The Tawk.to alternative for a team that answers email too.
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.
| Feature | Tawk.to | AcornReply |
|---|---|---|
Price Both have a free way in. The difference is what each one includes. | Free, with paid extras | Free tier, then flat per organization |
Live chat widget | Included, the whole product | Included on every plan, same inbox as email |
Email support in the same tool | Not included | Included |
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 |
Vendor branding on the widget | Removable as a paid extra | 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. 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.
Frequently asked questions
Is AcornReply cheaper than Tawk.to?
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.
Does the AcornReply free plan include the chat widget?
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.
Does AcornReply have live chat like Tawk.to?
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.
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. It is off until you do.