A LiveAgent alternative for founder-led email support

If customer support includes phone calls, a chat window, and social messages, LiveAgent has a place for those channels. If your queue is mostly email, Pipp gives your team one shared place to work through it together, with our AI and yours. Pipp AI, in beta, translates conversations, drafts replies in your style and summarizes them. Your own agent can connect over MCP at no cost and do nearly everything you can do in Pipp. The core inbox and agent access are free forever, for unlimited teammates and inboxes; Pipp AI is free during beta and fairly priced afterward.

LiveAgent’s Starter plan includes email ticketing, live chat, a chatbot, and a knowledge base; Team adds social channels, call center, and IVR. Those channels earn their place when customers use them. For a team centered on email, Pipp keeps every conversation and every teammate in one inbox, with no per-agent bill. Start using Pipp.

The short answer

Choose Pipp if your team mainly answers customer email and wants a great shared inbox. Every teammate gets a seat for free, and your own agent can set up, assign and send at no cost. Chat is already in the works, with more coming soon.

Choose LiveAgent if you need live chat, phone, a knowledge base, or several messaging channels alongside email today. Its plans change what you can connect, so check the tier before counting a channel as included.

Pipp and LiveAgent at a glance

LiveAgent claims were checked against its official pages on September 24, 2026. Plans, prices, AI, and MCP facts were checked again on October 20, 2026, after LiveAgent renamed and repackaged its plans. Details and links are below.

Built for teams that answer their own email

Pipp is for founders, developers, and small support teams whose customer conversations mostly arrive by email. If the person answering those messages is also shipping the product, one inbox to check is a real benefit. Sometimes the support department is one browser tab and one person who also fixes the bug.

The free core covers the whole team: shared inboxes, assignment, Open, Later and Closed states, internal notes, team roles and live presence. A command palette, keyboard shortcuts and 10-second undo send keep you quick. The app speaks 30 languages, and Pipp AI lets each teammate read and write in their own.

When LiveAgent earns its wider remit

LiveAgent belongs on your shortlist if you need chat and email together today. Its Starter plan includes email ticketing, live chat with a chatbot, a knowledge base, a customer portal, and event rules. That can serve a small team that answers email and website chat in the same shift.

Team adds Facebook, Instagram, X, Viber, WhatsApp, and Telegram, a call center with IVR, reporting, and SLA rules. Business raises the limits and adds an MCP server. If customers already call you, or your team depends on those channels and routing rules, LiveAgent has them now.

What LiveAgent costs for two agents

LiveAgent displays US-dollar per-agent rates for annual and monthly billing. Its invoicing guide says EU invoices can be converted to euros at the exchange rate on the billing day.

Annual rates are billed yearly. Starter costs $15 per agent per month on annual billing or $19 monthly, for up to five agents. Team costs $29 or $35, for up to 15 agents. Business costs $49 or $59, for any team size. Enterprise is a flat $3,199 per month on annual billing, or $3,999 monthly. That fee includes 80 agents.

These are base seat calculations, before tax, add-ons, AI provider charges, or negotiated terms. The annual column is a monthly equivalent, not a month-to-month payment.

At the displayed annual rate, two Starter seats cost $360 a year and two Team seats cost $696 a year. Enterprise is left out because its flat fee covers 80 agents.

The plan differences matter as much as the seat rate. Starter allows three email accounts and two chat buttons, with no social channels, call center, or reporting; Team allows ten email accounts and five chat buttons, and adds social channels and the call center. An extra knowledge base costs $19 per month. Check your actual channels before multiplying a seat price.

LiveAgent offers a 30-day trial without a credit card. Its separate free-product page describes a limited free account with seven days of ticket history, limited integrations, no social accounts, and missing features. The pricing page says to upgrade to a paid plan when the trial ends, and we haven’t verified the current free-account signup flow or every free limit. Treat the free account, trial, and paid subscription as different offers.

Pipp’s core inbox and agent access are free forever, for two teammates or twenty, with no cap on inboxes. Pipp AI is free during beta and fairly priced afterward. We haven’t set that price yet, so we can’t quote a total that includes paid Pipp AI.

How AI fits into the bill

LiveAgent’s pricing page lists a chatbot, an answer assistant, human handover, and an autoresponder, plus built-in summaries and call transcripts. AI agents can answer chats and reply to tickets. LiveAgent says it doesn’t charge for AI. You connect your own account at OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, or LiveAgent’s FlowHunt platform and pay that provider for what you use. Plans limit the number of AI agents: one on Starter, five on Team, 50 on Business. An older LiveAgent guide describes FlowHunt credits instead. Your provider bill depends on your workload, and we haven’t verified a representative one.

Pipp AI needs no provider account. It’s in beta, and an owner or admin turns it on in Settings → AI. It translates conversations so everyone reads and writes in their own language, and the customer gets theirs. It drafts replies in each person’s writing style and summarizes conversations. It never sends a reply on its own. It’s free during beta and fairly priced afterward.

You can also connect your own agent over MCP at no cost. Pipp works with any MCP agent, including Claude, ChatGPT (Dots), Codex, Grok and Grok Bot. It works as you, with the access you approve, and can do nearly everything you can do in Pipp: set up the workspace, domain and inboxes, invite teammates, assign, snooze and close conversations, write notes, and draft and send replies. Your teammates see what it did. Your own code can call the same 72 operations over our HTTP API. LiveAgent’s MCP server connects external AI tools such as Claude on Business and Enterprise, from $49 per agent per month on annual billing.

If you want AI answering chats and tickets now, LiveAgent does that. If you want a team email inbox and a full agent connection without a per-seat bill, Pipp charges nothing for either.

What’s coming to Pipp

Chat is already in the works, and more is coming soon. If chat or phone is part of this week’s support coverage, LiveAgent already has a plan for it.

Can you move from LiveAgent to Pipp?

There’s no automatic importer yet, so run both side by side while you switch. Pipp is free, so that costs nothing. Point new email at Pipp and keep LiveAgent for chat, calls and older tickets as long as you need them.

LiveAgent documents CSV exports in parts of its agent panel, ticket exports through API v3, and a database dump on request for paying customers leaving the service. Its API export example notes a 10,000-record retrieval ceiling for a filter and recommends narrower filters. Those routes are useful for keeping your own record of past tickets.

Questions about Pipp as a LiveAgent alternative

Is Pipp a complete LiveAgent replacement?

For shared email support, Pipp covers the inbox, the team and the AI. LiveAgent also has live chat on Starter, and social channels, call center, and IVR from Team. If you use those today, keep them running next to Pipp.

Does LiveAgent have a free plan or only a trial?

LiveAgent advertises a 30-day trial on its main pricing page and describes a separate limited free account elsewhere. The free page says ticket history is limited to seven days. We haven’t verified the current free signup flow, so check its terms for your account before treating it as a permanent working setup.

Does LiveAgent Starter include phone support?

Starter includes live chat and email ticketing; the call center and IVR start on Team. Live chat and phone are different channels, despite how often they share a support-team calendar.

Is Pipp free forever?

Our core inbox is free forever for unlimited teammates, inboxes and conversations, and so is connecting your own AI agent. Pipp AI is free during beta and fairly priced afterward. Fair daily sending limits apply, as described below.

When can I use Pipp, and will it have chat?

Today. Create an account, set up an inbox and start answering customer email with your team.

For now, each account can create up to 3 workspaces per day. Each workspace can send up to 100 recipient deliveries per day.

Each recipient in To or Cc counts separately. An email sent to 2 people in To and 1 in Cc uses 3 deliveries. Both daily limits reset at 00:00 UTC.

If you need the limit removed, email us at hello@pipp.so.

Chat is already in the works, and more is coming soon. Pipp AI is in beta and off by default. An owner or admin can turn it on in Settings → AI. Your own agent can connect at any time. Start using Pipp.

Should I cancel LiveAgent before trying Pipp?

No need. Try Pipp for your email while LiveAgent keeps handling chat and phone. Pipp is free, so running both costs nothing extra.

Want to keep customer email close?

Make room for the customer conversations that matter to your team. Pipp gives everyone one shared inbox, with our AI and yours. You can start today.

Core inbox and agent access: free forever. Pipp AI: free during beta, fairly priced afterward.

Start using Pipp ↗

Sources

We publish this comparison. Pipp is a product of Telesoft AG. LiveAgent claims and terms were checked on September 24, 2026, and plans, prices, AI, and MCP claims again on October 20, 2026. Prices and packaging may change. Agent and MCP claims were rechecked on October 27, 2026.

• LiveAgent pricing and plan comparison, for plans, limits, channels, AI billing, MCP server, currency, and trial (rechecked October 20, 2026)
• LiveAgent’s free-account description, for limited free access and seven-day ticket history
• LiveAgent FlowHunt AI credits guide, for its older description of FlowHunt credits
• LiveAgent invoicing guide, for dollar-denominated summaries and EU invoice conversion
• LiveAgent data export guide, for CSV, API, and database-dump routes
• LiveAgent API ticket export example, for ticket/message export and retrieval limits