Last updated: April 2026
Chatbase is a polished AI support agent used by 10,000+ businesses, including OpenAI and Sage. But its Standard plan jumps to $120/month, removing branding costs $1,188/year, and there is no email marketing layer. Grivo gives you the same AI support agent trained on your website, plus a full email campaign builder and shared inbox, starting at $0 forever.
The average SaaS team runs 5 separate tools for chat, email, and contact management - typically $80 to $200 per month combined. Grivo replaces them with one inbox at a fraction of the combined cost.
Chatbase is a strong product in the AI support agent space. Their own homepage highlights enterprise customers like Chuck E. Cheese, IHG, National Grid and Miele. But three pricing and product gaps push smaller teams to look around:
Chatbase's public pricing page lists Free ($0, 50 message credits/mo), Hobby ($32/mo, 500 credits), Standard ($120/mo, 4,000 credits), Pro ($400/mo, 15,000 credits), and Enterprise (custom). Auto-recharge is $40 per 1,000 message credits. Most production sites blow past the Free tier in days, so realistic monthly spend lands at $32 to $120 even for very small SaaS products.
Chatbase's pricing page lists a dedicated add-on: $1,188 per year to remove their branding from your deployed agents. For an indie hacker or bootstrapped SaaS, that is more than the entire annual cost of Grivo Pro. Grivo Pro removes branding by default at $19/month.
Chatbase is described on its homepage as "the complete platform for AI support agents", not a marketing platform. Leads collected by the widget have to be exported or piped through Zapier into Mailchimp, ConvertKit or Brevo to actually be nurtured. Grivo bundles email campaigns natively, so a chat lead becomes a campaign subscriber in the same dashboard.
| Feature | Grivo | Chatbase |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $0 (free forever) | $0 free / $32/mo Hobby |
| Free plan message credits | Generous fair use | 50 / month |
| Most popular paid plan | Pro $19/mo | Standard $120/mo |
| AI support agent trained on website | ✓ | ✓ |
| Train on PDF / docs | ✓ | ✓ |
| Email campaigns included | ✓ drag-and-drop builder | ✗ |
| Live chat shared inbox | ✓ | Smart escalation only |
| Lead capture in widget | ✓ name + email + custom | ✓ |
| AI Actions per agent | Unlimited workflow steps | 0 (Free) / 5 (Hobby) / 8 (Standard) |
| Training content size | No artificial cap | 400 KB Free / 10 MB Hobby / 20 MB Standard |
| Workspace seats | Unlimited team members | 1 (Free) / 2 (Hobby) / 3 (Standard) |
| Whitelabel / remove branding | Pro included | $1,188 / year add-on |
| Auto-recharge credits | Not needed | $40 per 1,000 messages |
| Helpdesk integrations | Native + Zapier | Zendesk, Salesforce, Intercom (paid plans) |
| WhatsApp / Messenger | Roadmap | ✓ |
| SOC 2 / GDPR | GDPR-compliant | SOC 2 Type II + GDPR |
| Setup time | ~2 minutes | ~5–10 minutes |
| Ideal for | SaaS, indie hackers, SMBs | Mid-market, enterprise support teams |
Chatbase is a focused AI support agent. The product spans training, smart escalation, advanced reporting, AI Actions and integrations like Zendesk, Salesforce, Intercom and HubSpot. What it does not do is send email campaigns. The leads it captures live in the Chatbase dashboard until you push them somewhere else.
Grivo bundles a drag-and-drop email campaign builder and shared AI support agent in one workspace. A visitor leaves their email through the widget, lands in a Grivo list, and you can trigger a welcome sequence the same minute. No Zapier, no CSV export, no two subscriptions.
Direct quote from chatbase.co/pricing: Free at $0, Hobby at $32/mo (or $384 billed annually), Standard (their "Popular" tier) at $120/mo (or $1,440 annually), Pro at $400/mo, Enterprise custom. Add-ons: $40 per 1,000 extra credits, $300/year per extra agent, $1,188/year to remove branding.
The honest comparison: a small SaaS team running Chatbase Standard plus Mailchimp Standard pays roughly $120 + $30 = $150/month. The same workload on Grivo Pro is $19/month. That is over $1,500/year saved before you account for the $1,188 branding add-on.
Chatbase markets "smart escalation": when the AI agent cannot resolve a query, it escalates via live chat or helpdesk tickets to your existing tool (Zendesk, Salesforce, Intercom, etc.). That is great if you already pay for one of those helpdesks. If you do not, you are now buying a second product just to pick up handoffs.
Grivo includes a native shared inbox in the same product. The AI bot, the live agent, the email reply - all live in one thread, in one tab. For SaaS teams under 20 people, that single-pane-of-glass workflow is the difference between "we shipped support" and "we built another tool stack".
Chatbase's pricing page lists model access as a feature: Limited models on Free, then Advanced OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, DeepSeek, Meta and MoonshotAI on paid plans. It is genuinely useful if you run model bake-offs. For most teams it is also overkill.
Grivo runs on GPT-4o by default and tunes prompts so you do not have to. If you are not actively evaluating Anthropic vs OpenAI for your specific support corpus, you will not miss the picker. If you are - Chatbase is a better fit.
Chatbase publicly advertises SOC 2 Type II certification and GDPR compliance. If your buyer is a regulated enterprise that requires SOC 2 in procurement, that is a real, documented advantage and may be the single deciding factor.
Grivo is GDPR-compliant, encrypts data in transit and at rest, and has SOC 2 in progress. For SaaS founders, indie hackers and SMBs selling to mid-market and below, this is rarely a blocker.
Honest answer: Chatbase wins for several specific use cases.
For everyone else - SaaS founders, indie hackers, agencies and small teams who want AI support agent + email + live chat in one tool without enterprise pricing - Grivo is the cleaner fit.
No data export needed - both tools train on the same source types.
Create your account at grivo.io. No credit card required. About 30 seconds.
Use the same domain you trained Chatbase on. Grivo crawls and builds the knowledge base automatically.
If your Chatbase agent had attached files, drag and drop the same files into Grivo. The 400 KB / 10 MB / 20 MB Chatbase tier limits do not apply here.
Brand colours, welcome message, avatar, custom lead-capture fields. Preview live before deploying.
Remove the Chatbase script. Paste Grivo's one-line snippet. The new agent is live the moment you deploy.
Now leads flow into Grivo. Build a welcome sequence using the drag-and-drop email builder. This is the workflow Chatbase does not offer.
Grivo is our recommendation, but here are the other tools in this category:
The original 'AI support agent trained on your website' product. Strong API and Notion integration. No email marketing. Starts at $39/mo.
Read full SiteGPT vs Grivo comparison →Targets organisations with large knowledge bases. 1,400+ file types, RAG API. $99/month Standard. No live chat or email.
Read full CustomGPT vs Grivo comparison →Outcome-based AI agent at $0.99 per resolution. Excellent on complex queries. Sits on top of Intercom or any helpdesk.
Read full Intercom Fin vs Grivo comparison →Developer-first agent platform. Pay-as-you-go base, $79+ Plus. Bring-your-own LLM. Steeper learning curve.
Read full Botpress vs Grivo comparison →Live-chat-first platform that recently added AI agents. Flat per-workspace pricing. Strong omnichannel inbox.
Read full Crisp vs Grivo comparison →