One inbox where chat is a door, not a chat-first console.
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 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.
| Feature | Crisp | AcornReply |
|---|---|---|
Primary channel | Live chat | Email, with chat and a form landing in the same inbox |
Pricing model AcornReply is the same price whether you have 1 or 9 teammates. | Per workspace, tiered, with a free tier | Flat per organization, with a free tier |
Free tier limits | Caps agents | Caps usage: 20 AI drafts lifetime, 500 outbound emails a month, no teammate cap |
Live chat widget | Included, the core product | Included on every plan, same inbox as email |
Built to staff chat as a channel AcornReply has no routing, queues, shifts, chatbots or SLAs. | Yes, chat is the whole product | No, chat is one door into an email inbox |
Help center | Included | Included, per workspace, doubles as the AI grounding source |
Pricing comparison.
Crisp publishes its plans at 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.
Frequently asked questions
Is AcornReply a cheaper alternative to Crisp?
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 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.
Does AcornReply have live chat like Crisp?
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.
What happens to a chat 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, 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.
Can I move my Crisp help center to AcornReply?
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.