Free chat has a price. It is another inbox to check.
All five of the products below give you an inbox of their own to look in. ChatRelay sends the chat out to Slack, WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord or your email, whichever you already have open, and you answer it there. One of the five does this for Slack and Discord, from $45 and $95 a month. Both are part of our £29.
In a hurry? Three questions and we will tell you whether this suits how you work.
Prices checked 11 November 2026. The pages we read are listed at the bottom.
The inbox is the price
A free chat widget is free to install. The work starts after that.
Somebody has to look at it. Not once, every day, including the days you are with clients, on the shop floor, or out on a job. It is a new place to look, on top of the phone, the texts, the emails and WhatsApp.
A chat is not usually missed because a business does not care. It is missed because it landed somewhere nobody had a reason to open.
That cost does not come down when the price does. A free chat inbox and a paid chat inbox are the same shape. Both of them wait for you to come to them. There is one exception on this page, and it is named further down.
Nobody is hiding this
Read their own pages and the shape is plain. Crisp says messages land "straight in your Crisp Inbox". Chatway sells answering WhatsApp "directly from the Chatway dashboard". tawk.to says agents "can work entirely from the Inbox without needing the Telegram app".
None of that is a trick. They are describing the thing they built, and they built it well. If you have a desk, a screen and somebody sitting at it during opening hours, an inbox is the right answer, and any of these five will do it.
Which way the chat travels
Every product on this page has Telegram, WhatsApp, SMS or social messaging of some kind. In every case but one it points inwards. Your customer's message is pulled into their inbox, and you type the reply in their dashboard or in the phone app they ask you to install.
The exception is Crisp. Crisp will send your website chats to Slack and let you reply from there, both ways, and it works. That starts on their Mini plan, $45 a month per workspace, billed monthly, before VAT. Discord works the same way from their Essentials plan, at $95.
We do the same in Slack and in Discord for £29, and in Telegram and your email at the same price. If Slack is the only app you care about, it comes down to £29 against $45.
Past Slack and Discord, Crisp points inwards like the rest: its Telegram and WhatsApp come into its inbox. Set Crisp aside and nothing else on this page sends the chat out to you at all.
Outside these five, a few products also send a chat out to you, among them Re:plain, Social Intents and Chatlio. What none of them does is chase a list of people until somebody answers.
ChatRelay points outwards. The message from your website arrives in whichever app you already have open, which is Slack, WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, your email or our own app, and you answer it in that thread. Your reply goes back to the visitor while they are still on your website. Nothing waits for you to come and find it, because it has already come to you.
It does not have to be one app for everybody. On Rota, each of up to five people gets it in their own: you in WhatsApp, the office in Slack, a colleague in Telegram, and it moves down the list until somebody answers.
That is a difference in direction, not in price.
Someone is on your website at ten past four. They type: have you got anything Thursday for a cut and colour. Your phone buzzes. It is Telegram, the same place your mate sent the football score, and it says someone on your website wants an appointment. You type two lines with wet hands and go back to your client.
You did not open a dashboard. You did not learn a system. Nothing was sitting unread when you got home.
The table
The rows that decide it are at the top. The prices are at the bottom, where you can check them against everything above. The Telegram, Slack, Discord, WhatsApp and info@ rows say which way the message points, because a tick would mean a different thing at each of these companies.
On a phone, scroll the table sideways for every column.
Read the last four rows together. Chatra charges per agent, and Crisp and Chatway charge for seats past the few included. Ours is what the business costs, however many of you answer. Rota, which chases a list of people until somebody answers, is a separate 79 pounds and is priced in full on the front page: nothing else on this table does it, so there is nothing to compare it against.
| ChatRelay | tawk.to | Tidio | Crisp | Chatway | Chatra | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where you type the reply | Slack, WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord or email, whichever you already use | tawk.to's inbox | Tidio's dashboard | Crisp's inbox. Or Slack from $45 a month, or Discord from $95 | Chatway's dashboard | Chatra's dashboard |
| A new inbox to check | None | Yes | Yes | Yes, unless you pay for Slack or Discord | Yes | Yes |
| An app you have to check | None. Ours is optional, and the enquiry reaches you whether you open it or not | Yes. It tells you in its app, or in a browser left signed in | Yes. Live alerts need you signed in, or you get an email later | Yes, unless you pay for Slack or Discord | Yes, to answer. Unread chats are emailed to you | Yes. Offline in it, you are not told at all |
| Telegram | Out to you, included | In to their inbox | In to their inbox, on Plus and Premium | In to their inbox | Sends the visitor away | None |
| Slack | Out to you, included, everyone in the channel | Alerts only, through Zapier or Make | Alerts only, on Plus and Premium | Out to you, from $45 a month | None | Alerts only, on Pro |
| Discord | Out to you, included | None of its own | In to their inbox, on Plus and Premium | Out to you, from $95 a month | A button that sends the visitor away | None |
| Out to you, £9 a month. Or £1 a month for the first three months if you sign up by 31 January 2027 | In to their inbox | In to their inbox | In to their inbox, from Essentials | In to their inbox, from Business | None | |
| Your info@ emails | Out to you with the chats, included | In to their inbox, as tickets | In to their inbox, as tickets | In to their inbox, from Mini | In to their inbox, from Business | In to their inbox, from Essential |
| Their branding removed | Included | $39 a month, or $29 yearly. Per property | €16.67 a month add-on on Growth, billed yearly. Included on Plus | $295 a month | Included from Business | Not stated |
| Websites | Up to 20 per location | No stated limit | More than one, shared settings | Per workspace | Unlimited, sharing one chat box. Separate ones on Plus, at $199 | Unlimited |
| Free plan | None. A fortnight free instead | Yes, forever, with their name on it | 50 chats a month | Yes, two seats | Yes, one seat, 50 chats a month | Five chats a month |
| Trial | A fortnight, no card | Not needed | 7 days, no card | 14 days, no card | 14 days | 10 days, no card |
| People who can answer | Everyone in the group chat it goes to | Any number | Ten | Two free, four on Mini, and anyone replying from Slack or Discord. Extra seats at $10 each on Plus | Two on Business, then $19 each, or $16 yearly | Billed per agent |
| If nobody answers | On Rota, the next person on your list after five minutes, then the one after | It turns orange after ten minutes. Nothing moves it on | Nothing moves it on. Round robin, from Growth, shares chats out | One person is emailed after three minutes | Nothing moves it on. Routing, on Plus, shares chats out | Everyone online is told at once |
| Conversations | Unlimited | Unlimited | 100 a month on Starter | Unlimited | 200 a month on Business | Unlimited when paid |
| Price, billed monthly | £29 for one location, however many people are in the group chat it goes to | £0 with their name on it, or $39 to take it off. Per property | €29 Starter, as shown to a UK visitor | $45 Mini, four seats | $39 Business, two seats | £31 an agent |
| Price, billed yearly | £290 a year for one location, about £24 a month | £0 with their name on it, or $29 a month to take it off. Per property | €24.17 a month | Not published | $31 a month, two seats | £25 an agent a month |
What it costs to have no inbox
We are the only one here with no free plan. That is the trade, and it is the whole of it: after a fortnight free it is £29 a month, and the chat comes to you instead of you going to it.
£29 a month for one location on Relay, billed monthly, in pounds. Pay yearly and two months are free, so it is £290 for the year. A location is a place with its own phone and its own people answering, and up to 20 websites can point at it.
There is no free plan. There is a fortnight free with no card, and you can walk away at the end of it.
Everyone in the group chat it goes to can answer, and there is no cap on conversations. Your partner, your office manager and whoever is on the front desk can all be in the group at no extra cost, so the bill does not move when you get busy or when somebody else starts helping with the phone. Our name never appears on the chat box, and that is in the price rather than an upsell.
Two weeks is long enough to find out. If the chat never once reaches you somewhere you were already looking, cancel and pay nothing. One enquiry answered in ten minutes instead of two days is the whole argument. You already know what one new customer is worth to you.
Is it for you?
Three questions, or seven if you want it sharper. It works out whether the way we do this actually suits how you work, and it will tell you when it does not. Everything it says is set out in full further down the page, so you can check its working.
When one of the others is the better answer
Pick tawk.to
If cost is what decides it, and their name on your chat box does not bother you.
Pick Crisp
If your team works at desks and wants chat, Telegram and WhatsApp pulled into one shared inbox. For Slack on its own, we are £29 and they are $45.
Pick Chatway
If you answer several websites on your own, get fewer than 50 chats a month, and free matters more than where you answer. Several websites for one business are one location with us.
Pick Tidio
If you want something answering for you rather than reaching you.
Pick Chatra
If a plain chat inbox, billed in pounds, is what you are after.
Pick none of us
If nobody will look at a chat within the hour, a phone number and a contact form will do less harm than a widget nobody answers.
Each one on its own page
The same comparison, one product at a time, with what it does well and how to move from it.
Where these figures come from
We read each of these pages on 11 November 2026. Prices in this market change often, and some of them show the annual rate first, so check before you decide. If we have got something wrong, tell us and we will correct it.
- tawk.to pricing
- tawk.to branding removal
- tawk.to agent and chat limits
- tawk.to Telegram channel
- tawk.to WhatsApp channel
- tawk.to alerts through Zapier
- tawk.to email forwarding
- tawk.to incoming chat alerts
- tawk.to desktop alerts
- Tidio pricing
- Tidio integrations
- Tidio Telegram integration
- Tidio Slack integration
- Tidio Discord integration
- Tidio email forwarding
- Tidio when you are offline
- Tidio workflows
- Crisp pricing
- Crisp Slack integration
- Crisp Discord integration
- Crisp email forwarding
- Crisp email alerts
- Chatway pricing
- Chatway Telegram button
- Chatway WhatsApp integration
- Chatway email forwarding
- Chatway notifications
- Chatway Discord button
- Chatway on the Shopify App Store
- Chatra plans
- Chatra Slack integration
- Chatra integrations, including email
- Chatra help, on notifications and the chat queue
tawk.to, Tidio, Crisp, Chatway, Chatra, Re:plain, Social Intents and Chatlio are the trade marks of their respective owners. We are not affiliated with any of them.