The cost-trap atlas for customer support and voice software

(read 2026-10-10 on aircall.io/pricing in a live browser, with Aircall's own country selector on United States) Essentials is $30 per license a month and Professional $50, both on annual billing, which the page marks as 25% off monthly.

The separate AI Assist add-on at $9 that we read on 27 September is no longer in the add-on list; the comparison table now marks call summaries, topics and call scoring as AI Assist on all three plans.

Billed monthly: Starter $40 with zero minutes included and $1.75 per minute after that; Small Business $179 for 100 minutes, then $1.70; Pro $329 for 250 minutes, then $1.60; Enterprise $639 for 500 minutes, then $1.35.

meter: unit · AI replies

Free: 50 AI replies a month, replies in one language you select, answers drawn from your FAQs, policy pages and product data, translated storefront widget, product finder and usage tracking.

The headline price is really a minutes bucket: a store with real call volume pays the overage, so cost tracks conversation length, not seats.

(read 2026-10-06 on bonline.com/pricing, prices in GBP excluding VAT) Three plans, priced per user a month.

Add-ons are billed monthly: AI call recording £8, CRM integrations £8 (HubSpot, Zoho, Odoo, Pipedrive, Salesforce and 200 more), and international bundles at £6 for 500 minutes to 100 destinations, £10 for 1,000 minutes, or £5 for unlimited minutes to 14 destinations.

(re-verified 2026-08-17; plan prices unchanged on 2026-10-06, included allowance changed) Standard $15 per user/mo, or $12 billed annually ($144 a year); Premium $35 per user/mo, or $28 annually ($336 a year); Enterprise custom.

Beyond the allowance, calls and SMS draw from a wallet: the subscription includes a $1 credit, after which you must load the wallet, and further numbers are billed separately.

Annual billing saves 20%.

(re-verified 2026-10-14 in a browser on callhippo.com/pricing, currency selector switched to USD, phone-number region US/CA: plan grid, both billing tabs and fair-usage notes re-read; the add-on prices below were last read on 15 September 2026) Starter is $19 per user per month on annual billing and $25 month to month, Professional $30 and $40, Ultimate $42 and $55.

Overages are in the notes: incoming minutes on standard numbers $0.02/min, incoming SMS $0.01 per message past fair use, outgoing calls to the same number capped at 10 per hour, and parallel calls capped at 30% of total call capacity.

Starter is $9 a month or $90 a year: 250 message credits a month, about 50 conversations by the page's estimate, 1 agent and 2 million training characters.

Add-ons are $9 a month per 1,000 extra credits, $9 per 10 million training characters, $9 per extra agent and $6 per 1,000 MCP actions.

(read 2026-10-13 in a live browser on chatwith.tools/pricing and in the terms at chatwith.tools/terms) Four plans in US dollars, excluding taxes, with annual billing at ten times the monthly price.

Lite €19, Starter €25, Essential €29 and Expert €49 per user/mo on annual billing, or €27, €34, €39 and €69 billed monthly, and Expert needs at least 3 licences (re-verified 2026-08-16 and 2026-10-06).

AI voice agents are separate subscriptions: the add-on card lists them from €99/mo with 200 minutes (on 6 October 2026 the AI Receptionist card itself showed €0 with 50 minutes free in the first month), AI Specialist €349/mo with 1,000 minutes, and above 10,000 minutes a month custom pricing CloudTalk advertises as low as €0.15 per minute.

meter: unit · AI conversations

(read 2026-08-19, re-verified unchanged 2026-09-04 on apps.shopify.com/cloze, listed as “Cloze: AI Shopping Assistant”) Free plan available: 25 AI conversations a month, up to 100 synced products, core assistant customisation and 7 days of conversation history.

On overage CometChat charges $0.10 per extra MAU (falling at higher tiers) or $1 per extra concurrent connection — and where both are exceeded it bills the higher of the two, not both.

Messages and storage are unlimited on every plan, and message retention is 6 months across the board, extendable at extra cost.

The pricing cliff is the honest headline: from a 100-MAU free tier straight to ~$239/mo is a brutal jump for an early-stage app, and users report plan structures changing under them.

(read on crankwheel.com/pricing, 2026-08-21, re-verified unchanged 2026-10-09) A free plan with no payment details required — unlimited usage for the first 15 days, then up to 15 sessions a month for life.

meter: unit · WhatsApp messages

Free: a WhatsApp chat button with unlimited conversations, custom size and location, and prefilled messages.

Essential $39 per agent/mo, Growth $89, Professional $119 (the plan eDesk marks Most Popular), Enterprise custom — all billed annually.

meter: unit · agent seats and resolved AI outcomes

eDesk claims the agent can automate up to 65% of support across channels, so model the outcome fee against your ticket volume — at 1,000 resolved tickets a month that is $990 on top of the seats.

Pro $18/seat/mo month-to-month or $10/seat/mo billed annually — unlimited AI summaries, 8,000 mins of storage per seat, 20 AI credits.

(price re-verified 2026-10-23 against the vendor's own pricing page and help guide) Free $0 — free forever, unlimited transcription, limited AI summaries, 400 mins of storage per team, 20 AI credits.

More credits are a separate subscription: 50 for $5 a month ($4 billed annually), 200 for $20 ($16), 1,000 for $90 ($72), 2,500 for $200 ($160), 5,000 for $375 ($300), 7,500 for $450 ($360) and 10,000 for $600 ($480).

Per agent per month: Growth $19 billed annually or $23 monthly, Pro $49 or $59, Enterprise $79 or $95.

Freddy AI is a separate bill, and both rates are published: the Freddy AI Copilot add-on is $29/agent/mo billed annually ($35 monthly), and Freddy AI Agent sessions cost $49 per 100 sessions beyond the 500 complimentary sessions each paid account receives once.

Free is $0 for up to 10 agents.

(price re-verified 2026-09-29 against the vendor's own pricing page) Per agent, read 29 Sep 2026 on freshworks.com/freshservice/pricing/: Starter $19/agent/mo billed annually or $29 monthly; Growth $49 or $59; Pro $99 or $119.

Add-ons and allowances: Freddy AI Copilot $29/agent/mo, offered on the Pro and Enterprise cards only and still an add-on on Enterprise even though that card now says 'Freddy AI included' (what is included there is the Freddy AI Agent (Classic) at 1,200 sessions per Enterprise licence per year, plus Freddy AI Insights); orchestration transactions included at 1,000/2,000/5,000/20,000 per account per month with extra packs at $250 per 1,000; MCP actions allowanced at 1,200, 6,000 or 12,000 a year with packs at $15 per 1,000; an e-signature pack at $90 for 30 signature credits; project management licences at $15/user/mo; a Business Agent licence for non-IT teams at $49/agent/mo on Pro and Enterprise only; connector app tasks at $80 per 5,000 after a one-time 500 free.

The $19 headline rarely survives contact with a real deployment: the ITSM features most IT teams buy for (change/problem management, deeper analytics) live at Pro, and so does Freddy AI Copilot, a $29-an-agent add-on offered only on Pro and Enterprise.

On Freshdesk the annual rates are unchanged since 1 August 2026: Growth $19 per agent per month, Pro $55, Enterprise $89, billed annually.

And the Freddy AI Agent that is included stops after 500 sessions; beyond that it is $49 per 100 sessions, so a busy queue turns the included allowance into a metered bill.

Freddy AI Copilot is a separate add-on at $29 per agent per month annually, or $35 monthly, on Pro and Enterprise only.

Basic is $90/month month-to-month or $77/month billed annually ($924 a year), including 300 tickets and 30 automated interactions with the same $0.40 ticket overage; the $50 helpdesk and $27 AI Agent printed on that card sum to the annual rate, not the monthly one.

Standard is $25 per user a month billed annually or $30 monthly, for up to 25 users: 2 Inboxes, live chat, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, multiple knowledge bases, one basic SLA policy, basic workflows, unlimited tags and saved replies and the AI Inbox assistant.

AI Answers, the autonomous assistant, is an add-on at $0.75 per resolution billed monthly, with a 3-month free trial.

Annual billing is labelled 16% off; SMS and phone calls run through integrations.

(read 2026-10-10 on helpscout.com/pricing with the monthly and annual toggles, USD) Free covers up to 5 users, 1 Inbox, 1 Docs site and 100 contacts a month, with 10 saved replies and 10 tags (in our test on 20 October 2026 the saved-reply limit held, but an eleventh tag was accepted).

(re-read 2026-08-29 on apps.shopify.com/helpcenter, re-verified unchanged 2026-10-14) Free to install, and the meter is tickets rather than agents — Basic already gives unlimited support agents, then bills for every ticket over the allowance.

Free covers 10 tickets a month and charges $0.25 for each one after that.

Sessions, voice-call minutes, SMS and knowledge-base characters are metered alongside — 10,000 / 100,000 / 1,000,000 / 2,000,000 monthly sessions and 50 / 100 / 200 / 300 voice minutes across the same four tiers.

Per the FAQ: a 30-day money-back guarantee from the date of payment; seasonal discounts apply only when upgrading to a higher-tier yearly plan and renew at full price the next period; upgrades are prorated and immediate, and a downgrade takes effect immediately with the unused time kept as account balance.

Conversations count chat and phone alike, and the voice-call limit is shared between voice calls and calls to a dedicated phone number, which is a separate add-on (also available on Starter) whose price the served page does not print.

No seat price published anywhere on the pricing page; the billing toggle has been removed and only add-ons carry a stated price (read 10 Sep 2026)

The plan cards claim unlimited US/Canada minutes while the FAQ published in the page's own structured data prices unlimited US and Canada minutes at $30 a month per user, so which of the two applies belongs in writing in your quote.

There is no PowerDialer on Professional, one line on Single-Line, and up to four simultaneous lines on Multi-Line — also the only tier offering AI human voice detection, as a premium add-on.

(re-verified 2026-08-17 and 2026-10-07 against the vendor's own pricing page) Since our August reading the plans have been renamed and a tier added: Starter $12 per user/mo billed annually or $15 monthly, for teams up to 5 users; Advance $32 or $40, up to 50 users; Max $48 or $60, with no member limit; Enterprise custom, quoted as volume pricing for 50+ seats.

Additional calls, SMS and numbers are billed at usage rates from a separate credit balance.

Subscriptions carry a 14-day unconditional refund; add-ons, numbers and credits are non-refundable.

LucroChat, the website chat product from the same vendor, sits on lucrovox.com/lucrochat with its own table metered on monthly conversations rather than calls: Starter $29 for up to 1,000 conversations on one website, Growth $59 for up to 3,000 conversations on up to three websites, Professional $199 for up to 10,000 conversations on unlimited websites, each with a 14-day trial and no card required.

meter: unit · conversations

Free: 200 conversations, AI answers about products, collections and orders, rich product cards with add-to-cart, order status and tracking in chat, replies in the shopper's language.

No published price: pricing page now routes to a demo booking with no plans or rates shown (read 1 Sep 2026)

The per-seat sticker is the entry ticket; the AI that makes the platform sing is metered separately, so a realistic modern deployment (seats + AI agent + phone) lands well above the tier price — model your full basket.

The figures that follow are our last reading of the published tiers and are a historical anchor, not a current quote: Starter about $59/seat/mo and Professional about $89, both on a 3-seat minimum, Enterprise about $139 on a 7-seat minimum, billed annually, with the AI metered separately (AI agents from about $100/mo scaling with volume, premium AI assistant about +$50/seat, phone about +$35/seat).

(price re-verified 2026-08-31 against the vendor's own pricing page; all prices are quoted on the page in USD) (2026) Three tiers: Starter $15/user/mo annual (billed $180/yr) or $19 monthly; Business $23 annual ($276/yr) or $33 monthly; Scale $35 annual ($420/yr) or $47 monthly.

Itemised extras: The Campaign Registry takes $19.50 once plus $1.50-$3/month to keep US carrier messaging deliverable, each additional phone number is $5/month, and international calling is billed per minute.

(re-verified 2026-10-15 on readymode.com/demo/pricing-readymode/, the page titled 'Readymode Pricing and Flexible Plans'; first read at $239/$299 on 2026-08-17, after the vendor announced a price change effective 1 Aug 2026) Two published plans, priced per license per month, with a Monthly/Annual toggle: Starter $239 billed monthly or $199 billed annually, for 1+ licenses, and iQ $299 billed monthly or $249 billed annually, which the page calls ideal for 5+ licenses.

The plan comparison now lists users per tier — 5 on Starter, 10 on Growth and Advanced, extra users at $12, $20 and $24 a month on yearly billing ($15, $25 and $30 monthly) — plus AI Credits of 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 and 40,000.

You're paying premium rates for real human receptionists billed per minute — worth it when a missed call is a lost client, but expensive if your call volume is low or an AI answering service would do the job for a fraction.

(2026-08-08, re-verified 10 September 2026 and again 13 October 2026 on www.salesmessage.com/pricing in both billing modes) Repackaged since our last check into two named plans plus Enterprise, metered in message credits.

Both plans carry a credits dropdown that raises the allowance for a fixed add-on.

Annual billing is shown as two months free.

(2026-09-11, re-read on their own pricing page and again on 13 October 2026) Usage-based, no platform subscription.

The credit model plus US carrier (10DLC) fees and per-number/per-seat add-ons mean the sticker isn't the whole bill — and SMS marketing only works with genuine opt-in and a real offer, not blasting a cold list.

(re-verified 2026-10-03 on simpletexting.com/pricing) Credit-based by monthly volume, and the headline is not the plan price: the page's "estimated monthly cost" bundles a $10/mo local number into every figure.

(read 2026-08-21 and re-verified unchanged 2026-10-09 on apps.shopify.com/storefaq) Four tiers, metered on FAQ page views and AI chatbot conversations rather than on the number of FAQs.

Free: 100 FAQ page views, unlimited FAQs and FAQ groups, the AI chatbot and AI-written FAQs, 25 AI conversations for the lifetime of the account, AI training on up to 50 products, export and import, instant answer with live chat and standard support.

Month to month, Startup is $20/seat/month and Enterprise is $25/seat/month.

No plan price is published: the page names Essentials, Pro and Enterprise with their inclusions but no amounts; only message credits ($0.03) and the $15 10DLC campaign fee carry a price

Add-on message credits $0.03 each, bought in advance; backup message credits $0.04 each, Textline's automatic fallback when you run out mid-conversation.

Starter is 24.17 a month billed annually against 29 paid monthly, Growth starts at 49.17 annually against 59 monthly, and the two stand-alone add-ons follow the same 20 percent step: the Lyro AI Agent from 32.50 annually against 39 monthly, Flows from 24.17 against 29.

Second, the plan table opens on annual billing.

The free plan carries 50 billable conversations, 100 Flows visitors reached and 50 Lyro AI conversations, and the comparison table's own footnote makes that last allowance a lifetime one rather than a monthly one.

meter: usage · shipments tracked

Annual billing saves 20% and every tier carries a 14-day trial.

Additional users are $89 a month on every plan - an add-on, not a starting price.

Every plan starts with a 14-day trial of 100 resolution credits and $10 of AI Operator credit, no card.

Solo is one user, Team carries unlimited users, and Office includes three with additional users at $9.99 each a month.

One caveat on those unlimited minutes: the pricing FAQ offers 3.9¢ per minute above "the minutes on your plan" and still names an Office-Max plan the page no longer sells, so the page contradicts its own cards — probably stale text, but unconfirmed.

Annual billing takes 30% off, making them $6.99, $13.99 and $20.99 a month.

Add-ons on any plan: additional agents $250 per agent a month, phone numbers $5 per number a month and Text Messaging $25 a month; premium support, advanced privacy, SOC 2 security, outbound and managed agents are quoted.

Correction to our own earlier dossier: an agency ladder of about $750 a month for 5 agents and roughly 2,500 AI voice minutes, plus platform plans from about $2,500 and the per-minute rate we derived from them, appeared nowhere on vida.io when we checked on 10 September 2026; the plans above are the first prices Vida itself has published.

Users are capped per tier: Growth includes 3 and lets you add none at all; Pro and Business include 5, with extra seats at €39 and €89 per user per month.

Add-ons are separate again — 1,000 automation triggers €35/mo, 1,000 AI co-pilot credits €25/mo, Shopify $4.99/mo, each extra WhatsApp number €29/mo — and the Astra AI agents, which the page describes as deployable to web, WhatsApp and voice, are an add-on priced separately.

Read again from the Netherlands on 7 October 2026: the euro tiers are unchanged, and the page now also prints monthly rates of €25, €69 and €149 per agent (a saving of 24%, 20% and 23% on annual), includes 5 automated resolutions per agent a month on the Team tiers and 10 on Professional, and charges €1.50 per extra resolution committed or €2.00 pay-as-you-go.

AI agents are included in Suite and Support plans but metered by 'automated resolutions' beyond the plan allowance, and App Builder, Action Builder and Voice are billed on consumption above their own allowances.

Paid add-ons on top of the seat price: Copilot $50 per agent/month (€50), Workforce Engagement bundle $50 (€50), Contact Center $83 (€82).

(re-verified 2026-08-12, read on their own pricing page from two countries) Per agent per month on annual billing, US storefront: Support Team $19, Suite Team $55, Suite Professional $115.

(re-read 2026-10-07 on the vendor's own pricing page; unchanged on 2026-10-15) The per-seat prices are gone.

Under 'AI agents in chat': Free at $0 with 'every feature, every integration', unlimited users and 100 AI credits a month; and Business+ at $50 a month in total for up to 5 users on annual billing ($62 month to month) with 400 AI credits a month, AI work agents for every user, automated workflows, third-party agents, API access, call recording with transcription and 10 TB of storage.

Add-ons are listed without prices: extra AI credits, extra storage, an HR-system integration and HIPAA compliance with a signed BAA.

Under 'Just chat': Free at $0, 'forever free for your whole team', with group chats and DMs, built-in to-dos, scheduled messages, calendar integration, WhatsApp chat migration, team access and permissions, malware scanning of files, 1 GB of storage, AI voice-note transcription and in-chat search; and Lite at $51 a month in total for up to 20 users on annual billing ($63 month to month), adding voice and video calls, task templates and sub-tasks, team privacy and download controls, group-creation permissions, 100 GB of storage, AI workspace search and turning messages into tasks.