# AcornReply: full marketing index

> The support inbox for teams under 10 who still reply themselves. AI surfaces context and drafts the reply in your voice. You edit and a human hits send.

Canonical home: https://acornreply.com/

## Positioning

AcornReply is the support inbox for small teams who still hit send themselves. Pick the page that matches how you work. Every one of them lands in the same product, the same flat price, and the same promise: a human always hits send.

## Pricing

### Free: $0/month
Try it before you commit.
- Unlimited conversations
- 20 AI drafts to try
- Manual replies, no limits
- Up to 500 outbound emails / month
- Email forwarding, no DNS changes
- Hosted contact form, JS snippet, iframe
- Live chat widget, unlimited chats
- Screenshot & file attachments on chat and forms
- Mobile PWA with web push

### Pro: $20/month
For teams that reply together. Flat per organization, not per seat.
- Everything in Free
- Unlimited AI drafts
- Unlimited outbound emails
- "Powered by AcornReply" stays on outbound

### Premium: $30/month
For teams that want their brand, or no brand, on every reply.
- Everything in Pro
- Customize or hide the outbound-email footer
- Customize or hide the contact-form footer

Free includes 20 AI drafts lifetime and 500 outbound emails per month. Pro and Premium are uncapped on both. All plans are flat per organization, not per seat. Live chat is included on every plan; chat replies do not count toward the outbound cap unless they go out as email.

## Live chat

### Live chat that lands in your support inbox.
URL: https://acornreply.com/live-chat

One script tag puts a chat bubble on your site. Every chat lands in the same inbox as your email, with the same AI drafts, on every plan.

**What the widget does**
- Same inbox as email: A chat opens the same conversation thread that an email or a form message would, with the same AI drafts and the same assignee. There is no second console to watch.
- Replies appear as they are sent: Replies appear in the widget as they are sent, so the visitor does not have to refresh the page or wait for an email to arrive.
- Presence from your real availability: Presence comes from each teammate's availability and schedule, in their own timezone, rather than from anyone's session. It is off by default, so the widget shows nothing about who is around until you turn it on.
- Read receipts for your team, an unread badge for the visitor: Your team gets read receipts on a chat reply. The visitor gets an unread badge on the bubble.
- Screenshots and files: Visitors can attach up to 3 per message, 5 MB each, 10 MB total, images and text files.
- Help-center articles in the widget: The widget offers help-center articles when you turn on article deflection. Until you do, it is a plain chat.
- On every plan: Live chat is included on Free, Pro and Premium, with unlimited chats and no plan cap on teammates. The Powered-by footer shows on Free and Pro, and Premium ($30 a month) can hide it. It is not a chat-first product: no routing, no queues, no shifts, no chatbots, no SLAs.

**Install it in one tag** The widget is one script tag. Copy it from Settings, under Channels, Live chat, and paste it into your site; the key in the URL is that workspace's own embed key. <script src="https://acornreply.com/embed/YOUR_EMBED_KEY.chat.js" async></script> The web contact form uses the same embed key and its own script tag, so you can run chat, the form, or both. No framework, no stylesheet injected into your page, and the script is under 14 KB.

**When nobody is online** By default the message waits in the inbox for a person. If the visitor left an email, the reply reaches them there. You can turn on an AI answer for when nobody is available. It is off until you do. Chat replies do not count toward the outbound-email cap. Only a reply that goes out as an email does: when the visitor is no longer in the chat and there is an email address on the thread.

**Q: What is a free live chat widget for a small website?**
A: It is a chat bubble you add to your site with one script tag, at no monthly fee, so a visitor can type a question instead of writing an email. Tawk.to is very widely deployed and free to use, and it is chat only. AcornReply includes the widget on every plan and lands each chat in the same inbox as your support email, so the answer comes from the same place as everything else.

**Q: Best free live chat for a small business website?**
A: If chat is the only thing you need, Tawk.to is the usual answer: free to use, very widely deployed, and funded by paid extras such as removing the branding or hiring agents. It is chat only, so it complements a support desk rather than replacing one. AcornReply Free puts the widget and a shared inbox for your support email in one tool, with 20 AI drafts in total and 500 outbound emails a month. There is a wider field in the live chat software roundup at acornreply.com/best/live-chat-software.

**Q: Do I need live chat or is email support enough?**
A: Email is enough for most small teams, and it is the channel customers already know how to use. Chat earns its place when questions arrive before a purchase, where a two-minute answer changes the outcome and a two-hour one does not. If you cannot answer quickly during your posted hours, honest hours and an email fallback beat a widget that goes quiet. In AcornReply the choice is not either-or: chat and email arrive in the same inbox, so turning chat on adds a door rather than a second tool.

**Q: Live chat vs chatbot for customer support?**
A: A chat widget puts a person on the other end; a chatbot answers without one. AcornReply ships the widget, and out of the box a person answers: every chat waits in the inbox with an AI draft ready to edit. What the AI does in the widget is one setting with modes, not a row of switches, and it is off until you choose one. Set it to show help-center articles (article deflection), or to let the AI answer when nobody is available; it does one or the other, never both.

**Q: Is there a support tool with live chat and a shared inbox?**
A: Yes. AcornReply is one: chat, your forwarded support email and the web contact form all land in the same inbox, on the same conversation thread, with the same AI drafts and the same assignee. Crisp is another, in a chat-first shape, putting chat, an inbox and a knowledge base together. The difference is which channel the tool is built around, so choose by the one you will actually run.

**Q: What is a cheaper alternative to tawk.to?**
A: Nothing is cheaper, because Tawk.to is free to use. The cost sits elsewhere: it is chat only, so it complements a desk rather than replacing one, and somebody still has to be there to answer. AcornReply Free costs nothing either, and it covers chat and your support email in one place, with 20 AI drafts in total and 500 outbound emails a month. If those limits fit, the comparison is about staffing and about the second tool you would otherwise run for email.

**Q: What is a cheaper alternative to crisp chat?**
A: Crisp's free tier caps the number of agents, so the bill arrives when you add a person rather than on day one; see crisp.chat/en/pricing for today's cap. AcornReply caps usage rather than people: every plan takes as many teammates as you like, and Pro is $20 a month flat for the whole organization. Moving over is self-serve: give Settings your Crisp website id and an API token, and the importer brings your help-center articles and their images across in the background, knowledge base only, never conversation history. Crisp is chat-first, with breadth across chat, an inbox and a knowledge base; AcornReply is email-first, with chat as one more door into the same inbox.

**Q: How do I add live chat to my website without a monthly fee?**
A: Paste one script tag into your site and the bubble appears. AcornReply Free has no monthly fee and includes unlimited chats, 20 AI drafts in total and 500 outbound emails a month. The tag pulls in no framework, injects no stylesheet into your page and is under 14 KB, so it will not fight the site you already have.

**Q: Can a two person team run live chat?**
A: Yes, if you are honest about hours. Two people cannot watch a widget all day, so turn on presence, which comes from each teammate's availability and schedule and is off by default, and let the rest arrive as messages you answer later. In AcornReply an unanswered chat is simply a conversation in the inbox with an AI draft waiting, and if the visitor left an email the reply reaches them there. The trap is not the tool, it is a widget that implies a live answer and then goes quiet.

**Q: What happens to live chat messages when nobody is online?**
A: By default the message waits in the inbox for a person. If the visitor left an email, the reply reaches them there. You can turn on an AI answer for when nobody is available, and it is off until you do.

**Q: Do I need a chatbot or a person answering chat?**
A: For a small team, a person, and that is the default here: every chat waits in the inbox for somebody to reply, with an AI draft ready to edit. If you want more than that, one setting decides what the AI does in the widget, and it is off until you pick a mode. You can have it show help-center articles (article deflection), or have it answer when nobody is available, one or the other. A bot earns its keep when volume is high and the same question arrives all day; below that, a drafted reply a person sends is quicker to set up and harder to get wrong.

**Q: Best customer support tool that does chat email and a help center?**
A: AcornReply does all three: the chat widget, your forwarded support email and a help center, in one inbox, with Pro at $20 a month flat for the whole organization. Crisp does all three too, in a chat-first shape, putting chat, an inbox and a knowledge base together. The question is which channel you want the tool built around: if support mostly arrives as email and chat is a convenience, the email-first shape fits; if chat is the main event, the chat-first one does.


## Use cases

### AI customer service that answers like you, not like a bot.
URL: https://acornreply.com/solutions/ai-customer-service

Most AI customer service means a chatbot that deflects, or an autopilot that replies to your customers on its own. AcornReply takes the other path: the AI writes each reply in your voice, and a human sends it. You get the speed of AI with none of the "why did the bot say that" risk.

**The two kinds of AI customer service, and why both scare small teams.** When people shop for AI customer service they find two shapes, and neither fits a team that knows its customers by name. Deflection chatbots try to stop the customer from reaching you; autopilot agents answer on their own. Both optimize for a support department's ticket volume, not for a small team's relationships.
- Chatbots deflect the people you want to talk to. Deflection is a win at enterprise volume and a loss at small-team volume, where every conversation is a customer you can still keep or lose by hand.
- Autopilot replies are a wrong answer waiting to happen. The moment an AI sends to your customer unsupervised, one bad answer on a refund or an edge case costs more than all the time it saved.
- Enterprise pricing for a startup problem. The AI tiers on legacy helpdesks stack on per-seat pricing, so a tiny team pays department prices to run a chatbot it does not fully trust.

**A third option: AI drafts, a human sends.** AcornReply puts the AI where it helps and the human where it matters. Every inbound message arrives already drafted; you approve it. That is the whole model, and it is why small teams can actually trust it with their customers.
- Forward your support address. Point support@yourcompany.com at your workspace. Nothing changes for your customer; you stop living in Gmail.
- AI drafts every reply in your voice. Each email arrives with a draft written in your tone, the matching FAQ attached, and the customer history beside it. The AI does the reading and the first pass.
- A human approves and sends. By default nothing goes to a customer without a person hitting send. You get AI speed with a human catch built into the loop, not bolted on after a complaint.
- Flat price, AI included. AI drafts are on every plan, flat per organization, free to start. The drafting is the product, not a tier you pay extra to reach.

**What "AI customer service" looks like here.** A customer emails asking to change a plan. The draft is ready in your voice, with their history and the right FAQ attached. You skim it, adjust one line, and send. The customer gets a normal, correct email from a person, in a fraction of the time, and no bot ever spoke for you.

**Q: Is AcornReply an AI chatbot?**
A: No. A chatbot talks to your customers directly. AcornReply talks to you: it drafts each reply and a human sends it. Your customer gets a normal email from your address, not a bot conversation.

**Q: Can the AI answer customers automatically?**
A: By default it does not. Drafts wait for a person to approve and send. Auto-send is deliberately off out of the box, because for a small team one wrong autonomous answer costs more than it saves.

**Q: How is this different from the AI on Zendesk or Intercom?**
A: Those add AI as a tier or add-on on top of a ticketing system, often aimed at deflection or autopilot. AcornReply was built draft-first from the start, includes AI on every plan, and keeps a human on every send.

**Q: Do I need to train the AI or write prompts?**
A: No. You pick a voice profile at setup and it tunes as you send. There is no prompt engineering and no sidebar to manage.

### AI drafts every reply. A human still hits send.
URL: https://acornreply.com/solutions/ai-support-inbox

AcornReply is a shared support inbox with AI built into the core, not bolted on as an add-on seat. Every inbound email arrives with a draft already written in your voice, the matching FAQ attached, and the customer's history alongside. You read, edit, send.

**Why bolt-on AI keeps disappointing support teams.** Most helpdesks added AI as an upsell on top of a ticketing system designed fifteen years ago. The AI lives in a sidebar, the pricing lives per seat per add-on, and the workflow still assumes a support department. Small teams end up paying enterprise prices to babysit a chatbot they don't quite trust with their customers.
- Autopilot AI answers customers wrong. Fully automated replies fail exactly when it matters: the edge case, the angry customer, the refund question. One bad autonomous answer costs more than a hundred drafted ones.
- Bolt-on AI costs a seat plus an add-on. The AI tier usually stacks on per-seat pricing, so a three-person team pays for three seats and then again for the intelligence.
- Chatbots deflect. Small teams need to answer. Deflection metrics make sense at enterprise volume. At small-team volume every conversation is a customer you know by name, and deflecting them is how you lose them.

**What it looks like when the draft comes first.** AcornReply was designed around the draft-first loop from the first commit, which is why the whole product fits in a forwarded address and one screen.
- Forward your support address. Point support@yourcompany.com at your workspace address. Customers notice nothing; you stop living in Gmail.
- Every email arrives pre-drafted. The draft is written in the voice profile you picked, with the matching FAQ snippet attached and the customer history next to it. No prompt engineering, no sidebar.
- You edit and send. By default the AI never emails your customer on its own; drafts wait for you. That default is why the drafts can be aggressive about saving you time: the human catch is built into the loop.
- The price ignores the AI. Flat per organization, free to start. The drafts are the product, not an add-on tier.

**What a drafted reply actually looks like.** A customer asks 'can I export my data?' The draft arrives matched against your FAQ, written in your tone, with the customer's past conversations beside it. You add one sentence about timing and send. The customer gets a normal email from a person, because that's what it is.

**Q: What is an AI support inbox?**
A: A shared inbox where AI reads each inbound customer email and prepares a reply for a human to review and send. It differs from a chatbot (which answers customers directly) and from a plain shared inbox (where every reply starts from a blank box).

**Q: Can AI answer customer support emails by itself?**
A: Technically yes, and AcornReply deliberately defaults the other way. Automated replies fail on the conversations that matter most. Drafting-plus-human-send captures nearly all the time savings with none of the wrong-answer risk.

**Q: Will customers know AI is involved?**
A: Customers receive a normal email from your address, written in your voice, sent by you. There is no ticket portal and no bot signature; in the default workflow, nothing goes out without a person hitting send.

**Q: How is this different from a chatbot?**
A: A chatbot talks to your customers. AcornReply talks to you: it prepares the reply, and you stay the sender. For small teams where every customer matters, that direction of trust is the whole point.

### The support email you missed was the one that mattered.
URL: https://acornreply.com/solutions/stop-missing-support-emails

Nobody decides to ignore a customer. Messages get missed because they live in a personal inbox, behind a filter, in a thread someone else thought you were handling. The fix is structural, not motivational.

**Why support emails go missing in small teams.** Missed messages are almost never a diligence problem. They are an ownership problem: the message landed somewhere no one was responsible for.
- The personal-Gmail trap. Support goes to whoever's address is on the site. When that person is heads-down, on holiday, or just drowning, the queue silently stops.
- The CC illusion. Two people CC'd on a thread each assume the other is replying. The customer waits a week while both inboxes show the thread as read.
- The forwarding maze. A message forwarded to the person who can answer it now exists in two threads, and the reply happens in neither.
- Filters eat the edge cases. The rule that tidies newsletters also swallows the customer whose subject line didn't match the pattern.

**The structural fix: one owned inbox, drafts ready.** Every step here removes a place where a message can be simultaneously everywhere and no one's job.
- Give support one address and one home. Forward support@ to a shared workspace. Every customer message now lands in a queue the whole team can see, not a personal inbox.
- Make ownership visible. Each conversation shows who has it. Returning customers route to whoever replied last, so context and responsibility travel together.
- Lower the cost of replying. Most missed emails were postponed because answering felt expensive. When each message already carries an AI-written draft in your voice, the marginal cost of replying now drops to reading it.
- Let nothing sit unowned. The queue view makes an unanswered, unassigned message impossible to miss, which is the entire game.

**Q: How do small teams stop missing support emails?**
A: Move support out of personal inboxes into one shared, owned queue; make per-conversation ownership visible; and lower the effort of each reply so messages stop being postponed. Tools help with all three, but the structural change (one home, visible ownership) does most of the work.

**Q: Is a shared Gmail account good enough?**
A: A shared login works until two people answer the same customer, or neither does. It has no ownership, no assignment, and no draft help. It's better than a personal inbox and worse than an actual shared inbox tool.

**Q: What should we do about the backlog of unanswered emails?**
A: Forward the address first so nothing new is missed, then work the backlog oldest-first from the queue. With drafts pre-written, clearing a backlog is mostly reading and sending.

### Automate the writing, not the deciding.
URL: https://acornreply.com/solutions/customer-service-automation

Most customer service automation is deflection in a nicer word: fewer customers reaching a person. AcornReply does the opposite. It automates the part that eats the time, which is writing the reply, and leaves every judgment call to you. A human reads each answer and hits send.

**What small teams mean when they say they want automation.** Almost nobody wants a robot answering their customers. They want back the twenty minutes it takes to write eight replies from a blank box. Those are different problems, and most automation software solves the first one by putting a deflection layer between you and the person who wrote in.
- Every reply starts from nothing. A question you have answered fifty times gets typed out again, because the answer lives in one person's head rather than anywhere the inbox can reach.
- The same twenty questions arrive every week. Pricing, refunds, setup, the one confusing screen. The volume is repetitive, but each customer still deserves an answer written for them and not a canned macro.
- The knowledge sits with one person. When the teammate who knows the product is in a meeting, the queue waits. Nobody else can answer without checking with them first.
- Hiring is the only lever most teams have. A second support hire is a large, permanent step for a team of four. Most small teams stretch instead, and every reply gets slower.

**What AcornReply automates, and what it deliberately does not.** The drafting is automatic. The deciding is not. That line is the whole product, and it is the reason this kind of automation is safe to leave switched on.
- Your help center and past replies become the knowledge base. Articles, FAQ entries and the replies your team has already sent are what the AI reads. It answers out of your own material rather than a generic idea of customer service.
- Every inbound message arrives already drafted. The draft comes written in your voice, with the customer history and the articles it used sitting next to it. The blank box is gone before you open the thread.
- A human edits and sends. Nothing reaches a customer unreviewed. You skim, fix a line, send. The calls that need judgment stay with the person who can make one.
- The genuinely mechanical parts are opt-in. Routing to the right workspace, snoozing a thread until a date, and auto-reply all exist. Auto-reply is opt-in and ships off, so the human-sends rule holds unless you deliberately turn it on.

**Where the time actually goes.** A refund question that used to take six minutes takes one. The draft already cites your refund policy article and has the order history beside it, so you change a sentence and send. Repeat that across a morning queue and the automation has paid for itself without a single customer talking to a bot.

**Q: What can you actually automate in customer service?**
A: Reliably: drafting the reply, pulling up the customer history, tagging and routing, snoozing a thread until a date, and acknowledging receipt. Much less reliably: deciding what the answer should be. AcornReply automates the first list and leaves the second to a person.

**Q: Will automation make replies sound robotic?**
A: Only if the automation writes generically. AcornReply drafts from your own help center articles and past replies, in a voice profile you pick at setup, and you edit before sending. The message that goes out is one you approved.

**Q: Is automated customer service worth it for a small team?**
A: It is worth it when the same questions repeat and replies are slow because writing them takes time. It is not worth it at five emails a week, where the setup costs more than it saves. Be honest about which one you are.

**Q: What should never be automated?**
A: Refunds, apologies, and anything with a legal or contractual edge. Those need a person who can make a judgment call and stand behind it. AcornReply will draft them, but it will not send them unless you switch auto-reply on yourself, and it ships off.

### An AI agent that drafts. A human who sends.
URL: https://acornreply.com/solutions/ai-customer-service-agent

The phrase "AI customer service agent" covers two very different products: an autonomous agent that answers your customers on its own, and an AI assistant working alongside a human agent. AcornReply is the second kind. If what you want is the first, Intercom Fin and Zendesk AI resolution are the honest answer, and this page will not pretend otherwise.

**When one person is the entire support team.** Most teams searching for an AI agent are not trying to remove humans from support. They have one human, that human has three other jobs, and the queue keeps arriving anyway. The question is whether a second pair of hands has to be a hire.
- One person is the whole support team. Support is one job among four. Writing a good reply takes real time, and that time is the first thing squeezed by everything else on the calendar.
- The queue does not stop for a meeting. An hour in a call is an hour of customers waiting, because there is no second agent to cover the gap and no shift to hand over to.
- Hiring a second agent is a large step. A support hire means a process, a permanent cost and a training period, all for a queue that might need two focused hours a day.

**What "agent" means inside AcornReply.** It behaves like a second agent who writes quickly and never sends without you. It reads the message, finds the answer in your own help center, and hands you a finished draft. You remain the person your customer is talking to.
- The AI drafts as though it were your second agent. Every inbound message arrives with a full reply already written, not a suggestion chip and not a sidebar you have to prompt into usefulness.
- It answers from your help center, not from a generic idea of support. Drafts are grounded in your own articles, FAQ entries and past replies, so the answer sounds like your team and cites the page it came from.
- A human always sends. Out of the box nothing leaves the workspace without a person approving it. Auto-reply exists, it is opt-in, and it is off by default.
- You keep the customer relationship. The customer gets a normal email from your address. There is no bot persona in the thread and nothing to disclose, because a person really did send it.

**A morning with a second agent.** Eleven messages overnight. Nine of them are questions your help center already answers, and all nine are drafted before you open the inbox. You read, adjust two, and send. The remaining two are the ones that needed you: a refund edge case and an angry customer. Those get your full attention, because the other nine did not take it.

**Q: What is an AI customer service agent?**
A: The phrase covers two products. One is an autonomous agent that answers customers directly and resolves tickets without a person, which is what Intercom Fin and Zendesk AI resolution do. The other is an AI assistant sitting next to a human agent, drafting the reply that the human then sends. AcornReply is the second.

**Q: Can an AI agent reply without a human?**
A: In AcornReply, only if you switch auto-reply on. It exists, it is opt-in, and it is off by default, so out of the box every reply waits for a person. If autonomous resolution is what you actually want as the normal path, buy a product built around it rather than turning ours into one.

**Q: Will an AI agent replace my support hire?**
A: It postpones one. Drafting takes most of the minutes out of each reply, so a team of three can hold a queue that would otherwise need a fourth person. It does not remove the judgment calls, and it does not cover a queue that needs staffing around the clock.

**Q: How does the AI know my product?**
A: From your help center articles, your FAQ entries and the replies you have already sent. You pick a voice profile at setup and it tunes toward how your team writes as you send. There is no prompt writing and no model training on your side.

### Every complaint owned, tracked, and actually answered.
URL: https://acornreply.com/solutions/complaint-management-software

Read this before anything else: AcornReply is not regulated-complaints software. There is no statutory case management, no audit workflow, and no complaints register built for a compliance regime. If a regulator inspects how you handle complaints, you need a compliance product and this is not it. What AcornReply does is make sure customer complaints arriving by email get an owner, a status and a real answer.

**Complaints are the emails you cannot afford to lose.** A complaint left unanswered for four days becomes a refund, a public review, or a customer who never writes again. A personal inbox or a plain shared mailbox tells you none of what you need: whether the thread is still open, who owns it, or whether the customer ever got a real answer.
- Nobody can say whether it was resolved. The reply went out from one person's own inbox, so a week later there is no way to tell whether the customer was satisfied or simply gave up.
- Two people reply, or nobody does. With no owner, an angry email gets two contradictory answers or none at all. Both leave the complaint worse than it arrived.
- Tone slips exactly when it matters most. Complaints get answered late, under pressure, by whoever is free. That is precisely when a rushed sentence turns a fixable problem into a public one.
- The history disappears. When the same customer writes again three months later, the earlier complaint and whatever you promised are not in front of whoever picks the thread up.

**What AcornReply does with a complaint.** It gives a complaint the three things a plain mailbox cannot: an owner, a status, and a written history that outlives the person who handled it.
- Every complaint is one thread with a status and an owner. Open, snoozed or resolved, assigned to a named person. You can see at a glance what is still unanswered and who is holding it.
- Nothing is closed silently. A thread becomes resolved only when a person marks it resolved, and a new reply from the customer reopens it automatically. Closing a complaint by forgetting about it is not available.
- The reply is drafted, so the tone holds under pressure. AcornReply drafts the answer from your own policies and past replies in a consistent voice. You edit and send, which is what keeps a rushed sentence out of the one thread where it would cost you most.
- Resolved threads keep their history. When the customer comes back, the whole complaint is on the thread: what happened, what was promised, and who promised it.

**The complaint you would rather not repeat.** A customer writes on a Friday about a charge they did not expect. It lands assigned, drafted from your refund policy, and open. Nobody is around until Monday, so it is still open on Monday morning rather than buried under sixty newer emails. It gets answered, marked resolved, and when the same customer writes in April the whole story is right there.

**Q: What is complaint management software?**
A: Software that captures a customer complaint, gives it an owner and a status, tracks it until a person resolves it, and keeps the record afterwards. In regulated industries the same phrase means something stricter: a statutory complaints register with audit trails and mandated response deadlines. Those are two different categories of product.

**Q: Is a shared inbox enough for handling complaints?**
A: A plain shared mailbox is not, because it carries no owner, no status and no proof that a complaint was answered. A shared inbox with assignment, statuses and full history is enough for most small teams, and that is what AcornReply is.

**Q: Does AcornReply meet regulatory complaint-handling requirements?**
A: No. There is no statutory case management, no audit workflow, no regulator-shaped complaints register and no mandated response-deadline tracking. AcornReply is a customer support inbox with owners, statuses and history. If a regulator audits your complaint handling, buy a compliance product instead.

**Q: How do you track whether a complaint was resolved?**
A: Each thread carries a status and an assignee. Resolving is a deliberate action by a person, and an inbound reply from the customer reopens the thread automatically, so a complaint cannot quietly close itself while the customer is still waiting.

### You are the support team. AcornReply is the rest of it.
URL: https://acornreply.com/solutions/founders

When the founder still answers every customer email, the bottleneck is not draft quality. It is context. AcornReply pulls the customer history, drafts a reply in the voice you already use, and waits for you to read it. You hit send between meetings, from a phone if you have to.

**The founder support stack is duct tape.** Most early-stage founders run support out of three places: a personal Gmail thread, a Notion FAQ that nobody else reads, and a Slack DM to a co-founder asking 'what do I say to this person.' It works until it doesn't, usually around the time you raise, or hit twenty customers, or take a four-day weekend.
- Context lives in your head. Half the answer is 'I remember this customer. They had the same issue in March.' That memory does not survive your next hire.
- Tone takes longer than the answer. Founders rewrite every reply six times because the wrong tone with the wrong customer ends a contract. The draft is the easy part. The voice is what eats the hour.
- Per-seat helpdesks price you out at one. Help Scout, Front, and Intercom all bill per seat, and the tiers worth having cost more per seat again. For a one-person company that's a tax on the only seat you have.
- You answer from your phone, between meetings. Every other inbox tool is desktop-first. Founders are not. The reply has to happen on a phone, in a hallway, in three minutes.

**How AcornReply fits a founder workflow.** AcornReply assumes you are the only person on this inbox today and the third person on it next quarter. The same setup works for both.
- Forward your support address. Forty-five seconds. Point support@yourcompany.com at a per-workspace address on acornreply.com. No DNS changes for v1, no MX rewiring, no domain verification dance. Customers keep emailing the same place. You just stop logging into Gmail to find them.
- Pick a voice profile. Sixty seconds. Onboarding shows you a handful of built-in voice profiles: pick the one closest to how you actually write. Every reply you send after that quietly tunes the profile, so the drafts read more like you with every send. Nothing to paste, nothing to maintain.
- Open a message, edit the draft, send. Every inbound message arrives with a draft already written and the matching FAQ snippet attached. You read it, edit if needed, hit send. No 'AI replied on your behalf' surprises in your customer's inbox.
- Add a co-founder when you're ready. Invite them as a member. The bill stays flat. They land in the same inbox, see the same drafts, and assignment rules keep returning customers on whoever last replied to them.

**A real founder reply, end to end.** Customer emails: 'Hey, can I export my data?' AcornReply matches the question against your FAQ, drops the relevant article into the draft, and signs off in the voice profile you picked at onboarding. Next to the draft, you see the customer's previous messages in this workspace (what they asked last month, how you answered then) so you do not have to scroll a long thread to remember context. You add one line about a timeline, hit send. Forty seconds, founder voice intact, customer reply lands in their inbox like email, not a ticket portal with a reply-above-this-line banner.

**Q: Can I use AcornReply if I am the only person on the team?**
A: Yes. AcornReply is priced flat per organization, not per seat. A solo founder pays the same Pro rate as a team of nine. The product is built around the assumption that the founder is the support team today, and the same workspace scales to a team without re-onboarding.

**Q: Will my customers see "AI replied to you"?**
A: No. Replies leave from your own workspace address with the display name you choose, so customers see a normal email from you, not a bot. By default a human edits and hits send on every draft; auto-reply is an opt-in setting that is off unless you turn it on.

**Q: How is this different from using ChatGPT to draft replies?**
A: ChatGPT does not know your customer history, your FAQ, or your past replies. AcornReply grounds each draft in your own knowledge base, lists the exact FAQ snippets it used under each draft, and warns you when it cannot find a confident answer. You still review, but you are reviewing a draft built from your own material, not from the open web.

**Q: What does it cost for a one-person team?**
A: Free covers your first 20 AI drafts and 500 outbound emails per month, enough to test on real traffic. Pro is $20 a month flat for the whole organization; Premium adds branding control at $30. No card to start.

### Outgrow Gmail labels. Skip the per-seat helpdesk.
URL: https://acornreply.com/solutions/indie-saas

Indie SaaS support runs on Gmail labels until it does not. AcornReply is the smaller jump: a shared inbox priced flat per organization, with AI drafts grounded in your help articles. Forward your support address and keep replying like a person.

**Gmail labels work, until two people open the same thread.** The standard indie SaaS support stack is one founder's Gmail with a `support` label, plus a co-founder who CCs themselves in. It scales to about three customers per day before duplicate replies, missed messages, and the 'who said what' Slack thread eat your morning.
- No shared state. Two teammates do not know if the other already replied. Customers get two answers, or none.
- No way to write in one voice. Your co-founder writes 'Hey friend, sorry about that!' You write 'Hi, thanks for the report.' Customers feel it.
- Per-seat helpdesks tax the wrong axis. You add a contractor for six weeks and a per-seat plan charges you for a whole seat anyway, month after month until someone remembers to remove them. The math punishes the way indie teams actually staff.
- No clean way to send a contact form to your site. Most indie SaaS landing pages link to a personal Gmail. Spam-filtered, no analytics, no signal.

**How AcornReply replaces the Gmail-label stack.** Forward your support address, paste a one-line contact-form snippet on your landing page, invite your co-founder. Three steps, one inbox, flat price.
- One inbox for email, live chat, and the contact form. Anything sent to your per-workspace support address, sent via the live-chat bubble on your site, submitted through the hosted contact form, or posted via the API lands in the same conversation list.
- Assignment that does not require a process doc. Returning customers automatically route to whoever last replied to them. Sending a reply claims any unassigned thread. The "Mine" filter shows just yours. No SLA queues, no round-robin rules to configure.
- AI drafts grounded in your FAQ, not the open web. Paste your help articles into the FAQ. Every draft cites which articles it used, and if it can't find a confident answer it asks for clarification instead of inventing one. You see exactly what the customer would see before you hit send.
- Mobile-first PWA, no native app required. AcornReply installs to your home screen from Safari or Chrome: no App Store wait, no native build. Swipe right to snooze, swipe left to resolve. The way you actually do support: on your phone, between meetings.

**A two-person indie SaaS, week one.** Founder A forwards support@theirapp.com to support@theirapp.acornreply.com. Founder B drops the contact-form `<script>` tag into the marketing site's footer. They paste eight help articles into the FAQ. By the end of week one, every inbound message has a draft waiting, customer replies thread automatically, and the Slack 'who's on this' chatter goes quiet.

**Q: Do I need to change my DNS records?**
A: No. AcornReply gives you a per-workspace forwarding address on acornreply.com. You just add a forward rule from your existing support@yourdomain.com in Gmail or Outlook. No MX changes, no DKIM rewiring, no waiting for DNS propagation.

**Q: How does AcornReply handle two people opening the same conversation?**
A: Every conversation has at most one assignee. Sending a reply auto-claims an unassigned thread for you, so the second person sees the assignee chip update in real time. There's no shared-cursor edit mode. That's a feature: drafts stay separate, the assignee is the source of truth.

**Q: Can I embed the contact form in my marketing site?**
A: Yes. The web form comes three ways: a hosted public URL at your-slug.acornreply.com/contact to link from anywhere, a single script tag that injects an inline iframe wherever you paste it, and a launcher button that sits in the bottom-right of every page and opens the contact form. All three feed the same inbox. Live chat (a separate real-time bubble) uses its own script tag, also on Settings → Channels.

**Q: Will the AI try to send replies on its own?**
A: Only if you turn it on. By default AcornReply is drafts-first: drafts sit in the conversation and wait for a teammate to edit and hit send. There is an opt-in auto-reply setting for teams that want it, but it is off out of the box: the product is built around a human on the send button, not autonomous resolution.

### One inbox per client. One bill. One voice profile per brand.
URL: https://acornreply.com/solutions/agencies

Small agencies juggle support for half a dozen clients out of half a dozen Gmail filters. AcornReply gives each client its own workspace (its own inbound address, its own voice profile, its own branding) under one organization, one team, one bill.

**Multi-client support is a context-switching tax.** Agencies running client support juggle different tones, different help articles, different FAQs across brands. Every reply starts with 'which client am I in right now.' Most helpdesks were built for one-company support and treat multi-tenant as an upsell to enterprise.
- Voice drift across clients. Client A is formal. Client B is casual. Without a per-client voice profile, your team writes in whichever tone they wrote in last, and clients notice.
- Shared inboxes priced as if every client needs its own seat. Per-seat helpdesks mean every agency teammate counts against every client subscription. Three teammates across five clients balloons to fifteen seat licenses.
- Hand-offs between contractors and full-timers. Contractors come in for six weeks. The standard helpdesk seat model penalizes short engagements. The standard FAQ model loses the institutional knowledge when they leave.
- Client-facing channels need client-facing branding. When a customer fills out a contact form on Client A's site, they should see Client A's logo and colors, not the agency's, and definitely not AcornReply's.

**How AcornReply maps to an agency stack.** One organization per agency. One workspace per client. Voice profiles, FAQs, branding, and inbound channels are workspace-scoped. Members, billing, and admin live one level up.
- One organization, many workspaces. Spin up a workspace per client: each gets its own inbound address (support@client-a.acornreply.com), its own FAQ, its own voice profile, and its own contact form. The agency org owns all of them and pays one bill.
- A voice profile per client. Each workspace has its own voice profile: pick a different one for Client A and Client B at onboarding, and every reply your team sends in that workspace quietly tunes the profile toward how that client actually writes. Same teammates, different voices, no per-client style guide to maintain.
- Branded contact forms on Premium. On Premium, hide or replace the "Powered by AcornReply" footer on outbound emails and the contact form. Detect-brand pulls each client's logo and primary color automatically. Clients see their own brand, end to end.
- Switch workspaces in one click. Workspace switcher in the top-right swaps the entire context: inbox, FAQ, voice, branding. Same teammates, no log-out cycle, no separate accounts.

**An agency with five clients.** A three-person agency runs support for five SaaS clients. They create one AcornReply organization and five workspaces inside it. Each workspace gets its client's voice profile, FAQ, and branded contact form. Teammates flip between workspaces from the switcher. One Pro subscription on the agency organization covers all five workspaces, on one bill at month-end.

**Q: Can one teammate work across multiple client workspaces?**
A: Yes. Members belong to the organization and can be granted access to any workspace inside it. Switching between client inboxes is a single click in the workspace switcher: same login, same session.

**Q: Can each client see their own branding on the contact form?**
A: Yes, on Premium. Open Branding settings inside the client workspace, click Detect brand, and AcornReply pulls the logo, favicon, social image, and primary color from their site. The "Powered by AcornReply" footer can also be hidden or replaced on both the contact form and outbound emails, per client, not per agency.

**Q: How does billing work across multiple clients?**
A: One plan for the whole organization, however many clients. AcornReply bills the organization, not the workspace: a single Pro subscription at $20 a month covers every client workspace in your agency org, so five clients cost the same as one. There are no per-workspace plans and no per-workspace line items, just one monthly invoice. Free caps you at 20 workspaces; Pro and Premium set no workspace limit.

**Q: Can I assign a contractor to one client without giving them access to the others?**
A: Yes. When you invite a member to the organization, you grant them access to specific workspaces. A contractor working on Client A's project sees only Client A's inbox, FAQ, and voice profile. Revoking access is one click when their engagement ends.

## Comparisons

### A Help Scout alternative built for the team Help Scout outgrew.
URL: https://acornreply.com/solutions/help-scout-alternative
Help Scout pricing: https://www.helpscout.com/pricing/

Help Scout is a strong shared inbox, for organizations that fit its seat structure and growth model. AcornReply is the smaller, flatter alternative for teams under ten who still want the founder to hit send.

**What Help Scout does well.** Help Scout pioneered the 'email that looks like email' shared inbox. It handles real volume, real teams, and real workflows: routing, saved replies, beacons, knowledge bases, and now AI Drafts and AI Answers. If you are running a 20-50 person support team with multiple tiers and complex routing, Help Scout earns the seat fee. AcornReply is not the right tool for that team.

**Where Help Scout starts to chafe for teams under 10.**
- Per-seat pricing punishes small, dynamic teams. Help Scout prices per seat and tiers up from there, so every teammate you add is another line on the invoice. For a founder, a contractor, and a part-time teammate, that math gets expensive fast, and contractors who join for a six-week project still cost a full seat. AcornReply is flat per organization.
- AI is unbundled and metered. Help Scout's AI Drafts is bundled in some tiers; AI Answers (the autonomous-reply product) is priced per resolution. The unit economics of metered AI are fine, but they make every cost forecast a guess. AcornReply's drafts are unlimited and unmetered on Pro and Premium, so there is nothing per-resolution to forecast.
- AI Answers nudges customers toward bot replies. AI Answers is Help Scout's autonomous-reply product, and Help Scout's roadmap visibly favors it. AcornReply has an opt-in auto-reply setting too, but it is off by default and the product is built around drafts a human edits and sends, not autonomous resolution.
- No mobile-PWA focus. Help Scout has native apps. AcornReply is a PWA: installs in one tap from Safari or Chrome, no App Store wait. The trade-off is intentional: PWAs match how small teams actually do support, which is on a phone between meetings.

**Feature comparison.**
- Pricing model: Help Scout → Per seat, per tier; AcornReply → Flat per organization
- Autonomous AI reply: Help Scout → Available (AI Answers add-on); AcornReply → Opt-in, off by default
- AI drafts: Help Scout → Included on higher tiers; AcornReply → Included on Pro + Premium
- Mobile app: Help Scout → Native iOS + Android; AcornReply → PWA, installs from browser
- Hosted contact form: Help Scout → Beacon (web widget); AcornReply → Hosted form + iframe + launcher button
- Branding control: Help Scout → Available on paid tiers; AcornReply → Premium tier
- Live chat widget: Help Scout → Beacon (chat + docs widget); AcornReply → Included on every plan, same inbox as email

**Pricing comparison.** Help Scout publishes its current plans on [helpscout.com/pricing](https://www.helpscout.com/pricing/). Its plans are priced per seat and tiered, and AI Answers is metered separately per resolution, so the bill moves with headcount and again with the number of AI answers. AcornReply is $20 a month for the whole organization on Pro and $30 on Premium, flat, regardless of team size, with unlimited drafts and outbound included. For a five-person team the two bills are not the same shape: one grows with the fifth hire and the sixth, the other does not.

**Who should stay with Help Scout.** If your team is over ten people, you need workload routing, SLA dashboards, multi-mailbox queues, or you already depend on Beacon's web widget integrations and Docs knowledge base, Help Scout is the better tool. The same goes for teams that want autonomous AI reply as the default, always-on behavior; AcornReply keeps that opt-in and off by default. The right move is the tool that matches how your team actually works.

**Q: Can I migrate my Help Scout conversations to AcornReply?**
A: Manual export from Help Scout and import into AcornReply is on the roadmap; we will assist hand-imports during early access. Most teams forward their support address and let new conversations land in AcornReply while the Help Scout archive stays read-only.

**Q: Is AcornReply cheaper than Help Scout?**
A: For teams under ten, almost always. Help Scout charges per seat, so a five-person team pays five times the seat rate and the sixth hire adds a sixth. AcornReply Pro is $20 a month flat for the whole organization at any of those headcounts, with no per-seat charge at all. Compare current Help Scout pricing on [helpscout.com/pricing](https://www.helpscout.com/pricing/).

**Q: Does AcornReply have a knowledge base like Help Scout Docs?**
A: Yes. AcornReply ships a public, per-tenant help center: your FAQs and articles live at your-slug.acornreply.com and double as the grounding source for AI drafts, so every reply cites the articles it used. It is both your customer-facing knowledge base and the AI's source, not a separate paid add-on.

**Q: Will my customers know I switched off Help Scout?**
A: Only if you want them to. Outbound replies go from your own workspace address with the display name you choose. Customers see a normal email from you, threading into their existing conversation. No ticket portal, no Beacon widget, no "Reply above this line" banner.

**Q: Does AcornReply support assignment and team workflows?**
A: Yes, sized for small teams. Every conversation can have one assignee; returning customers auto-route to whoever last replied to them; sending a reply claims an unassigned thread. There are no SLA queues, round-robin rules, or workload-balancing dashboards. Those are for the team size that justifies them, and that team should stay on Help Scout.

### A simpler shared inbox for the teams Front markets past.
URL: https://acornreply.com/solutions/front-alternative
Front pricing: https://front.com/pricing

Front markets to "complex customer operations." If your operation is one founder, two teammates, and a forwarded support address, you are exactly the audience Front's newest tier was built away from. AcornReply is the smaller fit.

**What Front does well.** Front built the category of 'collaborative inbox' and runs the best multi-channel workflows on the market: rules, routing, integrations with twenty CRMs, analytics dashboards, and now Copilot and Autopilot AI surfaces. For a 30-person customer ops team running across email, SMS, WhatsApp, Intercom, and Salesforce, Front earns its price. AcornReply is not that tool.

**Where Front feels heavy for teams under 10.**
- Pricing climbs steeply with tier. Front prices per seat and tiers up sharply: the entry Starter tier is the cheap one, and the AI and analytics features most teams actually want sit several tiers above it at a multiple of the per-seat rate. Below ten seats, the floor of the product is more than most small teams need.
- Autopilot is autonomous reply. Front's Autopilot ships autonomous AI resolution, and teams that want a human on every reply have to disable it explicitly. AcornReply inverts that default: auto-reply is off out of the box, and drafts wait for a human unless you deliberately opt in.
- Configuration overhead. Front rules, tags, and rules engine reward investment, but the investment is real. Below ten seats, most teams want the inbox to work day one, not after a setup sprint.
- Marketing now explicitly skips small teams. Front's homepage now leads with 'AI for simple support is everywhere. Complex customer operations demand Front.' If you are simple support, Front is telling you they are not your tool. We agree. Try ours.

**Feature comparison.**
- Target team size: Front → Mid-market to enterprise; AcornReply → Teams under 10
- Pricing model: Front → Per seat, per tier; AcornReply → Flat per organization
- Autonomous AI reply: Front → Autopilot tier; AcornReply → Opt-in, off by default
- Channel breadth: Front → Email, SMS, WhatsApp, social; AcornReply → Email, live chat, web form
- Integrations: Front → 100+ apps; AcornReply → Postmark inbound/outbound
- Time to first reply: Front → Hours to days; AcornReply → Under five minutes
- Live chat widget: Front → Not included; AcornReply → Included on every plan, same inbox as email

**Pricing comparison.** Front publishes its current plans on [front.com/pricing](https://front.com/pricing). Front is priced per seat and tiered, and the AI and analytics features sit above the entry Starter tier, so the bill moves with headcount and again with tier. AcornReply is $20 a month flat for the whole organization on Pro and $30 on Premium, with AI drafts included in both. Add a sixth person and Front adds a sixth seat, at whatever tier the team is on. AcornReply stays one $20 charge on Pro.

**Who should stay with Front.** Front is the right tool if you run multi-channel customer operations (email + SMS + WhatsApp + social), need a fully configurable rules engine and analytics dashboard, integrate with 5+ third-party systems already, or run a team where Autopilot's autonomous resolution is on the roadmap. AcornReply intentionally does not match those capabilities. If they are how you work today, stay.

**Q: Is AcornReply a Front alternative or a Front competitor?**
A: Alternative. The two tools sit at different team sizes. Front markets to mid-market and enterprise customer ops teams; AcornReply is built for teams under ten. The category overlaps but the customer rarely does. We recommend Front for any team that has outgrown AcornReply.

**Q: Does AcornReply integrate with my CRM?**
A: Not today. AcornReply ships native Postmark inbound/outbound and a hosted contact form. CRM integrations are on the roadmap for Pro and Premium tiers; if a specific CRM is a hard requirement for your team, Front is the safer choice today.

**Q: How does AcornReply handle SMS or WhatsApp?**
A: It doesn't. AcornReply is email-first by design. The live-chat widget and the web contact form (hosted, iframe, or launcher button) cover the in-product channels; SMS and WhatsApp are not on the v1 roadmap.

**Q: Can I switch from Front without losing my conversations?**
A: You can export from Front and import into AcornReply (manual today, with help during early access). Most teams forward their support address to AcornReply on day one and let new conversations land in the new inbox while the Front archive stays read-only.

### A Missive alternative that ships AI drafts and a contact form out of the box.
URL: https://acornreply.com/solutions/missive-alternative
Missive pricing: https://missiveapp.com/pricing

Missive is the cleanest shared-inbox UX on the market. AcornReply trades some of that polish for two things Missive does not ship in the base product: AI drafts grounded in your FAQ, and a hosted contact form for customers who are not already in your inbox.

**What Missive does well.** Missive's collaboration model is best-in-class: in-thread comments, shared drafts with cursor presence, rules without a steep learning curve, and a UI that feels like email. For teams whose support workflow is already 'we all live in one inbox together,' Missive is hard to beat. If that is you, stay with Missive.

**Where AcornReply differs.**
- AI drafts are built in, not bolted on. Missive markets 'not another AI sidebar', and it is true: the AI is light-touch. AcornReply takes the opposite trade. AI drafts are the primary surface: every inbound message arrives with a draft already written, citing the FAQ articles it used. You read, edit, send.
- Live chat and a hosted contact form, ready to embed. AcornReply ships a real-time live-chat widget, a hosted contact form at your-slug.acornreply.com/contact, an inline iframe embed, and a launcher button for the bottom-right of your site. Missive is inbound-channels-only; you bring your own contact form.
- Per-organization pricing instead of per-seat. Missive's Starter tier is generous but caps at five users; the Productive and Business tiers are per-seat. AcornReply is flat per organization at every paid tier.
- Voice profile, not just inbox rules. Pick a voice profile at onboarding; every reply you send quietly tunes it toward how your team actually writes. Missive will draft, but it does not learn your voice the same way.

**Feature comparison.**
- Pricing model: Missive → Per seat (above 5); AcornReply → Flat per organization
- AI drafts: Missive → Light-touch sidebar; AcornReply → Built-in, FAQ-grounded
- Hosted contact form: Missive → Not included; AcornReply → Included on every tier, even Free
- Live chat widget: Missive → Not included; AcornReply → Included on every plan, same inbox as email
- In-thread comments: Missive → Yes; AcornReply → Internal notes + @mentions
- Mobile: Missive → Native + web; AcornReply → PWA only

**Pricing comparison.** Missive publishes plans on [missiveapp.com/pricing](https://missiveapp.com/pricing). The Starter tier covers up to five users at a low monthly rate; Productive and Business tiers move to per-seat pricing. AcornReply Pro is $20 a month flat for the whole organization, no seat cap on the team size we are built for. At nine teammates, AcornReply is materially cheaper. At three teammates on Missive Starter, the math is closer. Pick on features, not price.

**Who should stay with Missive.** Missive is the better tool if your team collaborates in-thread (real-time comments, shared cursor drafts) more than they reply to customers, if you need rich inbound channel breadth (SMS, social, IM apps), or if you prefer Missive's lighter-touch AI to AcornReply's draft-first approach. If you live inside the inbox with your team, Missive is built for that. AcornReply is built around the draft.

**Q: Why does AcornReply lean harder on AI drafts than Missive?**
A: Different product opinions. Missive treats AI as an optional sidebar so the inbox stays unobtrusive. AcornReply treats AI as the primary draft layer so a solo founder or a small team can answer ten messages in the time it would otherwise take to write three. Both are valid; pick the one that matches how your team actually replies.

**Q: Does AcornReply support real-time collaboration on a draft?**
A: No. Each draft has one editor (the assignee). Missive ships shared-cursor draft editing; AcornReply does not. Assignment is the source of truth: sending a reply claims any unassigned conversation, and only the assignee gets notified about new messages on it.

**Q: Can I use AcornReply for personal email like Missive?**
A: No. AcornReply is a customer support inbox; the workspace model assumes your inbound traffic is customers, not personal mail. If you want a single tool that handles both, Missive is the right choice.

**Q: Is Missive cheaper than AcornReply for tiny teams?**
A: At one or two users it can be. Missive Starter is free for small usage; AcornReply Free covers your first AI drafts and a monthly outbound cap. At three to nine teammates, AcornReply Pro is typically the lower number because it does not scale per seat.

### The support inbox for teams Zendesk was not built for.
URL: https://acornreply.com/solutions/zendesk-alternative
Zendesk pricing: https://www.zendesk.com/pricing/

Zendesk is the enterprise standard, and it is very good at being an enterprise standard. If you are a startup with a forwarded support address and no support department, that power arrives as per-agent pricing, a ticketing portal, and a setup project. AcornReply is the smaller fit: the reply is already drafted when you open the message.

**What Zendesk does well.** Zendesk built the modern helpdesk category and runs it at scale: omnichannel routing, a full ticketing system, SLAs, a mature agent workspace, deep reporting, a huge app marketplace, and an AI layer that large support orgs genuinely rely on. For a support team of dozens handling thousands of tickets across channels, Zendesk earns its place. AcornReply does not try to be that tool.

**Where Zendesk feels heavy for a startup.**
- Per-agent pricing that scales against you. Zendesk is priced per agent per tier, and the tiers that carry the AI and automation most teams want sit well up the ladder. For a two- or three-person team, you pay department pricing for a founder-sized problem. AcornReply is flat per organization.
- It is a ticket portal, not an inbox. Zendesk turns email into tickets with a portal, statuses, and a reply-above-this-line experience. Startups usually just want to answer a customer like a human, from an inbox. AcornReply keeps it as email: your customer gets a normal reply from your address.
- AI is a paid layer on top. Zendesk's AI (agents, copilots) generally sits on higher tiers or as add-ons. AcornReply includes AI drafts on every plan, because the drafts are the product, not an upsell.
- Setup is a project. Triggers, automations, groups, SLAs, and the agent workspace reward configuration, but the configuration is real work. Below ten people, most teams want the inbox answering customers on day one.

**Feature comparison.**
- Target team size: Zendesk → Mid-market to enterprise; AcornReply → Startups and teams under 10
- Pricing model: Zendesk → Per agent, per tier; AcornReply → Flat per organization
- Customer experience: Zendesk → Ticket portal; AcornReply → Normal email from your address
- AI drafts: Zendesk → Higher tiers / add-on; AcornReply → Included on every plan
- Autonomous AI reply: Zendesk → Available; AcornReply → Opt-in, off by default
- Time to first reply: Zendesk → Setup project first; AcornReply → Under five minutes
- Live chat widget: Zendesk → Messaging on higher tiers; AcornReply → Included on every plan, same inbox as email

**Pricing comparison.** Zendesk publishes its current per-agent plans at [zendesk.com/pricing](https://www.zendesk.com/pricing/); the AI and automation features most teams want sit on the higher tiers. AcornReply is $20 a month flat for the whole organization on Pro and $30 on Premium, AI drafts included in both. For a small team, the difference is a support budget versus a rounding error.

**Who should stay with Zendesk.** Zendesk is the right tool if you run a real support department, need omnichannel ticketing with SLAs and deep reporting, integrate with many third-party systems, or are scaling past the point where one shared inbox is enough. AcornReply intentionally does not match that. If that is you today, stay, and come back when you want the small-team tool.

**Q: What is Zendesk help desk software?**
A: Zendesk is an enterprise-grade help desk platform built around a full ticketing system: it turns email, chat, phone, and social into tickets and adds omnichannel routing, SLA management, reporting dashboards, a help center, and an AI layer. It is sold in per-agent tiers (Suite Team through Enterprise), with the automation and AI most teams want sitting on the higher tiers. Its target market is mid-market and enterprise support organizations. See current tiers at [zendesk.com/pricing](https://www.zendesk.com/pricing/).

**Q: What is the best help desk software for a small business?**
A: For a small business under about ten people, a shared inbox usually beats a full help desk on setup and price. AcornReply and Help Scout are the common shared-inbox picks; Freshdesk and Zoho Desk offer free ticketing tiers to grow into. See a fuller honest comparison on our best help desk software for small business roundup.

**Q: Is AcornReply a real Zendesk alternative?**
A: For startups and teams under ten, yes. AcornReply covers the core job Zendesk does for a small team, receive support email, reply well, keep it organized, without the ticket portal, per-agent pricing, or setup project. For a large multi-channel support org, Zendesk remains the stronger choice and we will say so.

**Q: Do my customers have to use a ticket portal?**
A: No. That is the main difference. AcornReply keeps support as email: the customer emails your address and gets a normal reply from a person, with no portal, ticket numbers, or reply-above-this-line banner.

**Q: Is the AI included or an add-on?**
A: Included on every plan. Each inbound email arrives with a draft written in your voice; a human reviews and sends. There is no separate AI tier to buy.

**Q: Can I move off Zendesk without losing history?**
A: Most teams forward their support address to AcornReply on day one so new conversations land in the new inbox, and keep the Zendesk archive read-only. A full export/import is manual today, with help during early access.

### A support inbox, not a scaled-down helpdesk.
URL: https://acornreply.com/solutions/freshdesk-alternative
Freshdesk pricing: https://www.freshworks.com/freshdesk/pricing/

Freshdesk is a real helpdesk at a fair price, and it grows with a support team. It is also a ticket queue, a customer portal, and configuration somebody has to own. If your whole team is two to ten people, AcornReply is the lighter fit.

**What Freshdesk does well.** Freshdesk is the mature customer-support product in the Freshworks suite. Every request becomes a ticket with a status, a priority, an assignee, and a group, and email, a self-service portal, chat, phone, and social all funnel into that one queue, with automation rules, SLA policies, business hours, a knowledge base, reporting, and the Freddy AI layer around it. If support is becoming a job somebody holds, Freshdesk is a reasonable pick at less than the incumbents charge. AcornReply is aimed earlier.

**Where Freshdesk starts to weigh on teams under 10.**
- A ticket queue needs someone to work it. Statuses, priorities, and groups pay off when somebody grooms the queue. Below ten people nobody does, and the list stops matching reality. AcornReply keeps one status and one owner per conversation, and catches what you wanted ticketing for: hit send after a teammate already answered and it stops and names them.
- Per-agent pricing makes every extra pair of hands a decision. Freshdesk charges per agent on tiered plans, which fits a team where a seat maps to a shift, not one where a cofounder answers on weekends and a contractor covers a launch week. It is how small teams end up sharing a login. AcornReply is flat per organization.
- The parts you came for sit further up the ladder. Automation rules, SLA policies, richer reporting, and the AI features climb Freshdesk's tiers or arrive as add-ons. Normal for the category, and a real cost: what you want is usually one tier up, and that upgrade is per agent, so it multiplies by headcount. AcornReply includes AI drafts on every plan.
- The AI arrived after the ticket model. Freddy is a layer added across a suite designed before AI, so it is something you invoke inside a ticket somebody already opened. AcornReply is drafts-first: the email is drafted in your voice before you read it, grounded in your published help center and past resolved replies, and it cites the articles it used.

**Feature comparison.**
- Core model: Freshdesk → Ticketing helpdesk; AcornReply → Shared email inbox
- Pricing model: Freshdesk → Per agent, tiered, with a free tier; AcornReply → Flat per organization
- AI drafts: Freshdesk → Freddy, by tier or add-on; AcornReply → Included on every plan
- Autonomous AI reply: Freshdesk → Available; AcornReply → Opt-in, off by default
- Customer experience: Freshdesk → Ticket portal; AcornReply → Ordinary email in their inbox
- Time to first reply: Freshdesk → Configure first; AcornReply → Under five minutes
- Live chat widget: Freshdesk → Sold separately (Freshchat); AcornReply → Included on every plan, same inbox as email

**Pricing comparison.** Freshdesk publishes current plans at [freshworks.com/freshdesk/pricing](https://www.freshworks.com/freshdesk/pricing/). The shape is per agent on tiered plans with a free tier to start on, so the bill moves with headcount and again with tier. AcornReply is $20 a month for the whole organization on Pro and $30 on Premium, flat at one person or nine, drafts and outbound unlimited, no per-seat line and no annual commitment. Free is free forever rather than a trial and caps no teammates at all; it limits usage instead, at 20 AI drafts as a lifetime allowance and 500 outbound emails a month.

**Who should stay with Freshdesk.** Stay on Freshdesk if support is becoming a department: agents in shifts, SLA policies and business hours that bind, groups and routing between queues, a queue you report on, or phone and social alongside email. Stay if your customers expect a portal to look a ticket up in, because AcornReply has none. And if the tickets are really internal IT, Freshservice next door is the more honest pick than either of us. AcornReply serves the team that has not needed a helpdesk yet.

**Q: How is AcornReply different from Freshdesk?**
A: Freshdesk is a ticketing helpdesk that scales into a support team; AcornReply is a shared inbox for teams under ten where AI writes the first draft. On day one the difference is that the reply is already written when you open the message, and support stays as email rather than a queue you configure and staff.

**Q: Does AcornReply have a free plan like Freshdesk?**
A: Yes, and free forever rather than a trial. Freshdesk has a free tier too, so the question is what each one meters. Freshdesk prices per agent past its free tier, so the bill follows headcount. AcornReply caps teammates on no plan and limits usage instead: 20 AI drafts as a lifetime allowance and 500 outbound emails a month.

**Q: Is the AI included, or is it a tier?**
A: Included on every plan, with a human sending by default. Freddy on Freshdesk generally depends on your tier or add-ons. AcornReply drafts every inbound message as it arrives and cites the articles it leaned on, so you can check an answer instead of trusting it. Auto-reply exists as an opt-in setting and is off out of the box.

**Q: What does AcornReply not do that Freshdesk does?**
A: The workflow model is deliberately small: one owner per conversation, a returning customer routed back to whoever last replied to them, and sending a reply claims an unassigned thread. Nothing sits above that. No SLA policies, no groups or routing rules, no round-robin or workload balancing, no customer portal, and no ITSM features.

**Q: Can I switch from Freshdesk easily?**
A: The forwarding part is easy and the history part is manual. Point your support address at the address AcornReply gives your workspace and new conversations start landing there, with no DNS change to make, while your Freshdesk archive stays readable where it is. There is no Freshdesk importer today, though knowledge base content can come across by CSV or JSON import or through the API.

### For support that is not a Shopify help desk.
URL: https://acornreply.com/solutions/gorgias-alternative
Gorgias pricing: https://www.gorgias.com/pricing

Gorgias is excellent at one thing: high-volume e-commerce support wired into Shopify. If you run a store at scale, use it. If you are a startup or small team whose support is not order-status tickets, its e-commerce shape and per-ticket pricing are a poor fit. AcornReply is the general-purpose, flat-priced alternative.

**What Gorgias does well.** Gorgias is purpose-built for e-commerce support: deep Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce integrations, order and refund actions inside the ticket, macros for high-repeat store questions, and automation tuned to shopping. For a busy online store, that focus is a real advantage. AcornReply is built for the general small-team case instead.

**Where Gorgias fits only if you are a store.**
- Priced per ticket. Gorgias meters on ticket volume, which suits a store forecasting seasonal spikes but punishes any team whose support is spiky or hard to predict. AcornReply is flat per organization: your bill does not move with your busy week.
- The whole product assumes e-commerce. The value is in the store integrations. If you are a SaaS, an agency, a nonprofit, or a service business, most of what you pay for does not apply. AcornReply is channel- and industry-neutral.
- Still a ticketing desk. Gorgias is a helpdesk with a portal and queues, tuned for store agents. AcornReply keeps support as plain email from your address, which is what most non-store teams actually want.
- AI aimed at store questions. Gorgias's automation and AI are trained on repetitive e-commerce questions. AcornReply's drafts learn your voice for whatever you actually answer, not a store playbook.

**Feature comparison.**
- Best for: Gorgias → High-volume e-commerce; AcornReply → General small-team support
- Pricing model: Gorgias → Per ticket; AcornReply → Flat per organization
- Core integrations: Gorgias → Shopify / Magento / BigCommerce; AcornReply → Postmark email, hosted form
- Customer experience: Gorgias → Ticket portal; AcornReply → Normal email from your address
- AI drafts: Gorgias → E-commerce automation; AcornReply → Your voice, any topic; included
- Time to first reply: Gorgias → Store setup first; AcornReply → Under five minutes
- Live chat widget: Gorgias → On higher tiers; AcornReply → Included on every plan, same inbox as email

**Pricing comparison.** Gorgias publishes its current per-ticket plans at [gorgias.com/pricing](https://www.gorgias.com/pricing). That model fits a store that can forecast ticket volume. AcornReply is $20 a month flat for the whole organization on Pro and $30 on Premium, AI drafts included, and it does not meter on how busy your week gets.

**Who should stay with Gorgias.** If you run an e-commerce store at real volume and live inside Shopify, Gorgias is genuinely the better tool, its store integrations and order actions are hard to match, and we would not try. AcornReply is for the teams whose support is not order-status tickets.

**Q: Is AcornReply a good Gorgias alternative for my store?**
A: If you are a high-volume Shopify store, honestly, no. Gorgias's store integrations and per-order actions are its whole value and AcornReply does not replicate them. AcornReply is the better fit when your support is general small-team email rather than e-commerce order tickets.

**Q: Why flat pricing instead of per ticket?**
A: Per-ticket pricing suits a store that forecasts volume; it penalizes teams with unpredictable or spiky support. AcornReply charges flat per organization so a busy week costs the same as a quiet one.

**Q: Does AcornReply integrate with Shopify?**
A: Not today. AcornReply is deliberately channel- and industry-neutral: email inbound/outbound via Postmark and a hosted contact form. If deep Shopify integration is core to your support, Gorgias is the right choice.

**Q: What if I am a small store just getting started?**
A: A very small store whose support is still a handful of emails a day may find AcornReply's flat price and simple inbox a better start, and can move to Gorgias when order-tied ticketing and store automation become worth it.

### The AI support inbox without the per-resolution bill.
URL: https://acornreply.com/solutions/intercom-alternative
Intercom pricing: https://www.intercom.com/pricing

Intercom is a powerful customer-messaging platform built for scaling support and sales teams, with a chat Messenger and the Fin AI agent. It prices like one too: per seat, plus a metered charge for every Fin resolution. For a team under ten answering support email, AcornReply drafts the reply for you, and the price stays flat.

**What Intercom does well.** Intercom pioneered in-app messaging and now runs a genuinely strong platform: the Messenger, Fin (an autonomous AI agent that resolves conversations end to end), a help center, product tours, outbound campaigns, and deep integrations. For a company scaling support and sales across chat, email, and product, with the budget and the team to run it, Intercom is a category leader and earns it. AcornReply is aimed at a smaller, quieter job.

**Where Intercom is heavy for a small team.**
- Per seat, plus pay-per-resolution. Intercom is priced per seat across several tiers, and Fin is metered on top of that, charging for every resolution. So the AI you actually want is billed by the answer, and your bill grows with the support you do. AcornReply is flat per organization with AI drafts included, so answering more customers never costs more.
- Chat widget first, email second. Intercom's center of gravity is the Messenger on your site. If your support is really just a forwarded email address, you are adopting a messaging platform to answer email. AcornReply ships a live chat widget too, one script tag, on every plan, but chat lands in the same inbox as email with the same AI drafts and the same assignee, not a separate platform to run.
- Fin is autonomous by design. Fin is built to resolve conversations without you, which is powerful, and for a small brand still earning trust, a lot of control to hand over. AcornReply drafts the reply in your voice and a human sends by default; autonomy is opt-in, off until you want it.
- It is a platform to configure. Messenger, workflows, Fin, help center, and campaigns reward setup, which assumes people to run them. Under ten seats, most teams want the next email answered now, not a messaging platform to configure.

**Feature comparison.**
- Target team size: Intercom → Scaling support & sales; AcornReply → Startups and teams under 10
- Pricing model: Intercom → Per seat, tiered, plus a charge per AI resolution; AcornReply → Flat per organization
- Primary channel: Intercom → Chat Messenger; AcornReply → Email from your address
- AI model: Intercom → Fin, autonomous, metered per outcome; AcornReply → Drafts in your voice, human sends
- AI cost: Intercom → Metered per resolution, on top of seats; AcornReply → Included on every plan
- Integrations: Intercom → Large app store of third-party apps; AcornReply → Postmark inbound and outbound, REST API, MCP server
- Mobile app: Intercom → Native iOS and Android; AcornReply → PWA, installs from the browser
- Reporting: Intercom → Deep dashboards and custom reports; AcornReply → Core inbox and reply metrics
- Help center: Intercom → Full help center and articles; AcornReply → Per-tenant help center, doubles as AI grounding
- Time to first reply: Intercom → Platform setup first; AcornReply → Under five minutes
- Live chat widget: Intercom → Messenger, the core product; AcornReply → Included on every plan, same inbox as email

**Pricing comparison.** Intercom publishes per-seat plans (Essential, Advanced, Expert) at [intercom.com/pricing](https://www.intercom.com/pricing), and its Fin AI agent is billed separately per resolution. That is two meters running at once: one that ticks with every teammate you add, one that ticks with every answer Fin gives. AcornReply is $20 a month flat for the whole organization on Pro and $30 on Premium, AI drafts included, with no per-resolution meter. A five-person team handling a couple of hundred Fin resolutions a month pays Intercom for five seats plus every one of those resolutions, at whatever the current rates are, versus $20 flat on AcornReply Pro. For a small team, that is a predictable line item instead of a bill that scales with every answer.

**Who should stay with Intercom.** Intercom is the right tool if you run support and sales across chat and email at scale, want an autonomous AI agent resolving a high volume of conversations, rely on in-product messaging, tours, and outbound campaigns, or have the team and budget to run a full platform. AcornReply intentionally does not match that. If that is you today, stay, and come back when you want the small-team inbox.

**Q: Is AcornReply a real Intercom alternative?**
A: For startups and teams under ten answering support email, yes. AcornReply covers the core job, receive support messages, reply well in your voice, keep it organized, without the chat Messenger, per-seat pricing, or the per-resolution AI meter. For a company scaling support and sales across channels with an autonomous AI agent, Intercom remains the stronger platform and we will say so.

**Q: How is the pricing different from Intercom?**
A: Intercom charges per seat and then charges again for every Fin AI resolution, so the AI you want is metered by the answer. AcornReply is flat per organization with AI drafts included on every plan, so answering more customers never raises the bill.

**Q: Do I need a chat widget on my site?**
A: Only if your customers want one. AcornReply ships a live chat widget on every plan: one script tag, and every chat lands in the same inbox as your email with the same AI drafts. It is optional, and it is not Messenger. If chat is your primary channel and you want routing, proactive messages and a bot in the widget, Intercom is the stronger chat product and you should stay.

**Q: Does the AI reply on its own like Fin?**
A: Only if you turn it on. By default AcornReply writes the draft in your voice and a human reviews and sends. Autonomous replies are opt-in and off until you choose otherwise, unlike Fin, which is built to resolve on its own.

**Q: What are the cheapest Intercom alternatives?**
A: If price is the whole reason you are leaving, the budget field includes Tidio, Crisp, Tawk.to, Freshchat, and Help Scout, most of which start well below Intercom and some with a free tier. They are mostly chat-widget tools without an email-first inbox behind them. AcornReply ships a chat widget too, on every plan, in the same inbox as email, with AI drafts included and flat per-organization pricing. Compare current Intercom pricing at [intercom.com/pricing](https://www.intercom.com/pricing).

**Q: Are there open-source Intercom alternatives?**
A: Yes. The main self-hosted, open-source options are Chatwoot (the most actively developed), Chaskiq, and Papercups (now in maintenance mode), all of which you can run on your own server for the cost of hosting and maintenance. They suit teams with the engineering time to operate them. AcornReply is not open source; it is a hosted product that trades self-hosting for zero maintenance and AI drafts out of the box.

**Q: How much does a small team actually save versus Intercom?**
A: It depends on seats and AI resolutions, which is exactly the point: Intercom scales with both. A three-person team resolving several hundred tickets a month through Fin pays for three seats and then for every one of those resolutions, so the invoice has two lines that grow. AcornReply Pro is $20 flat for the whole organization, and neither a fourth teammate nor a busier month changes it. Check current numbers at [intercom.com/pricing](https://www.intercom.com/pricing).

**Q: Can I move off Intercom without losing history?**
A: Most teams forward their support address to AcornReply on day one so new conversations land in the new inbox, and keep the Intercom archive read-only. A full export/import is manual today, with help during early access.

### A Zoho TeamInbox alternative built around the draft.
URL: https://acornreply.com/solutions/zoho-teaminbox-alternative
Zoho TeamInbox pricing: https://www.zoho.com/teaminbox/pricing.html

Zoho TeamInbox is a capable, inexpensive shared inbox, and if you already run on Zoho it is the obvious choice. AcornReply is the alternative for teams who are not a Zoho shop and who want the reply written for them: AI drafts grounded in your own help center, and one flat price for the whole organization.

**What Zoho TeamInbox does well.** TeamInbox gives a team shared inboxes with assignment, internal discussions, shared drafts, tags and rules, across email plus WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram. It is priced per user, it is included in Zoho One, and it sits natively beside the rest of the Zoho suite. If your CRM, your books and your desk are already Zoho, TeamInbox is the cheapest sensible way to add a shared inbox, and leaving costs you that integration. That is a real reason to stay.

**Where AcornReply differs.**
- AI drafts are the surface, not an item in a menu. Every inbound message in AcornReply arrives with a full reply already written in your voice, citing the help center articles it drew on. TeamInbox is a shared inbox first: the writing is still yours to do.
- Flat per organization instead of per user. TeamInbox charges per user and meters shared channels by plan, with extra channels sold as add-ons. AcornReply is one flat price for the workspace on every paid tier, so a fourth teammate does not change the bill.
- A free plan rather than a trial. TeamInbox starts you on a 14-day trial. AcornReply Free is free forever: 20 AI drafts lifetime and 500 outbound emails a month, which is enough to judge the drafts on your own customer traffic before paying anyone.
- A hosted help center comes with the inbox. AcornReply ships a hosted help center with custom domains, a contact form at your-slug.acornreply.com/contact, and an embeddable live chat widget. Those same articles are what the AI drafts from, so writing help content makes the replies better. TeamInbox is inbound channels; you bring your own help center.

**Feature comparison.**
- Pricing model: Zoho TeamInbox → Per user, tiered; AcornReply → Flat per organization
- Starting free: Zoho TeamInbox → 14-day trial; AcornReply → Free plan, capped drafts and sends
- AI drafts: Zoho TeamInbox → Not the focus; AcornReply → Built-in, help-center grounded
- Channels: Zoho TeamInbox → Email, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram; AcornReply → Email, contact form, live chat
- Hosted help center: Zoho TeamInbox → Not included; AcornReply → Included, custom domain supported
- Zoho suite integration: Zoho TeamInbox → Native, part of Zoho One; AcornReply → None
- Mobile: Zoho TeamInbox → Native apps; AcornReply → PWA only
- Live chat widget: Zoho TeamInbox → Not included; AcornReply → Included on every plan, same inbox as email

**Pricing comparison.** Zoho publishes TeamInbox plans on [zoho.com/teaminbox/pricing](https://www.zoho.com/teaminbox/pricing.html). Both paid tiers are priced per user per month, shared channels are metered by plan, extra channels are sold as add-ons, and there is a 14-day trial rather than a free tier. AcornReply Pro is $20 a month flat for the whole organization and Premium is $30; neither moves when you add a teammate. At one or two users TeamInbox is very likely the smaller line item. By six or eight people answering, flat wins. Decide on the drafting, not on the difference.

**Who should stay with Zoho TeamInbox.** Stay if you already run on Zoho, because the suite integration is worth more than anything on this page. Stay if WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger have to land in the same inbox as your email, which AcornReply does not do. And stay if what you want is a shared inbox that gets out of the way, rather than a product with a firm opinion about how each reply gets written.

**Q: Is AcornReply cheaper than Zoho TeamInbox?**
A: It depends on headcount. TeamInbox is per user and AcornReply is flat per organization, so TeamInbox is usually the smaller number at one or two people and AcornReply is the smaller number by the time six or eight are answering. Check the current per-user rate on the Zoho pricing page against our flat organization price.

**Q: Can I move my Zoho TeamInbox threads into AcornReply?**
A: Most teams forward their support address to AcornReply on day one so new conversations land in the new inbox, and keep the TeamInbox archive read-only. A full export and import is manual today, with help during early access.

**Q: Does AcornReply support WhatsApp or Instagram?**
A: No. AcornReply covers email, a hosted contact form and a live chat widget on your own site. If social messaging has to sit in the same inbox as your email, TeamInbox is the better fit and that is not a gap we are about to close.

**Q: Is Zoho TeamInbox the same thing as Zoho Desk?**
A: No. TeamInbox is a shared inbox for team email and messaging. Zoho Desk is the full help desk, with tickets, SLAs and an agent portal. If your real comparison is against Zoho Desk, be aware that Desk is a much larger product and AcornReply is not trying to be it.

### One inbox where chat is a door, not a chat-first console.
URL: https://acornreply.com/solutions/crisp-alternative
Crisp pricing: https://crisp.chat/en/pricing/

Crisp is the stronger chat-first product, and if chat is where your customers reach you it is the one to buy. AcornReply puts live chat, email and a help center in one inbox at one flat price for the whole organization, with the widget included on every plan.

**What Crisp does well.** Crisp is chat-first, and it puts chat, a shared inbox and a knowledge base together in one console. That is a lot of product for the money, and the breadth is the point rather than depth in any one area. If chat is your primary channel and you want a chat-native console to work in all day, Crisp is the right tool and this page will not try to talk you out of it. AcornReply is not the right tool for that team.

**Where Crisp starts to chafe for a team that mostly does email.**
- Their free tier caps people. Ours caps usage. Crisp's free tier caps the number of agents, so the next person who needs to answer becomes a billing decision. Check [Crisp's pricing page](https://crisp.chat/en/pricing/) for today's cap, because a seat number is exactly the kind of fact that moves. AcornReply Free caps usage instead: 20 AI drafts lifetime and 500 outbound emails a month, and never people. Everyone on the team can be in the inbox on day one.
- In a chat-first tool, email is the bolt-on. In a chat-first tool the widget is the center of gravity, and email is fitted around it. In AcornReply the chat, the email and the contact form land in one inbox, on the same conversation thread, with the same AI drafts and the same assignee. There is no second place to look when the widget is quiet, which for most teams under ten is most of the week.
- We made this move ourselves. Biteable's in-app chat has run on AcornReply since June 2026, after moving off Crisp. The help center followed in July 2026, with 58 article URLs remapped so the existing links kept working. Those are the dates and the number of URLs. There is no deflection percentage to quote here, because we did not measure one.
- When nobody is online, a person still owns the answer. By default the message waits in the inbox for a person. If the visitor left an email, the reply reaches them there. You can turn on an AI answer for when nobody is available, and it is off until you do. For a team of two or three, that is usually the right default: the chat is a door, not a shift.

**Feature comparison.**
- Primary channel: Crisp → Live chat; AcornReply → Email, with chat and a form landing in the same inbox
- Pricing model: Crisp → Per workspace, tiered, with a free tier; AcornReply → Flat per organization, with a free tier
- Free tier limits: Crisp → Caps agents; AcornReply → Caps usage: 20 AI drafts lifetime, 500 outbound emails a month, no teammate cap
- Live chat widget: Crisp → Included, the core product; AcornReply → Included on every plan, same inbox as email
- Built to staff chat as a channel: Crisp → Yes, chat is the whole product; AcornReply → No, chat is one door into an email inbox
- Help center: Crisp → Included; AcornReply → Included, per workspace, doubles as the AI grounding source

**Pricing comparison.** Crisp publishes its plans at [crisp.chat/en/pricing](https://crisp.chat/en/pricing/). Crisp's tiers are per workspace, and the free tier caps the number of agents, so read that page for today's cap before you plan around it. AcornReply Pro is $20 a month and Premium is $30, flat for the whole organization, and Free is free forever with usage limits rather than a headcount limit. The argument is the shape of the bill, not the size of it: adding the third or the ninth person who answers customers changes nothing about what AcornReply costs.

**Who should stay with Crisp.** Stay if chat is your primary channel and somebody is there to answer it during the day. AcornReply has no routing, no queues, no shifts, no chatbots and no SLAs. If you need those, shop in the chat-first category. And stay if your knowledge base and the rest of your setup already live inside Crisp, because breadth in one console is worth real money and moving it is real work.

**Q: Is AcornReply a cheaper alternative to Crisp?**
A: For a team that grows past the free tier's agent cap, usually yes, because AcornReply never charges by the person. Crisp's tiers are per workspace and the free tier caps the number of agents; check [Crisp's pricing page](https://crisp.chat/en/pricing/) for today's cap. AcornReply Pro is $20 a month flat for the whole organization, so the fourth and the ninth teammate cost nothing extra. Compare the two shapes against your own headcount rather than a figure we would only get wrong later.

**Q: Does AcornReply have live chat like Crisp?**
A: Yes, on every plan, with unlimited chats. It installs as one script tag, and every chat lands in the same inbox as your email with the same AI drafts and the same assignee. The honest limits: presence comes from each teammate's availability and schedule and is off by default; your team gets read receipts while the visitor gets an unread badge; visitors can attach screenshots and files, up to 3 per message, 5 MB each and 10 MB total, images and text files. There is no routing, no queues, no shifts, no chatbots and no SLAs, which is where Crisp is the stronger chat product.

**Q: What happens to a chat when nobody is online?**
A: By default the message waits in the inbox for a person. If the visitor left an email, the reply reaches them there. You can turn on an AI answer for when nobody is available, and it is off until you do. Chat replies do not count toward the outbound-email cap either. Only a reply that goes out as an email does, which happens when the visitor is no longer in the chat and there is an email address on the thread.

**Q: Can I move my Crisp help center to AcornReply?**
A: Yes, and you do it yourself. Import your Crisp help center from Settings, with your Crisp website id and an API token; articles and images come across in the background, and the articles land unpublished so you publish them from the import modal. It is the knowledge base only: categories, sections, articles and images, never conversation history or chat transcripts. Biteable did this in July 2026, with 58 article URLs remapped so the existing links kept working, and those redirects are the part worth planning first.

### The Tawk.to alternative for a team that answers email too.
URL: https://acornreply.com/solutions/tawk-to-alternative
Tawk.to pricing: https://www.tawk.to/why-free/

Tawk.to is genuinely free, and it is deployed on a very large number of websites, which is part of why it is probably already on your site. AcornReply is the alternative for a small team that also runs a support email address: chat, email and a help center land in one inbox, and a person answers from it.

**What Tawk.to does well.** Tawk.to is free to use, and it funds itself through paid extras such as removing its branding or hiring agents rather than through a subscription. It is very widely deployed. It is chat only, which means it complements a support desk rather than replacing one. If you need chat on your site today, you cannot spend anything, and email is not a channel you run, use Tawk.to. That is the honest answer, and nothing further down this page changes it.

**Where a free chat widget starts to cost you.**
- Chat is all it does, so email is a second tool. Tawk.to is chat only, so the support email you already answer stays somewhere else, and one customer is two histories in two places with nothing joining them. In AcornReply chat, email and the hosted contact form land in the same inbox, with the same assignee and the same AI drafts, so there is no second console to sit in.
- A chat box is a staffing commitment. Putting a chat bubble on the site is a promise that someone is there, and a two person team is not always there. In AcornReply, when nobody is online, by default the message waits in the inbox for a person. If the visitor left an email, the reply reaches them there. It waits beside the email rather than in a channel of its own, with a draft already written, within your plan's allowance, so an unanswered chat is a normal piece of work instead of a missed one.
- Free here caps usage, not people. AcornReply Free is also free, and what it limits is usage rather than headcount: 20 AI drafts lifetime and 500 outbound emails a month, with no cap on teammates. Chat replies do not count toward the outbound-email cap. Only a reply that goes out as an email does: when the visitor is no longer in the chat and there is an email address on the thread. The Powered by AcornReply badge stays on the widget on Free and Pro, and Premium can hide it.
- A help center the drafts are written from. AcornReply includes a hosted help center per workspace, and those articles are the grounding source the AI writes each draft from, so help content you write makes the replies better. The widget can show help-center articles too, when you turn on article deflection. The effect is that an answer you have written once is available to the AI, to the visitor in the widget and to anyone who finds the article, rather than living in whichever head happens to be online.

**Feature comparison.**
- Price: Tawk.to → Free, with paid extras; AcornReply → Free tier, then flat per organization
- Live chat widget: Tawk.to → Included, the whole product; AcornReply → Included on every plan, same inbox as email
- Email support in the same tool: Tawk.to → Not included; AcornReply → Included
- Built to staff chat as a channel: Tawk.to → Yes, chat is the whole product; AcornReply → No, chat is one door into an email inbox
- Vendor branding on the widget: Tawk.to → Removable as a paid extra; AcornReply → Removable on Premium

**Pricing comparison.** Tawk.to is free to use and funds itself through paid extras such as removing its branding or hiring agents, which it explains at [tawk.to/why-free](https://www.tawk.to/why-free/). AcornReply Free is free as well, and it limits usage rather than people: 20 AI drafts lifetime and 500 outbound emails a month, with no teammate cap. Pro is $20 a month and Premium is $30, flat for the whole organization at any headcount. Cheaper is not the argument on this page, because Tawk.to is free. The argument is what each free option includes, and what a chat-only tool leaves you to staff or run somewhere else, since it complements a support desk rather than replacing one.

**Who should stay with Tawk.to.** Stay if there is no support budget at all, because free is free and this page is not going to pretend otherwise. Stay if email is not a channel you run, because most of what AcornReply adds is email shaped and you would be paying for the half you do not use. And stay if chat is a channel you staff for its own sake, up to hiring agents to sit on it, because AcornReply has no routing, no queues, no shifts, no chatbots and no SLAs.

**Q: Is AcornReply cheaper than Tawk.to?**
A: No. Tawk.to is free to use, and nothing we charge beats free. AcornReply Free is also free, with usage limits instead of a teammate limit: 20 AI drafts lifetime and 500 outbound emails a month. What you pay for on Pro is unlimited drafts and unlimited outbound in one inbox that also answers your email, with a help center the drafts are written from.

**Q: Does the AcornReply free plan include the chat widget?**
A: Yes, and Tawk.to is free to use as well. AcornReply Free has no monthly fee and includes the chat widget, inside its usage limits: 20 AI drafts lifetime and 500 outbound emails a month. Chat replies do not count toward the outbound-email cap. Only a reply that goes out as an email does, when the visitor is no longer in the chat and there is an email address on the thread.

**Q: Does AcornReply have live chat like Tawk.to?**
A: Yes, on every plan, installed as one script tag, and every chat lands in the same inbox as your email with the same AI drafts and the same assignee. The honest limits, in one list: presence comes from each teammate's availability and schedule and is off by default; there are read receipts for your team and an unread badge for the visitor; screenshots and files are capped at 3 per message, 5 MB each and 10 MB total, images and text files; and there is no routing, no queues, no shifts, no chatbots and no SLAs.

**Q: What happens to a chat when nobody is online?**
A: By default the message waits in the inbox for a person. If the visitor left an email, the reply reaches them there. You can turn on an AI answer for when nobody is available. It is off until you do.

## Head-to-head comparisons

### AcornReply vs Help Scout
URL: https://acornreply.com/compare/acornreply-vs-help-scout
Help Scout pricing: https://www.helpscout.com/pricing/

**The short answer.** Pick Help Scout if your support team is larger than ten people or you need workload routing, SLA dashboards, and multi-mailbox queues. Pick AcornReply if you are a team under ten who wants flat per-organization pricing instead of per-seat, and AI drafts that a human edits and sends. The dividing line is team size and how much workflow configuration you want to own, not feature count.

**Choose Help Scout if**
- Your team is over ten people and still growing.
- You need workload routing, SLA dashboards, or multi-mailbox queues.
- You already depend on Beacon web-widget integrations or the Docs knowledge base.
- You want autonomous AI reply as the default, always-on behavior.
- Native iOS and Android apps are a hard requirement.

**Choose AcornReply if**
- Your team is under ten and contractors come and go.
- You would rather pay one flat price for the whole organization than per seat.
- You want a human to hit send on every reply by default.
- You want unlimited drafts rather than a per-resolution meter to forecast.
- Your team does support from a phone as much as a laptop.

**Scored side by side.**
- Pricing model: Help Scout → Per seat, per tier; AcornReply → Flat per organization (edge: acorn)
- AI drafts: Help Scout → Included on higher tiers; AcornReply → Included on Pro and Premium (edge: tie)
- Autonomous AI reply: Help Scout → Available (AI Answers add-on); AcornReply → Opt-in, off by default (edge: tie)
- Knowledge base: Help Scout → Docs; AcornReply → Per-tenant help center, doubles as AI grounding (edge: tie)
- Routing and SLA queues: Help Scout → Workload routing, SLA dashboards; AcornReply → Single assignee, auto-route to last replier (edge: competitor)
- Mobile app: Help Scout → Native iOS and Android; AcornReply → PWA, installs from the browser (edge: competitor)
- Integrations: Help Scout → Large app directory; AcornReply → Postmark inbound and outbound, REST API, MCP server (edge: competitor)
- Hosted contact form: Help Scout → Beacon (web widget); AcornReply → Hosted form, iframe, and launcher button (edge: acorn)
- Live chat widget: Help Scout → Beacon (chat + docs widget); AcornReply → Included on every plan, same inbox as email (edge: tie)

**What each one costs.** Help Scout publishes current plans on [helpscout.com/pricing](https://www.helpscout.com/pricing/). Its plans are priced per seat and tiered, so every teammate you add is another line on the invoice, and AI Answers is metered separately per resolution on top of that. AcornReply is $20 a month for the whole organization on Pro and $30 on Premium, flat, regardless of team size. The two bills are different shapes: one grows with headcount and with every AI answer, the other does not move when you hire. Check Help Scout's current figures on their page before deciding, because ours is the only price we control.

**Q: Is AcornReply a drop-in replacement for Help Scout?**
A: No, and it is not trying to be. Help Scout ships workload routing, SLA dashboards, and multi-mailbox queues that AcornReply deliberately does not have. If you use those, AcornReply will feel thin. If you have never opened them, they are the seat fee you are paying for.

**Q: Which is better for a two-person team?**
A: AcornReply, on cost and setup time, in most cases. Help Scout Standard bills per seat, so two people is twice the seat rate and a third hire adds a third; AcornReply Pro is one flat price for the whole organization at any of those headcounts. Current Help Scout figures are on [helpscout.com/pricing](https://www.helpscout.com/pricing/). The caveat is capability: if either person needs native mobile apps or a mature Docs knowledge base today, Help Scout is the safer pick.

**Q: Do both tools ground AI drafts in your own content?**
A: Yes. This row is a genuine tie. Help Scout AI Drafts and AcornReply both write from your knowledge base rather than from the model alone. The difference is the default: AcornReply keeps autonomous sending off out of the box, so a person reads every reply unless you opt in.

**Q: What happens when my team outgrows AcornReply?**
A: You move to Help Scout or Front, and we would rather tell you that here than after you have hired past us. The signals are consistent: more than about ten people replying, a need for routing rules and SLA reporting, or multiple mailboxes with different queues.

**Q: Can I run both during a trial?**
A: Yes, and it is the lowest-risk way to compare. Forward a copy of your support address to AcornReply while Help Scout stays live. New conversations land in both, you compare the drafts against your own replies for a week, and nothing is migrated until you decide.

### AcornReply vs Front
URL: https://acornreply.com/compare/acornreply-vs-front
Front pricing: https://front.com/pricing

**The short answer.** Pick Front if you run multi-channel customer operations across email, SMS, WhatsApp, and social, need a configurable rules engine and analytics, or already integrate several third-party systems. Pick AcornReply if your support is email plus a web form, your team is under ten, and you want the inbox working on day one instead of after a setup sprint. Front is the more capable product. That is exactly why it is the wrong size for a three-person team.

**Choose Front if**
- You handle SMS, WhatsApp, or social alongside email.
- You want a fully configurable rules and routing engine.
- You need analytics dashboards across a larger support org.
- You integrate with five or more third-party systems already.
- Autonomous resolution through Autopilot is on your roadmap.

**Choose AcornReply if**
- Your support is a forwarded email address and a contact form.
- You want to be answering customers within five minutes of signing up.
- You would rather have no rules engine than an unconfigured one.
- Flat per-organization pricing beats per-seat at your headcount.
- You want AI drafts with a human sending, not autonomous replies.

**Scored side by side.**
- Target team size: Front → Mid-market to enterprise; AcornReply → Teams under 10 (edge: tie)
- Channel breadth: Front → Email, SMS, WhatsApp, social; AcornReply → Email, live chat, web form (edge: competitor)
- Rules and automation: Front → Full rules engine; AcornReply → Assignment plus auto-route to last replier (edge: competitor)
- Integrations: Front → 100+ apps; AcornReply → Postmark inbound and outbound, REST API, MCP server (edge: competitor)
- Time to first reply: Front → Hours to days; AcornReply → Under five minutes (edge: acorn)
- Pricing model: Front → Per seat, per tier; AcornReply → Flat per organization (edge: acorn)
- Autonomous AI reply: Front → Autopilot tier; AcornReply → Opt-in, off by default (edge: tie)
- Configuration required: Front → Rewards investment; AcornReply → Works day one (edge: acorn)
- Live chat widget: Front → Not included; AcornReply → Included on every plan, same inbox as email (edge: acorn)

**What each one costs.** Front publishes current plans on [front.com/pricing](https://front.com/pricing). Front is priced per seat and tiered, and the AI and analytics features most teams actually want sit above the entry Starter tier, so the bill moves on two axes: how many people you add and which tier you need them on. AcornReply is $20 a month flat for the whole organization on Pro and $30 on Premium, with AI drafts included in both. Price the Front tier you would actually buy rather than the entry one, and count the seats you expect to have in a year, because that is the number that moves.

**Q: Is Front better than AcornReply?**
A: For a mid-market customer operations team, yes, straightforwardly. Front has more channels, a real rules engine, and far more integrations. The question is not which product is more capable but which is the right size. Below ten seats, most of what you pay Front for is capacity you will not open.

**Q: Does AcornReply handle SMS or WhatsApp like Front?**
A: No. AcornReply is email-first by design. Live chat and the web contact form cover the in-product channels; SMS and WhatsApp are not on the v1 roadmap. If those channels matter to you, that alone settles the comparison in favor of Front.

**Q: How do the AI features compare?**
A: Both write drafts from your own content. The defaults differ: Front Autopilot ships autonomous resolution and a team wanting a human on every reply disables it explicitly, while AcornReply keeps auto-reply off out of the box. Neither default is wrong, but they suit different appetites for risk.

**Q: Can AcornReply integrate with my CRM the way Front does?**
A: Not today. AcornReply ships native Postmark inbound and outbound, a REST API, and an MCP server. CRM integrations are on the roadmap. If a specific CRM is a hard requirement now, Front is the safer choice and we would rather you knew before signing up.

### AcornReply vs Missive
URL: https://acornreply.com/compare/acornreply-vs-missive
Missive pricing: https://missiveapp.com/pricing

**The short answer.** Pick Missive if your team works together inside threads, with real-time comments and shared-cursor drafts, or if you want a single tool for team and personal mail. Pick AcornReply if you want every inbound message to arrive with a draft already written and cited, plus a hosted contact form and live chat in the box. Missive has the better collaboration model. AcornReply has the stronger draft layer. Choose on which of those you do more often.

**Choose Missive if**
- Your team collaborates in-thread more than it replies to customers.
- Shared-cursor draft editing is part of how you work.
- You want one tool for both team and personal email.
- You prefer a light-touch AI sidebar to a draft-first inbox.
- You need broader inbound channels such as social or IM apps.

**Choose AcornReply if**
- You want a written, cited draft waiting on every inbound message.
- You need a hosted contact form and live chat without building them.
- You have more than five teammates and want to stay off per-seat pricing.
- You want the inbox to learn your team voice as you send.
- Support is a job you do, not a room you live in.

**Scored side by side.**
- AI drafts: Missive → Light-touch sidebar; AcornReply → Built in, FAQ-grounded, cited (edge: acorn)
- In-thread collaboration: Missive → Comments plus shared-cursor drafts; AcornReply → Internal notes and @mentions (edge: competitor)
- Real-time co-editing of a draft: Missive → Yes; AcornReply → No, one editor per draft (edge: competitor)
- Hosted contact form: Missive → Not included; AcornReply → Included on every tier, even Free (edge: acorn)
- Live chat widget: Missive → Not included; AcornReply → Included on every plan, same inbox as email (edge: acorn)
- Pricing model: Missive → Per seat above five users; AcornReply → Flat per organization (edge: acorn)
- Personal email: Missive → Supported; AcornReply → Not supported, support inbox only (edge: competitor)
- Mobile: Missive → Native plus web; AcornReply → PWA only (edge: competitor)

**What each one costs.** Missive publishes plans on [missiveapp.com/pricing](https://missiveapp.com/pricing). At time of writing the Starter tier covers up to five users at a low monthly rate, and the Productive and Business tiers move to per-seat pricing. AcornReply Pro is $20 a month flat for the whole organization. At nine teammates AcornReply is materially cheaper. At three on Missive Starter the numbers are close enough that price should not decide it, so choose on the collaboration and draft trade-off instead.

**Q: Which has better AI, AcornReply or Missive?**
A: They are aiming at different targets. Missive markets itself as not another AI sidebar and keeps the AI light so the inbox stays unobtrusive. AcornReply makes the draft the primary surface, with every reply citing the articles it used. If you want AI out of the way, Missive is right. If you want it doing the first pass, we are.

**Q: Does AcornReply support real-time collaboration on a draft?**
A: No, and this row goes to Missive. Each AcornReply draft has one editor, the assignee. Assignment is the source of truth: sending a reply claims an unassigned conversation, and only the assignee is notified about new messages on it.

**Q: Is Missive cheaper for a small team?**
A: At one or two users it can be, since Missive Starter is free for small usage. AcornReply Free covers your first AI drafts and a monthly outbound cap. From about three to nine teammates, AcornReply Pro is typically the lower number because it does not scale per seat. Check both current pages before you decide.

**Q: Can I use AcornReply for personal email like Missive?**
A: No. AcornReply is a customer support inbox and the workspace model assumes inbound traffic is customers, not personal mail. If one tool for both is the requirement, Missive is the right choice.

### AcornReply vs Crisp
URL: https://acornreply.com/compare/acornreply-vs-crisp
Crisp pricing: https://crisp.chat/en/pricing/

**The short answer.** Pick Crisp if chat is your primary channel and you want a chat-first console built to staff it; pick AcornReply if email is your channel and you want chat, email and a help center in one inbox at a flat price. The two are shaped differently on purpose: Crisp is built to staff chat as a channel, while in AcornReply a chat that arrives with nobody online waits in the inbox for a person, next to the email. If you cannot say which channel is primary, pick the one your customers already use to reach you.

**Choose Crisp if**
- Chat is your primary channel and somebody is there to answer it.
- AcornReply has no routing, no queues, no shifts, no chatbots and no SLAs. If you need those, shop in the chat-first category.
- You want a chat-first console built around the widget, not an inbox with a widget on it.
- You want chat, an inbox and a knowledge base from one vendor, with breadth rather than depth.

**Choose AcornReply if**
- Email is the channel, and chat is one more door into the same inbox.
- You want one flat price for the organization, with nothing charged by the person.
- You want a human to send by default, with the AI writing the draft.
- You want a help center that also grounds the drafts your team sends.
- Your Crisp help center should come with you: import it yourself from Settings, knowing it brings the knowledge base and not the chat history.

**Scored side by side.**
- Primary channel: Crisp → Live chat; AcornReply → Email, with chat and a form in the same inbox (edge: tie)
- Live chat widget: Crisp → Included, the core product; AcornReply → Included on every plan, same inbox as email (edge: competitor)
- Pricing model: Crisp → Per workspace, tiered, free tier caps agents; AcornReply → Flat per organization, free tier caps usage not people (edge: acorn)
- Free tier limits: Crisp → Caps agents; AcornReply → Caps usage, never people (edge: acorn)
- Built to staff chat as a channel: Crisp → Yes, chat is the whole product; AcornReply → No, chat is one door into an email inbox (edge: competitor)
- Help center: Crisp → Included; AcornReply → Included, doubles as the AI grounding source (edge: tie)

**Pricing, side by side.** Crisp publishes its plans at [crisp.chat/en/pricing](https://crisp.chat/en/pricing/). Crisp's tiers are per workspace, and the free tier caps the number of agents, so read that page for today's cap. AcornReply Pro is $20 a month and Premium is $30, flat for the whole organization, and Free caps usage rather than people. Compare the shape rather than the size: one of these bills moves when somebody new starts answering customers, and the other one does not.

**Q: Is Crisp free?**
A: It has a free tier, and that tier caps the number of agents. The cap moves, so check [Crisp's pricing page](https://crisp.chat/en/pricing/) for today's figure rather than trusting this page for it. AcornReply Free caps usage instead of people: 20 AI drafts lifetime and 500 outbound emails a month, with no limit on how many teammates share the inbox.

**Q: Which is better for a two person team?**
A: It depends on the channel, not the headcount. Two people can run AcornReply live chat, because a chat nobody picks up waits in the same inbox as the email, and the visitor can leave an email address so the reply reaches them if they step away. If what you need instead is a queue somebody watches all day, AcornReply is the wrong tool: it has no routing, no queues and no shifts, and a chat-first product is the category to shop in.

**Q: Does AcornReply show help articles in the chat widget?**
A: Yes, when you turn on article deflection: the widget then offers help-center articles before a person picks the chat up. With it off, the widget is a plain chat that lands in the inbox next to your email, and nothing is suggested to the visitor automatically.

### AcornReply vs Tawk.to
URL: https://acornreply.com/compare/acornreply-vs-tawk-to
Tawk.to pricing: https://www.tawk.to/why-free/

**The short answer.** Use Tawk.to if you need free chat today and email is not a channel you run. Use AcornReply if you want chat, email and a help center in one inbox, with a human answering from it. Price is not the dividing line, because both have a free way in: the dividing line is whether you already answer a support email address, and whether an unanswered chat needs somewhere sensible to wait. Tawk.to is chat only, so it complements a support desk rather than replacing one.

**Choose Tawk.to if**
- Chat is the only channel you want, and there is no support budget.
- Chat is a channel you staff for its own sake, up to hiring agents to sit on it.
- The site has no support email address behind it for a reply to fall back to.

**Choose AcornReply if**
- Email is a channel you actually run, and chat is one more door into it.
- Nobody owns support, so an unanswered chat has to wait somewhere sensible.
- You want every message to arrive with a reply already drafted in your voice.
- You want a help center the drafts are written from, in the same product as the inbox.

**Scored side by side.**
- Price: Tawk.to → Free, with paid extras; AcornReply → Free tier, then flat per organization (edge: competitor)
- Live chat widget: Tawk.to → Included, the whole product; AcornReply → Included on every plan, same inbox as email (edge: tie)
- Built to staff chat as a channel: Tawk.to → Yes, chat is the whole product; AcornReply → No, chat is one door into an email inbox (edge: competitor)
- Email support in the same tool: Tawk.to → Not included; AcornReply → Included (edge: acorn)
- Vendor branding on the widget: Tawk.to → Removable as a paid extra; AcornReply → Removable on Premium (edge: tie)

**Pricing, side by side.** Tawk.to sets out why it is free at [tawk.to/why-free](https://www.tawk.to/why-free/): the product is free to use, and paid extras such as removing the branding or hiring agents fund it. AcornReply Free is free as well, with usage limits rather than a teammate limit. Pro is $20 a month and Premium is $30, flat for the whole organization, so the bill does not move when someone joins. On price alone Tawk.to wins and this page is not going to argue with free. The question worth asking is what each free option covers once email is part of the job.

**Q: Is Tawk.to the only free way to put chat on a small site?**
A: No, there is more than one. Tawk.to is free to use and funds itself through paid extras such as removing the branding or hiring agents, and it is chat only. AcornReply Free includes the chat widget on the free plan, with usage limits rather than a teammate limit, and every chat lands in the same inbox as your email and your contact form.

**Q: Can two people run chat without a live queue?**
A: Yes, as long as unanswered chats have somewhere to go. In AcornReply they wait in the same inbox as your email, and if the visitor left an email the reply reaches them there. Presence comes from each teammate's availability and schedule, and it is off by default, so the widget is not claiming somebody is watching when nobody is.

**Q: Does AcornReply answer chat with a bot instead of a person?**
A: By default a person. AcornReply writes the draft and a human sends it, so chat works the way the rest of the inbox does. You can turn on an AI answer for when nobody is available. It is off until you do.

## Frequently asked questions

**Q: Are there usage limits today?**
A: The Free plan covers everyday support with limits on AI-drafted replies and outbound emails, while incoming messages and teammates stay uncapped. Pro and Premium lift those limits. See the pricing page for the current plans and what each includes. Learn more: Plans and what counts toward your limits

**Q: Can I cancel and export my data?**
A: Yes. You can delete your account from settings any time; all conversations and customers are removed. Exporting your inbox to JSON is available on request during early access and self-serve at launch. Learn more: Your data: security, storage, and export

**Q: Can I change the avatar that shows next to my name?**
A: Yes. Open Settings → Profile → Identity → Change avatar, pick or take a photo, crop it square, and save — it appears everywhere your name shows up. If you signed in with Google, your Google photo is used by default until you upload your own. Learn more: Managing your account and profile

**Q: Can I customize how the contact form and chat button look?**
A: Yes. In Settings → Branding, enter your website URL and click Detect brand to pull in your logo and colors automatically, then override individual tokens — backgrounds, button, chat bubble, logo, footer, and font — separately for light and dark modes. Learn more: Brand your contact form, chat, and help center

**Q: Can customers attach files or screenshots?**
A: Yes. On live chat and the contact form, customers can attach images and small text files like logs or CSVs — up to 3 files, 5 MB each — or paste a screenshot straight from the clipboard. We deliberately accept images and text only (no executables, documents, or archives) and re-encode images on upload, which strips location and device metadata for the sender's privacy. Attachments appear right in the conversation. Customers emailing you can attach files the usual way. Learn more: How customers reach you: your support channels

**Q: How do I forward email from Gmail or Outlook?**
A: In Gmail: Settings → Forwarding and POP/IMAP → add the forwarding address from Settings → Workspace (it looks like support@yourslug.acornreply.com). Confirm the verification email when it lands in your AcornReply inbox, then turn on the forward rule. In Outlook: Inbox → Rules → forward to the same address. The same address works for any provider that supports forwarding. Learn more: Moving your existing support inbox to AcornReply

**Q: How do I invite teammates?**
A: Settings → Members → Invite teammate. Enter their email and send. They get a magic-link invite by email. Everyone joins as a member; promote them to admin from the same Settings → Members page after they accept. Admins manage members, billing, and workspace settings; members focus on the inbox. Learn more: Invite your team and set roles

**Q: How do I search the inbox?**
A: Type three or more characters into the search bar at the top of the inbox, or press / from anywhere in the inbox to jump straight to it. Search looks across customer name and email, the message subject, and the body of every message in the thread — not just the most recent one. The active status tab scopes results, so switch to All to search across every status at once. Learn more: Search and keyboard shortcuts

**Q: How do I sign in?**
A: Three ways: email and password, Google, or a one-time code sent to your email. As long as the same email is used, it's the same account no matter how you sign up. You can set up or change your password any time in Settings → Profile → Password. Learn more: Managing your account and profile

**Q: How do I turn on notifications?**
A: Open Settings → Notifications, pick a workspace, and choose email, web push, or both — for the events "New and unassigned customer message" and "Snoozed conversation wakes," set independently. Web push is per device, so install the app on your phone and allow notifications there. Learn more: Notifications: never miss a message

**Q: How do customers reach me?**
A: Four ways, all feeding the same inbox: email to your per-workspace support address, a live-chat bubble on your site, a hosted or embeddable contact form, and a developer API. On live chat and the form, customers can also attach a screenshot or a small file. Every reply goes out from your workspace's address, never AcornReply's. Learn more: How customers reach you: your support channels · Live chat on your website

**Q: How does assignment work?**
A: Every conversation has one assignee or none. Replying claims it for you, and a returning customer's message goes to whoever last helped them. Tap the assignee chip to assign to yourself, a teammate, or unassign; the Mine filter shows just yours. Everyone still sees every conversation. Learn more: Who's on it? Assignment in a shared inbox

**Q: How does the AI draft replies, and is my customer data safe?**
A: When a customer writes in, AcornReply drafts a reply grounded in the help articles and FAQs in your workspace — and lists exactly which ones it used right under the draft. If it can't find anything relevant, it asks a clarifying question instead of guessing. You always review and send; nothing goes out on its own unless you turn on auto-reply. Drafting sends the customer's message and the matched knowledge-base snippets to a trusted AI provider. Your conversations are never used to train AI models or shared with anyone else, and they stay scoped to your workspace. Learn more: How AcornReply drafts replies · Your data: security, storage, and export

**Q: How does the AI learn my voice?**
A: During onboarding you pick a reply voice from a small set of built-in styles — friendly, direct, or technical. AcornReply uses that voice, together with your knowledge base, to draft new replies in a consistent tone. You can switch to a different voice any time from Settings → Workspace. Learn more: Choosing and switching your reply voice

**Q: How much does it cost?**
A: AcornReply has a Free plan plus paid Pro and Premium plans, each a flat monthly price — never per seat or per workspace, so you can add teammates and spin up more workspaces without your bill going up. Free covers everyday support with caps on AI-drafted replies and outbound emails; Pro and Premium lift those caps, and Premium adds branding control like replacing or hiding the "Powered by AcornReply" footer. Incoming messages and teammates are never capped. See the pricing page for current prices. Learn more: Plans and what counts toward your limits

**Q: I changed my branding but the contact form still shows the old style — why?**
A: Saved branding changes don't appear until you Publish them. The contact form and embeds are edge-cached for speed, so visitors keep seeing the old style until you click Publish on the Branding page — which clears the cache for your URLs within a few seconds. Learn more: Brand your contact form, chat, and help center

**Q: Is it secure?**
A: Sign-in uses Google SSO or an email magic link. Public contact submissions go through a bot-prevention challenge. Inbound webhook signatures are verified with a shared secret. We don't sell or share customer data. Learn more: Your data: security, storage, and export

**Q: Is there a mobile app?**
A: AcornReply is a PWA — open it on your phone and use 'Add to Home Screen' (iOS) or 'Install app' (Android). Once installed it opens full-screen like any other app. Swipe right on a conversation to snooze, swipe left to resolve. Learn more: Install AcornReply on your phone

**Q: What address do my outbound replies come from?**
A: Replies are sent from a per-conversation address on your workspace's domain. The display name is whatever you set as 'From display name' in Settings → Workspace, so the customer sees a normal email from your team — not from AcornReply. Replies they send back land in the same conversation automatically. Learn more: How customers reach you: your support channels

**Q: What do open, snoozed, and resolved mean?**
A: Open is the default work state. Snoozed hides a conversation until a chosen time or until the customer replies — either event auto-reopens it. Resolved locks the thread so you stop seeing it, and you can reopen it any time; an inbound reply reopens it automatically too. Learn more: Open, snoozed, and resolved: managing your queue

**Q: What happens if I rename my workspace?**
A: Your inbox keeps working. We remember every slug a workspace has used, so the old inbound forwarding address and the old hosted contact URL keep routing to the same inbox. Update your forwarding rules whenever it suits you. Learn more: Moving your existing support inbox to AcornReply

**Q: What happens right after signup?**
A: You name your workspace and pick a slug — that slug becomes both your inbound forwarding address and your hosted contact URL. Then you pick a reply voice. Then you're in the inbox. Teammates invited after this skip the create step and land straight in the inbox.

**Q: What if the AI draft is wrong?**
A: You can rewrite it directly in the textarea, regenerate a fresh draft, or discard it and type from scratch. Nothing sends until you press Send — unless you've turned on auto-reply, which is off by default. Learn more: How AcornReply drafts replies

**Q: What is AcornReply?**
A: AcornReply is a support inbox for small teams who still answer their own customer email. AI drafts a reply from your knowledge base and chosen voice, and by default a human reviews and sends every one — nothing goes out on its own. Prefer more automation? You can turn on auto-reply or article suggestions in Settings → AI assist; it's off by default. Learn more: Set up AcornReply in 10 minutes · Let the AI reply on its own

**Q: What's the difference between admin and member roles?**
A: Admins manage billing, members, and workspace settings — name, voice, embed snippets. Members focus on the inbox: read conversations, edit drafts, send replies. Both roles see every conversation in the workspaces they belong to. Learn more: Invite your team and set roles

**Q: What's the difference between an organization, a workspace, a conversation, and a message?**
A: An organization owns billing and members — usually one per company. A workspace is a single inbox inside that organization; teams running multiple brands or products can spin up more than one. Every customer thread in a workspace is a conversation, and each email or form submission inside it is a message. Learn more: Organizations and workspaces: running one inbox or many

**Q: Where is my data stored?**
A: On Postgres in the US. Each workspace's data is row-isolated and queries are scoped by workspace ID — there is no cross-tenant access path. Learn more: Your data: security, storage, and export

**Q: Who gets notified when a customer message arrives?**
A: It depends on assignment. An assigned conversation notifies only its assignee; an unassigned one notifies everyone subscribed to new-message alerts — until someone replies or picks it up, after which future messages go just to that person. Snoozed wake-ups always go to the assignee. Learn more: Notifications: never miss a message · Who's on it? Assignment in a shared inbox

**Q: Why are some images hidden in a customer's original email?**
A: To protect your privacy, the "Show original email" view never auto-loads images linked from the internet — many are invisible tracking pixels that would tell the sender you opened the message. Linked images appear as an "Image hidden for privacy" placeholder with an open link, so you can view a specific one in a new tab when you need to. Images embedded directly in the email still display normally.

# AcornReply developer docs

OpenAPI spec: https://acornreply.com/api/v1/openapi.json | Docs: https://acornreply.com/developers

## Overview

Create support tickets, manage your knowledge base, and embed live chat from your product or an AI agent. Three ways to integrate: embed live chat, connect an MCP client, or call the REST API.

## Live chat embed

Add a chat bubble to your site with one script tag, style it from your workspace settings, swap the bubble for your own button, and tell AcornReply who the visitor is so your agents have context.

### Add live chat to your site

Paste this snippet and a chat bubble appears in the bottom-right of every page. Visitors start a conversation, the messages land in your AcornReply inbox, and the replies your team sends show up in the widget in real time, even after the visitor closes and reopens it.

Copy it, with your workspace's key already filled in, from Settings → Channels → Live chat in the app. That's the whole drop-in. To control the widget from JavaScript (your own button, or identifying visitors) add one small line to this snippet, shown in the next two sections.

A floating bubble opens a chat card; on phones it becomes a full-screen sheet.

Replies arrive over a live connection, an unread badge sits on the bubble, and the widget follows the visitor's light/dark system theme.

One conversation per visitor, resumed across page loads. Closing the card never drops the thread.

Styling is no-code. The bubble icon, its light and dark colors, the chat header logo, and the greeting and first message are all set under Settings → Appearance in the app, so you don't edit them here. This page covers only the code-level integration: where the snippet goes and how to drive the widget from your own UI.

```text
<script src="https://acornreply.com/embed/YOUR_KEY.chat.js" async></script>
```

### Hide the chat bubble

Prefer to launch chat from your own "Contact us" button, a nav link, or an existing component instead of the default bubble? Hide the built-in bubble and drive the widget yourself with a small browser-side API. This is all client-side JavaScript; it does not touch the REST API.

The examples below add one line above the script tag, a tiny stub that defines window.AcornReply up front so your calls are safe to make the moment the page loads, before the widget has finished loading.

Hide the bubble and wire your own element

Add data-hide-button to the script tag to suppress the built-in floating bubble. The chat card and the control API still load, so any element on your page (an existing button, a menu item, your own React or Vue component) can open it. Listen for the acorn:chat-state event to keep your trigger in sync when the visitor closes the card from inside it or presses Escape.

```text
<script>
  window.AcornReply = window.AcornReply || function () { (window.AcornReply.q = window.AcornReply.q || []).push(arguments) }
</script>
<!-- data-hide-button hides the default bubble; the card + API still load -->
<script src="https://acornreply.com/embed/YOUR_KEY.chat.js" data-hide-button async></script>

<button id="help" type="button" aria-expanded="false">Need help?</button>
<script>
  const help = document.getElementById("help")
  help.addEventListener("click", () => AcornReply("toggle"))

  // detail.open is true when the card is open, false when it closes,
  // including closes the visitor triggers from inside the chat or via Escape.
  window.addEventListener("acorn:chat-state", (e) => {
    help.setAttribute("aria-expanded", String(e.detail.open))
  })
</script>
```

### Control the widget (JS API)

The control API

The public entry point is a single global function, window.AcornReply(command):

There's one more command, AcornReply("identify", traits), for telling AcornReply who the visitor is. See Identify your visitors below.

When do you need destroy? If you drop the script tag on your site once, never: the widget is meant to live for the whole page. Reach for it only when your own code injected the script and now has to take it back out, namely:

a single-page app (React, Vue, etc.) that mounts the embed on some routes and removes it on others, so call destroy in your component's unmount/cleanup;

pulling the widget after the visitor withdraws cookie or chat consent.

It's needed because the script installs once and ignores a second injection while it's live, so removing the <script> tag alone leaves the widget on the page; destroy clears the DOM, the listeners, and window.AcornReply itself. It does not end the conversation: the visitor's chat resumes if you load the widget again later.

| Field | Type | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `AcornReply("open")` |  | Open the chat card. |
| `AcornReply("close")` |  | Close the card. The conversation keeps running in the background, so new replies still light up the bubble's unread badge. |
| `AcornReply("toggle")` |  | Open the card if it's closed, close it if it's open, ideal for a single custom button. |
| `AcornReply("destroy")` |  | Remove the widget and all its listeners. Most sites never need this; see the note below. Advanced, for SPA teardown. |

### Pin the color scheme

Pin the color scheme

The bubble and card colors come from your workspace appearance settings, but the light/dark scheme follows the visitor's system theme by default. To lock it to one scheme, add ?theme=light or ?theme=dark to the script URL, or set data-theme on the tag.

```text
<!-- Always dark, regardless of the visitor's system setting -->
<script src="https://acornreply.com/embed/YOUR_KEY.chat.js?theme=dark" async></script>

<!-- Equivalent, as an attribute -->
<script src="https://acornreply.com/embed/YOUR_KEY.chat.js" data-theme="dark" async></script>
```

### Let AI write the setup

Prefer to let AI write it?

Not a developer? Paste the prompt below into ChatGPT, Claude, or any AI assistant, fill in the one blank describing what you want, and it will write the exact snippet to add to your site. The prompt already contains everything the assistant needs to know about the widget's API, so you don't have to explain it.

```text
I use AcornReply's live chat widget on my website. I install it with this snippet:
<script>
  window.AcornReply = window.AcornReply || function () { (window.AcornReply.q = window.AcornReply.q || []).push(arguments) }
</script>
<script src="https://acornreply.com/embed/MY_KEY.chat.js" async></script>

This JavaScript API is available on the page via the global function
window.AcornReply(command, payload). The install snippet defines it up front, so
it is safe to call any time, even on page load, without waiting for anything:
- AcornReply("open")    -> open the chat
- AcornReply("close")   -> close the chat (the conversation keeps running)
- AcornReply("toggle")  -> open if closed, close if open
- AcornReply("destroy") -> remove the widget entirely
- AcornReply("identify", { email, name, externalId, plan }) -> tell AcornReply who the visitor is
- Add the attribute  data-hide-button  to the second <script> tag to hide the
  default chat bubble so I can trigger the chat from my own button instead.
- Listen for the  "acorn:chat-state"  event on window; event.detail.open is true/false
  and tells me whether the chat is currently open.
- Add  ?theme=light  or  ?theme=dark  to the script URL to lock the color scheme.

What I want: ______________________________________________
(for example: "open the chat when someone clicks my 'Contact us' button",
 or "open the chat automatically 20 seconds after someone lands on my pricing page")

Give me the complete HTML and JavaScript to paste into my site, and tell me exactly
where on the page each piece goes.
```

### Identify your visitors

If you already know who a visitor is, tell AcornReply with one call so the chat skips the email prompt and your agents see them (email, name, and any attributes you send) in the sidebar. Call AcornReply("identify", ...) as soon as you know who they are: on page load or later, after a client-side login. The same call covers both: it's safe any time. Identity is applied when the visitor opens the chat and isn't stored between page loads, so include the call on each page.

Reserved keys: email, name, and externalId (also accepted as external_id) become identity fields. Any other key with a primitive value (string, number, boolean) becomes sidebar metadata. These values come from the browser and are unverified, so treat them with the same trust as an email the visitor types themselves.

```js
<script>
  window.AcornReply = window.AcornReply || function () { (window.AcornReply.q = window.AcornReply.q || []).push(arguments) }
</script>
<script src="https://acornreply.com/embed/YOUR_KEY.chat.js" async></script>

<script>
  // Call as soon as you know who the visitor is: on page load or after login.
  AcornReply("identify", {
    email: "user@example.com",
    name: "Ada Lovelace",
    externalId: "u_123",
    plan: "Pro",
  })
</script>
```

## MCP

### Connect an AI agent (MCP)

The knowledge base API is also available as a remote MCP server at https://mcp.acornreply.com, with the same entries and search tools as the REST API, including set_published to publish or unpublish an entry, plus full category management (list_categories, create_category, update_category, delete_category, reorder_categories) and images (upload_image, create_image_upload, finalize_image_upload) for hosting images. There are two ways to connect: sign in with OAuth (recommended, no API key), or send a workspace API key for clients without OAuth support and for the Claude API.

Connect with OAuth: in Claude (claude.ai or Claude Desktop), add https://mcp.acornreply.com as a custom connector and click Connect. Then sign in with your AcornReply account (any sign-in method works, including Google), pick a workspace if you have more than one, and approve access on the consent screen. In Claude Code, add the server with the command below, then run /mcp, choose acornreply, and select Authenticate; your browser opens to sign in. Any other MCP client that supports MCP OAuth (dynamic client registration with PKCE) connects the same way, with just the URL.

Any workspace member can connect, not only admins. Tokens are per user, per workspace: the connection acts as you, with your own access, in the workspace you picked. To switch workspace, ask your agent to change it; it uses the list_workspaces and select_workspace tools, and a switch applies to every conversation using that connection. On an OAuth connection, write results include workspace { id, name }, so you can always see where a change landed. To disconnect, remove the connector in your client, or go to Settings > MCP & API > Connected apps and choose Disconnect.

The MCP server only reaches your knowledge base: FAQs, articles, categories, images, and article stats. It cannot access your inbox, conversations, customers, billing, or team members. Knowledge entries AcornReply learns automatically from resolved conversations are not exposed over MCP either: they never appear in list or search results, and every entry tool treats their ids as not found.

AcornReply is listed in the official MCP registry as com.acornreply/server, so clients that browse it can add it without being handed the URL. The published manifest declares the Authorization header as optional: clients that support OAuth sign in instead, and the rest prompt you for an API key as part of the install.

```bash
claude mcp add --transport http acornreply https://mcp.acornreply.com

# Then, inside Claude Code: run /mcp, choose acornreply, and select Authenticate.
```

### Connect any other MCP client

A client that supports MCP OAuth needs only the URL, https://mcp.acornreply.com, and signs you in as described above.

For a client without OAuth support, or for the Claude API, connect with a workspace API key. Admins create keys in Settings > API keys. Authenticate the same way as the REST API: the key as a Bearer token, sent only in the Authorization header. Never put a key in the URL or a query parameter. An API-key connection is fixed to the key's workspace, so list_workspaces and select_workspace are not offered.

Calling the Claude API (Messages API) directly? Use its MCP connector, shown in the second example below: send the anthropic-beta: mcp-client-2025-11-20 header and add the server and toolset to your request. Claude passes authorization_token to AcornReply in the Authorization header.

For clients that read a JSON config (Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, and others), add this to the client's mcpServers configuration:

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "acornreply": {
      "url": "https://mcp.acornreply.com",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer ak_YOUR_KEY" }
    }
  }
}
```

**Claude API (Messages API MCP connector):**

```json
{
  "mcp_servers": [
    {
      "type": "url",
      "url": "https://mcp.acornreply.com",
      "name": "acornreply",
      "authorization_token": "ak_YOUR_KEY"
    }
  ],
  "tools": [{ "type": "mcp_toolset", "mcp_server_name": "acornreply" }]
}
```

### Tools

The MCP server exposes the same knowledge base operations as the REST API, grouped into tool families that map onto the resources below: search (search_kb), entries (create/list/get/update/delete, plus set_published to publish or unpublish), categories (create/list/update/delete/reorder), images (upload_image, create_image_upload, finalize_image_upload), format (get_format_guide) for the content-format contract, and analytics (article_stats) for per-article help-center view stats. Unlike the REST API, the entry and search tools cover only FAQs and articles; entries learned from past conversations are left out.

OAuth connections also get workspace tools: list_workspaces shows the workspaces you can access and which one is selected, and select_workspace switches the connection to another one, by id or slug. The switch applies to every conversation using that connection. API-key connections do not see these tools.

Deletes ask for confirmation. The first delete_entry call returns { requiresConfirmation, impact } and deletes nothing; call it again with confirm: true to delete the entry. delete_category works the same way when the category has sections or filed entries. This applies to API-key connections too.

Every tool carries a title and a read-only or destructive annotation, so a client can show at a glance which tools only read, and ask before running one that writes or deletes.

## API

### Common

#### Authentication

Every request carries a workspace API key as a Bearer token. Create keys in Settings > API keys (admins only). Keys are server-side secrets. Never ship one to a browser or mobile app.

```text
Authorization: Bearer ak_YOUR_KEY
```

#### Base URL & conventions

All endpoints are under https://acornreply.com/api/v1. Requests and responses are JSON with snake_case keys; ids are UUIDs unless a field accepts a slug.

#### Errors

Errors return { "error": { "message", "type", "code", "fields": [...] } }. 401 means a missing or invalid key; 422 lists the failing fields; 5xx are safe to retry with the same external_id.

#### Rate limits

30 requests per minute per key. Beyond that you get HTTP 429 with a retry-after header (seconds). Back off and retry; idempotency keys make retries safe.

#### Idempotency

external_id is the idempotency key. Reusing one returns the existing ticket with HTTP 200 (a fresh ticket returns 201), so retries and double-submits cannot create duplicates; no new ticket or message is created.

On a replay, body, subject, tags, priority, and metadata are ignored, and context only fills gaps in the stored environment (never overwriting). The customer record is refreshed, though: customer.name updates the contact's display name, and customer.external_id backfills if it wasn't already set. A genuinely new ticket needs a new external_id.

#### Pagination

List endpoints return a next_cursor; pass it back as ?cursor= to fetch the next page. A null next_cursor means the last page.

### Tickets

#### Create a ticket

One endpoint creates a conversation in your inbox from an end-user message. Only customer.email and body are required; everything else enriches what your team sees.

```bash
curl -X POST https://acornreply.com/api/v1/tickets \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ak_YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "customer": { "email": "jane@acme.com", "external_id": "usr_42" },
    "subject": "Export failing",
    "body": "My export has been stuck for an hour.",
    "priority": "normal",
    "tags": ["billing"],
    "metadata": { "plan": "trial", "user_id": 42 },
    "context": { "locale": "en-US", "timezone": "America/Chicago", "country": "US" },
    "external_id": "tkt_abc123"
  }'
```

| Method | Path | Summary |
| --- | --- | --- |
| POST | `/api/v1/tickets` | Create a ticket |

**Request fields:**

| Field | Type | Required | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `customer` | object | yes | The end user the ticket belongs to. Matched/created by email. |
| `customer.email` | string | yes | Customer's email (required). |
| `customer.name` | string | no | Display name; derived from the email when omitted. |
| `customer.external_id` | string | no | Your ID for this customer, stored for cross-referencing. |
| `body` | string | yes | The first message text (required). |
| `subject` | string | no | Synthesized from body when omitted. |
| `priority` | low \| normal \| high \| urgent | no | Workflow priority shown in the inbox and sidebar. |
| `tags` | string[] | no | Up to 20 labels shown on the conversation. |
| `metadata` | object | no | Flat business data (string/number/boolean values, max 50 keys). Shown in the conversation sidebar Details section and usable in quick-link URL templates. |
| `external_id` | string | no | Idempotency key. Reuse returns the same ticket (HTTP 200) instead of creating a duplicate. |
| `context` | object | no | Observed end-user environment (not the calling server's). All fields optional; invalid values are dropped without failing the request. country is an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code derived by the caller. Never send an IP. Shown to agents in the conversation sidebar's Environment section. |
| `context.user_agent` | string | no | End user's browser User-Agent. |
| `context.locale` | string | no | BCP 47 tag, e.g. en-US. |
| `context.timezone` | string | no | IANA zone, e.g. America/Chicago. |
| `context.country` | string | no | ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, e.g. US. |
| `context.page_url` | string | no | Page the user was on (https). |
| `context.referrer` | string | no | Referrer URL (https). |

**Example response:**

```json
{
  "ticket": {
    "id": "498b650b-c46c-4b66-a0f4-dbf5a8d8a803",
    "external_id": "tkt_abc123",
    "subject": "Export failing",
    "status": "open",
    "priority": "normal",
    "tags": [
      "billing"
    ],
    "source": "api",
    "url": "https://acornreply.com/conversations/498b650b-c46c-4b66-a0f4-dbf5a8d8a803",
    "created_at": "2026-06-12T00:00:00.000Z",
    "customer": {
      "id": "166ac1e0-3013-4304-b4f6-a04c0374f8be",
      "email": "jane@acme.com",
      "external_id": "usr_42"
    }
  }
}
```

| Status | Description |
| --- | --- |
| 200 | Idempotent replay (existing ticket returned) |
| 201 | Ticket created |
| 401 | Missing or invalid API key |
| 422 | Validation error |
| 429 | Rate limit exceeded; the retry-after header carries the wait in seconds. |

#### Fill the context object from the browser

The context object is the end user's environment. It renders in the conversation sidebar so your team sees device, language, local time, and country next to the message. Collect it client-side, then create the ticket from your server where the API key lives.

Derive country yourself (for example from Cloudflare's CF-IPCountry header on your own request). Never send the user's IP: the API has no field for it and we never store one.

```js
// 1) In the browser: collect the end user's environment with their message.
//    No API key here; this is plain data collection.
const context = {
  user_agent: navigator.userAgent,
  locale: navigator.language,
  timezone: Intl.DateTimeFormat().resolvedOptions().timeZone,
  page_url: location.href,
  referrer: document.referrer || undefined,
}
await fetch('/support/tickets', { // your own backend endpoint
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
  body: JSON.stringify({ message, context }),
})

// 2) On your server: create the ticket. The API key stays server-side.
const res = await fetch('https://acornreply.com/api/v1/tickets', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.ACORN_API_KEY}`,
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    customer: { email: user.email, external_id: user.id },
    body: message,
    metadata: { plan: user.plan },
    context: { ...context, country: req.headers['cf-ipcountry'] },
    external_id: ticketId, // idempotency key
  }),
})
const { ticket } = await res.json() // ticket.url links into your inbox
```

#### metadata vs context

metadata is business data you tell us: plan, order id, feature flags, as flat string/number/boolean values, max 50 keys. It shows in the sidebar's Details section and powers quick-link URL templates like {metadata.order_id}.

context is the observed environment: user agent, locale, timezone, country, page URL. It shows in the sidebar's Environment section. The two never mix.

### Knowledge base

Manage the knowledge base your AI drafts and help center pull from: list, create, update, and delete entries; search; and full category management: create, update, delete, and reorder categories (POST/PATCH/DELETE /api/v1/kb/categories and POST /api/v1/kb/categories/reorder). Entries are faq or article. Send Markdown in body (articles are converted to sanitized HTML; pass body_html instead if you already have HTML), and file an entry under a category by passing its slug or id as category. Write responses (create/update) include a warnings[] array listing anything the sanitizer changed or dropped.

#### Entries

Create, read, update, and delete FAQ and article entries. Send Markdown in body (articles are converted to sanitized HTML, or pass body_html), and file an entry under a category by passing its slug or id as category. Write responses include a warnings[] array of anything the sanitizer changed.

Syncing entries from your own docs or CMS? Two request fields exist for it. origin_link is your own customer-facing link for the entry: set it and customers are sent there instead of the AcornReply-hosted help-center page, in AI draft citations, auto-serve deflection cards, and the help-center source link. source_ref_id is your own cross-reference id for the entry, so you can match the row again on the next sync; it is unique per workspace and entry type. Both accept null to clear them, and a slug or source_ref_id already taken in this workspace comes back as a 422 (code slug_taken or source_ref_taken) whose fields[] entry carries existing_id, the entry already holding it, so you can PATCH that one instead.

Pass dry_run: true on create or update to validate and preview warnings[] without writing. The response comes back with a null id and timestamps. See https://acornreply.com/api/v1/kb/format for the exact list of supported Markdown features and the article HTML/iframe-host allowlist.

| Method | Path | Summary |
| --- | --- | --- |
| GET | `/api/v1/kb/entries` | List KB entries |
| POST | `/api/v1/kb/entries` | Create a KB entry |
| GET | `/api/v1/kb/entries/{id}` | Get a KB entry |
| PATCH | `/api/v1/kb/entries/{id}` | Update a KB entry |
| DELETE | `/api/v1/kb/entries/{id}` | Delete a KB entry |

**Request fields:**

| Field | Type | Required | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `type` | faq \| article | yes | Entry type (required). |
| `title` | string | yes | Entry title (required). |
| `body` | string | no | Markdown source. Faqs render it as-is; articles are converted to sanitized HTML. Provide body or body_html, not both. Unsupported constructs are stripped and reported in the response’s warnings[] array. See GET /api/v1/kb/format for the supported feature/tag list. |
| `body_html` | string | no | Raw HTML for callers that already have HTML instead of Markdown. Sanitized against the article allowlist before storage (see GET /api/v1/kb/format); anything dropped is reported in warnings[]. Provide body or body_html, not both. |
| `published` | boolean | no | Whether the entry is eligible for AI drafting and the help center. Defaults to unpublished. |
| `slug` | string | no | URL slug; derived from the title when omitted. |
| `category_id` | string \| null | no | Category to file the entry under. |
| `category` | string | no | Slug or id of the category to file the entry under. Alternative to category_id: send one, not both (sending both is a 422). Unlike category_id (uuid only), this accepts a slug. |
| `origin_link` | string \| null | no | Your own customer-facing link for this entry — your docs site, your existing help center, a product page. When set, it replaces the AcornReply-hosted help-center URL everywhere a link to this entry is shown to a customer: AI draft citations, auto-serve deflection cards, and the help-center source link. Must be an absolute http:// or https:// URL. Omit or send null to keep pointing customers at the AcornReply-hosted page. |
| `source_ref_id` | string \| null | no | Your own cross-reference id for this entry (a row id, slug, or ticket key in your system), so you can match this entry on a later re-sync. Unique per workspace and entry type: reusing an id already taken in this workspace is rejected with a 422 (code source_ref_taken) rather than silently updating the entry that already holds it. The error’s fields[] entry carries existing_id so you can PATCH that entry instead. |
| `dry_run` | boolean | no | When true, validates and renders the entry, including warnings[], without writing to the database. The response comes back with a null id, created_at, and updated_at. |

**Entry object (response):**

| Field | Type | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `id` | string \| null | Null on a dry_run response. |
| `type` | faq \| article \| past_conversation | Entry type. Only faq and article are creatable through this API; past_conversation entries are indexed automatically from resolved conversations. |
| `title` | string |  |
| `body` | string | Rendered/stored body: Markdown for faq, sanitized HTML for article. |
| `published` | boolean | Whether the entry is eligible for AI drafting and the help center. |
| `status` | verified \| unverified |  |
| `slug` | string \| null |  |
| `category_id` | string \| null |  |
| `origin_link` | string \| null | Your own customer-facing URL for this entry. When set, it replaces the AcornReply-hosted help-center URL everywhere a link to this entry is shown to a customer. Null means customers get the AcornReply-hosted page. |
| `source_ref_id` | string \| null | Your own cross-reference id for this entry, unique per workspace and entry type. Null unless you set one. |
| `created_at` | string \| null |  |
| `updated_at` | string \| null |  |

**Example request:**

```json
{
  "type": "faq",
  "title": "How do refunds work?",
  "body": "We refund within **30 days** of purchase.",
  "published": true
}
```

#### Categories

Create, update, reparent, reorder, and delete categories (a category with child sections or filed entries returns an impact preview on delete until you re-call with confirm). Reference a category by slug or id anywhere an id is accepted.

| Method | Path | Summary |
| --- | --- | --- |
| GET | `/api/v1/kb/categories` | List KB categories |
| POST | `/api/v1/kb/categories` | Create a KB category |
| PATCH | `/api/v1/kb/categories/{id}` | Update a KB category |
| DELETE | `/api/v1/kb/categories/{id}` | Delete a KB category |
| POST | `/api/v1/kb/categories/reorder` | Reorder KB categories |

**Request fields:**

| Field | Type | Required | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `title` | string | yes | Category title (required). |
| `description` | string | no |  |
| `parent` | string | no | Slug or id of a top-level category to nest under (makes this a section). |

#### Images

Upload an image with POST /api/v1/kb/images (multipart file, WebP/PNG/JPEG/GIF, max 5 MB) to host it on your CDN; the response returns url, sha256, width, and height. To upload raw bytes without multipart, POST /api/v1/kb/images/presign (mime + sha256) for a presigned PUT URL, PUT the bytes, then POST /api/v1/kb/images/finalize with the returned key; the server verifies the bytes against your sha256 before committing. URLs are content-addressed by SHA-256 and immutable, but may 404 for a few seconds at the CDN edge right after upload. Uploads are burst-limited (60/min per workspace) and count against a daily per-plan quota (lowest on the free plan); over either you get HTTP 429.

| Method | Path | Summary |
| --- | --- | --- |
| POST | `/api/v1/kb/images` | Upload a KB image |

#### Search

Semantic search over your published knowledge base, the same retrieval the AI drafting uses. Pass q (the query, required) and an optional limit; results come back ranked by relevance.

| Method | Path | Summary |
| --- | --- | --- |
| GET | `/api/v1/kb/search` | Search the KB |

#### Article analytics

Per-article view stats for your published help-center articles, for automating content pruning such as finding articles nobody has read. Only published articles are included, and only unique-visitor counts (never any visitor identifiers) are exposed. views and uniques (distinct visitors) are counted within the optional since/until window (all-time by default); last_viewed_at is always all-time. total is the full count matching your filters and truncated tells you whether more rows matched than the page returned. Example: ?max_views=0&since=2026-04-16&sort=views lists the articles with no views since April.

All filters are optional query parameters:

| Method | Path | Summary |
| --- | --- | --- |
| GET | `/api/v1/kb/analytics/articles` | List published-article view stats |

**Query parameters:**

| Field | Type | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `since` | string | ISO date or datetime (UTC). Lower bound (inclusive) for counting views/uniques. |
| `until` | string | ISO date or datetime (UTC). Upper bound (exclusive); must be after since. |
| `min_views` | integer | Keep articles whose in-window view count is at least this. |
| `max_views` | integer | Keep articles whose in-window view count is at most this (max_views=0 finds dead articles). |
| `last_viewed_before` | string | ISO date/datetime (UTC). Keep articles last viewed before this, or never viewed. |
| `sort` | views \| last_viewed_at | Sort key. Defaults to views. |
| `order` | asc \| desc | Sort direction. Defaults to asc (fewest-viewed / stalest first). |
| `limit` | integer | Page size, default 50. Check truncated in the response to know if you hit it. |

**Example response:**

```json
{
  "articles": [
    {
      "id": "0f2c8b3a-2b1e-4c7a-9f10-6d5e4c3b2a10",
      "title": "Deactivating your account",
      "slug": "deactivating-your-account",
      "category": "Account",
      "views": 0,
      "uniques": 0,
      "last_viewed_at": "2026-01-03T09:12:00.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "total": 12,
  "truncated": false
}
```

#### Format guide

Pass dry_run: true on create or update to validate and preview warnings[] without writing. The response comes back with a null id and timestamps. See https://acornreply.com/api/v1/kb/format for the exact list of supported Markdown features and the article HTML/iframe-host allowlist.

| Method | Path | Summary |
| --- | --- | --- |
| GET | `/api/v1/kb/format` | Get the KB content-format contract |