HiQBot connects six messaging channels to a single inbox: website chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram and LINE. A multi channel chatbot is an AI agent that answers customers on more than one of those channels. Website chat, WhatsApp and Instagram work on every plan, starting with Solo at $49 a month, billed monthly. Messenger, Telegram and LINE need Starter or above. From Starter, any of the six can also run as a live chat channel, going straight to your team with no AI in front of it.
Most platforms in this category publish a flat list of logos and send you to a pricing page to work out what you actually get. The table below does that job here instead.
If you are deciding how many to connect first, start with what omnichannel customer service means for a small team.
Last updated
Three channels are on every plan, including the cheapest one. The rest arrive with Starter, which is also where the seats for your team start.
| Channel | Plans | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Website chat | Every plan | One tag on your site. The agent answers on its own, and from Starter a person can take the thread over. |
| Every plan | Sign up inside the dashboard. Coexistence mode means the number your team already uses keeps working. | |
| Every plan | DMs, and also comment automation, publishing and post insights. | |
| Messenger | Starter and up | Messages to your Facebook Page land in the same queue as everything else. |
| Telegram | Starter and up | Connects through a bot on your own Telegram account. Usually a two-minute job. |
| LINE | Starter and up | Messages to your LINE Official Account, which is how most businesses in Japan, Thailand and Taiwan are reached. |
The line worth reading twice is the WhatsApp one. On most platforms WhatsApp sits behind the mid tier, because it is the channel people upgrade for. Here it is on the entry plan, next to Instagram, which is the pairing a small shop actually sells on. If you run a dining room, that pairing is also what takes restaurant bookings without anyone watching the phone.
Connecting a channel is the easy half. The part that decides whether your week gets better is what the omnichannel inbox does next.
Every connected channel feeds one queue. A WhatsApp message and an Instagram comment sit in the same list, each tagged with where it came from, so nobody has to remember to open a second app before they log off. When a new conversation comes in with an email address or phone number that already belongs to a contact, HiQBot adds it to that contact in the built-in CRM, so your team sees the history in one record.
The agent takes the first pass on all of it. When a thread needs a person, it goes to someone free and on shift, and the whole conversation goes with it rather than a summary. That is covered properly on the live chat handoff page.
One honest caveat. Every plan includes the unified inbox, so on Solo you still see every conversation from every channel in one place. What starts at Starter is the team side of it: live chat seats, routing and assignment. If you are one person and you want the sales agent on autopilot while you check the closings and bookings, Solo is the plan. If you have someone answering messages, you want Starter.
You sign up inside the HiQBot dashboard rather than being sent off to Meta's Business Manager to work it out alone. Coexistence mode matters more than it sounds: the number your team already answers on keeps working the way it does today, so you are not asking customers to save a new one or abandoning your message history to switch.
One thing to know before you budget. Meta charges your own WhatsApp account per message, at a rate that depends on the country and the message category, and HiQBot does not resell or mark those up. Your subscription here and your Meta usage bill are two separate things. Plenty of vendors leave that vague until the first invoice lands. Connecting the number is covered step by step in the WhatsApp Business API setup guide.
The WhatsApp Business API page goes into the setup in detail.
This is the one most comparisons get wrong. Nearly every platform in this category treats Instagram as a DM pipe. HiQBot handles DMs, and it also runs comment automation, publishing and post insights, all on the entry plan.
Comment automation is the part that earns its keep. Someone asks the price under a post, the agent replies in the thread and moves the conversation into DMs where it can qualify them properly. That is a real path from a public comment to a booked call, and it runs while you are asleep. There is more on it on the Instagram comment-to-DM automation page.
LINE is the channel most Western platforms either skip or price into an enterprise plan. If you sell into Japan, Thailand or Taiwan, it is not a nice extra. It is closer to what WhatsApp is in Brazil or India: the app people already have open, and often the only one they will message a business on.
Businesses reach customers there through a LINE Official Account, which behaves differently from a personal account. Customers add you, and after that you can answer them directly. HiQBot connects that Official Account into the same queue as your WhatsApp and Instagram threads, so a Bangkok customer and a Manchester customer land in one list and neither one waits longer because your team forgot which app to check.
The tools that do LINE well are usually priced for large support organisations, and the tools priced for small teams tend not to do LINE at all. That gap is the reason this section exists. LINE is on Starter here, at $139 a month.
How a LINE Official Account chatbot worksTelegram connects through a bot on your own account and is usually the fastest of the lot to switch on. Messenger picks up the messages sent to your Facebook Page, which for a lot of local businesses is still where enquiries quietly pile up.
Not every conversation should meet an AI first. A channel here can be set to live chat instead, and then it behaves like a dedicated live chat inbox: the message arrives, it is assigned to whoever is free and on shift, and a person answers it. Nothing runs ahead of them, and there is nothing to read back through afterwards.
You set it per channel, so you can run the website widget on the sales agent, take WhatsApp straight to your team, and keep a VIP or partner channel on live chat only. A short AI intake can still sit in front of a live chat channel, collecting the name, the account and the reason so the rep opens a thread that already has answers in it.
It changes what you pay, too. Credits are drawn by AI replies, so a live chat channel your team answers does not draw them. With intake switched on, the conversation draws a single credit at the moment it is handed to a person, and nothing after that. Live chat channels need Starter or above, which is where the live agent seats start.
If your customers reach you on your website, Instagram and WhatsApp, Solo covers all three and the agent handles them on its own. If you need Messenger, Telegram or LINE, or you have a person answering messages and want them working from a shared queue, that is Starter. Growth is for when the AI needs to resolve support rather than only sell, with tickets behind it.
Channel access does not change mid-plan, so the table above is the whole answer. Message allowances and seat counts do differ by plan, and those are on the pricing page.