Respondo vs Crisp: which customer support platform fits your team?

Crisp has been a go-to recommendation for small teams and startups since 2015: a clean live chat with a free plan that makes it easy to start. Respondo takes a different approach: an AI-first support platform for teams whose conversation volume is growing faster than their headcount.

Both platforms do customer support, and both now put an AI agent in front of the queue. But they're priced around different things — Crisp around seats per plan and AI credits, Respondo around plans with unlimited teammates and a pool of AI replies — and that changes which one fits at each stage of a company. Here's an honest comparison. All prices are public list prices, monthly billing, as of November 2026.

At a glance

Quick overview

Crisp

Crisp was founded in 2015 in Nantes, France, and has grown without venture funding. It started as a free live chat widget and is now a multichannel messaging platform: a shared inbox, a knowledge base, chatbots and a visual workflow builder, campaigns, co-browsing, contact profiles, and native chat SDKs for iOS, Android, and React Native. Its AI agent, Hugo, answers customers across chat, email, and messaging channels.

Crisp is known for a clean interface, a free plan that genuinely covers a two-person team, and low entry prices. It's a popular choice for early-stage startups and solo founders.

Respondo

Respondo is an AI customer support platform built AI-first. It includes an AI agent that resolves about 7 out of 10 conversations end to end, a shared inbox across channels, a knowledge base and help center, outbound campaigns and surveys, analytics, AI Copilot for your team, and mobile SDKs for in-app chat. Every plan includes unlimited teammates.

Respondo is built for growing teams who want the AI to do most of the routine work and a bill that doesn't change with every hire.

Pricing: different models for different stages

How Crisp charges

Crisp prices each workspace by plan, and each plan includes a fixed number of seats and a monthly allowance of AI credits:

Hugo is paid from those credits per conversation it handles — from its first message until the conversation is resolved, routed, or escalated. Crisp puts the average at about $0.05–$0.10 per conversation; the exact amount depends on the AI model and the length of the conversation. Credits reset every month. When they run out, Hugo stops answering and hands new conversations to your team, unless you switch on pay-as-you-go billing.

Seat counts are hard limits below Plus: an 11th teammate means moving from Essentials at $95 to Plus at $295. Messaging channels like WhatsApp and Instagram, the knowledge base, and the workflow builder start on Essentials.

How Respondo charges

Respondo has three plans: Startup, Growth, and Business at $99, $219, and $499 a month, or $79, $179, and $399 a month billed annually. Every plan includes unlimited teammates and every channel.

Each plan includes a monthly pool of AI requests: 1,000 on Startup, 2,500 on Growth, 7,500 on Business. One AI request is one AI reply or one Copilot action, at the same price whatever model answers. If you need more, a top-up of 1,000 costs $49 a month.

What it costs in practice

Here are three teams with the AI answering every conversation first. For Respondo, we assume about two AI replies per conversation. For Crisp, we use Hugo's $0.05–$0.10 per conversation for usage beyond the included credits — Crisp doesn't publish a separate pay-as-you-go rate, so check yours in billing.

For a small team, Crisp is clearly cheaper — and on the free plan it costs nothing at all, as long as you don't need AI. As the team and the AI's share of the work grow, the bills converge. At that point the difference is less about the total and more about what's included: unlimited seats and every channel on every Respondo plan, and an AI line priced per reply rather than by tokens.

Feature comparison

AI agent

This is where both products have changed the most. Crisp's Hugo and Respondo's AI agent are both LLM-based agents: they answer from your knowledge base, work across channels, and hand off to a human when they can't help.

Hugo can also run actions in third-party tools; unlimited task automations come with the Plus plan. Respondo's AI agent resolves about 7 in 10 conversations, keeps the conversation's context when it hands off, and replies in the customer's language — auto-translation in 50+ languages is included on every plan. From the Growth plan, Respondo also shows you which customer questions your content doesn't answer yet, so you know what to write next.

The bigger difference is how the AI is billed. Hugo spends credits per conversation at a rate that varies with the model and the conversation's length. Respondo counts AI replies at a fixed price, so the same month always costs the same.

Inbox and channels

Both platforms bring many channels into one shared inbox.

Crisp has the broader list: chat and email, plus WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram, SMS, Line, Viber, and more on the Essentials plan and above. It also offers co-browsing.

Respondo covers web chat, email, WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Slack, and Discord — all included on the Startup plan — plus in-app chat through iOS, Android, and Flutter SDKs. Teams, round-robin assignment, SLAs, and macros are built in.

If you need SMS, Line, or Viber, Crisp has them and Respondo doesn't. If you want messaging channels without moving up to a higher plan, Respondo includes them from the start.

Knowledge base

Both platforms include a knowledge base that the AI answers from. Crisp's is clean and easy to publish to, available from the Essentials plan.

Respondo's hosted help center can be combined with sources like your website and Notion, all feeding the AI agent. From the Growth plan, the knowledge-gaps report shows what customers ask that your content doesn't cover, and articles get version control.

Automation and outbound

Crisp offers chatbots, a visual workflow builder, routing rules, and campaigns from the Essentials plan, with unlimited task automations on Plus.

Respondo includes outbound on every plan: banners and in-app messages from Startup, with NPS surveys, exit pop-ups, and retention flows from Growth, and 20,000 to 150,000 outbound messages a month included. The Workflows builder comes with the Business plan.

Multiple brands

If you run more than one product or brand, the models differ. On Crisp, each brand is its own workspace with its own plan (Crisp offers 20% off up to three additional workspaces on Essentials and Plus). On Respondo, one workspace handles up to 5 brands on Growth and 10 on Business from a single inbox, and more brands are $29 a month each.

Analytics

Crisp includes analytics from Essentials and advanced analytics with custom dashboards on Plus.

Respondo includes reporting on response times, resolution, CSAT, and volume on every plan. From the Growth plan, Advanced Analytics adds AI quality, knowledge gaps, and ROI.

Setup

Both are fast to set up compared with enterprise help desks. Crisp takes minutes: add the chat widget, connect your inbox, invite the team — and the free plan makes it easy to try. Respondo usually takes a few hours on the first day, because the AI needs your help content: connect a channel, import your articles or website, and the AI starts answering. Most teams go live the same day.

Where each platform fits best

Choose Crisp if

• You're a solo founder or a team of 1–3 with modest conversation volume
• You want to start for free and don't need AI yet
• You need SMS, Line, or Viber alongside chat
• Co-browsing is part of how you support customers
• You value Crisp's simple interface and a European, bootstrapped vendor

Choose Respondo if

• Your team is growing past Crisp's seat limits, or you want everyone — support, sales, product — in the inbox without paying per seat
• You want the AI to handle most conversations end to end, with replies priced at a fixed rate
• You run several brands and want them in one inbox
• You want messaging channels and outbound on the entry plan
• You want to see which questions your knowledge base doesn't answer yet

The honest take

Crisp and Respondo aren't really competing for the same moment in a company's life.

A solo founder with a few dozen conversations a month should probably start on Crisp's free plan. There's no reason to pay for an AI platform before the volume justifies it.

A team of 10 or more, with thousands of conversations a month and a choice between hiring three more people or letting AI take the routine work, is exactly where Respondo is built to help: the AI handles the volume, the team handles the exceptions, and adding people doesn't change the bill.

Many teams start on a lightweight chat tool and move to an AI-first platform as they grow. The question isn't which tool is better — it's where your team is now, and what you'll need over the next 12 months.

Where Respondo fits

Respondo was built for the moment a growing team needs AI that actually resolves conversations, not just deflects them. If manual replies are no longer sustainable and another hire isn't the right answer, that's where Respondo makes sense.

The platform assumes you'll grow and prices accordingly: unlimited teammates on every plan, every channel included, and AI capacity in fixed blocks you control. The AI handles the repetitive majority of your queue, and your team focuses on the conversations that need a person.

The 14-day free trial includes the full platform, and no credit card is required. Plans start at $79 a month billed annually, with unlimited teammates.