Crisp

This Crisp chat review covers what Crisp is used for, its key features, Crisp pricing and AI credits, how the Hugo AI agent works, where it shines and falls short, and how it compares with other customer communication tools. Crisp adds a chat widget to your website and collects every customer conversation from chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and SMS in one collaborative inbox. Support teams reply from the web app or the mobile apps, and Hugo, the built-in AI powered agent, answers common questions from your own knowledge base. Crisp is made by Crisp IM, a bootstrapped company founded in 2015 in Nantes, France, whose tools are used by around 600,000 companies (Sifted).

What is Crisp used for?

Crisp is used for customer support, sales chat and lead capture on websites and in apps. Typical users are SaaS companies, online stores on Shopify or WooCommerce, agencies and small and medium sized businesses that want one platform instead of separate tools for chat, email and social messages. A team can talk to visitors in real time, turn chats into leads, answer support tickets and publish a knowledge base for self service, all under one roof.

The main value is the shared inbox. Every message from every channel lands in the same place, with the customer data from the built-in CRM next to it, so the team sees the full history before it replies. As the business grows, Crisp adds automated workflows, routing rules and the AI agent to handle repetitive questions, so larger support teams keep control without adding more tools.

Key features

• Chat widget: a live chat box for your website with contact forms, chat triggers, file sharing and mobile SDKs for iOS and Android apps.
• Omnichannel inbox: one collaborative inbox for more than 20 messaging channels, including chat, email, WhatsApp Business, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram, X, SMS, Viber, Line and phone (Crisp pricing).
• Hugo AI agent: an AI agent trained on your Q&A, website pages and files that answers customers, detects topics and hands over to a human through routing rules.
• Knowledge base: a self service help center in several languages, which Hugo also uses as a source.
• CRM and customer data: contact profiles with conversation history, segments and custom data that the team can search, manage and update.
• Automation builder: visual workflows that ask questions, collect details, route conversations and call other tools.
• Campaigns: email and in-app messages to segments of contacts.
• MagicBrowse: co-browsing that lets an agent see the customer's page during a chat.
• Integrations: Shopify, WooCommerce, Stripe, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Zapier and Make, plus a REST API and a real-time API for developers.

Crisp pricing

Crisp prices per workspace per month, with a set number of seats included. The plans below come from the Crisp pricing page as of September 2026.

• Free plan: $0 forever. 2 seats, the chat widget, a shared inbox and the mobile apps. No AI and no email inbox.
• Mini plan: $45 per month. 4 seats, the email inbox, shortcuts, chat triggers and $5 of included AI credits, about 90 AI conversations.
• Essentials plan: $95 per month. 10 seats, all messaging channels, the knowledge base, CRM, the automation builder, analytics and $25 of AI credits, about 450 AI conversations.
• Plus plan: $295 per month. 20 seats, ticketing, more than 100 integrations, white labeling and $75 of AI credits, about 1,350 AI conversations.
• Enterprise: custom price with dedicated onboarding and personalized SLAs.

Every plan includes unlimited conversations and live chat for all users on the plan. Extra seats cost $10 per seat per month. There is a 14-day free trial without a credit card, annual billing, a 50% discount for nonprofits and students, and 20% off for three or more workspaces.

The cost surprise to check is AI usage. The AI credits are a dollar amount, not unlimited AI, and they reset every month. When they run out, Hugo stops answering unless you turn on pay-as-you-go billing in the AI agent settings (Crisp Help Center). The second surprise is that billing is per workspace, so each brand or website you run in a separate workspace needs its own paid plan.

Hugo, the AI powered agent, and AI credits

Hugo is the AI agent included from the Mini plan. You train it on questions and answers, website pages and files; on Essentials and Plus it can crawl up to 2,000 pages per domain. Hugo answers customers across channels, tags conversations by topic and hands over to a human when it can't find an answer, when the customer asks for a person or when the customer seems frustrated. Hugo Copilot also suggests replies to agents inside the inbox. Crisp says its AI can automate about half of incoming customer questions; your share depends on how complete your knowledge base is.

Crisp bills Hugo per AI conversation, not per message: one conversation runs from the first AI answer until it is resolved, routed or escalated. The included credits suit small volumes. A busy store or SaaS with hundreds of AI conversations a month should expect pay-as-you-go costs on top of the plan, and set a monthly limit in the billing settings.

Omnichannel inbox and customer experience

Crisp lets a team manage customer conversations from multiple channels in one unified inbox. An agent sees the chat, the email thread and the WhatsApp messages of the same customer together, with their profile, past orders and notes, and can respond from one place. Filters, assignments and search give support teams more control as volume grows, and access rights decide which users see which inboxes. For customers the experience is simpler: they communicate on the channel they prefer and get one consistent answer, not three replies from three tools. This is where Crisp offers the most value compared with a plain live chat tool.

Setting up the Crisp chat widget

The setup process is straightforward. Create a workspace, paste the chat widget script into your website or install the plugin for WordPress, Shopify or WooCommerce, and set your colors and availability. Connect the email inbox and messaging channels, invite your team members and create your first knowledge base articles. On paid plans you then train Hugo and build workflows. A small team can have a working chat and shared inbox running in an afternoon, and you can start on the free plan to test it.

Where Crisp shines — and where it falls short

Strengths:

• All customer conversations from many channels in one shared inbox.
• Flat price per workspace with several seats included, cheaper than per-seat tools for smaller teams.
• A usable free plan and a no-card free trial.
• AI agent, knowledge base, CRM and automation in one platform.

Trade-offs:

• AI is metered by credits, so heavy AI usage costs extra.
• Billing per workspace makes several brands expensive.
• Marketing features for social channels are limited.
• Reporting and ticketing are lighter than in large help desk suites until the Plus plan.

How Crisp compares

• Intercom: a larger customer service suite with the Fin AI agent, priced per seat and per resolution.
• HubSpot: CRM first, with live chat and a help desk as part of the Service Hub.
• Giosg: live chat and interactive content aimed at sales and lead generation.
• ChatBot: a chatbot builder that pairs with a separate live chat tool.
• Chatfuel: AI chatbots for WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger.
• Landbot: no-code conversational flows for lead capture and forms.

Is Crisp worth it?

Crisp is a great fit for small and medium sized teams that want live chat, a shared inbox, a knowledge base and an AI agent in one platform at a flat monthly price, with the features growing as the business grows. The free plan and the Mini plan are a good start, and Essentials covers most growing support teams. It is less of a fit if you expect heavy AI volume, run many brands in separate workspaces, or need the deep reporting of a large help desk. If you want help to set up Crisp, build workflows or connect it to your stack, the agencies and developers on LowCodeDevs can take it on.

Sources

• Crisp pricing: plans, seats, channels, AI credits and discounts.
• How does Hugo AI pricing and billing work: AI credits, conversation billing and pay-as-you-go.
• Crisp's new start, Sifted: company history, founders and scale.
• Crisp Chat Review, Chatimize: channels, integrations and drawbacks. It says the AI chatbot is only on the $45 plan; Crisp's pricing page includes Hugo on Mini and every higher plan.
• Crisp Pricing 2026, Featurebase: workspace billing and limits (written by a competitor).
• Crisp live chat overview, eesel AI: features and limitations (written by a competitor).