Crisp Review

Crisp offers live chat, help docs, status pages, a CRM and email campaigns for customer support and sales at a low and predictable price. It's great value.

Last updated: January 2021

Founded in 2015, Crisp is a relatively new entrant to the live chat space. As well live chat, Crisp offers email and messaging campaigns, a CRM, a knowledge base and even status pages.

Crisp has very straightforward pricing without any hidden extras, or variable pricing based on the number of messages you send, or leads that you track.

I recommend Crisp in particular for small or medium-sized companies or for startups for whom flat, predictable pricing is important.


PROS

  • Transparent and predictable pricing
  • Fast and helpful support
  • Lots of integrations

CONS

  • There's no teams feature

User Experience

The chat widget is obvious but not obtrusive for your customers. Integrations with Crisp's own Helpdesk, as well as other channels such as Twitter or Facebook Messenger are readily available in the bar at the top of the chat widget.

Internal users, or agents (Crisp calls them "Operators") have a simultaneous view of queued chats and the current chat. Useful contextual information is provided for the current chat.

Pricing

Crisp offers a free tier with 2 seats included. This is good enough to get up and running with live chat on your website.

It also includes use of Crisp's mobile apps so you can easily communicate with website visitors or your users while on the go.

The Pro package is aimed at very small teams who need features such as triggers or the Facebook Messenger, or Twitter integration.

Pro Features

The Unlimited plan includes unlimited seats and enables features such as automatic assignment, CRM integrations and the knowledge base. It is very good value.

Unlimited Plan Features

Features

Style Chat Widget Upgrade

Limited customization is possible in the Free and Pro plans, but you will probably need the Customization plugin only available in the Ultimate plan in order to match the Chatbox to your brand and message. Show Screenshot

Remove Branding Upgrade

The Crisp branding can be removed if you upgrade to the Unlimited plan.

Office Hours

Office hours can be configured in the Availability Settings area. One downside of the approach used in Crisp is that different working hours cannot be selected for individual days, i.e. the same schedule must be applied to all working days. Show Screenshot

Teams
Routing Upgrade

Automatic Assignment is referred to as "Routing" in Crisp. Requires the Crisp Unlimited Plan. Show Screenshot

Saved Replies

Saved replies are known as "Message Shortcuts" in Crisp. You can also include macros to insert dynamic content into a reply. Show Screenshot

Block Users Upgrade

Block chat for specific IPs. Requires at least Pro.

Hide Chat Widget

You can hide the chatbox on specific pages as well as for specific countries and locales.

Trigger Chats Upgrade

Triggers let you send automated messages to your visitors and users. Requires the Crisp Pro Plan.

Tagging

Users and conversations can be tagged with what's known as "Segments" in Crisp. Your contacts can then be searched by segment.

Reports Upgrade

Crisp Analytics lets you build metrics from chats, customer ratings and response times. Data can be exported to CSV. Requires Crisp Unlimited

Chatbot Upgrade

Crisp's chatbot is available in the Unlimited plan via the Bot plugin.

Email Inbox Upgrade

You get a unique incoming email address (in the form 1234@mail.support.crisp.chat). You can set emails to forward to this address if your customers contact you via a support email address (e.g. help@yourdomain.com). Email is available in the Pro and Unlimited plans.

Custom Email Address Upgrade

Crisp supports DKIM so you can send emails to customers from your own domain. Setting up a custom email domain requires the Unlimited plan.

Track User Data Upgrade

Crisp automatically tracks attributes like location and pages visited. Requires Crisp Pro. Show Screenshot

Campaigns Upgrade

You can create campaigns to send automated or manual messages by email or chat to your customers and leads. This requires the Unlimited plan.

GDPR-compliant

Access requests replied to in under 1 week (within the legal limit of 1 month); Verified that their own data processors are GDPR-compliant; Will notify their customers within a maximum of 24 hours after finding out about and fixing a data breach; Data Protection Officer appointed; All data (apart from connection logs) held on servers in the EU.

Internationalization

The chatbox is available in over 50 languages. By default Crisp detects the visitor's browser language and adjusts the chatbox language accordingly. However, this can also be changed so that the chatbox always appears in one language.

Offers App

Crisp offers apps for Mac, Windows iOS and Android so you can keep in touch with your visitors and users easily whilst on the go.

Knowledge Base Upgrade

Crisp provides a knowledge base feature for your help docs if you have the Unlimited plan. It is well integrated with the chat widget so you can surface help articles to your users.

API

Crisp has a REST API with libraries for NodeJS, Go, PHP, Ruby and Python. It also has Javascript SDK for manipulating the chat widget.

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Matt

Review by Matt

Matt is a product manager with extensive experience in building and supporting software-as-a-service products. This includes implementing live chat for customer support and customer success teams.

Our work is supported by affiliate links.

Review Updates

  • Jan 05, 2019 Review Published
  • Sep 11, 2019 Updated Review
  • Jan 26, 2020 Update and a correction
  • Jan 07, 2021 Review updated