Subscription chatbot or custom assistant: when each one serves
Published on October 04, 2026 · Updated on October 11, 2026
A subscription chatbot works when your service is simple and the same for everyone.
A custom assistant makes sense when you have appointments to book, customers who write any which way and information only your business has.
The price gap follows the gap in work.
What a subscription chatbot gives you
- A ready-made menu or flow, the same for every customer on the platform.
- A monthly fee, with no setup.
- Answers based on what you enter yourself in a dashboard.
- Little or no fine-tuning: you use what the platform offers.
What a custom assistant gives you
- Content written from your business: services, prices, lead times and calendar rules.
- A connected calendar, with booking, rescheduling, cancellation and the three reminders.
- A team running it: monitoring, tuning answers and reading the questions that come in.
- Wording for each line of business: clinics, salons, shops, real estate and insurance brokers don’t talk the same way.
What the custom option costs
No setup fee, and a monthly fee from $500 to $1,050.
On the annual plan, 12 months paid upfront, the monthly fee gets a 20% discount ($400, $640 or $840 per month).
It takes more work at the start, because it needs your content and review in the first weeks.
When ready-made is enough
If you just need to answer the same questions and share your address, hours and price list, ready-made works and costs less.
We tell you that before selling, and we mean it: selling an assistant to someone who needs a menu is costly for both sides.
Either way, a message sent through the official API follows Meta’s rate table.
Decide with three questions
- Does your service need to book, confirm and remind appointments?
- Do questions arrive written any which way, with voice notes and typos?
- Is there business information only you know, and that changes the answer?
Two yeses point to the assistant.
None, and ready-made is enough.