What are the best alternatives to respond.io?

The first reason is that there is no single meter: there are four, plus one more from Meta. You pay the subscription, you pay for extra users, you pay for monthly active contacts and you pay for AI credits; Meta's WhatsApp fees are not included and are topped up from a separate balance. None of the four is abusive on its own; the problem is that in January you cannot know what September will cost.

The second is where the agent that answers on its own lives. Starter carries the inbox and the writing-assistance layer, which helps a person type faster, but the autonomous agent starts on Growth, whose monthly equivalent billed yearly is $159 USD ($1,908 USD per year) against Starter's $79 USD. If what you bought was an agent and you landed on Starter, you bought something else.

The third is the hard cap on credits. Starter includes 5,000 AI credits per month, Growth 10,000 and Advanced 20,000; overage costs $15 USD per additional 1,000, and there is a hard limit at twice your plan's allowance. Once you reach it, the AI switches off until the next cycle. That is a reasonable budget guard and also a blackout: your best sales month is exactly the month the agent stops answering.

The fourth is monthly active contacts. Growth starts from 1,000 active contacts and the additional block of 100 costs $12 USD on Growth and $15 USD on Advanced. It is a meter that rises precisely in high season, when more people write to you, and it does not depend on how much work the platform did, only on how many people spoke to you.

The fifth is users. Starter includes five and charges $12 USD per additional user per month; Growth and Advanced include ten and charge USD 20 and $24 USD respectively. If your plan is for the team to grow, that line grows with you.

The sixth is the invoice. Its Spanish site publishes prices in dollars just like the English one. We found no peso price, Mexican entity, VAT treatment or CFDI commitment, and WhatsApp fees arrive as consumed balance rather than a line you can budget in advance.

• It publishes a price. An alternative that only quotes on a call cannot be compared, so all five publish at least one list price.
• It declares its meters. That is the criterion that orders this list: how many separate things are billed, and which of them move on their own month to month.
• It does the same job: gathering conversations from several channels, distributing them across people, and keeping a record of the contact.
• It can be bought from Mexico today, even when it bills in dollars; where no local entity or invoicing is published, this page says so.
• Every claim here links to the vendor's public page and carries its verification date.

Eva is our product and appears on this list, so the list is not neutral by nature; that is why every row links the public page it came from. respond.io's plans were verified on 24 September 2026 and its AI-credit top-up on 16 September; its annual totals, extra users and extra contacts and the Wizybot figures on 14 August 2026; Kommo on 24 September 2026; Whaticket's PRO plan on 16 September 2026 and its extra connection on 28 September 2026; Aurora Inbox between 28 and 29 September 2026. Every price is printed in the currency its vendor publishes, without conversion: of this list, only Aurora Inbox publishes a peso rate, while respond.io, Kommo, Whaticket and Wizybot bill in dollars. The respond.io prices shown here are the annual-billing figures, which is how its own page publishes them, and the automation figure we quote is Wizybot's own claim, not a measurement of ours.

1. 1. Eva

   Best for: Anyone who wants an AI agent to quote from their real catalog, book and follow up.

   Includes a CRM, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, calls, email and your website.

   Setup included.

   Price: Eva from $191 USD a month, billed yearly, AI credits included.

   What costs extra and the terms

   Source

2. 2. Kommo

   Best for: Anyone leaving because they want a real sales CRM behind the conversation rather than only an inbox: visual sales-stage boards, tasks, contact records, campaign attribution, audience synchronization and sales-and-marketing analytics, with a native WhatsApp API integration.

   Tradeoff: There is no monthly option: pricing is quoted per paid user per month ($20 USD on Básico, $30 USD on Avanzado), with a published minimum of six months prepaid, meaning $120 USD per seat before you start. You trade four meters for two different problems: the entry commitment and the per-person cost. The autonomous agent starts on Avanzado, included credits do not roll over, and the entry-level extra credit package costs $29 USD per month. It bills in dollars only.

   Source

3. 3. Aurora Inbox

   Best for: Anyone who wants a bill that fits on one page: a monthly peso price with three users included on every plan, an AI agent with 800 monthly responses from the entry plan, the three Meta channels, and invoicing with Mexican tax identifiers and downloadable CFDI files.

   Tradeoff: $1,800 MXN per month plus VAT (or $99 USD) for Aurora CRM. Each additional user and each additional channel costs $240 MXN per month plus VAT. It is not a platform the size of respond.io: we found no equivalent to its enterprise controls, its routing automation or its reporting, and it publishes no AI-response overage price either.

   Source

4. 4. Whaticket

   Best for: A large support team that wants the meters gone: it publishes three users on Plan BASIC and eight on Plan PRO, with no published cap on contacts or chats (meaning no active-contact counter) and one WhatsApp connection included.

   Tradeoff: USD 49 per month on Plan BASIC and $109 USD on Plan PRO; each additional WhatsApp connection is from USD 20 per month. AI is not included: its usage is paid directly to OpenAI with no published allowance or per-conversation consumption, so the AI meter does not disappear, it changes vendor and invoice. Its legal entity is American, so the tax line is not solved on that side either.

   Source

5. 5. Wizybot

   Best for: An online store on Shopify, WooCommerce or VTEX that wants this solved today: it installs itself, charges no implementation fee, publishes no lock-in, includes human agents with no published limit and sends WhatsApp campaigns. Its own site claims it automates «96 percent» of enquiries.

   Tradeoff: Its public plan at $69.99 USD every 30 days includes 1,250 AI messages and 2,500 AI comments per month, then charges $0.07 USD per extra message and $0.05 USD per extra comment: if its own claim holds, that counter runs out quickly. It is a single plan with a public price (Personalizado publishes none) and it is built around the store rather than around a sales team: we found no opportunity CRM, appointment booking or in-chat payment. It bills in dollars only.

   Source

Eva in detail: Eva hands the conversation to a person on your team with the full history, and also handles Instagram comments and TikTok ad comments. With Essential at $229 USD month to month and 5,000 credits, Eva is not the cheapest option on this list. Payment inside the conversation, with your tools connected, is by SPEI bank transfer. Setup is included: we configure everything Eva does today, at no extra cost. A 1,000-credit top-up costs $49 USD and each extra user is $17 USD per month. On enterprise controls (single sign-on, multiple workspaces, data masking and automatic notices to other systems), that row belongs to respond.io, and it deserves a review if your IT team requires them before signing. There is also no public self-serve signup or free trial today.

Eva is our product and comes first. These are the criteria: published pricing, declared meters, the same job of gathering and distributing conversations with a contact record, availability to buy from Mexico, and claims with a source and a date. Eva comes first because it combines an agent that executes, an included CRM, every channel and comments, AI already in the price and public pricing. Kommo follows for buyers who need a sales-stage board and sales analytics; Aurora for pesos, local invoicing and a simple bill; Whaticket for many people answering without an active-contact counter; and Wizybot for an online store that wants it installed today. If what you are buying is inbox infrastructure for a large team, with enterprise controls your IT function requires, respond.io keeps a real published advantage and it deserves comparison before you switch.

respond.io is the better choice for a large human team that covers many channels and requires enterprise controls.

• One inbox for WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram, email, live chat and calls.Source · Jul 28, 2026
• Advanced includes single sign-on, multiple workspaces, data masking and automatic notices to other systems.Source · Jul 28, 2026
• Growth and Advanced include ten users, and Enterprise lists unlimited users.Source · Jul 28, 2026

The first step is the WhatsApp number. On respond.io, Meta's WhatsApp fees are paid from a balance you top up, so your number is connected through them and moving it means migrating the WhatsApp Business account between providers inside Meta, with verification in the middle. Plan for days rather than minutes, ask for the release procedure in writing, and ask as well what happens to any unused WhatsApp balance.

The second is your data. Contacts, conversation history, tags and custom fields are yours, and on Growth and Advanced there is a technical path to get them out because those plans publish an API and automatic notices to other systems. We did not verify that export's exact scope, so do what you would with any vendor: ask for the export clause in the document you will sign and for a test export before you cancel anything.

The third is the configuration, and with respond.io there is usually a lot of it. Workflows with their routing and assignment rules, broadcasts, custom fields and reports do not copy across to the next vendor. Setup is included: we configure everything Eva does today, at no extra cost. Eva goes live in up to 5 business days once access and catalog are ready. With Kommo, Aurora, Whaticket and Wizybot the configuration is yours to build beyond whatever the plan includes.

The fourth is the calendar. If you paid yearly ($948 USD on Starter, $1,908 USD on Growth or $3,348 USD on Advanced), the overlap is already paid: use the remaining term to run the new vendor in parallel on a secondary channel or a time window, and move when you have seen real conversations resolved. And before committing to the next one, use the fact that respond.io publishes a seven-day trial with Growth features and no card, so you measure against something rather than a memory.

The fifth is the exit on the other side, which almost nobody reads before signing. Kommo requires six months prepaid from the first purchase; Aurora states that payment is in advance and non-refundable; Whaticket states there is no refund for early termination and that fees for the remaining term become due; Wizybot is cancelled by uninstalling the app and publishes no lock-in. Read those four clauses before signing the next one.

And on our side, so you know what is left for you: we handle the number's migration inside Meta ourselves, the same way we handle your company's verification. Your contacts come into Eva by CSV or Excel file, with deduplication on import; your catalog comes in by file or by API; and on top of that a contact is created and updated on its own the moment the person writes. Ask your current vendor for the export and we go through it with you during setup, before you cancel anything.