# Olark review (2026): is it worth $29 a month?

> Live chat for websites, with an optional flat-fee AI agent

Checked Nov 12, 2026 · graded Nov 12, 2026 by ToolGPA.

Olark is a live chat product for websites, sold per human agent seat. Its Standard AI Website Agent is a separate flat-fee package that answers visitor questions, captures and qualifies leads and hands off to a person in the same chat. The vendor says it charges by agent seat, not by AI usage.

- **Category:** Help Desks & Live Chat
- **Made by:** Olark (since 2009)
- **Website:** https://www.olark.com
- **Runs on:** Web, iOS, Android
- **Who should skip it:** Skip it if you need ticketing or a help center, as the pages show neither.
- **Facts last checked:** Nov 12, 2026

## Pricing

As of Nov 12, 2026, Olark is a paid product with a free trial, starting at $29 per agent / month.

- **Pricing model:** Free trial
- **Free plan:** None.
- **Free trial:** 14-day free trial for Live Chat, no credit card required.

| Plan | Price | What you get |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Live Chat | $29 per agent / month, billing basis not shown | Full-featured live chat with human agents and no AI. The AI agent can be added later without reinstalling. |
| Standard AI Website Agent | $400 per month, billed annually ($4,800 a year) | Unlimited AI conversations with no overages, lead capture and qualification, proactive engagement and one human agent seat. Extra human seats are $29 per agent a month. |
| Custom | Custom | For power users and enterprise: regional routing, multiple teams, custom workflows and SLAs, and SSO. Sold through sales. |

Read from https://www.olark.com/pricing on Nov 12, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Olark before buying.

## Key features

- **AI website agent:** The agent answers visitor questions from your site content, keeps its knowledge in step with the site, and qualifies leads. The in-app name for it is AI Assistant.
- **Human live chat:** Chat between visitors and your agents, with live handoff from the AI to a person in the same conversation thread.
- **Proactive engagement:** Chats can be triggered by visitor behavior such as UTM source, return visits and time on page.
- **Lead capture:** Buttons, in-chat contact forms and booking links appear when the agent decides they help.
- **Assistant split tests:** Traffic can be split between two assistant configurations to compare tone, openers and qualification approach.
- **Channels and customization:** The features page lists WhatsApp and SMS, and chatbox colors and position can be matched to the site.

## Good for

- Small sites that want live chat priced per agent
- Teams that want an AI agent at a fixed monthly fee instead of per-resolution pricing
- Sales and lead-generation chat on a marketing site

## Worth knowing

- The AI agent starts at $400 a month, billed annually, which is far above the $29 live chat seat price.
- The pricing page does not say whether the $29 seat price is monthly or annual billing.
- Olark is a chat product; the pages here show no full ticketing or help center product.
- SSO, regional routing and custom SLAs are only in the sales-only Custom package.

## ToolGPA grades

**GPA: 2.2 out of 4**, graded Nov 12, 2026. Olark is live chat for websites, priced per human seat, with a separate AI agent package. The AI package starts at $400 a month billed annually, about 14 times the seat price, and the pages show no ticketing or help center.

- **Value for money: C.** $29 per agent a month is the middle of the category. The AI agent package is $400 a month billed annually, about 14 times that.
- **Free plan and trial: C.** A 14-day trial of Live Chat with no credit card. There is no free plan.
- **Features: C.** Live chat with human agents, and an AI agent as a separate package. It does the chat job fully, but it is a smaller job: the pages show no ticketing or help center.
- **Ease of use: C.** No store rating on record, and the chat widget and AI answers need setting up.
- **Platforms and integrations: B.** Web plus iPhone and Android apps, and 8 listed integrations. No desktop app on record.

These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from Olark's own pages on 12 November 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews.

## Where it stands among help desk and live chat tools

- Olark's GPA of 2.2 is higher than 25 of the 66 other help desk and live chat tools we grade, and level with 10.
- It stands best on platforms and integrations (B, above 6 of 66) and worst on features (C, above 3).
- Its paid plans start at $29 a month for each person, against a middle price of $29 for the category: 27 of the 57 others that charge start lower.
- On features, ease of use and platforms it scores 2.3 out of 4. 16 tools score higher and cost less.

The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/customer-support

## Keep it, or make your own?

**Keep it.** To replace Olark you would be making an AI model answering your customers from your own help articles. That is not a weekend's work, with an AI app builder or without one. It costs $348 a year.

- You could not: An AI model answering your customers from your own help articles.
- You could not: The WhatsApp Business API, which Meta opens only through approved partners.
- You could not: Texts to thousands of numbers, registered with the carriers.
- You could not: A chat box on your site that reaches you the moment a customer types.
- You could not: A chatbot builder hooked into the messaging apps.
- You could not: A real app for iOS and Android. Something home-made would be a web page.
- You could not: It is priced for each person, which means accounts and billing for a team.
- You could not: It plugs into other products, Salesforce, HubSpot and Zendesk among them.

A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it.

## Works with

Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk, Help Scout, Front, Mailchimp, Shopify, Zapier

**Tags:** Live chat, AI support agent, Chatbots, WhatsApp messaging, SMS marketing

## Alternatives

- [Text by LiveChat](https://toolgpa.com/tools/livechat): Website chat, ticketing and an AI agent from the LiveChat team. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/livechat-vs-olark)
- [tawk.to](https://toolgpa.com/tools/tawk-to): Free live chat, ticketing and help center, with paid add-ons. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/olark-vs-tawk-to)
- [Crisp](https://toolgpa.com/tools/crisp): Live chat and shared inbox priced per workspace, not per seat. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/crisp-vs-olark)
- [Tidio](https://toolgpa.com/tools/tidio): Live chat, ticketing and the Lyro AI agent priced by conversations. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/olark-vs-tidio)
- [Smartsupp](https://toolgpa.com/tools/smartsupp): Live chat, WhatsApp and email inbox with the Mira AI shopping agent. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/olark-vs-smartsupp)

## Sources

The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Nov 12, 2026:

- https://www.olark.com/pricing
- https://www.olark.com/features
- https://www.olark.com/integrations
- https://www.olark.com

Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/olark
Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).