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 Telegram, Slack, WhatsApp or a text message, in an app you already have open, and you answer it there. One of the five does part of this for Slack, and it is named and priced below.
In a hurry? Three questions and we will tell you whether this suits how you work.
Prices checked 23 August 2026. Every figure links to the page we read it from.
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 on a roof, under a sink, or driving between jobs. 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 replying "from your 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 is their Mini plan, $45 a month per workspace, billed monthly, before VAT. If Slack is the only app you care about, they already do the thing we do.
Set Crisp and Slack aside and nothing else on this page sends the chat out to you at all.
ChatRelay points outwards. The message from your website arrives in Telegram, Slack, WhatsApp or as a text message, in an app you already have open, and you answer it in that thread. Your reply goes back to the visitor while they are still on your website. There is no inbox to check, because there isn't one.
That is a difference in direction, not in price.
Someone is on your website at ten past four. They type: can you come out Thursday. Your phone buzzes. It is Telegram, the same place your mate sent the football score, and it says someone on your website wants a price for a bathroom. You type two lines with wet hands and go back to work.
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 and WhatsApp 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.
| ChatRelay | tawk.to | Tidio | Crisp | Chatway | Chatra | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where you type the reply | An app you already use | tawk.to's inbox | Tidio's dashboard | Crisp's inbox. Or Slack, from $45 a month | Chatway's dashboard | Chatra's dashboard |
| A new inbox to check | None | Yes | Yes | Yes, unless you pay for Slack | Yes | Yes |
| An app you have to check | None. Ours is optional and has nothing in it to check | Yes. It is where your messages live | Yes. It is where your messages live | Yes. It is where your messages live | Yes. It is where your messages live | Yes. It is where your messages live |
| Telegram | Out to you | In to their inbox | None | In to their inbox | Sends the visitor away | None |
| Slack | Out to you | Alerts only | Not for customer chats | Out to you, from $45 a month | None | Alerts only, top tier |
| WhatsApp or a text | Out to you | In to their inbox | WhatsApp in. No texts | In to their inbox | WhatsApp in. Texts are a link | Neither |
| Their branding removed | Included | $39 a month, or $29 yearly. Per property | Growth plan only | $295 a month | Included from Solo | Not stated |
| People who can answer | Any number | Any number | Ten | Two, then $10 each | One on Solo | Billed per agent |
| Conversations | Unlimited | Unlimited | 100 a month on Starter | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited when paid |
| Websites | Any number per location | No stated limit | More than one, shared settings | Per workspace | Unlimited | 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 | 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 |
| Price, billed monthly | £29 Relay, £79 Rota, a location | £0 with their name on it | $29 Starter | $45 Mini | $29 Solo | £31 an agent |
| Price, billed yearly | £24 Relay, £66 Rota, a month | £0 with their name on it | $24.17 a month | Not published | $24 a month | £25 an agent a month |
Where we lose
Three things, plainly.
tawk.to is free forever. No limit on chats, no limit on people answering, no stated cap on how many sites you put it on. It is free with their name on your chat box, and taking that off is $39 a month billed monthly, or $29 billed yearly, charged per property and not shared between properties. Even so, on raw cost we will not beat them.
Chatra, Chatway and tawk.to all cover as many websites as you like on one subscription. We charge per website, so one person looking after three sites pays less on any of those three than on us.
All five have their own iPhone and Android app, several on the free plan, and real two-way WhatsApp, Instagram or Messenger for your customers. Ours is a notification you can reply to, not a place to go and look.
We are the only product on this page you have to pay for from the first day. That is the trade. £29 a month, and the chat comes to you.
What it costs to have no inbox
£29 a month for one location, 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 any number of 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.
Any number of people can answer and there is no cap on conversations. Your partner, your office manager and the lad in the van 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 job 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 decides it. Free forever, unlimited chats, unlimited people answering, no stated cap on sites. Nothing here changes that.
Pick Crisp
If Slack is where your team lives and Slack is enough. Reply from Slack both ways on Mini, $45 a month per workspace, billed monthly, before VAT. They host in Europe.
Pick Chatway
If one person answers for several websites. Unlimited websites on every plan, the free one included. Solo $29 a month monthly, $24 annually, one seat.
Pick Tidio
If you want AI answering more than a relay. Starter $29 a month monthly, $24.17 annually, metered at 100 conversations.
Pick Chatra
If you want a plain chat inbox billed in pounds. £31 per agent a month monthly, £25 annually, before VAT.
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.
Where these figures come from
We read each of these pages on 23 August 2026. Prices in this market change often, and four of the five default to showing the annual rate, 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
- Tidio pricing
- Tidio integrations
- Crisp pricing
- Crisp Slack integration
- Chatway pricing
- Chatway Telegram button
- Chatway on the Shopify App Store
- Chatra plans
- Chatra Slack integration
tawk.to, Tidio, Crisp, Chatway and Chatra are the trade marks of their respective owners. We are not affiliated with any of them.