Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover dm & comment automation. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
| Respond.io | tawk.to | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $79 | Free |
| Pricing model | Paid subscription | Free |
| Free tier | No | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Not stated |
| Free trial | 7 days | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Not stated |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | Not stated | Not stated |
| Runs on | Web | Web |
| Covers | DM & Comment Automation, Social Media Management | DM & Comment Automation |
| Works with | Instagram, Facebook | Nothing in particular |
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
One inbox for DMs across every messaging app
Respond.io pulls Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and the rest into a single queue, so a brand deal conversation does not get lost because it started on the wrong app. Routing and automation sit on top, and a person can take over from the bot mid-thread. Pricing counts the contacts you talk to each month, which punishes a big audience of light senders.
Only on this side
Live chat that is free, with paid extras
tawk.to gives away the live chat widget itself, with unlimited agents and no seat count, and earns from three things around it: taking the branding off, an AI bot answering from your knowledge base, and hired human agents who answer chats for you by the hour. That last one is unusual enough to be the reason to look. The free product is not a trial and does not expire.
Our note
Leave the branding on and it genuinely costs nothing, which makes the decision easy for a small site. The $1 an hour agent service is the part worth reading twice, because it is priced unlike anything else in this category.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.