An honest brand can't lie about its rivals, so we won't. Here's where we fit, where we don't, and who should pick someone else.
| PakoChat | Contact form | tawk.to | Crisp / Tidio | Intercom (Fin) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI hands off instead of guessing | ✓ core | — | add-on, partial | partial | optimizes for resolution |
| Answers only from your approved Q&A | ✓ | — | varies | varies | broad sources |
| Turn the AI off entirely | ✓ | n/a | — | limited | not the point |
| Pricing model | Flat Founder + $15/user | free | free core | tiered, with caps | per-seat + $0.99/resolution |
| Bills you more the more the AI works | Never | n/a | n/a | n/a | Yes (per-resolution) |
| Surprise price increases | No | n/a | n/a | reported | reported |
| Remove their branding | Free | n/a | paid (~$29/mo) | varies | n/a |
| Live in minutes | ✓ one script tag | n/a | ✓ | ✓ | onboarding project |
| Your data exports | ✓ | ✓ | varies | varies | varies |
| Real human support | ✓ | n/a | paid add-on | varies | reported slow |
Every claim here is fair and checkable. We update it as their pricing changes.
Free and simple — and it makes people wait, sometimes for hours. If that's costing you sales or goodwill, live chat that covers you when you're away is the upgrade. If it isn't, you may not need us yet, and we'll say so.
Genuinely free, with unlimited agents — a real, generous core. The catch is the model: removing their badge costs a monthly fee, real AI is a paid add-on, and their revenue comes from staffing your chats. Free, but not free. We charge fairly and let you remove our badge for nothing.
Both are good, well-liked tools that install fast. The recurring complaints are the ones we built against: surprise price changes, conversation caps that arrive sooner than you'd think, and missed-notification moments. Our whole design treats "a chat nobody noticed" as the real failure.
The polished one — and its AI genuinely works. But it's built for bigger teams, and the pricing is the catch: per-seat plus $0.99 per AI resolution, so the better the bot performs, the larger and less predictable your bill. We deliberately don't run that meter.
If your goal is a bot that resolves as many tickets as possible without a human ever stepping in — an autonomous agent measured on deflection — that's not us, on purpose. We optimize for the opposite: never letting the bot say something wrong under your name. If max deflection is the goal, one of the AI-agent tools will serve you better. If "my brand never lies to a customer" is the goal, that's the whole reason we exist.