Demos are designed; checklists are yours
Every vendor demo shows the same happy path. The differences that will actually cost or save you money live in the pricing fine print, the limits, and the exit doors — none of which appear on a demo call. Evaluate with a written checklist and make every vendor answer the same questions.
1. Price it at YOUR team size, three ways
- Today's team — including the part-timer who covers lunch.
- Next year's team — per-agent pricing compounds quietly; a flat plan does not.
- Peak season — do extra seats for December cost a year's commitment or a month's?
Write the three totals down per vendor. Per-agent tiers plus paid add-on modules routinely double the sticker price by the time your real usage is priced in.
2. Read the free plan's fine print
"Free" hides in the limits: how many agents, how many conversations per month, how long is chat history kept, whose branding is on the widget, and — the one that bites later — what happens to your data if you stay free forever. A free plan with a monthly chat cap stops being a plan the day your site gets traffic; a free plan with unlimited chats is an actual tier.
3. Ask exactly how AI is charged
AI pricing models differ more than any other line item: per resolution, per session bundle, per agent add-on, or included. Ask each vendor: "if the bot answers 500 questions next month, what does that cost?" — and get the number in writing. A metered bot quietly converts your growth into their revenue; know which model you are signing.
4. Confirm the exit before the entrance
- Can you export transcripts, contacts, and knowledge-base articles — yourself, without a support ticket?
- Is there an API for the data, or only a dashboard?
- What deletes when you cancel, and when?
A vendor's answer to "how do I leave?" tells you more about the relationship than any feature grid.
5. The 30-minute hands-on test
Sign up for the free tier of your two finalists and run the same script on each: install the snippet on a test page, send yourself a chat from a phone, answer it from the console, trigger the offline state, and find the transcript afterwards. Note where you got stuck — YOUR stuck points, not the reviewer's. Thirty minutes of this beats thirty comparison tabs, because the product you can set up without help is the product your team will actually run.
Score it and decide
Total cost at next-year size, free-plan honesty, AI pricing clarity, data exit, and the hands-on friction score — five rows, two finalists, one afternoon. (MyLiveChat's answers are public: flat plans, a free tier with unlimited chats, AI without per-resolution metering, and a documented API — start the hands-on test free and hold us to the same checklist.)