01
Flat pricing, forever.
$19 a month, unlimited agents, no per-seat tax as you hire. Every competitor on this page bills per seat. The math becomes brutal at 10 seats and embarrassing at 30.
Why Message
Pay per company.
Not per seat.
Nineteen dollars a month, unlimited agents, every channel, real grounded AI. Intercom is thirty-nine dollars per seat. Zendesk is fifty-five. Drift starts at twenty-five hundred a month for ten people. We did the math on this page.
14 days freeNo credit cardMigration on us
Calculator
Drag the slider. Watch theirs scale.
Ours stays at nineteen dollars a month at three seats, at thirty, at three hundred. Theirs walks up linearly with every hire. The math is the simplest possible: their cheapest paid plan, multiplied by your seat count.
Calculator
What you would pay, by team size.
Drag the slider. Message stays flat. Every other vendor scales with headcount.
Team size
10 seats
310203075150
message.com
Business plan
Unlimited agents
$19
/ month flat
Drift
Premium
$2,500 base, 10+ seats
$2,500
/ month · save $2,481
Zendesk
Suite Team
$55 per seat
$550
/ month · save $531
Intercom
Essential
$39 per seat
$390
/ month · save $371
LiveChat
Team
$24 per seat
$240
/ month · save $221
Tidio
Plus
$0
/ month · save $-19
Annual with message
$228
Annual with the median competitor
$4,680
You save, per year
$4,452
Math is the simplest published-price comparison: each competitor's lowest paid plan, multiplied by seat count. AI add-ons, phone add-ons, and per-resolution charges are excluded, which makes the comparison kinder to them than the real bill.
Start free trial →14 days free, no credit card needed.
By team size
What you save, annualized.
Real scenarios from our customer onboardings, with published competitor pricing for the cheapest paid plan plus the typical add-ons.
5-seat ecommerce
vs Intercom Advanced
$5,712
saved per year
Their monthly bill: $495
Message monthly bill: $19
Message monthly bill: $19
15-seat B2B SaaS
vs Intercom Advanced
$17,592
saved per year
Their monthly bill: $1,485
Message monthly bill: $19
Message monthly bill: $19
40-seat marketplace
vs Intercom Expert
$66,492
saved per year
Their monthly bill: $5,560
Message monthly bill: $19
Message monthly bill: $19
100-seat enterprise
vs Zendesk Suite Pro
$137,772
saved per year
Their monthly bill: $11,500
Message monthly bill: $19
Message monthly bill: $19
Side by side
The honest comparison.
What each vendor actually ships, not just the marketing copy. Sources at the foot.
| Feature | message | Intercom | Zendesk | LiveChat | Drift | Tidio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flat price, unlimited agents | Yes, on every plan | · | · | · | · | · |
| Chat + tickets + phone in one bill | · | Add-ons | Add-ons | · | · | |
| Grounded AI on customer's own KB | Yes, included | Fin, $0.99/resolution | Add-on | Add-on | Limited | Add-on |
| AI never trains on your data | Opt-out | Opt-out | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | |
| Free starter plan | 14-day trial | · | Trial only | Trial only | · | |
| Phone in the inbox | Limited | Add-on | Separate product | · | · | |
| HIPAA BAA available | Business plan | Enterprise only | Enterprise only | · | · | · |
| EU data residency | Yes, included | Enterprise only | Enterprise only | · | · | · |
| REST API and webhooks | ||||||
| Migration tooling from competitor | · | · | · | · | · | |
| Source-available widget | · | · | · | · | · |
Sources: each competitor's public pricing page, May 2026. Disagree with a row? Email [email protected] and we will look at it on the record.
Six switches
The reasons teams actually switch.
We do exit-style debriefs with every customer at ninety days. These six come up every time, in roughly this order, and they map cleanly to what every pricing-comparison chart on this page is missing.
02
Private AI you actually own.
Our AI is self-hosted on infrastructure we run, so your customer conversations stay inside your account and are never resold to a third-party model provider. Grounded in your knowledge base, never trained on your data.
03
Chat, tickets, and calls on one bill.
Other tools sell you chat then ask you to pay separately for tickets, then again for phone, then again for AI. We bundle. The whole stack costs less than Intercom's cheapest seat.
04
Set up in 60 seconds, not 60 days.
One-click installs for Shopify, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, and Webflow. Migration tooling from Intercom, Zendesk, Help Scout, Drift, and Front. You ship today, not after Q1.
05
Phone is a first-class citizen.
Inbound and outbound calls live in the same queue as chat, with voicemail and Smart Hold built in. We replace Aircall, OpenPhone, and Dialpad too, not just Intercom.
06
We answer email in hours, not days.
We are still small enough that the founder reads every support reply. You will get answers from engineers, not a tiered ticket queue.
Migration
We do it for you. For free.
A customer engineer reads your Intercom / Zendesk / Help Scout / Drift / Front / Tidio export and rebuilds your workspace inside seven days. No charge, no commitment.
From
IntercomZendeskLiveChatDriftTidioFreshdeskFrontHelp ScoutHelpDeskKustomerRichpanelCrispGorgiasTawk.toHelp Scout, Front, others
- Day 0
Send the export
From Intercom / Zendesk / Help Scout / Drift. Or hand us your API key and we pull it ourselves.
- Day 1-2
We map the data
Conversations, contacts, tags, saved replies, business hours. Routing rules rebuilt in plain English with you.
- Day 3-5
Mirror mode
Both stacks run in parallel. Your team uses Message; the old stack stays on for safety.
- Day 6-7
Cutover
Widget swaps, phone routes to us, email forwards us, old tools archive.
Run the trial
See the math in your own workspace.
Spin up a workspace, install the widget, watch the AI ground itself in your own knowledge base in under a minute. Decide on day fourteen.