Startup-friendly messaging platform combining live chat, chatbot, and shared inbox
Crisp is a business messaging platform for startups and small businesses that combines live chat, a shared team inbox, chatbot builder, email campaigns, and a knowledge base in one affordable package. Its flat-rate team pricing and generous free plan make it popular with early-stage companies that need customer communication tooling before they are ready to invest in enterprise support platforms.
Crisp is a strong fit if its core strengths match your workflow, budget, and support needs. Use the quick signals below before opening the full review.
Crisp serves the startup and small business market with a product philosophy centred on accessibility: a generous free plan, flat team pricing rather than per-seat, and a feature set that covers the core customer communication stack without requiring the configuration investment that enterprise tools demand.
Crisp's free plan provides 2 agents with unlimited conversations across live chat and email — a meaningful free tier for founders and small teams handling support themselves. The Pro plan at $25/month adds 4 agents, an unlimited knowledge base, automated chatbot, and integrations. This flat team pricing means a 4-agent team pays the same $25/month regardless of conversation volume — predictable and budget-friendly for startups with variable traffic.
Crisp's MagicBrowse feature allows agents to view the customer's screen in real time during a live chat session — seeing exactly what the customer sees without any download or plugin requirement. For technical support and onboarding use cases where showing the customer what to do is faster than describing it, co-browsing eliminates the 'screenshot and explain' back-and-forth. This capability is typically an enterprise add-on; Crisp includes it in the Pro plan.
Crisp is a strong starting point — when teams outgrow its automation, reporting, and SLA management capabilities, Freshdesk or Help Scout offer the natural next step. Crisp's architecture is appropriate for startups and small teams; it is not designed to scale to enterprise support operations.
Score: 7.1/10 — Best startup-friendly messaging platform with co-browsing; limited automation and reporting for growing support teams.
Free
Free billed annually
$25/mo
$300/mo billed annually
$95/mo
$1,140/mo billed annually
Crisp is best for Early-stage startups that need professional live chat and shared inbox tooling before they can justify enterprise helpdesk pricing, Small teams that want flat-rate pricing without per-seat billing anxiety as the team grows, Product teams that need co-browsing capability for user onboarding and technical support without a separate co-browsing tool.
Yes. Crisp currently lists a free plan in ToolRankr data.
It has a free plan.
Crisp is reviewed using ToolRankr's scoring model for ease of use, value, features, support, and overall quality. Affiliate links may earn a commission, but sponsored labels do not change editorial scoring.
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