How we make this list: we compare pricing pages, product documentation and public user reviews. Ratings come from G2, Capterra or Trustpilot, with the date we checked them.
Key takeaways
- Gorgias is the safest pick for Shopify stores doing real volume, because agents can refund, edit and upsell orders without leaving the chat.
- Tidio and ManyChat are the two cheapest ways in: Tidio for website chat with an AI agent, ManyChat for Instagram and Messenger automation.
- Attentive and Postscript are both SMS-first, but they serve opposite buyers: Attentive is a managed enterprise program, Postscript is self-serve with published per-message rates.
- Intercom and Ada cost the most and deliver the most automation, but both bill AI usage on top of the base plan, so model your volume before you commit.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Best for | Starting price | Free plan |
|---|
 Gorgias | Shopify stores with high ticket volume | $10/month (Starter, 50 tickets) | Free trial (7 days) |
 Tidio | Small stores wanting AI chat on a budget | $29/month (Starter, billed monthly) | Yes (50 conversations per month) |
 ManyChat | Creators selling through Instagram DMs | $17/month (Essential, 250 active contacts) | Yes (25 active contacts) |
 Attentive | Large DTC brands where SMS drives revenue | See website (usage-based, quoted per brand) | Free trial (for eligible businesses) |
 Postscript | Shopify brands wanting transparent SMS rates | $0/month (Starter, $49 monthly minimum spend) | Free trial ($100 credit for 30 days) |
 Intercom | Support teams wanting one AI agent across every channel | $29/seat/month (Essential, billed annually) | Free trial (14 days) |
 Ada | Enterprises with very high support volumes | See website (custom quotes only) | No |
 Chatfuel | SMBs automating WhatsApp and Instagram lead capture | $20/month (Business, billed monthly) | Free trial (7 days) |
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Starting price$10/month (Starter, 50 tickets)
Free planFree trial (7 days)
If you sell on Shopify, Gorgias is probably already on your radar. Around 17,000 ecommerce brands run on it, and the reason is the depth of the Shopify integration. An agent can pull up an order, change a shipping address, issue a refund or apply a discount without leaving the conversation window. That turns support chats into revenue instead of cost centers, which is the whole point of conversational commerce.
The AI Agent layer handles the repetitive work, pre-trained on ecommerce conversations and able to work across email, chat and text. The honest catch is the double meter: you pay per ticket and per AI-resolved interaction, so a store with heavy volume needs to model both. The 7-day free trial requires no payment details, which makes it easy to test with real tickets.
What we like- Native Shopify actions like refunds and order edits inside the conversation
- AI Agent resolves common questions across email, chat and SMS
- Agents are unlimited on every plan, never priced per seat
Watch out for- Ticket-based billing gets expensive as volume grows
- AI Agent adds per-resolution fees on top of the helpdesk plan
Starting price$29/month (Starter, billed monthly)
Free planYes (50 conversations per month)
Tidio wins the budget tier by refusing to act like budget software. More than 300,000 businesses use it, and the homepage pitch is direct: paid plans start at $29 a month, and the free plan stays free. Lyro, the built-in AI agent, averages a 75 percent resolution rate across customers and works across web chat, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and email from one inbox.
What stands out for smaller teams is how little setup it demands. Flows come with 40-plus ecommerce templates for cart recovery, lead capture and bookings, and Lyro trains on your website and help center rather than generic data. The trade-off is metering: the base plan counts billable conversations, and Lyro AI conversations draw from a separate quota, so read both meters before you compare it against a flat-rate tool.
What we like- Free plan covers 50 conversations a month with no card required
- Lyro AI agent answers only from your content and admits when it does not know
- Paid plans start at $29 with no surprise upgrades
Watch out for- Lyro AI conversations are a separate metered quota on top of the base plan
- API access and webhooks require the Plus tier
Starting price$17/month (Essential, 250 active contacts)
Free planYes (25 active contacts)
Instagram comments are where ManyChat lives. Someone writes "price?" under a Reel, and the automation replies publicly and drops into the DM within seconds. For creators and small brands, that single flow can be worth more than an entire email program. ManyChat covers Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, TikTok, Telegram, SMS and email, but its heart is social chat marketing, not support ticketing.
The pricing changed in March 2026 to bill by active contacts: Free covers 25, Essential is $17 a month for 250 ($14 billed annually), Pro is $39 for 2,500, and it climbs from there. AI replies are now included from Pro up. The contact-based model is the thing to watch. A quiet month costs little, but one viral post can push you into a higher tier automatically. If Instagram is your main sales channel, few tools convert attention faster.
What we like- Comment-to-DM automation turns Instagram engagement into sales conversations
- Official Meta Business Partner with a TikTok partnership
- Visual flow builder needs no code
Watch out for- Billing scales by active contacts, so a viral month raises the bill
- WhatsApp and SMS carry separate Meta and carrier fees on top
Starting priceSee website (usage-based, quoted per brand)
Free planFree trial (for eligible businesses)
Attentive is the enterprise SMS platform hiding inside this list. It processes over a billion messages a month and positions SMS as a primary revenue channel rather than a side channel. The patented two-tap sign-up is genuinely good at list growth, and the platform now spans SMS, email, RCS and push with AI features for personalization, send-time optimization and journeys.
What you are really buying is the program, not just the software. Every plan includes strategy, onboarding and deliverability support, which is why large retail brands stay. The flip side is procurement: there is no public pricing, quotes are built from list size, message volume, channels and AI add-ons, and third-party reporting puts quarterly minimums in the low thousands. If you send fewer than 50,000 texts a month, start with Postscript instead.
What we like- Patented two-tap sign-up grows SMS lists faster than standard forms
- SMS, email, RCS and push run from one builder
- Every account gets dedicated strategy and deliverability support
Watch out for- No public pricing, everything goes through a sales conversation
- Contracts typically carry quarterly minimum spends that rule out small brands
Starting price$0/month (Starter, $49 monthly minimum spend)
Free planFree trial ($100 credit for 30 days)
Postscript takes the opposite approach to Attentive: same SMS-first category, fully self-serve, every price on the website. The Starter plan is $0 a month with a $49 monthly minimum spend, and you pay $0.009 per SMS and $0.045 per MMS plus carrier fees. Growth is $100 a month with lower per-message rates, and Professional is $500. Nothing is hidden, and the pricing page spells out exactly what a long text costs, which is rare in this space.
For Shopify brands, the fit is natural. Subscriber acquisition tools, popups, checkout collection, advanced segmentation on Shopify data and a visual flow builder all come standard. Compliance is wired into the product rather than bolted on, and there are no profile fees for growing your list. The free trial gives you a $100 credit for 30 days, which is enough to run a real campaign before paying. Watch the per-message math at scale, since high volume is where a flat-rate competitor can win.
What we like- Published per-message rates with carrier fees passed through at cost
- Free Starter includes automations, unlimited segments and a toll-free number
- No contracts required on monthly billing
Watch out for- Per-message costs add up fast at real scale
- Dedicated short codes cost extra through the carriers
#6
Intercom
Best for: Support teams wanting one AI agent across every channel
Visit intercom.com
Starting price$29/seat/month (Essential, billed annually)
Free planFree trial (14 days)
Intercom enters this category sideways. It is a full customer service suite first, but Fin, its AI agent, is one of the strongest conversational sellers available. It resolves across chat, email, WhatsApp and voice, takes actions through APIs, and learns from the same inbox your human team uses. More than 30,000 brands run on it, and the resolution data is public: 76 percent on average across 12,000-plus customers.
The pricing has two layers and you must budget for both. Essential starts at $29 per seat a month billed annually ($39 monthly), Advanced is $85 and Expert is $132. Fin adds $0.99 per outcome on every plan, charged at most once per conversation. For a busy team, the Fin line often exceeds the seat bill, so model your expected resolutions, not just your headcount. The upside is control: you can set hard monthly outcome limits so the bill never surprises you.
What we like- Fin AI agent averages 76 percent resolution across chat, email, WhatsApp and voice
- Seats, inbox and AI share one customer record
- 14-day trial needs no credit card
Watch out for- Fin costs $0.99 per outcome on top of every seat, so bills scale with volume
- No free plan, only a trial
#7
Ada
Best for: Enterprises with very high support volumes
Visit ada.cx
Starting priceSee website (custom quotes only)
Free planNo
Ada plays in a different league from everyone else here. It is an agentic customer experience platform built for airlines, telcos, marketplaces and other operations doing hundreds of thousands of conversations a year. One intelligence layer drives the agent across every channel, and Playbooks let it follow multi-step procedures, checking account status, executing workflows and updating systems of record without human touch. The company reports 550-plus deployed agents and 6.4 billion interactions.
There is no public pricing and no self-serve path. The pricing page is a demo form, and third-party buyer data puts the median contract around $72,000 a year. That is the honest filter: if you do not have a procurement process and six-figure support costs to automate away, Ada is not for you. If you do, few platforms match its depth in regulated, high-volume industries.
What we like- Reasoning Engine powers one agent across voice, chat, email, WhatsApp, SMS and social
- Playbooks execute multi-step SOPs against your systems
- Enterprise compliance including HIPAA, SOC 2 and PCI DSS
Watch out for- Quote-only pricing with entry contracts reported in the tens of thousands per year
- Far more platform than a small team can justify
#8
Chatfuel
Best for: SMBs automating WhatsApp and Instagram lead capture
Visit chatfuel.com
Starting price$20/month (Business, billed monthly)
Free planFree trial (7 days)
Chatfuel is the veteran of the bunch, and its 2026 rebuild turned it into an AI agent platform for service businesses. The pitch is simple: replies, qualifies, books and follows up on WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook automatically. Customers can pay inside the conversation, pick booking slots in the chat, and every chat becomes a lead card in a built-in pipeline. More than 150,000 businesses use it.
The current pricing is straightforward on paper: Business at $20 a month ($18 billed annually), Agency S at $100 a month ($90 annually) for agencies running client accounts. Every plan starts with a free trial and no credit card is required. The caveat is history. Chatfuel has changed its pricing model several times, from conversation-based to a single AI PRO tier to the current structure, so confirm the billing screen inside your account before you commit. For WhatsApp-first lead generation, it remains one of the fastest tools to launch.
What we like- Official Meta Partner and WhatsApp Business Solution Provider
- In-chat payments and booking without a checkout page
- 50-plus tested templates for fast launch
Watch out for- Pricing has been overhauled repeatedly, which makes long-term budgeting harder
- The Meta-channel focus means thinner website live chat than dedicated chat tools
How we chose
We did not test these tools hands-on. We ranked them the way a buyer should: reading each vendor's pricing page, documentation and feature lists, then cross-checking against public reviews on G2, Capterra and Trustpilot and discussions on Reddit. We favored tools with published pricing, real Shopify or Meta integrations, and a clear fit for a specific company size, and we dropped products that were shut down, acquired into something unrecognizable, or priced only through enterprise sales with no self-serve path.
What to check before you sign up
Start with channels, not features. A tool that is brilliant on Instagram is useless if your customers live on WhatsApp, and an SMS platform means nothing if you have no list yet. Map where your last 100 customer conversations actually happened, then shortlist the two or three tools that cover those channels natively rather than through a third-party connector.
The pricing model matters more than the sticker price
These tools bill in at least four different ways: per ticket (Gorgias), per seat (Intercom), per conversation or outcome (Tidio, Intercom's Fin, Ada), per contact (ManyChat) and per message (Attentive, Postscript). A $20 plan can cost more than a $100 plan at your volume. Run your last three months of message counts through each model before you decide.
AI depth versus flow builders
Flow-based builders like ManyChat and Chatfuel are fast to launch and predictable, but they only handle paths you designed. AI agents like Fin, Lyro and Ada handle the unexpected, but they bill per resolution and need good knowledge content to work from. If your questions are repetitive and narrow, flows are cheaper. If they vary wildly, pay for the AI.
Compliance is not optional for SMS
US texting is governed by the TCPA and carrier rules, and the fines are real. Postscript and Attentive build compliance into sign-up flows and quiet hours. If you pick a chat tool and bolt SMS on later, confirm who handles opt-in proof, carrier registration and quiet-hour enforcement before you send your first campaign.
Where the money actually goes
Most buyers underestimate the add-ons. Carrier fees sit on top of every SMS platform's per-message rate. WhatsApp conversations carry Meta's fees on top of your subscription on every tool here. AI resolutions bill separately from seats on Intercom, Gorgias and Ada. None of this is hidden, but it is spread across pricing pages, FAQ entries and checkout screens.
The practical move is a 90-day cost model. Take your monthly conversation count, your SMS volume, your agent headcount and your expected AI resolution rate, then price all three finalists on the same assumptions. The cheapest headline price rarely survives contact with real volume, and the most expensive tool is sometimes the cheapest per resolved conversation.
Frequently asked questions
What is conversational commerce?
It is selling through conversations instead of static pages: AI chat, live chat, SMS, WhatsApp and social DMs that answer questions, recommend products and take payment inside the chat. The goal is to remove the gap between a shopper's question and the checkout.
Which conversational commerce platform is cheapest to start?
Tidio and ManyChat both have genuinely free plans, and Postscript's Starter is $0 a month plus message costs. For a store testing the waters, start free on the channel where your customers already message you, then upgrade when volume justifies it.
Do I need SMS, or is chat enough?
Chat captures demand on your site and social profiles. SMS reaches people who left. Most stores see the best return running both: chat for on-site conversion, SMS for cart recovery and repeat purchases. If you can only afford one, pick the channel your customers already use to contact you.
How much does AI chat actually resolve?
Vendor-reported averages run from 60 to 85 percent, and real results depend on your content quality. Tools that train on your help center and product data, like Lyro and Fin, outperform generic bots. Expect the first month to be lower while the AI learns, then measure resolution rate monthly.
Can these tools replace my support team?
No. They replace the repetitive tier of support: order status, shipping questions, returns, FAQs. Complex, emotional or high-value conversations still need humans, and every tool here includes handoff to a live agent for exactly that reason. Budget for fewer repetitive tickets, not zero agents.
Is WhatsApp messaging free on these platforms?
No. Meta charges per conversation on WhatsApp, and every platform passes that cost through on top of your subscription. Factor Meta's conversation fees into your budget separately from the tool's plan price.
Sources we checked (8)
- https://www.gorgias.com/pricing
- https://www.tidio.com/pricing/
- https://manychat.com/pricing
- https://www.attentive.com/messaging
- https://postscript.io/pricing
- https://www.intercom.com/pricing
- https://www.ada.cx/platform/
- https://chatfuel.com/pricing
Is your product missing or out of date?
We review this list regularly. Vendors can request a listing, send updated pricing or ask about featured placement.
Shihab Mia · Founder, Rankite
Shihab has 5+ years in B2B and SaaS SEO. He writes Rankite's software buying guides from pricing pages, documentation and public user reviews. More about Shihab.