Managed live-chat vendors charge $15 to $35 for every lead their agents log, and the more they log, the more you pay. CWA Chat is $199 a month for up to 500 chats or $350 for up to 1,000, with larger plans up to 10,000, however many leads your site produces. Every plan includes a custom AI chat assistant built from your own website: we read your pages and documents, and it answers visitors from them in seconds. Click to call is included. Month to month, with a one-time $500 setup.
A real month for one industrial client on their previous vendor. Each bar is the vendor's public price applied to that volume. Where a vendor publishes no price, the figure is one reported by a third party and is marked as an estimate. Hover a bar for the working.
Prices read from each vendor's public pricing page on 24 September 2026. * Estimate: the vendor publishes no price, or the volume falls between published bundles. Sources are listed at the foot of this page. Prices change; check the vendor's page before relying on a figure.
The managed services staff a script with human agents. The software tools give you a widget to configure yourself. CWA Chat is set up for you, answers instantly from your own content, and is stopped in code from saying the four things that get an industrial supplier in trouble.
| Feature | CWA Chat | Blazeo | Ngage | Smith.ai | Chat Agents | HelpSquad | DIY chatbot tools |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flat monthly price, no per-lead or per-chat billBlazeo, Ngage, Smith.ai bill per lead or per chat. HelpSquad sells chat bundles. DIY tools add per-resolution fees. | Included | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Included | Partly | Partly |
| Unlimited leads, never billed per leadCWA Chat includes 500 or 1,000 chats a month by plan, then $25 per extra 100. Smith.ai and HelpSquad cap chats, not leads. | Included | Not offered | Not offered | Partly | Included | Partly | Partly |
| A custom AI chat assistant built from your own website: we crawl your pages and documents and it answers from themHuman-agent services work from a script you fill in. DIY tools index your site but you set them up. | Included | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Partly |
| Replies in seconds, 24/7, every visitor at onceHuman agents answer in 30–60 seconds and queue when busy. | Included | Partly | Partly | Partly | Partly | Partly | Included |
| Hard rules enforced in code on every outgoing message (never a price, lead time, rating or order) | Included | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered | Not offered |
| Written lead summary emailed to your team, plus CRM delivery | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included | Partly |
| Junk filtered, not billed as leadsPer-lead vendors have no incentive to filter. Smith.ai excludes some chat types. | Included | Not offered | Not offered | Partly | Included | Included | Partly |
| Click to call for visitors on a phoneBlazeo: call connect, price on request. Chat Agents: phone transfer $100/person/month. | Included | Add-on | Not offered | Not offered | Add-on | Not offered | Not offered |
| Your own tracking number with call logsCWA Chat: from $10 a month per number. | Add-on | Add-on | Not offered | Not offered | Add-on | Not offered | Not offered |
| Two-way texting from the chatCWA Chat: $50 a month. Ngage bills texts at the per-lead rate. Chat Agents: $50 per number. | Add-on | Included | Add-on | Not offered | Add-on | Included | Partly |
| Chat in SpanishCWA Chat: $49 a month. Blazeo: not on any managed-chat tier. Ngage: Spanish-speaking operators. Smith.ai: English-Spanish translation in chat. Chat Agents: price on request. HelpSquad: offered, cost not published. | Add-on | Not offered | Included | Included | Add-on | Partly | Included |
| Human handoff to your own sales teamCWA Chat escalates to your team by email and phone, and with live takeover you answer chats from your own phone; the vendors' agents are theirs, not yours. | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included | Partly |
| Month to month, no setup feeCWA Chat: month to month, $500 one-time setup covering the crawl, rules and install. Blazeo: month to month, setup fee reported. Ngage: activation fee. | $500 setup | Partly | Not offered | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| Transparent, public pricing | Included | Not offered | Not offered | Included | Included | Included | Included |
"Partly" means the vendor offers a version of it with material limits, such as chat caps, per-resolution fees, or a feature only on a higher tier. Compiled from public pages on 24 September 2026.
Every plan includes your own custom AI chat assistant, built from your website. They differ only in how many chats they include. Add Spanish, or any of three phone add-ons that no chat vendor bundles at this price.
A tap-to-call button for visitors on a phone, dialling any number you choose.
Your own local number that rings your line and logs every call. 100 minutes for $10, 300 for $20 or 1,000 for $49 a month, then 5¢ a minute.
Visitors tap 'Text me' and the conversation continues by SMS. 500 texts included, then 5¢ a text.
During hours you choose, chats are texted to your cell and you reply from your phone. Take over from the assistant or hand back anytime. 1,000 texts included, then 5¢ a text.
Your assistant greets and answers Spanish-speaking visitors in Spanish, from the same pages and documents, and your lead summary still arrives in English.
Not sure which plan? Most industrial sites get 100 to 150 chats a month, so Starter fits. Move up or down any month. Agencies and multi-site groups get a rate per site. Ask in the chat.
A per-lead bill rewards the vendor for counting generously. In one client's Blazeo history, 20 to 27% of billed leads were vendor pitches, job seekers and enquiries for a different kind of business. A flat price means we only get paid if you stay, so our incentive is the quality of the leads, not the count.
Yes, yours. The assistant answers instantly from your own pages, gathers the name, company, contact details and requirement, and hands the conversation to your team by email, click to call, call connect or text. It never pretends to be a person.
Quote a price, promise a lead time, state a compliance rating as fact, or take an order. Those four rules are checked in code on every message after the model has written it, and a message that breaks one is rewritten into a handoff.
Starter includes 500 chats a month, Standard 1,000, Growth 5,000 ($1,575) and Scale 10,000 ($3,000). Above 10,000 we price it with you. A typical industrial site gets 100 to 150. Leads are never capped or billed on any plan. Past the allowance, extra chats are $25 per 100, or 25 cents each, against $5 to $7 per chat for overage at the bundle vendors.
Usually a day, for a one-time $500 setup fee. We crawl the site, load your documents, write the rules for what you sell and what you do not, set your hours and phone numbers, and send you the one-line embed or the WordPress plugin.
From each vendor's public pricing page, read on 24 September 2026. Where a vendor publishes no price we used a figure reported by a third party and marked it as an estimate. Prices change; check the vendor's page before relying on a number.
Every competitor figure on this page, and where it came from. Checked 24 September 2026.
CWA Chat is a product of Custom Web Audits. Vendor names are the trademarks of their owners and are used only to identify the products compared.