Table of Contents
- Understanding HubSpot Breeze Costs
- Options to Reduce HubSpot AI Chatbot Costs (While Maintaining High Quality)
- The Realistic Path to Lower AI Costs
- Lower Cost Does Not Mean Lower Quality
- Final Recommendation: Reduce Costs, Keep Quality
Introduction
HubSpot’s AI chatbot (Breeze Customer Agent) promises to transform your customer support. It can answer questions automatically, reduce ticket volume, and provide 24/7 assistance. But there’s a catch that stops many businesses in their tracks: the cost. This article will show you how to reduce HubSpot AI Chatbot costs by up to 96% (yes, really!) while keeping strong AI performance and maximum helpfulness for your customers.
With HubSpot charging around $1 per AI conversation, the cost quickly becomes challenging, particularly when some of those conversations are just spam. And that’s before you factor in the expensive Professional or Enterprise plan required to access the feature.
Many small and medium businesses face a difficult choice. Do they limit where they use AI to control costs? Or do they skip AI chatbots entirely and miss out on faster customer support?
The good news: it doesn’t have to be this way. Major cost savings are possible without sacrificing quality or customer experience. Let’s get into it!
Understanding HubSpot Breeze Costs
Before exploring solutions, here’s a quick overview of how HubSpot charges for its AI chatbot. For an in depth breakdown, you can see our article on HubSpot AI Agent pricing Explained.
Plan Requirements
HubSpot’s Breeze Customer Agent is only available on Professional or Enterprise plans. Free and Starter plan users cannot access Breeze Customer Agent. If you aren’t already on a Professional tier subscription then using Breeze Customer Agent is out of reach (and not cost effective to upgrade just for access). But you can still add AI to your HubSpot chat widget on any plan by other means.
The Credit System
HubSpot uses a credit-based pricing model for AI features. Each AI chatbot conversation consumes 100 HubSpot credits.
Professional and Enterprise plans include a small quantity of credits for testing, then you must purchase additional HubSpot credits. The cost breaks down to approximately $1 per conversation when buying extra credit packs ($10 for 1,000 HubSpot credits, equivalent to 100 conversations).
Real-World HubSpot Cost Examples
Here’s a range of costs for different volumes of conversations:
| Conversations / Month | Extra HubSpot Credits required | Extra cost of HubSpot Credits | Potential Saving |
|---|---|---|---|
| 200 | 17,000 | $170/month | $135 (79%) |
| 500 | 47,000 | $470/month | $435 (93%) |
| 800 | 77,000 | $770/month | $735 (95%) |
| 1,600 | 157,000 | $1,570/month | $1,515 (96%) |
| 4,000 | 397,000 | $3,970/month | $3,845 (97%) |
| 8,000 | 797,000 | $7,970/month | $7,735 (97%) |
| 16,000 | 1,597,000 | $15,970/month | $15,471 (97%) |
The above figures don’t include the cost of HubSpot’s subscription plan or onboarding fees.
For many companies, these costs make the decision clear: either restrict AI usage, or abandon the technology altogether. Neither option serves your customers well. So now let’s look at how to reduce these costs while still getting great results from AI.
Options to Reduce HubSpot AI Chatbot Costs (While Maintaining High Quality)
You have three main paths to reduce your HubSpot AI chatbot costs. Each offers different trade-offs between effort, savings, and customer experience. We will cover the options here, and then we’ve put together the Realistic Path to Lower AI Costs in a following section (so feel free to skip ahead!).
- Option 1 – Reduce quantity of AI Conversations (60% potential savings, High effort)
- Option 2 – Maximise usefulness to increase ROI (0% savings, +20% ROI, High effort)
- Option 3 – Use a cost-effective Specialist AI Provider (96% saving, Low effort)
Option 1: Reduce the Quantity of AI Conversations
60% Potential Savings, High Effort
Since HubSpot charges per conversation, one approach is reducing the number of chats your AI handles. This option requires the most effort and may impact customer experience, so use this option carefully:
- Reduce nuisance conversations: If your main landing page attracts spam messages, consider replacing live chat with a contact form on that specific page. You could limit the chat widget to product pages or within your app, where visitors demonstrate real buying intent.
- Make information more visible: Analyse your most common chatbot questions. If customers frequently ask about shipping times or return policies, make that information more prominent on your website. Adding tooltips, FAQ sections, or clearer navigation can prevent questions before they’re asked.
- Fix underlying issues: Sometimes high chat volume signals a UX problem. If customers constantly ask how to complete a specific action, improving your interface could reduce incoming questions.
The downside of this approach is clear: you’re solving a cost problem by making your AI less available. Although it’s a straightforward way to reduce costs of your HubSpot AI chatbot, customers who need help may not get it, potentially hurting satisfaction.
Next, focus on getting the most value out of each chat that does happen.
Option 2: Maximise Usefulness to Increase ROI
0% Direct Savings, 20% Better ROI, High Effort
This option doesn’t reduce your AI costs directly. Instead, it ensures every AI conversation delivers real value, instead of consuming both AI credits AND then consuming human time too. The goal is avoiding situations where the AI fails to help and a human agent must step in anyway.
This option will take time to implement, but is good practice in all situations, so should be used to maximise ROI of your AI solution.
- Analyse conversation patterns: Review what subjects come up most frequently in your AI chats. Look for questions the AI could answer more more helpfully or more completely. Then update your knowledge base to provide this extra information, to help the AI provide better answers to the most frequent questions – so the customer gets a complete and useful answer meaning they don’t need to also contact human support.
- Identify knowledge gaps: Look for subjects/questions that the AI couldn’t help with. If it’s a question, add that information to your knowledge base. If it’s a problem/issue, consider adding a holding response to your knowledge base such as “we know about this issue and are working on it”. Whatever the gap is, consider giving your AI the information it needs to give your customer the answer that a human would otherwise provide, to avoid the customer needing to speak to a human after already having had an AI conversation.
How to spot these patterns?
In HubSpot there isn’t a tool that does this for you, however you can use either a standalone categorisation tool or use a specialist AI chatbot provider that already includes this feature (this will be covered below). These tools will define each conversation with a category and subject, group them together, and highlight knowledge gaps where your documentation needs improvement. This makes it easy to see what your customers ask about most and where to prioritise adding new knowledge.
This approach is worthwhile regardless of your AI provider. Ensuring accurate, helpful responses reduces the double cost of AI credits plus human agent time on the same issue.
Option 3: Use a Cost-Effective Specialist AI Provider
96% Cost Reduction, Low Effort
This option delivers the fastest, most significant impact. By switching to a specialist HubSpot AI chatbot provider, you can dramatically reduce costs while potentially improving quality.
By using a specialist, such as Resolve247, you can integrate an external AI Chatbot directly into your existing HubSpot Chat widget, so you can have AI-powered conversations without high costs from HubSpot and without changing your workflow.
The cost of providing AI responses then becomes so cost-effective that you don’t need to worry about restricting it’s usage, you can happily provide AI responses on all your pages to help all your customers without worrying about costs spiralling out of control.
Here’s the maths behind the 96% saving:
HubSpot Breeze costs approximately $1.00 per conversation (100 credits at $10 per 1,000 credits).
Specialist providers like Resolve247 have plans starting at $35 per month for 2,000 AI messages. With an average of 2.5 messages per conversation, that’s roughly 800 conversations for $35. That works out to $0.04 per conversation (a saving of 96%).
The comparison:
| Conversations / Month | Extra cost of HubSpot Credits | Resolve247 Cost | Saving |
|---|---|---|---|
| 200 (500 msgs) | $170/month | $35/month | $135 (79%) |
| 500 (1,250 msgs) | $470/month | $35/month | $435 (93%) |
| 800 (2,000 msgs) | $770/month | $35/month | $735 (95%) |
| 1,600 (4,000 msgs) | $1,570/month | $55/month | $1,515 (96%) |
| 4,000 (10,000 msgs) | $3,970/month | $125/month | $3,845 (97%) |
| 8,000 (20,000 msgs) | $7,970/month | $235/month | $7,735 (97%) |
| 16,000 (40,000 msgs) | $15,970/month | $499/month | $15,471 (97%) |
The above costs are based on paying monthly, further savings can be achieved by paying annually.
Other benefits of using a specialist AI Provider:
Depending on which specialist you choose, it could be a simple and quick replacement to provide instant cost savings, and also:
- Easy switch – Your workflow could remain exactly the same, using a specialist AI provider directly within your existing HubSpot chat widget.
- Same interface – Your customers and your team continue to use the same interface, no hassle. Conversations still appear in your HubSpot inbox.
- Seamless human handover – creating a HubSpot ticket when a customer needs a human for live chat.
- Advanced features – Features such as categorisation, knowledge gap analysis, custom instructions and more.
- Works on any plan – with a third party specialist provider, there’s no need to upgrade to HubSpot Professional tier. You can use AI even on HubSpot’s Free or Starter plans.
The Realistic Path to Lower AI Costs
For most businesses, the smart approach is first Option 3 (specialist AI provider), for biggest impact with least effort, and then Option 2 (maximising ROI), for ongoing cost optimisation.
Using a cost-effective specialist AI provider is the most impactful and easiest step, so do this first.
This means you don’t need to compromise by reducing AI usage. By using a provider with affordable pricing, you can add AI chat everywhere your customers and prospects might have questions. Landing pages, product pages, help centre, your app – all become viable locations for instant AI assistance.
Unlike Breeze Customer Agent, specialist integrations don’t require expensive plan upgrades. Whether you’re on HubSpot Free, Starter, Professional, or Enterprise, you can cost effective AI to your HubSpot chat widget in minutes.
The best specialist providers include features HubSpot doesn’t offer. For example, Resolve247’s Insights feature provides a subject and category for each AI conversation. It identifies knowledge gaps so you can see what customers ask about most and where your knowledge base needs work. This continuous improvement cycle maximises your AI’s effectiveness over time. Also features like Custom Instructions let you control the AI’s behaviour precisely, to handle specific situations carefully, to promote certain offers, or how to respond to different customer types. HubSpot’s Breeze offers no equivalent customisation.
Then once you have benefited from the quick and significant cost saving of swapping to a specialist AI provider, then you can use the Insights tools to optimise your knowledge base to maximise the ROI, by ensuring the AI can answer as many questions as possible. This said, after a 96% cost saving maybe further cost saving isn’t such a priority at that point! While cost might not be the main driver at that point, customer experience and workload reduction could still be improved by optimising the knowledge base in response to the questions your customers ask!
Lower Cost Does Not Mean Lower Quality
A natural concern arises: if it costs 96% less, surely the quality suffers? With specialist AI providers, the opposite is often true.
Focused expertise matters. HubSpot is a broad platform with many excellent tools. But their AI features are just one function among hundreds. A specialist provider like Resolve247 has one focus: delivering excellent AI responses. This concentration drives deeper investment in AI quality.
Industry-leading models and techniques. The best HubSpot AI chatbot alternatives use premium AI models and advanced techniques. Behind the scenes there are proprietary multi-step processes that verify answers against your knowledge base before sending them to customers.
Anti-hallucination guarantees. Resolve247 is so confident in their AI accuracy that they offer an anti-hallucination guarantee. If the AI ever provides an answer not supported by your content, you receive that month free. HubSpot offers no similar assurance.
Lean operations, not bloated costs. Specialist providers operate with smaller, focused teams. They don’t carry the overhead of a massive enterprise platform. These savings pass directly to customers through affordable pricing.
Final Recommendation: Reduce Costs, Keep Quality
You don’t need to choose between excellent AI support and reasonable costs. The solution is straightforward: use a specialist AI chatbot that integrates seamlessly with your existing HubSpot workflow.
With providers like Resolve247, you get high-quality AI responses at approximately 4 cents per conversation instead of $1. You gain features HubSpot doesn’t offer, like Custom Instructions and Insights for identifying knowledge gaps. And you can use AI on any HubSpot plan, avoiding expensive upgrades.
The integration maintains everything that works about your current setup. Customers chat through your familiar HubSpot widget. Conversations appear in your HubSpot inbox. When human help is needed, tickets are created automatically. The only difference is dramatically lower costs and often better AI performance.
Ready to reduce your HubSpot AI chatbot costs while keeping high-quality results?
Get started with Resolve247’s HubSpot AI chatbot. Easy 5-minute setup. Direct integration into HubSpot. 30-day free trial, no credit card required.
FAQ
Is the only way to reduce HubSpot AI costs to remove the chat from some pages?
No. While limiting where you display your chatbot reduces conversations, it also reduces helpfulness to your customers. A better approach is using a cost-effective specialist AI provider. This lets you offer AI assistance everywhere customers need it, without worrying about per-conversation costs.
Can I reduce the cost of HubSpot’s AI chatbot?
Yes. You can reduce costs by either using fewer conversations (limiting placement or reducing spam) or by switching to a more affordable AI provider that integrates with HubSpot. The second option offers far greater savings without sacrificing customer support quality.
What’s the cheapest way to use an AI chatbot with HubSpot?
Using a specialist third-party AI chatbot is significantly cheaper than HubSpot’s Breeze Customer Agent. Providers like Resolve247 cost approximately $0.04 per conversation versus HubSpot’s $1.00. This represents savings of over 96% for most businesses.
How does Resolve247 compare to HubSpot Breeze?
Resolve247 offers several advantages over HubSpot Breeze. It works on any HubSpot plan (not just Professional/Enterprise). It costs 96% less per conversation. It includes Custom Instructions for controlling AI behaviour. And it provides Insights to identify knowledge gaps. For a detailed comparison, see our article on Best HubSpot AI Chatbot: HubSpot’s AI vs Resolve247.
Can you reduce HubSpot AI costs without reducing quality?
Absolutely. By using a high-quality third-party AI specialist, you maintain or improve response quality while dramatically cutting costs. Specialist providers focus entirely on AI excellence, often delivering better results than generalist platforms.
How does HubSpot price its AI chatbot?
HubSpot uses a credit-based system for Breeze Customer Agent. Each AI conversation consumes 100 credits. Professional plans include 3,000 credits (30 conversations) monthly. Enterprise includes 5,000 credits (50 conversations). Additional credits cost $10 per 1,000, making each extra conversation approximately $1.
Do I need to upgrade my HubSpot plan to use an AI chatbot?
Not if you use a third-party integration. While HubSpot’s native Breeze Customer Agent requires Professional or Enterprise plans, specialist alternatives like Resolve247 work on any HubSpot tier, including Free and Starter.
Will using a third-party AI affect my HubSpot workflow?
Good integrations preserve your existing workflow completely. Conversations appear in your HubSpot inbox. Human handover creates HubSpot tickets automatically. The experience for both customers and your team remains familiar, with the only change being better pricing and often improved AI quality.
