Crisp has become a familiar name in customer communication, mostly known for its clean shared inbox and live chat. For a lot of startups, it’s the first step in building a support system. Lately, Crisp has started adding artificial intelligence features to help automate customer support.
So, what does this mean for your team? In this article, we’ll give you a straightforward look at what Crisp AI is all about. We’ll walk through its main features, look at the pricing, and cover some important limitations you’ll want to think about. By the end, you’ll have a clear idea of whether Crisp is the right AI partner for you long-term, or if a more flexible tool might be a better match.
What is Crisp AI?
First off, Crisp AI isn’t a separate product you can buy. It’s a set of AI features built directly into the main Crisp platform. This includes their AI chatbot, automated message triggers based on what a user does, and AI that tries to find answers in your help docs. It’s all meant to work together inside one system.
And that’s the main thing to understand: to use Crisp’s AI, you have to use Crisp for everything like your helpdesk, live chat, and CRM. It’s a complete package. If you’re a new company just starting out, that simplicity can be pretty appealing.
But for businesses that already have tools they like, this "all-or-nothing" setup can be a big problem. The alternative is a tool that works on top of what you already have. For example, a platform like eesel AI is built to connect with your current helpdesk, whether it’s Zendesk, Intercom, or Freshdesk. This lets you add modern AI features without having to switch your entire support setup. For most growing teams, that kind of flexibility is a must-have.
A breakdown of the main Crisp AI features
Let’s dig into what Crisp’s AI tools actually do for your customer service team.
The Crisp AI Chatbot and workflow builder
Crisp gives you a no-code chatbot builder to create automated conversations with a visual drag-and-drop system. The builder uses three types of blocks:
- Events: These are the triggers that kick off a workflow, like a user sending a message or clicking a button.
- Actions: These blocks do something, like send a reply, update a customer’s profile, or add a private note for your team.
- Conditions: These are "if/then" checks, like seeing if a user is on a specific webpage or if you’re closed for the day.
Crisp AI's no-code chatbot builder.
While this is great for simple workflows, it can get messy trying to build and manage complicated setups. You can quickly end up with a confusing web of blocks that’s a headache to fix or improve. This is a common issue with visual builders and shows why good testing tools are so important.
Pro Tip: Before you launch a complex chatbot, you need to be sure it actually works. A great way to check is with a simulation. For instance, eesel AI lets you test its AI on your past support tickets in a safe environment. You can see its accuracy, how many tickets it could have deflected, and where its knowledge is weak, all before it ever talks to a real customer.
Here’s a simple visual of how a basic Crisp chatbot flow could be set up:
Crisp's AI action blocks for customer support.
Omnichannel support automation with Crisp AI
One of Crisp’s strong points is that its chatbots work across different channels. You can build a workflow once and use it on your website chat, WhatsApp, Instagram DMs, and Facebook Messenger. That’s one of the main upsides of their all-in-one approach, since it keeps all your conversations and customer info in one place inside the Crisp inbox. If your team is all-in on Crisp, this can make things a lot simpler.
Crisp AI resolutions and knowledge integration
So, how does Crisp AI find answers? It looks in three main places: the Crisp Knowledge Base, your public website, and pre-written "Answer Snippets." A feature called "MagicReply AI" then tries to create a reply from that information.
Data learning process for Crisp AI compared to other solutions.
But here’s a major catch: this only works if your documentation is perfectly written and up-to-date. If the answer to a question isn’t written down in one of those places, the AI will probably give up and send the ticket to a human.
This is where a different kind of training really makes a difference. Instead of just reading polished help articles, a tool like eesel AI can be trained on all your past support tickets. By learning from thousands of real conversations, it picks up on the nuance and context needed to solve trickier problems, the kinds of things that never make it into an FAQ. This leads to much better accuracy and deflection because it’s learning from how your best agents really solve things.
Pricing & subscription options explained
Crisp’s AI features aren’t included in their free or basic plans. You’ll need to be on their Essentials or Plus plan to use them. The price is based on a "per workspace" model, which can get pricey if you have multiple teams or brands to support.
Here’s a quick look at the plans that have Crisp AI:
| Feature | Essentials Plan | Plus Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $95 /month per workspace | $295 /month per workspace |
| Included Seats | Not specified | 20+ |
| AI-Powered Resolutions | 50 per day | Unlimited |
| Knowledge Base | Yes | Yes |
| AI Chatbot | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | Limited (e.g., WhatsApp, Instagram) | 100+ integrations |
| White Labeling | No | Yes |
Looking at the pricing, you can spot a potential issue for growing companies. Crisp’s plans are seat-based, so your costs go up as you hire more support agents. This means your bill gets bigger as your team grows, which can feel odd when you’re using AI to handle more of the workload.
This is a big difference from the value-based approach of tools like eesel AI. With eesel AI, you pay based on the number of resolutions and actions the AI handles. This model grows with the value you get from automation. You only pay for what the AI actually resolves, no matter how many agents you have. It’s a fairer model that connects your spending directly to your results.
Where the Crisp AI ecosystem falls short
Crisp can be a good place to start, but it’s important to know the trade-offs of locking yourself into an all-in-one platform. For businesses with plans to grow, these limits can turn into real headaches down the road.
The "all-or-nothing" dilemma
When you choose Crisp for its AI, you’re not just getting an AI tool, you’re buying into its whole world. You have to use their helpdesk, live chat, and CRM. If your company has already put time and effort into a platform like Zendesk, Intercom, or Jira Service Management, switching everything over to Crisp is a huge, risky, and disruptive project.
This is why an AI layer that works with your current tools is often a better fit. eesel AI is designed to improve, not replace, the tools you already have. It connects to your existing helpdesk and knowledge sources (like Slack or Confluence), giving you powerful automation without the pain of migrating. You get the best of both worlds: top-notch AI and the tools your team already knows how to use.
A comparison of Crisp AI's ecosystem vs. a layered AI approach.
Limited training data means lower accuracy
We touched on this earlier, but it’s a big one. The quality of your AI depends on what it learns from. Crisp AI mainly learns from your help articles and other pre-written content. This is fine for answering simple, common questions, but it doesn’t prepare the AI for the messy reality of customer problems.
The best AI support agents learn from the best data source you have: your past support conversations. The eesel AI Business plan unlocks training on past tickets, letting it learn from thousands of real interactions your team has already handled. It understands context, follows complex steps, and adopts your brand’s tone in a way that bots trained only on help articles can’t. The result is an AI assistant that is more accurate, more helpful, and more human.
The process for deploying Crisp AI versus a solution with simulation.
Lacks specialized tools for support teams
While Crisp has a decent chatbot, it’s missing some of the specialized tools that modern AI platforms offer. For example, reviews and comparisons often point out that Crisp doesn’t have a dedicated AI Email Assistant for helping agents write replies or smart AI Triage for automatically organizing your ticket queue.
In contrast, eesel AI offers a whole set of tools made to automate different parts of the support process. This includes AI Triage to automatically tag, route, and prioritize new tickets, and an AI Copilot that works inside your helpdesk to give agents instant, context-aware reply suggestions. These tools do much more than a simple chatbot and can make your entire support team more efficient.
Is Crisp AI the right choice for you?
So, what’s the verdict? Crisp AI is a handy, all-in-one solution that can be a great starting point for new businesses building their support system from the ground up. If you’re okay with living inside a single platform, it’s a simple way to get going with automation.
However, for growing businesses or companies that already have their tools in place, Crisp’s "walled garden" can create real problems. Its seat-based pricing works against you as you grow, and its dependence on help articles limits how smart its AI can really be. For these companies, the trade-offs in flexibility, power, and accuracy might be too big to ignore.
Teams that need a more powerful and flexible AI solution that plays nicely with their current setup will be better off with a dedicated AI platform. eesel AI offers a smooth way to add enterprise-level automation to the helpdesk you already use, giving you a better and faster return on your investment.
Ready to see what a dedicated AI layer can do for your current support system? Book a demo of eesel AI and see how you can automate over 70% of support tickets without having to switch helpdesks. Start your free trial today!
Frequently asked questions
You can’t get AI features on the free or basic plans. You will need to subscribe to Crisp’s Essentials or Plus plan to access the chatbot builder and other Crisp AI automation tools.
No, you cannot. Crisp AI is not a standalone product and is deeply integrated into the Crisp platform, meaning you must use their helpdesk, live chat, and CRM to access the AI features.
Crisp AI learns primarily from your written documentation, including articles in the Crisp Knowledge Base, your public website content, and pre-written "Answer Snippets." It does not learn from your team’s past support conversations.
The main limitation is its "all-or-nothing" approach, which locks you into using the entire Crisp platform and prevents integration with other tools. This can be a major problem for teams that have already invested in other helpdesks or CRMs.
