Olark alternatives: what Olark costs now, and what 3, 5 and 10 agents pay elsewhere

If you remember Olark as the $29-a-seat live chat tool, the pricing page will surprise you. Its main plan is now an AI website agent at $400 a month, billed annually, with the old human-only chat sitting beside it at $29 per agent. That changes what a good Olark alternative looks like, and the answer isn't simply "something cheaper". For a team with a lot of AI conversations, Olark's flat fee is genuinely good value. For a team with few, it is a $4,800 commitment for something you could get for $39 a month.

This post answers the Olark pricing question first, then prices a 3-, 5- and 10-person team on Olark and six alternatives, and finds the point where a flat AI fee beats paying per resolution. Talvo makes one of the alternatives, and we include its gaps. All prices come from vendor pages checked October 21, 2026, in US dollars before tax.

Olark pricing in 2026: three offers

Olark publishes its prices now, and the structure is simple enough to fit in a small table.

A few answers to the questions people type into Google.

How much does Olark cost? For the AI plan, $400 a month with one human seat, which Olark's own FAQ extends to $429 for two agents and $458 for three. A five-person team is $400 + 4 × $29 = $516 a month, and ten people are $400 + 9 × $29 = $661. For human-only chat, it is $29 times the number of agents: $87 for three, $145 for five, $290 for ten.

Is there a monthly price for the AI plan? Not on Olark's pricing page. The $400 is shown as billed annually, which is $4,800 up front, and no month-to-month option is displayed.

Does Olark have a free plan? The pricing page lists none. It offers a 14-day free trial of Live Chat with no credit card, and a free "Build Preview" of the AI agent that takes about a minute.

Why do other sites show different prices? Older comparison pages describe a previous structure: a Standard plan at $29 monthly or $23 annual, plus a custom Pro. The current page has no $23 price and no Pro plan. If a review site quotes those numbers, it is describing the old model.

Does Olark have a conversation limit? Olark says no. Its FAQ answers "What happens if we go over our conversation limit?" with "There isn't one."

When Olark is still the right call

It would be dishonest to open a list of alternatives without saying who shouldn't leave.

Olark's flat AI price is its strongest card. Nothing is metered, so a quiet month and a record month cost the same, and the numbers further down show that at high AI volume this beats every per-resolution tool we priced. It has been selling live chat since 2009, is backed by Y Combinator and is a certified B Corp, and says it is trusted by more than 12,000 businesses (a vendor claim). Its integrations page lists a wide set of CRM and marketing connections, among them HubSpot, Salesforce, Zendesk, Front, Help Scout, Zapier, Shopify and WooCommerce, though the plan requirements aren't stated. The plan includes account management, and the lead-qualification focus suits B2B sites.

No acquisition has been announced as of October 21, 2026, and the company is actively selling, with a live Q&A scheduled for October 27.

The reasons to look elsewhere are about fit. The AI plan is annual only as shown, so $4,800 is the cost of finding out whether it works for you (the free preview and trial soften this). It is website chat: Olark's pages list no email inbox, SMS or WhatsApp. SSO, multiple teams and custom SLAs sit in the sales-led tier. And the pricing page shows no knowledge base or help center product.

What 3, 5 and 10 people pay, on Olark and elsewhere

We priced the same three teams everywhere. They have 3, 5 and 10 human agents, and the AI touches 300, 1,000 and 3,000 conversations a month. For tools that bill per resolution we assumed 60% of those become billable resolutions (180, 600 and 1,800). That 60% is our assumption, not any vendor's figure. Tools that bill every AI conversation (Crisp, Tidio, Freshchat) are charged on all of them. Tidio also meters human conversations, so we assumed 600, 1,000 and 2,000 for the three teams.

Each cell is annual billing, then monthly billing, with each Talvo cell using the lowest total among plans with enough teammate seats.

The Talvo arithmetic, per billing mode. Three agents and 180 resolutions: Starter at $39 plus 80 × $0.49 = $78.20 annual, or $49 plus $39.20 = $88.20 monthly. Five agents and 600: Growth at $119 plus 100 × $0.49 = $168, or $149 plus $49 = $198, beating Starter ($284, $294) and Scale ($249, $299). Ten agents and 1,800: Scale at $249 or $299, with 2,000 included; Growth would be $756 or $786.

Notes on the rest. Olark's figures are the plan price plus $29 per extra agent, as above. Crisp's AI cost is its own estimate of $0.05 to $0.10 per AI conversation, with no published yearly discount, so one range covers both modes. LiveChat's AI agent comes with 10 included resolutions a month on Essential and 200 on Growth; overage is sold in packs of 50 for $49.50, about $0.99 each, so we picked the cheaper plan each time. Fin's Intercom Essential seats are $29 annual or $39 monthly list, plus $0.99 per outcome, and the numbers assume every one of the 60% counts as one. Freshchat's Freddy AI bills a session for every AI interaction within 24 hours, at $49 per 100 after the 500 free ones, which you only get once.

The surprise in this table is how good Olark's AI plan looks. By the 10-agent team, most of the metered tools have climbed into four figures, while Olark stays near $500 to $660. If your AI volume is large and you want it predictable, take that seriously.

Flat AI versus per-resolution AI: where the lines cross

Talvo's bill has a floor and a slope. A plan includes 100, 500 or 2,000 resolutions, and each one beyond that is $0.49. Olark's has no slope at all. So there has to be a volume where Olark becomes cheaper. We computed it for each team, using the lowest-total Talvo plan (Scale, at these volumes):

The working for the 5-agent team on annual billing: Scale is $249 including 2,000 resolutions, so Olark's $516 is reached when $249 + (R − 2,000) × $0.49 = $516, which gives R ≈ 2,545. Below roughly 2,300 to 2,850 AI resolutions a month, Talvo is cheaper for these teams, often by hundreds of dollars. Above it, Olark is. At a 60% resolution rate, 2,545 resolutions means more than 4,200 AI-handled conversations.

Two caveats keep this fair. Resolutions aren't conversations: Talvo bills a conversation the AI answered end to end from your published help articles with no teammate stepping in, counted once, and never bills a hand-off. Olark's unlimited conversations cover everything the AI touches. And Talvo's Scale plan tops out at 25 teammates, past which it is custom pricing.

The alternatives, one by one

Drift isn't on this list. Salesloft announced in March 2026 that it is gradually sunsetting Drift in favor of 1mind, so it isn't a tool to adopt.

Talvo is a live chat widget with an AI agent, shared inbox with two-way email, and a hosted help center, priced per workspace. Starter is $49 a month ($39 annual) for 5 teammates and 100 resolutions; Growth is $149 ($119) for 15 and 500; Scale is $299 ($249) for 25 and 2,000. A resolution beyond that is $0.49, and the Free plan covers 2 teammates with 25 AI resolutions a month during the beta. It suits Olark teams who want AI without an annual commitment and a knowledge base built in. It lacks Olark's CRM connections: today's integrations are a REST API, webhooks and Slack, with no HubSpot, Salesforce or Zapier. Proactive campaigns exist, but target only by URL, delay and returning visitors, with plain-text messages. It is in beta and has no reviews yet, and "Powered by Talvo" can't be removed.

Crisp prices the workspace, not the seat. Mini is $45 for four seats and Essentials is $95 for ten, with the omnichannel inbox (WhatsApp, Instagram, SMS) and a knowledge base starting at Essentials. Its AI is usage-based and cheap by its own estimate, and it stops when the included credits run out unless you enable pay-as-you-go. Crisp has not had a SOC 2 audit. See Crisp pricing and Crisp alternatives.

Tidio is the cheap starting point, at $29 a month for Starter with 10 seats, plus separate meters for AI (Lyro, from $39 for 50 conversations) and automations. Three meters make the bill hard to forecast. Tidio alternatives and Tidio pricing cover it.

LiveChat, now sold under the Text name, is the closest to Olark in spirit: polished chat, per user. Essential is $19 per user annual ($25 monthly) and Growth is $79 ($99). It lists WhatsApp, Messenger and SMS, and says it is SOC 2 Type 2 audited. Its AI resolutions cost about $0.99 each beyond a small allowance. See LiveChat alternatives.

Freshchat has a free plan for up to 10 agents (no AI agent) and paid plans from $19 per agent annual ($23 monthly), including SMS, WhatsApp and Facebook and Instagram on Growth. Fin, formerly Intercom, has an AI agent reviewers praise, but charges per seat plus $0.99 per outcome; see Intercom pricing and cheaper Intercom alternatives.

If you only need human chat

A lot of Olark users never wanted AI. If the $29 per agent human plan is what you pay today, you have plenty of free options. Crisp's Free plan covers 2 seats, Tidio's Free covers 50 conversations a month with 10 seats, Freshchat's Free covers up to 10 agents, HubSpot's Free covers 2 users with branding, and Chatwoot's Hacker plan covers 2 agents and 500 conversations a month, live chat only. Chatwoot is open source, with paid cloud plans from $19 per agent. Each has limits that Olark's paid plan doesn't, so check the one that bites: seats, conversations, history or branding.

Switching from Olark

Swapping the widget is the easy part. Moving history is the part to plan.

1. 1Add the Talvo widgetPaste one script tag before the closing body tag and remove Olark's snippet. It works on WordPress, Shopify themes, Webflow, Squarespace, Wix and custom sites (guide).
2. 2Import your help contentCrawl your site or bring in articles from another help center, as drafts you review and publish (how it works).
3. 3Import contactsUpload a CSV with name, email, company and phone on the Contacts page. Matching is by email.
4. 4Turn on the AI agentIt answers only from published articles, cites them, and hands off when it isn't confident.
5. 5Run both for a weekKeep Olark live on part of your traffic and compare which questions the AI hands off.

Past chats don't move. Talvo imports contacts and help content, not conversation history, so keep your Olark account until you no longer need the transcripts. Tell your team that Talvo's widget settings are modest: position, welcome text, expected reply time, launcher style and brand color.

Olark teams often rely on proactive chat. Talvo's proactive campaigns start on the Starter plan, and each campaign can show after a set number of seconds on pages whose URL contains a string you choose, optionally only to returning visitors. A visitor sees at most one campaign, once. There is no targeting by attributes or segments.

Which Olark alternative fits

Stay on Olark's AI plan if your AI volume is high, you want a fixed bill, you rely on its CRM connections and you are comfortable with an annual commitment. It earns its price at volume.

Move to Talvo if you have under a few thousand AI resolutions a month, want to pay month to month, and want chat, email, a help center and AI answers in one workspace price. Move to Crisp if you need WhatsApp and Instagram now and value its maturity. Choose LiveChat if polished chat per user is what you like about Olark. Choose a free plan if you only need human chat. For the wider field, see best live chat software for small business, AI resolution pricing compared and per-seat vs flat pricing. To check your own volumes, use the support cost calculator.