My Honest Chatbase Review After Using It For 4 Years (2026)

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Chatbase has always been one of the easiest ways to build an AI chatbot. And it just got easier: you no longer need to click through the platform, because you can simply tell Chatbase what you want and it makes the changes for you.

But should you use it for your business?

I have used Chatbase for my clients for more than 4 years, so I know exactly what works and what doesn’t.

In this review, I will show you what makes Chatbase great, where it falls short, and what it costs.

Our Verdict

Our Verdict

Chatbase is one of the easiest platforms to build AI agents.

You can train it on your website or documents. And within minutes, it answers questions based on your data, without any technical setup.

You don’t even need technical experience to improve it. You can simply tell the Chatbase AI (called the Backstage) what you want to change, and it makes the changes for you.

This makes it a great fit for anyone that wants to get started with AI quickly.

At the same time, Chatbase goes beyond the basics. It can do AI actions like booking appointments or checking order info. And it comes with a built-in live chat and help desk, so a human can jump in whenever the AI needs one.

Chatbase offers both free and paid plans, starting at $40/month.

Chatbase logo
Go to Chatbase
4.5
Plans Cost
$40 to $500
Introductory offer
Free plan with 1 chatbot and 50 message credits/month
Standout features
Easy to set up, Ask AI to make changes, Data sources, AI Actions, WhatsApp Outbound

Pros

  • Talk to an AI to change or improve your AI agent (the Chatbase Backstage)
  • Chatbot can be set up in less than 10 minutes
  • AI Knowledge Base
  • Connect with other tools using AI Actions
  • Easily update AI answers with Chat Logs and Suggestions
  • Built-in live chat and help desk
  • Livechat integrations with Zendesk, Salesforce, Hubspot, Zoho Desk & Freshdesk

Cons

  • Cannot create chatbot flows
  • No marketing possibilities on Facebook and Instagram
  • Cannot send proactive messages on the website

What is Chatbase?

Chatbase is an AI chatbot platform that lets you build AI agents trained on your own data.

You can train it on your website, documents or knowledge base. Then, Chatbase will use it to automatically reply to questions.

But Chatbase goes beyond simple chatbots. You can also connect your agent to other tools, allowing it to take actions like booking appointments, checking order statuses, or collecting leads.

Home page of the Chatbase website

One thing that stands out is how easy it is to get started. Unlike more complex platforms that require technical setup, Chatbase lets you go build an AI chatbot in just a few minutes.

Chatbase at a Glance

So what can Chatbase actually do? Here are the main features:

  • The most special one: you can just talk to an AI to change your AI or create your AI agent. This is called the Backstage:Change the tone of voice of your AI agent with the Chatbase Backstage
  • Data sources: you can train Chatbase on your own data, such as your website, files or Notion pages:Train Chatbase on websites, files, text snippets, Q&As, Notion pages and tickets
  • AI Actions: your agent can actually do stuff, like booking appointments or checking the status of an order:Add AI Actions to your AI agent in Chatbase
  • Chat Logs: see an overview of all conversations, and update any answer you don’t like:See an overview of all conversations in the Chatbase chat logs
  • Procedures: step-by-step instructions for your AI, like how to handle an order status question:Create a procedure with step-by-step instructions in Chatbase
  • Help desk: built-in live chat and tickets. Whenever your AI agent doesn’t know the answer, or someone wants to talk to a human, you can turn the conversation into a live chat or create a support ticket:Manage tickets in the built-in help desk inbox of Chatbase

How to use Chatbase?

This is what the Chatbase interface looks like:

Overview of the Chatbase interface

On the left, you find everything you need:

  • Playground: talk with your agent and check if it gives the right answers
  • Build: the instructions, data sources and actions of your AI
  • Activity: a look at all your conversations
  • Analytics: how your agent is doing
  • Contacts: all the people that talked to your chatbot
  • Channels: where your agent lives, like your website or WhatsApp
  • Integrations: connect Chatbase with other platforms
  • Outbound: send WhatsApp campaigns
  • Help desk: the live chat and tickets from your customers
  • Settings: control the settings of your agent

But here is the thing: you barely have to use the interface, because you can just tell the Backstage what you want. More on that in a minute.

Creating your first AI agent is super easy. You start by filling in your website URL, so Chatbase can train the agent on your own data:

Fill in your website URL to train your AI Agent in Chatbase

Next, you choose what your agent will do. Chatbase has templates for customer support, sales and shopping assistants:

Customize your agent's personality with a template in Chatbase

After that, you select the tools in your tech stack, such as Shopify or Zendesk:

Select the tools in your tech stack in Chatbase

And finally, you choose where you want to deploy your agent, like your website or WhatsApp:

Select where you will be deploying your AI agent in Chatbase

That’s it. Chatbase even grabs your logo and styling from your website automatically. Within a minute, I could already talk to my chatbot:

Talk directly to your new AI agent in Chatbase

Now, here is where it gets interesting. When I want to change or improve my agent, I don’t have to touch the platform at all.

I can simply go to the Backstage and describe what I want. For example, I asked it to change the tone of voice of my agent, and it did exactly that:

Change the tone of voice of your AI agent with the Chatbase Backstage

The Backstage shows its changes for approval first, and this works for almost everything: instructions, integrations, actions, you name it.

And once your agent is live, you can keep testing it in the Playground whenever you like.

Ease of use
How easy it is to build and change things once you're set up? On a scale of 1 to 5.
5
Setup difficulty
How much technical work it takes to get going.
Easy
Average setup time
How long until your first bot or AI agent is live.
10 minutes
Set up with AI
Describe what you want in a chat, and an AI builds the bot or agent for you.
Test before going live
You can try the bot or agent yourself before customers see it.

Want to compare Chatbase with 33 other chatbot platforms? Compare them here →

Chatbase AI Features

Chatbase’s AI features are the core of the platform. Instead of building traditional chatbot flows, everything revolves around 4 things:

  1. Data sources
  2. AI Actions
  3. Procedures
  4. Suggestions

Data Sources

You can train your AI agent on data sources. In Chatbase, there are 6 types of data you can use:

  1. Files (PDFs, Word documents and text files)
  2. Text
  3. Website URLs
  4. Question & Answers
  5. Notion
  6. Support tickets from Zendesk or Salesforce (only on the Pro plan)

Train Chatbase on websites, files, text snippets, Q&As, Notion pages and tickets

The agent can then automatically answer questions based on that data.

You’re also not locked into a single AI model like ChatGPT. Chatbase lets you choose from multiple leading models, like Claude, Llama and DeepSeek.

AI Actions

With AI Actions, your agent can actually do stuff during a conversation. These are the built-in actions Chatbase offers:

Add AI Actions to your AI agent in Chatbase

For example, I connected my agent to Shopify. When a customer asks where their order is, the agent looks it up and answers right away:

Get Order Status of a Shopify Order in Chatbase

And if Chatbase doesn’t have a built-in connection with your tool, you can create a custom action yourself:

Create a custom action in Chatbase

Even here, you don’t need a technical background, because you can just ask the Backstage to build the custom action for you.

Procedures

Procedures are step-by-step instructions that tell your agent exactly how to handle a request.

Take an order status question. In a procedure, you spell out the steps: ask for the customer’s email address, ask for the order number, look up the order with the Shopify action, and then show the result to the customer:

Create a procedure with step-by-step instructions in Chatbase

So actions are what your agent can do, and procedures are how it should do them. Procedures can even use your actions in their steps.

Suggestions

Suggestions is a feature that spots gaps in your knowledge base. If people keep asking questions your agent can’t answer, Chatbase points that out, so you can fix it.

Suggestions overview in Chatbase, that spot gaps in your knowledge base

Good to know: Suggestions is only available on the Pro plan ($500/month).

And whenever you don’t like an answer your agent gave, you can revise it straight from the Chat Logs:

Revise an answer of your AI agent in Chatbase

Chatbase automatically learns from every revised answer. That way, your agent gets better with every conversation.

Build an AI agent
You can build an AI agent that replies on its own.
Train the AI on your content
The AI learns from your website, documents or files.
AI rules
Tell the AI what it may and may not do, and which steps to follow. Also called guidance, guardrails or procedures.
Let the AI perform actions
The AI can do things in other tools, like book a meeting or update your CRM.
Connect the AI to MCP servers
The AI agent can use any tool that has an MCP server, without a custom setup per tool.

Chatbase Help Desk

Chatbase comes with its own help desk, available from the Standard plan.

Whenever the AI doesn’t know the answer, you can hand the conversation over to a live chat agent. Or the customer can create a ticket, which your team picks up in the inbox:

Manage tickets in the built-in help desk inbox of Chatbase

And if you want, you can also connect Chatbase to other help desk tools, like Zendesk, Intercom and Freshdesk. So you can either use Chatbase as a standalone help desk, or connect it to the help desk you already use.

Hand over to a human
Your team can take over a conversation from the bot or AI, in an inbox inside the platform.
AI copilot
AI helps your team inside the inbox after a handover: it summarises the chat, tells you the customer's mood, and suggests replies.
Auto-assignment rules
Conversations go to the right teammate automatically.
SLAs
Set response-time targets and get alerted when a conversation is about to miss them.
Connects to an external help desk
Hands conversations over to helpdesk platforms like Zendesk, Freshdesk, Intercom and similar.
Contact profiles
One profile per person with their details and chat history.
Custom fields
Add your own fields to a profile, like order number or budget.
Merge contacts across channels
The same person on WhatsApp and Instagram becomes one profile.

Chatbase Integrations

Aside from the help desk integrations, Chatbase also offers several direct integrations with:

  • eCommerce platforms like Stripe and Shopify
  • Appointment platforms like Calendly and Cal.com
  • Slack
  • Automation platforms like Zapier, Make and N8N

Chatbase Integrations

Likewise, you can create your own integrations using custom actions. And if you need more, Chatbase also offers an API and Webhooks to send Leads data to other applications.

Direct integrations
How many built-in connections to other tools does it have?
11-50
Zapier
Direct integration with Zapier, one of the largest integration platforms in the world.
Make
Direct integration with Make (formerly Integromat), one of the largest integration platforms in the world.
API Calls
Send data to or get data from another tool's API, for example inside a flow.

Channels, Lead Capture & Marketing

With Chatbase, you can deploy your AI agent across multiple channels, including your website, email, Slack, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram.

For most users, the main use case will be the website widget. You can fully customize it to your branding, and when you fill in your URL, Chatbase even grabs your styling and colors automatically:

Customize your chat widget in Chatbase

You can also enable voice mode on the widget, so visitors can talk to your agent instead of typing. And there is a phone channel, which is currently in beta.

Additionally, Chatbase lets you create a standalone help page that looks similar to a ChatGPT interface:

Chatbase Help Page

On the marketing side, Chatbase offers outbound campaigns on WhatsApp. You send a message to your audience, and when people reply, your AI agent picks up the conversation (or a human does, via a help desk ticket):

Send an outbound WhatsApp campaign in Chatbase

For some companies, that is a huge benefit: you reach out first, and the AI handles the follow-up.

WhatsApp is the exception, though. There are no campaigns or marketing automations for Facebook and Instagram, and you cannot send proactive messages on your website based on user behavior.

Broadcasts
Send one message to many contacts at once.
Sequences
Send a series of messages over time.
Proactive website messages
Send a visitor a message based on what they do, like 90 seconds on the pricing page.
Comment to DM on Facebook
Send a DM to someone who comments on your Facebook post.
Click-to-message Facebook ads
Run Facebook ads that open a chat with your bot.
Facebook Ref URL
A link that opens Messenger and starts a specific flow.
Comment to DM on Instagram
Send a DM to someone who comments on your Instagram post or reel.
Follow to DM on Instagram
Send a DM to someone who follows you on Instagram.
Story mention reply on Instagram
Reply in DM when someone mentions you in their story.
WhatsApp message templates
Send approved WhatsApp templates, for broadcasts or for follow-ups outside the 24-hour window.

Chatbase Pricing

Chatbase offers a free plan with basic features, and paid plans starting at $40/month.

These are the pricing plans of Chatbase:

Free

$0/mo

Test whether Chatbase is the right fit for your business.

  • 50 message credits/month
  • 1 MB training content size
  • 1 team member
  • Limited access to AI models
  • Website channel

Hobby

$40/mo

The cheapest way to get started.

  • 700 message credits/month
  • 5 AI actions per agent
  • 10 MB training content size
  • 2 team members
  • Basic analytics
  • WhatsApp, Facebook & Instagram channels

Standard

$150/mo

Everything most businesses need, including the help desk.

  • 4,000 message credits/month
  • 8 AI actions per agent
  • 20 MB training content size
  • 3 team members
  • Help desk
  • Voice and telephony
  • Outbound campaigns on WhatsApp
  • API access
  • Auto retrain agents

Chatbase also has a Pro plan ($500/month). That is basically the Standard plan with more message credits, plus Suggestions and the option to use your Zendesk or Salesforce tickets to train your AI agent.

Also, if you pay yearly, you get 2 months free on any plan.

Chatbase Add-Ons

If you need more flexibility, Chatbase offers several add-ons:

  • Auto-recharge credits: $40 per 1,000 message credits
  • Extra AI agent: $25/month per agent
  • Remove Chatbase branding: $99/month

These add-ons allow you to perfectly tailor your needs to the Chatbase pricing plan you want:

Pricing add-ons of Chatbase

Starting price
The lowest price you can start with per month, including seat minimums (in US dollars).
$40 per month
Free plan
Does the chatbot platform provide a free plan?
Free trial
Does the chatbot platform provide a free trial?

Analytics

Chatbase shows you how your agent is doing, such as the total number of chats, messages, and thumbs up and down:

See chats analytics in Chatbase

You can also see which topics people ask about and the sentiment of those conversations. For those two, you need to upgrade your plan.

The help desk has its own analytics, showing how many tickets were created and solved:

See help desk analytics in Chatbase

To be honest, the analytics are still pretty minimal. But that isn’t a huge problem, and here is why.

You can just ask the Backstage. I asked how many of last month’s conversations were about our return policy, and it gave me the answer straight away:

Ask the Chatbase Backstage a question about your analytics

Dashboard
An overview of conversations and contacts.
Ask AI about your data
Ask questions about your analytics in a chat and get the answer from an AI.
Flow analytics
See how people move through each flow and where they drop off.
AI Resolution rate
How many conversations the chatbot resolved on its own, and how often it had to fall back or hand over.
Knowledge gaps
Shows questions the AI couldn't answer, so you know what to add to its knowledge. Also called suggestions.
Conversion tracking
Tracks sales, bookings or sign-ups that come from conversations.
Team performance
Response times and workload per teammate.
Custom reports
Build your own reports or dashboards.

Is Chatbase worth it?

So, should you use Chatbase to create your chatbot?

Yes, I 100% recommend it.

Chatbase makes it super easy to create an AI agent. You can train it on your own knowledge, let it take actions, and improve its answers over time.

And you don’t need any technical knowledge, because you can just talk to the Backstage and it builds everything for you.

Add the built-in live chat and help desk, and you can handle all your customer conversations in one tool.

Go to Chatbase

But if you are thinking of using Chatbase as your chatbot tool, you should also consider these drawbacks:

  1. You cannot create your own chatbot flows
  2. There are no marketing possibilities on Facebook and Instagram
  3. You cannot send proactive messages on your website

In case those drawbacks are too severe for you, it may be a good idea to consider some Chatbase alternatives.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Chatbase do?

Chatbase lets you create chatbots that are trained on your own data, such as your website or documents of your business. Once your chatbot has been trained on your data, it can automatically answer questions from customers about it.

Is Chatbase free?

Chatbase has a Free Forever plan, so yes, you can use it for free. Chatbase free plan features include 50 messages credits/month, one chatbot, and limited features to train your chatbot on. This plan is perfect if you want to test out their platform.

Is Chatbase safe?

Yes, Chatbase is safe. Chatbase is GDPR compliant and encrypts all the data that goes through the platform. Moreover, they don’t use your data to train any AI model, which many Chatbase reviews praise it for.

Does Chatbase use ChatGPT?

Yes, Chatbase supports ChatGPT models.

At the same time, it also gives you the flexibility to choose from other AI models, so you’re not locked into a single provider.

Is Chatbase legit?

Yes, Chatbase is a legit AI platform that you can use to create personalized AI Chatbots, trained on your own data. Many businesses use the platform to create their own AI chatbots.

Who are the main Chatbase competitors?

The main Chatbase competitors include Tidio, Intercom Fin, Botpress, and Voiceflow.

These are worth exploring if you’re comparing different AI agent builders.

Is Chatbase GDPR proof?

Yes, according to the Chatbase website, it is GDPR proof.

Joren Wouters

I’m Joren Wouters, founder of Chatimize. With 6+ years of experience with chatbots, I have been featured by the world’s biggest chatbot platforms, including Manychat, Chatfuel, Botpress and Chatbot.com (to name a few).

I am also one of the 30 people on the planet, that can call himself a “Manychat Educator”. This has led me to work with almost any type of business, from small to large.

I’m here to help you create powerful chat funnels that generate leads, boost your revenue, and cut down on costs.

Comments (6)

  1. Lynn

    I have been attempting to get the website to load but it doesn’t. Has Chatbase.co gone out of business?

    1. Joren Wouters

      Hey Lynn! Nope, they are still in business, but I got this complaint before. Where are you living?

  2. CB

    Very helpful review. Clear.

    1. Joren Wouters

      Thank you, CB!

  3. banco

    cuando lo conecté a IG, meta me envió una advertencia de que tengo un integrador automatizado y no cumple con sus políticas. entonces debo bajarlo?

    1. Joren Wouters

      Hey Banco! If you get this warning, I recommend disabling Chatbase for a day or so. Then, activate it again.
      This is not a Chatbase issue, rather a Meta issue. They have spam systems in place that cause this, which is pretty annoyting (also happens with other platforms).

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