What is per-conversation pricing?
Per-conversation pricing means a chatbot or support tool bills by the number of conversations in a month, where one conversation counts once however many messages it holds. Each vendor sets its own rule for when a conversation starts, ends and becomes billable.
Also called: pay per conversation, conversation-based pricing, billable conversations.
By Santhul Joseph, AI EngineerUpdated
How vendors count a conversation
- Tidio counts a billable conversation when a human agent replies in it or your team starts it, and counts it once. Its Lyro AI agent has a separate quota, from $32.50 a month for 50 AI conversations.
- Watermelon counts all messages within 96 hours as one conversation, with plans from €99 a month for 250 conversations.
- Intercom charges WhatsApp per conversation, at rates that vary by region and volume.
- Tidio doesn't count visitor messages nobody answers. Other vendors use other rules, so read the definition before you compare plans.
The trade-off
In its favour: a long conversation costs the same as a short one, so a customer who asks ten follow-up questions doesn't cost more.
Against it: a two-word question and a twenty-minute chat cost the same, so a month full of short chats fills the quota quickly. And because every vendor defines a conversation differently, two plans with the same number can mean very different things.
The SimplyBoost approach
SimplyBoost doesn't charge per conversation. Plans are a flat €39, €89 or €169 a month for 500, 2,000 or 6,000 AI replies, the messages the AI agent writes. Replies your team writes are free, and the owner plus up to 2 teammates are included.
To compare fairly: a long conversation uses more AI replies than a short one, so estimate with your own average chat length.
Questions people ask
Is a conversation the same as an AI reply?
No. A conversation is the whole exchange with one customer; an AI reply is one message the agent writes in it. One conversation can include several AI replies.
Which is cheaper, paying per conversation or per AI reply?
It depends on how long your chats are. If your conversations average three agent replies, 500 AI replies covers about 165 conversations, so compare that with what a per-conversation plan gives you for the same money.
Do conversations my team answers count?
On some per-conversation plans they do: Tidio's billable conversations are the ones a human replies in. In SimplyBoost, replies your team writes never count toward your plan.