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 on Hobby ($40, or $32 billed yearly) is a small site's volume, and the plans that carry real traffic cost $150 and $500 a month. There is no free plan to fall back on, so 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
- Every paid plan carries a 7-day trial, and the yearly toggle takes 20% off
Cons
- The free plan is gone, so evaluation is limited to a 7-day trial
- API access is gated to Standard at $150/month ($120 billed yearly), several times the entry price
- Overage at $40 per 1,000 credits is steep next to the in-plan rate on Pro
- Each plan includes a single agent; more cost $300 per agent a year, and removing branding $1,188 a year