HiQBot is an AI customer conversation platform. It puts an AI agent on your website chat, WhatsApp and Instagram, gives your team a shared inbox behind that agent, and keeps every contact in a built-in CRM. The biggest difference from respond.io is where the AI sits in the price list: their pricing page lists AI Agents from the Growth plan, $159 a month billed yearly or $199 billed monthly, while HiQBot runs the same agentic engine on all three of its plans, starting at $49 a month.
Weighing more than one tool? See how the alternatives compare.
HiQBot publishes this page. Every respond.io figure on it was read from respond.io/pricing on 11 September 2026, and every HiQBot figure from our own plans API the same day, so you can check both yourself.
HiQBot is our product, so read this section with that in mind. We have still listed the cases where respond.io is the better buy, because you would find them in week two anyway.
Those are real trade-offs. If drip sequences or an open API are on your requirements list, respond.io is the better fit and the price difference does not change that.
Pricing
The plans are not seat-for-seat equivalents, so the seat and contact allowances sit next to the price rather than in a footnote. Both columns were read from the two pricing pages on 11 September 2026.
| Plan pricing | HiQBot | respond.io |
|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | Solo · $49/mo · 1 seat · 2,500 credits | Starter · $79/mo billed yearly ($948/yr), $99/mo billed monthly · 5 users · unlimited contacts |
| Middle plan | Starter · $139/mo · 2 seats · 6,000 credits | Growth · $159/mo billed yearly ($1,908/yr), $199/mo billed monthly · 10 users · from 1,000 monthly active contacts |
| Upper plan | Growth · $229/mo · 5 seats · 10,000 credits | Advanced · $279/mo billed yearly ($3,348/yr), $349/mo billed monthly · 10 users · from 1,000 monthly active contacts |
| Top plan | No enterprise tier | Enterprise · custom price · unlimited users |
| Annual price | $490, $1,390 and $2,290 per year | $948, $1,908 and $3,348 per year |
| Extra seat | Agent Seats add-on · $15 per seat per month | $12, $20 or $24 per user per month by plan |
| AI agent included from | $49/mo | $159/mo billed yearly, $199 billed monthly |
| Free trial | 7 days | 7 days |
respond.io includes more seats per plan than HiQBot does. HiQBot includes the AI agent on plans where respond.io does not. Which matters more depends on whether your bottleneck is headcount or automation.
Features
respond.io groups its channels together rather than listing them plan by plan, so those rows below say what we could verify on 11 September 2026 instead of guessing on their behalf. Check their channel page if your decision turns on one specific channel.
| Feature comparison | HiQBot | respond.io |
|---|---|---|
| AI agent that qualifies, quotes and books | All plans, from $49 | AI Agents listed from Growth, $159 billed yearly ($199 monthly) |
| AI on the entry plan | Full agentic engine, running unattended | AI Prompt and AI Assist |
| Website chat widget | All plans | Not broken out by plan on their pricing page |
| WhatsApp Business API | All plans | Not broken out by plan on their pricing page |
| Instagram DMs | All plans | Not broken out by plan on their pricing page |
| Instagram comment automation, publishing and insights | All plans | Not broken out by plan on their pricing page |
| Messenger, Telegram and LINE | Starter and up | Not broken out by plan on their pricing page |
| Shared inbox | All plans | Included |
| Live chat handoff | Starter and up | Included |
| Teams, roles, capacity policies and SLA | Starter and up | Included |
| AI that resolves support, plus ticketing | Growth | Not broken out by plan on their pricing page |
| Advanced reporting and CSV export | Growth | Advanced Reports from Growth |
| Built-in CRM | All plans | Contact management included |
| Broadcasts and campaigns | WhatsApp broadcasts on all plans, advanced on Growth. No drip sequences | Growth and up |
| Workflow automation builder | Not available | Growth and up |
| Developer API, webhooks, Zapier and Make | Not available | Developer API from Growth, webhooks from Advanced |
| Single sign-on and multiple workspaces | Not available | Advanced |
| WhatsApp calling by a human agent | Growth | Listed as a "Calls" channel and a WhatsApp Business Calling API row; not broken out by plan on their pricing page |
| Voice notes with transcription | Add-on, all plans | Listed as "AI Agents: Voice Calls"; not broken out by plan on their pricing page |
| How usage is metered | Credits per month, one credit per reply at Core | Monthly active contacts, plus users |
| Unused credits at the end of the month | Carry over for two billing periods on monthly plans | Reset with the billing cycle |
On respond.io's own pricing page, the Starter plan ($79 a month billed yearly, $99 billed monthly) lists AI Prompt and AI Assist. AI Agents appear in the Growth column, $159 billed yearly or $199 billed monthly, as part of what Growth adds over Starter. So the first respond.io plan that carries an AI agent costs $159 a month if you pay for the year up front, and $199 if you pay monthly.
HiQBot runs the same agentic engine on all three plans. What changes between tiers is the profile the engine runs under, not the engine. On Solo it is a sales agent running on autopilot. On Starter it is the same agent with live chat handoff available. On Growth it also resolves support conversations and raises tickets.
If your real question is whether software can handle the first reply at 11pm, that is the whole decision, and you are comparing $49 a month against $159 billed yearly, or $199 billed monthly, for it.
HiQBot handles Instagram comment automation, publishing and insights alongside DMs, on the $49 Solo plan. When somebody comments on a post asking what something costs, that is a lead, and it should not sit there until a human scrolls past it.
LINE is the other quiet one. HiQBot supports it from the $139 Starter plan, alongside Messenger and Telegram, and it matters if you sell into Japan, Thailand or Taiwan, where LINE is often the channel customers actually use. respond.io does not break its channel list out by plan on its pricing page, so compare that one directly against their channel page.
HiQBot broadcasts to WhatsApp on every plan, including Solo, on approved templates, to people who opted in. No HiQBot plan has drip sequences. respond.io covers broadcasts and scheduled campaigns from their Growth plan.
HiQBot has no public API, no webhooks and no Zapier or Make integrations. Everything runs inside the product. respond.io ships a developer API from Growth and webhooks from Advanced.
HiQBot connects to HubSpot for contacts and deals, and contacts live in the built-in CRM next to the conversation that produced them.
respond.io’s Growth plan starts at 1,000 monthly active contacts and scales from there, with seats charged on top at $20 each beyond the ten included.
respond.io meters two things at once. Monthly active contacts: 1,000 included on Growth, then $12 per additional 100. And AI credits: 10,000 included on Growth, then $15 per 1,000, hard-capped at twice your allowance. An AI Agent reply costs 2 to 5 credits depending on complexity, so that allowance is roughly 2,000 to 5,000 replies. Your bill depends on which of the two meters you hit first.
HiQBot meters one thing: credits. 2,500 a month on Solo, 6,000 on Starter and 10,000 on Growth. A reply on the Core AI level uses one credit; stronger levels think longer and use more, and you choose the level per inbox. Contacts are not counted at all, and there is no overage. Credits are prepaid, so the agent pauses at zero until they renew or you add a $20 pack of 1,000.
The quiet months are the other half of that comparison. On a monthly HiQBot plan, credits you did not spend carry into the next month and stay available for two billing periods, with the new month’s allowance always spent first. A slow February funds a busy March instead of disappearing on the renewal date. Carrying over depends on the renewal being paid on time; the credit terms set out the conditions.
A business with 3,000 contacts and 3,000 Core replies a month pays $159 plus $240 in contact overage plus $60 in credit overage on respond.io Growth: $459 a month at their yearly-billed rate, or $499 if they bill you monthly, against $139 flat on HiQBot Starter, where those replies draw 3,000 of 6,000 credits and nothing bills on top. Contact-based pricing suits a small list that talks a lot. Work out which shape your conversations have before you compare the headline numbers. Figures read from respond.io's pricing page and their AI credits documentation on 11 September 2026.
Neither number covers what Meta charges you. WhatsApp conversations bill to your own Meta account on both platforms, at rates that change by recipient country and message category, so the platform fee is only half the bill. Our calculator prices that half against Meta’s published rate card.
Switching over
Run the WhatsApp Business signup inside the HiQBot dashboard through Meta’s own flow. Coexistence mode means the number your customers already message keeps working, so nobody has to be told to start over.
Upload the policies, price list and help articles your team already answers from. The agent replies out of those, in whatever language the customer wrote in.
Add Instagram and the website widget on any plan, then Messenger, Telegram and LINE from Starter up. They land in one queue rather than five tabs.
The trial runs 7 days, which is long enough to put both platforms on the same channel and watch what each one does with the same questions.
On list price, yes at every tier. HiQBot runs $49, $139 and $229 a month. respond.io runs $79, $159 and $279 a month if you pay for the year up front, and $99, $199 and $349 if you pay monthly. respond.io includes more seats per plan, so the gap narrows if you need a lot of seats. Both sets of prices were read from the two pricing pages on 11 September 2026.
Their Growth plan, at $159 a month billed yearly or $199 billed monthly. Their Starter plan, $79 billed yearly or $99 monthly, lists AI Prompt and AI Assist instead. HiQBot includes its agentic AI on all three plans, starting with Solo at $49. Read from respond.io’s pricing page on 11 September 2026.
Yes, on all three plans, including Solo at $49. You complete the WhatsApp Business signup inside the HiQBot dashboard through Meta’s own flow, and coexistence mode keeps the number your customers already message working. Meta bills WhatsApp conversation usage to your account directly.
Yes. Solo is built for that: a single-seat sales agent on website chat, WhatsApp and Instagram that qualifies, quotes, books and answers questions from your documents on autopilot, with every conversation landing in your unified inbox so you can check the closings and bookings. Move to Starter later if you want team seats behind it.
No. There is a 7-day free trial, then three paid plans at $49, $139 and $229 a month. There is no free-forever tier.
Gallabox on the list too? Same write-up, different tool.
Start the trial and put it on a channel you already use, or book a demo and we will run it against the questions your team answers most.
respond.io pricing and features on this page were read from respond.io/pricing and respond.io/help/organization-settings/ai-credits on 11 September 2026, and HiQBot pricing from our own plans API the same day. Competitor pricing changes, so check their page before you decide. respond.io is a trademark of its owner and is named here to compare products.