LiveAgent AI vs Chatbase vs Helply: Features and Pricing Compared

Key Takeaways:

• Helply is built for B2B software teams that want support to produce revenue, not just deflect tickets: its AI assistant drafts replies with account context, Support Intelligence answers questions across your tickets and billing, and revenue signals flag churn and upsell as they happen.
• Helply keeps the support platform free with unlimited seats and charges only when AI delivers an outcome, starting at $0.25 per drafted reply and $0.50 per resolution.
• Chatbase is the quickest path to a working chatbot (about 10 to 15 minutes) and supports multiple AI models, but its message-credit pricing causes bill spikes.
• LiveAgent is the lowest-cost entry, with a free-forever plan and paid tiers from $15 per agent per month, plus the only built-in call center of the three, though its AI runs on a bring-your-own-OpenAI-key model.
• Pick by buyer: Chatbase to build a bot, LiveAgent to run a budget help desk, Helply to run B2B support as a revenue engine.

Support tickets are stacking up. The AI tool you bought to fix that just asked the customer "Can you tell me more?" for the third time, then routed the whole thing to a human anyway. You are paying for automation and still doing the work by hand.

It is a common story. Support teams keep hitting the same wall: the bot "just deflects" instead of resolving the issue across their systems. Then there is the endless "Can you provide more details?" loop that never actually helps. Worst of all, the bot hands an already-frustrated customer to an agent in worse shape than before.

The fix is not more chatbot. It is picking the tool that matches how your team actually works, whether that is a website bot, a budget help desk, or AI that resolves tickets with full account context.

Let’s get started!

LiveAgent vs Chatbase vs Helply: Comparison Table

Chatbase builds an AI chatbot trained on your content and bills per message credit. LiveAgent runs a multichannel help desk with AI features added on top and bills per seat.

Helply is a B2B AI-native support platform where the platform is free with unlimited seats and you pay only for the AI outcomes it produces.

Want the cost broken down for your own team size and volume? The Helply cost calculator estimates your monthly spend before you commit to any contract.

How to Think About the Three: Chatbot Builder vs Help Desk vs Support Platform

These three tools get lumped together, but they belong to different categories. Knowing the category tells you more than any feature checklist, and it is the first filter in how to choose customer support software.

Chatbase is a chatbot builder. You feed it your content, and it deploys a bot that answers questions on your site or in WhatsApp. The job it does well is fast, self-serve bot creation.

LiveAgent is a help desk. It centralizes email, chat, calls, and social into one inbox, with AI layered on as an assistant. The job it does is consolidate channels for a support team on a budget.

Helply is a support platform built for B2B. The AI drafts and resolves with full account context, answers questions across your whole support history, and reads every ticket for revenue signals like churn risk and upsell intent.

The job it does is turn support into a function that protects and grows revenue.

LiveAgent: Budget Omnichannel Help Desk with AI Added On

LiveAgent is a long-running help desk that combines ticketing, live chat, a built-in call center, and social channels in one inbox. It has since layered AI features on top of that foundation.

For a small or mid-size team that wants phone, email, chat, and social in a single low-cost tool, it covers a lot of ground.

LiveAgent Key Features

• Omnichannel ticketing. Email, chat, phone, and social conversations funnel into one inbox with routing and automation rules, so nothing lives in a separate tool.
• Built-in call center and IVR. On its higher-tier plans, LiveAgent runs phone support with interactive voice response, which none of the other two tools offer natively.
• Live chat with proactive invitations. A customizable chat widget triggers invitations based on visitor behavior, so agents can reach out before a customer asks.
• Knowledge base and customer portal. Customers self-serve through documentation and submit or track tickets in a branded portal.
• AI suite. AI Chatbot, AI Answer Assistant, AI Human Handover, and AI Autoresponder draft replies and handle some interactions automatically.

LiveAgent Pricing

LiveAgent has a free-forever plan, though it is tightly capped. You get one email channel, live chat, a knowledge base, and only 7 days of ticket history before older tickets are hidden. Automations and integrations are not included.

Paid plans run per agent per month: Small business at $15, Medium at $29, Large at $49, and Enterprise at $69 on annual billing. Month-to-month rates are slightly higher.

LiveAgent's AI also adds a cost the seat price does not show. It runs on a bring-your-own-key model: you connect your own OpenAI API key, and OpenAI bills you directly for usage on top of your LiveAgent seat fees.

The AI is not a flat add-on, and it is not really LiveAgent's own model.

How LiveAgent Compares to Chatbase

Against Chatbase, LiveAgent wins on being a real support system rather than a single bot. It gives you a shared ticket queue, native human handoff, and a built-in phone channel, so an escalation has somewhere to land.

Chatbase can route to a human, but it is not a system of record for a support team. It has no call center at all. If your problem is "we need to run support across email, chat, and phone," LiveAgent is the more complete answer.

LiveAgent Pros

• Real channel consolidation. Reviewers consistently praise pulling email, chat, phone, and social into one inbox as the core reason they stay.
• Low entry cost. A free-forever plan and a $15 starting tier make it one of the cheapest ways to get a structured help desk running.
• Built-in voice. The native call center removes the need for a separate telephony tool, which mid-size teams value.

LiveAgent Cons

• Dated interface and buggy mobile app. Users describe a UI that needs frequent refreshing and a mobile app that feels neglected.
• BYOK AI adds cost and setup. The AI requires your own OpenAI key and a separate usage bill, so it is neither plug-and-play nor predictable.
• Billing and reliability friction. Reviews flag call-notification bugs, unexpected logouts, and frustration with renewals and refunds.

Best for: small to mid-size teams that want an affordable, all-in-one help desk with built-in voice and can tolerate a dated interface and DIY AI setup.

Chatbase: No-Code AI Chatbot Builder Trained on Your Data

Chatbase lets you build an AI chatbot trained on your own content. You upload documents, connect data sources, and deploy a bot that answers from your material on your website, in WhatsApp, or through Messenger.

Higher tiers now add Voice, Telephony, and a basic Helpdesk, but the core job is fast, no-code bot creation.

Chatbase Key Features

• Custom training on your content. Upload PDFs, docs, and URLs to build a bot that answers from your specific information rather than generic knowledge.
• Multi-model choice. Chatbase runs on OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, DeepSeek, Meta, and Mistral models, so you are not locked to one provider.
• AI Actions. The bot can execute tasks through integrations like Stripe, Zendesk, Salesforce, and Calendly, though action depth depends on the integration and the tier.
• Broad integrations. Connections to Slack, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, HubSpot, Shopify, and more push the bot into the channels you already use.
• Analytics and escalation rules. Performance reporting surfaces common questions, and rules route conversations to humans by content or sentiment.

Chatbase Pricing

Chatbase bills on message credits. The Free plan gives 50 credits a month and 400 KB of training, and idle agents are deleted after 14 days.

Paid tiers are Hobby at $32/mo (500 credits, 10 MB), Standard at $120/mo (4,000 credits, 20 MB, plus Voice and Telephony), and Pro at $400/mo (15,000 credits, 40 MB), with custom Enterprise above that.

Watch the add-ons. Extra credits cost $40 per 1,000, an extra AI agent is $300 a year, and removing the "Powered by Chatbase" badge costs $1,188 a year.

Because billing is per credit, a traffic spike or viral moment can burn through your allotment fast and trigger overage charges you did not plan for.

How Chatbase Compares to LiveAgent

Against LiveAgent, Chatbase wins on AI quality and speed to value. It is AI-first, not AI-bolted-on, so the bot is good at answering from your content, and setup takes minutes with no API key to wire up.

You also get model choice and more advanced AI Actions than LiveAgent's assistant offers.

If your problem is "we want a smart self-serve bot live this afternoon," Chatbase beats LiveAgent handily.

Chatbase Pros

• Fastest setup of the three. Reviewers report a working FAQ bot in 10 to 15 minutes with no technical skills required.
• Model flexibility. Support for OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, and more lets you match the model to the task.
• Free tier to test. You can validate a basic bot before paying, which lowers the risk of trying it.

Chatbase Cons

• Billing and refund complaints. Trustpilot reviews, a "Poor" rating around 2 out of 5, cite charges after cancellation and denied refunds under a non-refundable policy.
• Reliability gaps. Users report errors, timeouts, API failures, training that disappears, and the bot failing to read PDFs or knowledge base content.
• Unpredictable credit costs. The per-credit model spikes on traffic surges, and removing branding adds $1,188 a year.

Best for: teams that want a quick, low-cost website or WhatsApp bot and can self-serve through occasional setup and reliability friction.

If it is on your shortlist, weigh the broader field of Chatbase alternatives for support teams.

Helply: A B2B Support Platform That Turns Tickets into Revenue

Helply is an AI-native support platform built for B2B companies that sell software. It is not a chatbot you bolt on or a basic inbox. The AI works the way a strong B2B agent does.

It drafts every reply with the full account in view, answers any question across your support history, and treats each ticket as a signal about account health.

Underneath sits a complete support platform that is free with unlimited seats, so the cost shows up only when AI delivers a result.

Helply Key Features

• AI assistant that supercharges agents. The AI assistant drafts every reply with sources and full account context from your CRM, billing, and product data. A human agent answers faster and sharper instead of starting from a blank box.
• Support Intelligence. Ask Helply anything across tickets, accounts, billing, and product usage in plain language, and your entire support history becomes queryable.
• Revenue signals. Every ticket is scanned for churn risk, upsell intent, competitor mentions, and feature requests, each routed to the CSM, AE, or Product owner who needs it.
• Autonomous resolution. High-confidence tickets resolve on their own across channels, while everything else reaches a human with an AI-drafted reply already waiting.
• Knowledge base that writes itself. Helply drafts articles from recurring ticket patterns and flags the gaps where your documentation is missing.
• Deep B2B channels. Slack Connect, Microsoft Teams, Discord, email, in-app chat, SMS, WhatsApp, a customer portal, and an API all feed the same context layer.

Helply Pricing

Helply has three tiers:

• The Fully Featured Support Platform is free forever with unlimited seats and no credit card, and includes shared inbox and ticketing, email and live chat, a knowledge base, macros, and standard reporting.
• AI-First Support adds the outcomes and bills only when one fires, with spending caps included.
• Enterprise adds volume credits, SLAs, SSO and SCIM, custom data residency, and white-glove migration.

The AI outcomes price by category:

• Ticket resolution. Resolutions are $0.50 each, drafts are $0.25 each.
• Revenue intelligence. Upsell Opportunities, Churn Detection, and Competitor Monitoring are $2.99 each.
• Product intelligence. Feature Flags are $2.99 each, and a KB gap identified is $0.50.
• Knowledge base. Article Creation and Article from AI recorder are $2.99 each.

You never pay for a seat that sits idle or a credit a chat burned without helping. A single caught churn or a closed upsell can cover hundreds of signals, which is why the revenue-intelligence outcomes carry a premium.

See the full breakdown on the Helply pricing page.

Helply Pros

• Free platform, unlimited seats. Bring your whole team on at no per-seat cost, then pay only for AI outcomes that actually happen.
• AI that uses account context. Replies are drafted against CRM, billing, and product data, not generic help content, so the answers hold up when customers are technical.
• Support becomes revenue. Churn, upsell, and competitor signals route to the right team automatically, so support protects and grows accounts.
• Pricing aligned to value. Outcome billing with spending caps means cost tracks results, not headcount or traffic.

Helply cons

• Built for a specific buyer. Helply targets technical B2B companies that sell software, so it is not the right fit for B2C, e-commerce, agencies, or marketplaces.
• Outcome pricing is a new model. If you are used to flat per-seat plans, per-outcome billing takes a mental adjustment, though spending caps keep the monthly number predictable.

Best for: B2B software teams, with a sweet spot around $1M to $50M ARR, that want support to resolve tickets and surface revenue without paying per seat.

Pricing Models Compared: Per Seat vs Per Credit vs Per Outcome

The billing model sets your real cost, not the sticker price, and it decides who gets penalized. These three tools each pick a different one.

LiveAgent charges per seat, then sends you to OpenAI for the AI bill. Costs climb with every agent you hire, whether or not the AI does much.

Chatbase charges per message credit, so costs climb with traffic, and you pay even when a chat resolves nothing.

Helply keeps the platform free and charges per outcome, so you pay when the AI drafts, resolves, or surfaces a revenue signal, and not before.

Example: A 5-Agent Team at 3,000 Conversations a Month

Picture a five-person support team handling roughly 3,000 conversations a month.

On LiveAgent's Medium plan, five seats run about $145 a month, plus a separate OpenAI bill for AI usage.

On Chatbase, 3,000 conversations burn well past the Standard plan's 4,000 credits once you count multiple messages per chat. That pushes you toward the $400 Pro tier or into $40-per-1,000 overages.

On Helply, the platform is free for all five agents, and you pay only for the outcomes you switch on. If the AI drafts or resolves half those conversations, that is real work removed from the queue, billed only when it happens, and capped so the number stays predictable.

The revenue-intelligence outcomes can pay for themselves the first time Helply flags a churn risk before the renewal slips.

To see your own figures, the Helply ROI calculator runs the math in about four minutes.

The Verdict: Which AI Support Tool Should You Choose?

LiveAgent is the budget pick if voice and channel consolidation matter more than modern AI. Chatbase is the right call when you just need a smart bot live fast and can absorb its billing quirks.

If you run B2B support and want every ticket to either get resolved or surface revenue, Helply is built for exactly that.

Final Verdict

The LiveAgent vs Chatbase vs Helply choice comes down to the job you are hiring the tool for. Need a website bot live this week? Start with Chatbase. Want a budget help desk with built-in phone support? LiveAgent covers it.

But if you run B2B support, neither is built for your job. They answer tickets and stop. They will not catch churn before a renewal, flag an upsell, or alert your AE when a competitor shows up in a thread.

Helply does all three, on a support platform that is free for your whole team, and you pay only when the AI delivers a resolution, a draft, or a revenue signal.

So stop paying for seats, and for chatbot credits that bill you whether or not the work gets done. Bring your team onto a free platform, point the AI at your tickets, and turn support into a revenue engine.