Alternatives
Chatbase alternatives
Start with how much is actually known. Chatbase has roughly twenty-five reviews on G2, which is nowhere near enough to support a sentence like "users commonly report", and any page telling you what Chatbase customers generally think is guessing. What can be checked is the published pricing, so that is what this page is mostly about.
What this page is based on
Roughly twenty-five G2 reviews. That is a small corpus: it can suggest where to look and it cannot establish a pattern. Everything below that comes from reviews is flagged as directional, and the pricing figures come from Chatbase's own live pricing page.
Prices checked: 26 August 2026. Chatbase sets its own prices and can change them without telling us.
The branding fee is the page
Removing "Powered by Chatbase" is $99 a month, on a plan that starts at $40 a month. The cheapest way to run Chatbase unbranded is therefore well over three times the cost of running it branded, and the badge is on your own website under your own name the whole time.
It is worth seeing that fee next to the others in this category, because it is an outlier rather than a norm.
Chatbase $99 a month. Chatling $35 a month. Tidio $16.67 a month. Formala includes it on every paid plan, from $19 a month, billed monthly.
The free tier is also worth reading carefully: fifty credits a month, one agent, and agents deleted after fourteen days of inactivity. That is a trial with no end date rather than a free plan, and an experiment you leave alone for a fortnight is gone.
If the fee and the handoff are why you are going
Formala answers the two most consistently reported complaints directly. The badge comes off on the cheapest paid plan because it is what a free account pays with rather than something to resell. And a person taking over is built in rather than assembled: you see who is chatting, type into the conversation yourself, and the assistant goes quiet until you hand it back. No Zapier in the middle.
Booking is the third. Chatbase books through a Cal.com action, which is excellent if you already run Cal.com and an entire second product to adopt if you do not. Formala writes into the Google or Outlook calendar your week already runs on.
| Plan | Price | Included |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $19 /mo | 150 conversations |
| Growth | $39 /mo | 400 conversations |
| Pro | $79 /mo | 1,000 conversations |
| Business | $149 /mo | 2,500 conversations |
One price, and every core feature on it
Starter at $19 /mo for 150 conversations, Growth at $39 /mo for 400 conversations, Pro at $79 /mo for 1,000 conversations, Business at $149 /mo for 2,500 conversations. 2 months free paid annually. Nothing multiplies by the number of people who log in, nothing meters the answers, and there are no credits to convert before you can work out what a month costs.
A real shared inbox
Several people on the same leads from Growth upward, several live chats at once, and presence so you can see who is on the site right now. Step into any conversation and the assistant goes quiet until you hand it back. Search it, filter by priority, export it.
Messages that survive somebody leaving
A visitor can write to a named person rather than into a void, get the reply by email, and pick the thread back up later. No account, no password, no portal to log into.
A help center that answers for you
A help center you write feeds the assistant's answers, so replies come from your own documentation rather than a short FAQ list, and visitors can browse and read those articles themselves in the widget.
Booking into the calendar you already keep
Google Calendar or Outlook directly. Real free times offered inside the chat, and the appointment written back into your own diary. No third scheduling account to open and keep in sync.
Photos the assistant reads, documents you receive
A visitor can send photos and PDFs, up to ten megabytes each, with nothing to build first. The assistant reads the photos and answers about what it can see. A PDF reaches you on the lead, but the assistant does not open it, so it will tell the visitor a file arrived rather than pretend to have read it.
Voice, on any plan
A microphone in the chat, bought as an add-on on top of whichever plan you are on. The visitor talks, hears the answer read back, and can go back to typing. There is one voice, the same for every business using Formala; it is not a choice.
The badge comes off on the cheapest paid plan
Removing "Powered by Formala" is included from $19 a month, billed monthly upward. It is what a free account pays with rather than an add-on to resell.
One line of code on the site you already have. 30 days free, no card.
What Formala does not do
- No ticket status or lifecycle. A conversation is a conversation, not an object that moves through states.
- No SLAs, and nothing measuring a response against one.
- No saved replies or macros.
- No assignment or routing rules. Everyone on the account sees the same inbox.
- No agent performance reporting.
Those matter when several people answer against targets and somebody reports on it. If that is your week, the referrals below are better answers than we are, and the rest of this page will not change that.
If you need the channels, stay where you are
One trained agent answering on your site, WhatsApp, Instagram DMs, Messenger, Slack and email, with voice and telephony on the higher plans, is a real capability and Formala has none of it. If your customers reach you in five places, the branding fee is a price worth paying and nothing on this page outweighs that.
- Chatbase
- Chatling
- Crisp
If the agent has to do transactional work
Chatbase's Actions framework runs real API work against your systems, and it has the enterprise controls to go with it: SSO, audit logs, HIPAA eligibility and zero data retention. Formala books appointments and captures leads; it does not call your order system, and it cannot answer a security questionnaire.
- Chatbase
- Voiceflow
Side by side
A dot marks a row where Formala is ahead. Rows where Chatbase is ahead carry no marker either way.
| What is being compared | Chatbase | Formala |
|---|---|---|
| Removing the vendor badge | $99 /moMore than twice the price of the $40 a month plan it sits on top of. | $0Included on every paid plan, Starter included. |
| Entry price | $40 /moHobby, with seven hundred credits. Yearly billing takes twenty percent off. | $19 /mo$15.83 a month, billed annually. One price for the account, no per-seat multiplication and no charge per answer. |
| The next step up | $150 /moStandard, with four thousand credits, and nothing between it and Hobby. Pro is $500 a month. | $39 /mo$32.50 a month, billed annually. Four paid tiers rather than a jump of nearly four times. |
| A person taking over | Via ZapierNo built-in live chat. This is the most consistently reported gap in a small corpus, so treat it as directional and check it against your own use. | Built inSee who is chatting, type into it yourself, and the assistant goes quiet until you hand it back. Every plan. |
| Booking | Via Cal.comReal slots in the chat with no setup beyond your Cal.com event URL. It presumes you already run Cal.com. | Google, OutlookDirect, with real free times in the chat and the appointment written back. No third account. |
| Free tier | 50 creditsOne agent, and agents deleted after fourteen days of inactivity. | 30 daysEverything on, no card. Afterwards the contact form keeps working for nothing. |
| Channels | Six, plus voiceWebsite, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Slack and email from one trained agent, with voice and telephony on Standard and above. | Website onlyFormala answers on your site. Voice is a microphone in that chat, not a phone line. |
There is a fuller side-by-side on Formala vs Chatbase, written for somebody still choosing rather than already leaving.
What reviewers say
With roughly twenty-five reviews there is no pattern to report responsibly, only recurring mentions worth checking yourself. Those are cost escalation, limited customisation of the dashboards and the chat experience, and gaps in query handling and integrations. The absence of built-in live chat comes up most often. All of that is directional.
Sources: G2, about 25 reviews.
What we could not confirm
- How a Chatbase credit maps to a model call. We could not confirm it, so no credit figure on this page has been converted into a number of answers, and you should ask them before choosing a tier.
Questions
$99 a month, on a plan starting at $40 a month. For comparison, Chatling charges $35 a month and Tidio $16.67 a month, billed as an add-on, and Formala includes branding removal on every paid plan from $19 a month, billed monthly.
Leaving something else
Stop losing the visitors who almost reached out.
Set Formala up in the time it takes to read this page.
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