AI reception and chat
How much does an AI chatbot cost a small business in Australia?
What drives the cost of an AI chatbot for a small business, what to ask before you pay, and what Realtiq charges, in Australian dollars.
"How much does a chatbot cost?" has no single answer, because the word covers very different things. A free widget that shows a menu of buttons is a chatbot. So is an assistant that answers from your own prices, books into your calendar and hands over to your team. This post explains what drives the cost, so you can compare quotes on the same footing, and then lays out what Realtiq charges.
The two kinds of cost
Almost every chatbot has the same two cost lines, whatever the provider calls them.
- Setup. The one-off work of building it for your business: writing what it knows, setting its rules, connecting channels and testing it.
- Monthly. The ongoing fee for running it, plus whatever the underlying platforms charge for usage.
A low monthly number with a hidden setup fee is not cheaper, and a "free" tool that you configure yourself has a cost too: your time, and what happens when it gives a wrong answer. When you compare quotes, always ask for setup and monthly side by side.
What moves the price
The channels
A chat bubble on your website is one channel. WhatsApp, Instagram direct messages, Facebook Messenger, email and SMS are each another, and some need accounts with their own set-up steps. A chatbot that lives in one place is simpler than one that gives the same answers everywhere.
What it can do
There is a big difference between a bot that answers questions and one that does the task. Answering "are you open on Sunday?" is the easy part. Checking your calendar and booking a slot, adding the customer to your CRM, or alerting your team on the channel they use are integrations, and each is built and tested separately.
How well it is set up
The quality of a chatbot comes from the information behind it. A good setup includes your hours, services, prices and service area, the questions customers really ask, the tone you use and the rules for handing over. A cheap setup skips this and gives generic answers. That is how chatbots end up inventing prices or promising things you never offered.
Volume
Most platforms price by the number of conversations or messages. A café with a handful of enquiries a week and a clinic with hundreds do not have the same needs. Ask what volume is included and what happens above it.
The people checking it
Somebody should read real conversations in the first weeks and tighten the answers. If that is not included, you will do it yourself, or it will not get done.
Questions to ask any provider
- What is the setup fee and what is the monthly fee, together?
- Which channels are included in that price?
- How many conversations a month are included, and what happens above that?
- Does it only answer from information I approve?
- What does it do when it does not know?
- Can I read the conversations?
- Is there a contract, or is it month to month?
- Who owns the accounts, such as WhatsApp Business?
What Realtiq charges
The chat assistant is a single price for all the channels you choose: website chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, email, SMS and missed-call text back.
Prices in Australian dollars. Every proposal is confirmed in writing before we start.
That includes setting it up with your answers, hours and services, a monthly volume of conversations set in your proposal, and conversation reviews and tuning with you. It runs month to month, and you can cancel any time. If the included volume is ever exceeded, we agree what happens with you first.
Integrations, such as booking into your calendar or adding contacts to a CRM, are scoped and quoted separately in the proposal. Third-party accounts and fees, such as WhatsApp Business, are set up in your name and listed there too.
If you want the phone answered as well, the voice agent is a separate service:
Prices in Australian dollars. Every proposal is confirmed in writing before we start.
Is it worth it?
That depends on your business, so a few honest questions are better than a promise.
- How many enquiries do you receive when you cannot reply quickly: after hours, on weekends, during busy periods?
- What is a new customer worth to you?
- How much of your day goes on answering the same questions?
If the answers are "not many", "not much" and "very little", a chatbot is probably not the right investment yet, and a good website with clear hours and a booking link may do more. If you are replying to messages late at night and losing track of who asked what, the picture changes. We would rather tell you that on a 15 minute call than sell you something you do not need.
Common questions
Is it just ChatGPT on my website?
No. It runs on a modern AI language model, but it is set up with your business information, your prices and your rules, and it only answers about your business. When a question falls outside that, it hands over to you.
Can a chatbot make things up?
It is instructed to answer only from the information you approve and to hand over when it does not know. We review conversations with you and tighten the answers over time. You should still test it hard before it goes live.
Do I need a new website to use one?
No. The chat can sit on your existing website, and the same assistant answers on WhatsApp, Instagram and the other channels. If your site is due a rebuild anyway, the two can be done together.
What about my customers' privacy?
Realtiq's own privacy notice is on the privacy page. For your assistant, we set out what it collects and why in the proposal, and you decide which details it asks for.
Talk it through, 15 minutes
Book a 15 minute call to see which channels a chat assistant could cover for you, or try the live chat first.