Ethora: The Chatbase Alternative You Can Run on Your Own Model and Servers
Train an AI chatbot on your website and documents, then add it to your site with one line of code. Same job as Chatbase, with an open-source core, your choice of model (including one you host), human handoff in the same conversation, and a free plan with no credit card.
The honest short answer
Ethora vs Chatbase: the honest short answer
Chatbase is a hosted builder for AI agents that answer customers across chat, email and voice, trained on your files, website, Notion pages and support tickets. Ethora does the same core job for your website (crawl your site, add documents, paste one script tag) and adds what a hosted tool cannot: an open-source core you can self-host, per-agent model choice including models you run yourself with Ollama or vLLM, and a full chat platform where a person can join the conversation.
Stay with Chatbase if
- You want a purely hosted tool your marketing or support team runs without developers
- You rely on its ready-made channels and integrations (WhatsApp, Instagram, Zendesk, Salesforce, HubSpot and more)
- You want AI voice agents that answer phone calls
Choose Ethora if
- You want to own the stack: open-source core, self-hosting or a dedicated server in your cloud account
- You need your own model, including a self-hosted one, so content and conversations stay inside your perimeter
- The chatbot is the start of a bigger chat project: human handoff, chat SDKs for your app, voice and video calls
Best for: Chatbase for a hosted, integration-rich AI support agent; Ethora for an AI website chatbot you can own, self-host and grow into a full chat product.
Side by side
Ethora vs Chatbase: capabilities at a glance
The ten questions buyers ask most when choosing an AI chatbot for their website. Chatbase facts come from its public website, pricing page and documentation.
Ethora
How to read this table
Chatbase facts are taken from chatbase.co, its pricing page and its documentation, checked 16 October 2026. Plans and limits change, so check their pricing page for the current state. If something here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
Why teams switch
Why teams move from Chatbase to Ethora
Both will answer visitor questions from your content. The reasons to switch are about who owns the stack, which model answers, and what the chatbot can grow into.
Chatbase
Hosted AI agent builder
Ethora
Open-source chat and AI platform
An honest view
When Chatbase is the better choice
We would rather you pick the right tool. Chatbase is likely the better fit in these cases.
A hosted tool for a non-technical team
If nobody on your side wants to think about hosting, models or APIs, and you are happy for the vendor to run everything, a purely hosted builder keeps it simple.
Many ready-made integrations
Chatbase lists channels such as WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram plus helpdesk and CRM integrations. If you need those on day one without building anything, that ecosystem is the reason to stay.
AI agents on the phone
Chatbase offers voice agents that answer calls. Ethora has voice and video calls between people in its chat SDKs, which is a different thing.
Build it on Ethora
Everything you need to replace Chatbase
The pieces most teams use when they move their website chatbot to Ethora.
AI chatbot for your website
One script tag adds a floating AI chat widget to any site. It loads asynchronously and keeps its styles isolated from your page.
See the AI chat widgetRAG chatbot on your own content
Crawl your website, upload documents, and check which sources each answer used before you go live.
How the RAG chatbot worksWordPress AI chatbot plugin
Install the Ethora Chat Assistant plugin from wordpress.org and connect it to your agent without editing theme files.
Get the pluginSelf-hosted LLM AI agent
Point an agent at Ollama, vLLM or another OpenAI-compatible endpoint so prompts and answers never leave your servers.
Run it on your own modelPricing
Free plan with 1,000 monthly active users and no credit card, then Small Business at $149/mo and Enterprise from $599/mo.
Compare plansAlso comparing Tidio?
If you are weighing a live chat and helpdesk tool with an AI agent, see how Ethora compares with Tidio.
Ethora vs TidioAI chatbots running on Ethora today
Healthcare: HIPAA-compliant AI assistant (RAG) over a medical video library
Dr. Talks is one of the most prominent organizers of online healthcare conferences and summits.
Ethora enabled them to create a context-aware AI-powered chatbot to help users navigate thousands of pages of medical content, correctly referencing pages, authors, videos and timestamps. 100% secure and HIPAA-compliant.
This assistant enhances user experience by simplifying interaction with the platform and reducing search time.
- 1000+ summits indexed by AI bot
- Instant user engagement
- Vector embeddings enable intelligent domain expert AI responses
Communities: fan chat app with second-screen rooms and digital collectibles
A cross-platform social app uniting the automotive community around racing events.
Fan rooms for teams and drivers, second-screen events, and collectibles handed out and traded through chat bots.
- Cross-platform iOS and Android app
- Fan rooms and second-screen events
- Collectibles distributed in chat
Energy: dedicated chat server, AI-agent rooms and a React Native app for a procurement platform
Preshent is a US platform for energy-project procurement with AI-driven decision support.
Ethora provides the conversation layer: a chat room per project workspace shared by people and the AI agent, a dedicated chat server in Preshent’s own cloud, push notifications and a React Native app.
- 1,130 chat rooms, one per workspace
- AI agent as a participant in every room
- Dedicated chat server, 99.99%+ uptime
Professional services: a private, self-hosted AI assistant for a corporate intelligence firm
A London corporate intelligence and investigations firm whose analysts could not use public AI assistants on confidential client work.
Ethora designed a private AI assistant: a single-tenant server with AI agents, document search and an open-weight model on the firm’s own GPU, managed by Ethora in a London cloud region or installed on a workstation in the office.
- Local open-weight LLM, no public AI services
- Single-tenant server, UK hosting
- Cloud GPU or on-premise workstation
Virtual worlds: a 3D multiplayer world built from a book, with AI characters, in one weekend
An internal R&D showcase by Ethora’s founder: Alice in Wonderland, The Tempest and A Christmas Carol as 3D worlds you walk through in first person.
Each room is an Ethora chat, each character an Ethora AI agent with the book as its knowledge; a generator and the hosted MCP server build a new world from any book in about four minutes.
- Built in a weekend on the public SDK, API and MCP
- Characters answer in character from the text
- Daily AI budget keeps a public world affordable
AI agents on customer websites: support, intake and teaching assistants
Clinics, schools and small businesses build AI agents on Ethora themselves and put them on their own websites, often on the day they sign up.
3 examples, from a US mental health provider and a wellness brand to a university pharmacology course.
- WordPress plugin or one script tag
- Answers from the customer’s own pages and documents
- Self-serve, no developer needed
Migration
Moving from Chatbase to Ethora
Your content is the asset, not the bot. Most teams can run both side by side for a few days and switch the script when the answers match. A US mental health provider went live on Ethora the same day it signed up; see the AI website agent case studies.
Export your sources
List the website URLs, files, text snippets and Q&A pairs you trained Chatbase on, and copy your agent’s instructions.
Crawl your site in Ethora
Sign up free, create an app and an AI agent (start from the support agent template), crawl your website and upload the same documents.
Set the instructions
Paste your instructions as the agent’s system prompt, then set its name, avatar, greeting and colours with the live preview. Pick the model, cloud or your own.
Swap the embed script
Replace the Chatbase snippet with
<script src="https://widget.chat.ethora.com/assistant.js" data-app-id="YOUR_APP_ID"></script>before</body>, or install the WordPress plugin.Test 10 real questions
Take ten questions visitors really asked and run them in the Try it chat. It shows which sources each answer used, so gaps are easy to spot and fix.
Watch conversations for a week
Read the widget conversations in the admin, add the knowledge that was missing, rebuild, and join conversations yourself where a person should answer.
Chatbase alternative FAQ
How is Ethora different from Chatbase?
Both train an AI chatbot on your content and embed it on your website. Chatbase is a hosted agent builder with many ready-made channels and integrations. Ethora adds an open-source core, self-hosting or a dedicated server in your cloud account, per-agent model choice including self-hosted models, and a full chat platform with human handoff, chat SDKs for your own apps and voice and video calls.
Can I use my own model, for example with Ollama?
Yes. Each agent can use a cloud model API such as OpenAI or a model you host through an OpenAI-compatible endpoint such as Ollama or vLLM. Our open example repository shows the setup with four environment variables; in our test a 3B model on a 4 vCPU, 8 GB CPU-only server answered short replies in 6 to 8 seconds.
Can a person take over from the AI?
Yes. A person can join the same conversation the visitor is having with the AI agent, and admins can read every widget conversation with its message history.
Is Ethora suitable for healthcare websites?
Ethora is HIPAA and SOC 2 compatible, and a BAA is available on Enterprise and dedicated deployments. Whether a specific project is compliant depends on its configuration and hosting. Chats are encrypted in transit and at rest by default; end-to-end encrypted rooms are an optional per-app setting that is off by default.
Does it work on WordPress, Shopify or Wix?
On WordPress, install the Ethora Chat Assistant plugin from wordpress.org. On any other site builder, paste the one-line script tag into the site’s custom code or footer area, for example theme.liquid on Shopify.
Train an AI chatbot on your website today
Crawl your site, set the instructions, paste one line. Free to start, on our cloud or your own servers, with the model you choose.
