LiveChat for Small Business: What Text Essential Costs a Team

What a small team actually pays

For one to five people answering chats, the answer is Text Essential at $19 per user per month billed annually, or $25 per user per month billed monthly.^[1] That is the entry plan of LiveChat, now sold to new customers as Text plans, and every person who logs in to answer chats or tickets needs a seat. There is no minimum team size. Three users come to $57 a month billed annually or $75 billed monthly; five users come to $95 or $125, by our arithmetic. Essential covers most small teams. Growth earns its higher price only in the specific cases described further down.

Annual billing means 12 months paid upfront, so the lower rate only pays off if you stay. A year of Essential costs $228 per user billed annually against $300 per user billed monthly, which means paying monthly costs about 32% more. The crossover sits between nine and ten months: keep the plan ten months or longer and annual wins, while nine months on the monthly rate comes to $225 per user, just under the annual $228. If you are still testing whether chat works for your business at all, start monthly. Commit once the answer is yes.

Existing LiveChat customers keep their current plan and price, and our LiveChat pricing guide covers that side along with the billing terms: downgrades and removed users take effect at renewal with no credit, cancellation goes through support, and livechat.com publishes no refund policy, and Text's HelpDesk.com pricing page, which sells the same Text plans, says refunds are reviewed case by case on request. Everything below describes what a new small business gets on Text. Older help pages describe the LiveChat app.

A working day on Essential

Picture a three-person shop. A visitor opens the website widget, and the conversation lands in one shared inbox alongside WhatsApp, Messenger and email forwarded from Gmail, Microsoft 365, Outlook or Yahoo, which arrives as tickets. Whoever is free picks it up. Copilot, included for every user on every plan, suggests replies and pulls up context, and it never sends anything without the agent's approval. When nobody is online, Text's offline form collects the visitor's email, so the morning starts with people to answer instead of lost leads.

The AI Agent sits in front of that inbox on Essential too, one per account. On Essential, it learns from a website address and uploaded files, Text's small-business page says, and answers questions about products, prices and policies.^[2] Its Collect customer details skill gathers leads in chat on every plan. If no teammate takes a chat within 30 seconds, the AI Agent on any plan can create a ticket instead. With Shopify connected, recent orders appear next to the chat, and Essential's sales reports count orders placed during chats. That covers more of the day than the plan name suggests.

Two small-team stories are worth reading with their source in mind. Text's customer story says Fuse, a student-housing company with 11 to 50 employees, cut resolution time from almost five days to under two while ticket volume rose by about two-thirds with the same team.^[3] Fuse also says setup took a day, mostly under an hour, with no developer needed to load the knowledge base. At WickedWeasel, customer service manager Claudia Carta says in Text's materials that her team uses it daily for support tickets and real-time chats.^[4] These are vendor-published results. Treat them as possible, not typical.

Where Essential pinches a small team

Essential is built for a team that does not yet need managing. Conversation and file history lasts 60 days, against unlimited on Growth. Tags are fixed to five defaults: sales, support, positive feedback, complaint and spam. There are no chat routing rules, no working hours, no chat supervision or takeover, no shared canned responses and no chat or ticket summaries; all of those start on Growth. Essential also allows 3 workflow rules with 300 executions a month and one email forwarding address. For two people sharing one inbox, little of this hurts.

The pinch points tend to arrive in a predictable order. Working hours usually come first: on Growth, the AI Agent's chats follow the hours you set, a control Essential does not have. Routing comes next, once you want chats from one page or country to reach the person who handles them. The 60-day history matters if repeat customers or disputes send you back to old conversations; Text does not publish what happens to Essential conversations after that window, so export anything you need to keep. Five reply suggestions per user a month is a sample, not a workflow.

Ten AI resolutions, and what more costs

Essential includes 10 AI resolutions per account a month, not per user, so adding a seat adds none. Growth includes 200 per account a month. On both plans, extra resolutions come in packs of 50 for $49.50, which works out to $0.99 per resolution. Packs are added from billing settings and recur every cycle until you reduce them, and a reduction applies at the next renewal. Unused resolutions, included or bought, do not carry over. On Essential and Growth, Text emails you at 90% of the included allowance. Essential's ten a month suits a test drive. A busy store will outgrow it.

Run the numbers before you switch the AI Agent on for everything. Suppose you want it to resolve about 100 chats per account a month on Essential: two packs lift the allowance to 110 for $99 extra, so a single user comes to $118 a month at the annual rate, by our arithmetic. One user on Growth costs $79 a month billed annually with 200 resolutions included, so a solo store leaning on AI should start on Growth. Essential plus two packs wins only from two users, at $137 against $158 a month on annual billing. Measure your actual volume during the trial first.

When Growth pays for itself

Growth costs $79 per user per month billed annually, or $99 per user per month billed monthly. The step-up from Essential is $60 per user a month on annual billing and $74 on monthly billing. For five users on annual billing, that is $300 more a month, by our arithmetic. Five people on the higher plan come to $395 a month billed annually or $495 billed monthly, and the annual rate saves $1,200 a year. The same ten-month rule applies: nine months monthly is $891 per user against $948 for the year.

The AI allowance creates a clear threshold. If you need roughly 200 AI resolutions per account a month, Essential needs four packs to reach 210, which adds $198 a month. Growth includes 200 and costs $60 more per user a month on annual billing, or $74 on monthly billing. On annual billing, Growth is the cheaper route for one, two or three users, at $60, $120 or $180 extra against $198. On monthly billing, only one or two users come out ahead, at $74 or $148, because three users already add $222. Past those points, Essential plus packs costs less, but you give up routing, supervision, summaries and unlimited history. Then decide on features.

Features often settle it before arithmetic does. If you need the AI Agent and your team to respect business hours, chats routed by page, domain, country or channel, a manager watching live chats, or history beyond 60 days, Growth is the lowest Text plan with them. Custom SSO, audit logs and SLAs are Enterprise only, priced by quote and billed annually. Few small businesses need that tier.

Setting it up without a developer

Setup is one code snippet pasted into your site, or an install through the Shopify app, WordPress, Webflow or Google Tag Manager, with no separate integration fee on any Text plan. Installing from the Shopify App Store bills Text through Shopify every 30 days, and Text says signing up directly makes annual billing cheaper. The team replies from the web app, the desktop app for macOS and Windows, or the Text - Live Chat for Business app on iOS and Android. The mobile app is free to download but needs a trial or paid plan. It sends push notifications, replies to chats and tickets and shows who is on your site. Configuration still happens in the web app.

Channel costs are where small businesses get surprised. WhatsApp has been native since June 2026, and each number is free from Text, though you need a Meta Business Portfolio with admin rights. Messenger and Instagram Business or Creator accounts connect natively. SMS runs only through your own Twilio account, and Twilio bills you directly. Text is not a phone system, so there is no voice channel. It also has no customer-facing help center; KnowledgeBase is a separate product. Our messaging channels guide covers each one.

Two more checks before you sign up. HIPAA compliance with a BAA is listed as coming soon on Enterprise, and Text's DPA says not to send ePHI without a signed BAA, so a small clinic should keep patient health information out of Text today. Text says it is SOC 2 Type 2 audited and that its chat widget meets WCAG 2.2 AA. The trial runs 14 days on Essential or Growth with no credit card, and nothing is charged automatically when it ends. Your workspace, history and settings carry over to the plan you pick.

The bottom line

For a small business, Text Essential is the sensible start: one shared inbox for website chat, WhatsApp, Messenger and email tickets, plus one AI Agent, at a per-user price that stays modest up to five seats. Its limits are real but specific: 60 days of history, five default tags, 10 AI resolutions per account a month, and no routing, working hours or supervision. Move up when you need those controls, or when one to three users on annual billing (one or two on monthly billing) need about 200 AI resolutions a month. Skip it if you need phone support, or HIPAA, which is still coming soon on Enterprise.