Chatbase
The fastest route from a folder of help docs to a working support widget, and priced accordingly once real traffic arrives. Credits are the whole story: 700 messages a month at $32 is a small site's volume, and the jump to a plan that carries actual traffic is $120, then $400. Budget from expected conversations, not from the feature grid.
Pros
- Crawl-and-embed setup produces a usable widget in an afternoon with no retrieval plumbing to write
- Actions and human handoff mean it degrades into a ticket rather than a dead end
- A real free tier exists for evaluation, and every paid plan carries a 7-day trial
Cons
- API access is gated to Standard at $120/month, four times the entry price
- Overage at $40 per 1,000 credits is steep next to the in-plan rate on Pro
- Removing vendor branding costs $1,188/year, more than the entire Hobby plan
- Free-tier agents are deleted after 14 days of inactivity, so an abandoned evaluation disappears