Ethora: The Crisp Alternative With the AI Agent on the Free Plan
Try an AI agent on your website before you pay for it. Ethora’s free plan includes the chat and AI features: train the agent on your website and documents, pick its model, including one you host, and let a person join the same conversation. Run it on our cloud or your own servers. 1,000 monthly active users, no credit card.
The honest short answer
Ethora vs Crisp: the honest short answer
Crisp is an AI-first customer support suite: a shared inbox for web chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and other channels, a knowledge base, and an AI agent trained on your website, files and help articles. Its Free plan has no AI credits; AI credits start on the Mini plan and the omnichannel AI chatbot is listed on Essentials. Ethora is an open-source chat and AI platform: an AI agent trained on your website and documents, included on the free plan, on the model you choose (including one you host), with human handoff in the same conversation and SDKs to put the same chat inside your own apps.
Stay with Crisp if
- Your team works one shared inbox across web chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger
- You want a help center and a workflow builder in the same tool as the chat
- You want EU-hosted software and do not want to run any infrastructure
Choose Ethora if
- You want to test an AI agent with real visitors on a free plan before paying
- You want to choose the model for each agent, including one you host yourself
- You need self-hosting or a dedicated server in your own cloud account, or SDKs to build chat into your apps
Best for: Crisp for a support team that wants an omnichannel inbox with AI in one hosted suite; Ethora for an AI website agent you can start free, run on your choice of model and host yourself.
Side by side
Ethora vs Crisp: capabilities at a glance
The ten questions buyers ask most when choosing an AI chat agent for their website. Crisp facts come from its public website, pricing page and AI page.
Ethora
How to read this table
Crisp facts are taken from crisp.chat, its pricing page and its AI page, checked 16 October 2026. Crisp prices are per workspace and offer yearly billing, so check its pricing page for the billing period and current AI credit allowances. If something here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
Why teams switch
Why teams move from Crisp to Ethora
Teams rarely leave Crisp for its inbox. They look elsewhere when the website AI agent is what they need first, and they want to try it free, choose what it runs on and decide where it is hosted.
Crisp
Support suite with an AI agent
Ethora
Open-source chat and AI platform
An honest view
When Crisp is the better choice
Ethora is not a help desk. If these describe you, Crisp is likely the better fit, and some teams use both: Crisp for email and messaging apps, Ethora for the AI agent on the website.
One inbox for every channel
Crisp brings web chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and more into one shared inbox. Ethora covers your website and your own apps only.
A help center in the same tool
Crisp includes a knowledge base you write and publish, which its AI reindexes after each update. Ethora reads your existing site and documents but does not host a help center.
Visual workflows
If your team builds conversation workflows in a no-code builder, Crisp has one. Ethora agents follow written instructions and tools, not a visual flow canvas.
Build it on Ethora
Everything you need to replace Crisp’s AI agent
The pieces most teams use when they move their website AI agent to Ethora.
AI chat widget for your website
One script tag adds a floating AI chat widget to any site. Visitors chat without signing in.
See the AI chat widgetRAG chatbot on your own content
Crawl your website, upload your help articles and PDFs, and see which sources each answer used.
How the RAG chatbot worksSelf-hosted LLM AI agent
Point an agent at Ollama, vLLM or another OpenAI-compatible endpoint and keep prompts and answers on 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 tawk.to?
If you are weighing free live chat with AI add-ons, see how Ethora compares with tawk.to.
Ethora vs tawk.toAlso comparing JivoChat?
If your visitors write in several languages, see how Ethora compares with JivoChat.
Ethora vs JivoChatAI agents on customer websites, built with Ethora
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 your website AI agent from Crisp to Ethora
You can run both for a few days and switch the website chat 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.
Collect your knowledge
Export your Crisp help center articles and answer snippets, and gather the PDFs and website pages your AI agent was trained on.
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 documents.
Set the instructions
Write the agent’s system prompt: tone, what it must not answer, and when to ask for a person. Set its name, avatar, greeting and colours with the live preview.
Swap the embed script
Remove the Crisp chatbox code or plugin and add
<script src="https://widget.chat.ethora.com/assistant.js" data-app-id="YOUR_APP_ID"></script>before</body>, or install the Ethora plugin on WordPress.Test 10 real questions
Take ten questions from your Crisp conversation history and run them in the Try it chat. It shows which sources each answer used.
Watch conversations for a week
Read the widget conversations in the admin, add missing knowledge, rebuild, and join the conversations where a person should answer.
Crisp alternative FAQ
Which AI model does Ethora use?
The one you choose for each agent: a cloud model API such as OpenAI, or a model you host through an OpenAI-compatible endpoint such as Ollama or vLLM. With a self-hosted model, prompts and answers stay on your own infrastructure.
Does Ethora replace Crisp’s inbox for email, WhatsApp and social media?
No. Ethora covers the chat on your website and inside your own web and mobile apps. It has no shared inbox for email, WhatsApp, Instagram or Messenger. Some teams keep Crisp for those channels and use Ethora for the website AI agent.
Can I keep my chat data in the EU?
Yes, with a dedicated server that Ethora runs in your own cloud account in an EU region, or by self-hosting the open-source core on your own servers. 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.
Can I self-host Ethora?
Yes. The core is open source (AGPL) and installs with Docker Compose, a Helm chart, or the AWS Marketplace and Azure Marketplace images. Self-hosting covers the chat server, the AI agents and, with a local model, the model itself.
Is Ethora suitable for healthcare or other regulated businesses?
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. See the HIPAA compliant chat API page for details.
Put an AI agent on your site today, free
Crawl your site, set the instructions, paste one line. Start on the free plan, on our cloud or your own servers, with the model you choose.
