Crisp

What Is Crisp?

Customer support tooling has a pricing problem. Intercom charges per seat, per conversation, and per product module — a growth-stage startup can easily hit four figures per month before it's solved any hard support challenges. Zendesk layers complexity on top of cost. For European companies that need omnichannel messaging without the enterprise tax, that gap is significant.

Crisp was built in Nantes, France, in 2015 by Baptiste Jamin and Valerian Saliou as a direct answer to that problem. The company — still bootstrapped, still small — ships a platform that consolidates live chat, email, social messaging, a knowledge base, chatbots, and basic CRM into a single workspace. Not a collection of products with connectors between them, but a single shared inbox where every conversation from every channel lands in one place.

The pricing philosophy reflects the founding frustration. Crisp bills per workspace rather than per conversation, and each plan bundles a block of agent seats. The Plus plan at €295/month includes 20 seats, with extra seats at €10 a month each. At Intercom's typical per-seat rates, that same team could cost several times more. Crisp's free tier, with 2 seats, a live chat widget, and up to 100 customer profiles, is usable for a very small site, not a crippled demo.

Crisp operates from a lean team: the French business register puts Crisp IM SAS in the 10 to 19 employee band. That creates real risks around support responsiveness and long-term platform development, but it also explains how the company maintains competitive pricing without external investment. Customer data is held in the EU, mainly in the Netherlands and Germany, although some of the providers involved are US companies.

Key Features

Unified Omnichannel Inbox

The shared inbox pulls conversations from website live chat, email, WhatsApp Business, Instagram DMs, Facebook Messenger, SMS, X (Twitter), Telegram, Viber, Line, and phone into a single threaded view. Agents see the full conversation history regardless of the channel where the customer is writing. Switching between channels doesn't fragment the contact record, because the CRM profile updates across all touchpoints. For support teams juggling multiple communication surfaces, this removes the tab-switching that plagues multi-tool setups.

Co-browsing and Live Typing Preview

Two features give Crisp agents unusual visibility into customer sessions. Live typing preview shows what a visitor is typing before they send the message — agents can start preparing a response before the question arrives. Co-browsing lets agents view and interact with the visitor's browser screen in real time, without a plugin or download on the customer side. These tools were borrowed from high-end enterprise platforms and are included from Crisp's first paid plan, Mini, making them accessible to teams that couldn't previously justify enterprise live chat software.

Hugo AI Agent, Chatbot, and Workflow Builder

Crisp's AI agent, Hugo, answers customer questions from the knowledge base and conversation history, and every paid plan includes AI credits to run it. Mini includes about 90 automated conversations a month, Essentials about 450, and Plus about 1,350. From the Essentials plan, Crisp also includes an AI-powered chatbot built on a no-code visual workflow editor. Flows can handle FAQ deflection, lead qualification, routing to specific agents or teams, and handoffs to human agents. The builder uses drag-and-drop logic with condition branches, not scripted decision trees. Its AI layer adds natural language understanding, which reduces the rigid keyword matching that frustrates users on simpler bot platforms. Behind it sit large language models from external providers (OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic, and Mistral), and Crisp says they are disabled by default until a customer enables them.

The chatbot is omnichannel: configure once, deploy across live chat, WhatsApp, and other connected channels without rebuilding flows per channel.

Knowledge Base

Crisp includes a built-in help centre for self-service deflection. Articles can be embedded directly in the chat widget, surfaced by the chatbot, or published as a standalone page. The editor is clean and supports rich text, images, and embedded video. It's not a dedicated documentation platform and won't replace Gitbook or Notion for complex products. For a team that needs a basic help centre inside its chat widget, though, it removes the need for a separate tool subscription.

Per-Workspace Pricing With Bundled Seats

Most chat platforms charge per agent seat. As the team grows from 5 to 15 support agents, the bill triples. Crisp charges per workspace and bundles a block of seats into each plan: 4 on Mini, 10 on Essentials, and 20 on Plus. Seats beyond that cost €10 a month each, so growth is no longer entirely free, but a 15-agent team on Essentials still pays only €50 a month on top of the plan price.

Pricing

Crisp's tier structure maps cleanly to business growth stages. The Free plan with 2 seats and 100 customer profiles handles early-stage support. Mini (€45/month, 4 seats, 5,000 profiles) adds a shared email inbox, custom email domain, unlimited data retention, and internal search. Essentials (€95/month, 10 seats, 50,000 profiles) is where the platform becomes genuinely powerful, adding the omnichannel inbox, chatbot, knowledge base, analytics, and workflow automation together. Plus (€295/month, 20 seats, 200,000 profiles) adds a ticketing portal, 100+ integrations, and white-labelling, and a custom-priced Enterprise tier sits above it.

The 14-day free trial on all paid plans requires no credit card, which removes friction from evaluation. VAT is excluded from all published prices, so European businesses should add the applicable VAT rate when budgeting. Prices display in euros or US dollars depending on the visitor's region, and the numbers are identical in both currencies.

The flat per-workspace model is Crisp's sharpest competitive differentiator against Intercom. A 10-agent team on Crisp's Essentials plan pays €95/month before VAT. Intercom's equivalent feature set for the same team starts above €800/month. The functionality gap is real but narrowing, and for most SME support teams Crisp closes enough of it at a fraction of the cost.

EU Compliance & Privacy

Crisp is a French company, Crisp IM SAS of Nantes, and its terms are governed by French law. The French business register lists its two founders as president and managing director, with no corporate parent. Customer data is held in the EU: the sub-processor list places the main servers in the Netherlands and Germany, with additional infrastructure at Scaleway in France and encrypted backups on AWS in Ireland.

A GDPR-compliant Data Processing Agreement is available on request. Crisp's privacy page documents the legal basis for each data processing activity and the retention periods for different data categories. It also states that any transfers outside the EU follow Chapter V of the GDPR, using Standard Contractual Clauses where applicable.

The nuance is who runs the infrastructure. Crisp's main hosting provider is DigitalOcean, LLC, a US company, even though the servers sit in the EU. Cloudflare, Vultr, and AWS also appear as US-based providers. The optional AI models from OpenAI, Gemini, and Anthropic are US services too, while Mistral is the EU option. EU hosting is real, but the provider chain is not fully European.

There are no current ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certifications published — a gap for enterprise procurement teams with formal compliance requirements. For most SME and growth-stage teams, the DPA and EU data location will be sufficient.

Who It's Best For

Growth-stage startups with expanding support teams that can't absorb steep per-agent pricing. Bundled seats mean a team growing within its plan allowance pays nothing extra, and extra seats are cheap.

E-commerce businesses handling customer queries across WhatsApp, Instagram, and website chat simultaneously. The omnichannel inbox with Shopify and WooCommerce sync connects order data directly to conversations.

Teams replacing Intercom on cost grounds. Crisp's Essentials plan at €95/month covers most of what mid-tier Intercom provides, with the added advantage of EU data hosting that US-built Intercom cannot match.

GDPR-conscious teams that need written assurance of EU data hosting. Crisp's Netherlands and Germany infrastructure and available DPA cover the standard compliance requirements without enterprise negotiation.

The Verdict

Crisp occupies a defensible position: genuinely capable omnichannel messaging at a price that doesn't punish team growth. The co-browsing and live typing preview features punch above their price tier. EU hosting and a GDPR DPA satisfy most compliance requirements for European SMEs. The meaningful caveats are a small team of roughly 10 to 19 people, US-owned infrastructure providers behind the EU hosting, and no formal security certifications for enterprise buyers. For cost-sensitive teams with 5-50 agents who want an EU-hosted Intercom alternative, Crisp makes a strong practical case.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Crisp GDPR compliant?

Yes. Crisp IM SAS is a French company, and customer data is held in the EU, mainly in the Netherlands and Germany. A GDPR Data Processing Agreement is available on request. Some sub-processors are US companies, including the main host DigitalOcean, and any transfers outside the EU use Standard Contractual Clauses.

How does Crisp pricing work?

Crisp charges per workspace, with seats bundled into each plan. The Free plan includes 2 seats, Mini (€45/month) includes 4, Essentials (€95/month) includes 10, and Plus (€295/month) includes 20. Extra seats on paid plans cost €10 a month each. Depending on region, prices display in euros or US dollars, with the same numbers in both. A 14-day free trial needs no card.

Does Crisp include a chatbot?

Yes. An AI-powered omnichannel chatbot with a no-code visual workflow builder is included from the Essentials plan (€95/month). Every paid plan also includes AI credits for Hugo, Crisp's AI agent. Mini covers about 90 automated conversations a month, Essentials about 450, and Plus about 1,350.

How does Crisp compare to Intercom?

Crisp is significantly cheaper than Intercom for teams with more than 3 or 4 agents, because seats come bundled with each plan. Intercom has a richer product ecosystem, deeper CRM integration, and more mature enterprise tooling. Crisp trades that depth for substantially lower cost and EU data hosting.

Where is Crisp data stored?

Crisp's sub-processor list puts its main servers in the Netherlands and Germany, with extra infrastructure at Scaleway in France and encrypted backups on AWS in Ireland. The main host, DigitalOcean, is a US company. Optional AI models from US providers are disabled by default.