The Chatbase Problem
Chatbase is one of the most popular AI chatbot builders. You upload your docs, it creates a chatbot, and you embed it on your site. Simple enough. But if you're an indie maker running a bootstrapped product, the pricing model creates a problem that gets worse as you grow.
Chatbase charges $19-399/month with hard message caps on every plan. The Hobby plan gives you 20 message credits per month — barely enough to test. The Standard plan at $99/month gives you 2,000 credits. For a product with even moderate traffic, you'll burn through that in a week.
And here's the thing: you're paying for messages whether they're useful or not. A visitor who types "hi" and then "what does this do?" has already used 2 credits. The AI's response uses more. A single conversation can consume 5-10 credits easily.
What Indie Makers Actually Need
After talking to dozens of indie makers about their support setup, the pattern is clear:
- Predictable costs — bootstrapped products need to know what they're paying, not worry about usage spikes
- No message caps — support volume is unpredictable, especially around launches
- Multiple data sources — docs live in Notion, on websites, and in uploaded files
- Knowledge gap tracking — knowing what's missing from your docs is as valuable as answering questions
- One-time payment option — lifetime deals align with the indie maker mindset of owning your tools
Chatbase addresses point 3 partially (files and websites, but no native Notion integration). It doesn't address points 4 or 5 at all.
LaunchChat vs Chatbase: Feature Comparison
| Feature | LaunchChat | Chatbase |
|---|---|---|
| Lifetime deal | Yes — $229 one-time | No |
| BYOK (unlimited messages) | Yes | No |
| Starting price | $29/mo | $19/mo |
| Notion integration | Native OAuth + auto-sync | No |
| Website crawling | Yes | Yes |
| File uploads | Yes | Yes |
| Citations in answers | Yes — [Source N] links | Limited |
| Knowledge gap tracking | Yes — with AI-drafted suggestions | No |
| Auto-escalation | Configurable threshold | Basic |
| Custom AI model | Any OpenRouter model | GPT-4 only |
| Multi-language | 20+ languages, auto-detect | Yes |
The Lifetime Deal Difference
This is the biggest differentiator. Chatbase is subscription-only — you pay every month, forever. If you stop paying, your chatbot stops working.
LaunchChat offers a $229 lifetime buyout. Pay once, use forever. No recurring charges. For an indie maker who's already paying for hosting, domains, email, analytics, and a dozen other SaaS tools, eliminating one more monthly bill is meaningful.
The math is simple: $229 lifetime vs $99/month for Chatbase's Standard plan. LaunchChat pays for itself in less than 3 months.
BYOK: The Unlimited Messages Play
Even if you prefer monthly billing, LaunchChat's BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) plan at $19/month changes the economics entirely. You bring your own OpenAI, Anthropic, or OpenRouter API key. LaunchChat charges a flat platform fee. You pay the AI provider directly for usage.
What does that cost in practice? A typical support conversation uses about 1,000-2,000 tokens. With Claude 3 Haiku (the default model), that's roughly $0.02-0.05 per conversation. Even at 1,000 conversations per month, you're paying $20-50 in API costs plus $19 for the platform.
Compare that to Chatbase's $399/month Unlimited plan — and even that has a 40,000 message credit cap.
Knowledge Gap Tracking
This is the feature Chatbase doesn't have that matters most for long-term support quality.
When a user asks a question that your docs don't cover, Chatbase just... fails. The user gets a generic "I don't know" response. You never find out what they asked or that your docs have a gap.
LaunchChat logs every unanswered question as a knowledge gap. It aggregates similar questions (so "how do I cancel" and "where's the cancel button" count as one gap), tracks frequency, and uses AI to draft a suggested article for each gap.
This creates a feedback loop: users ask questions → gaps are detected → you write the missing docs → the chatbot gets smarter → fewer gaps. Teams using this loop typically see their deflection rate improve by 10-15% per month.
When Chatbase Is the Better Choice
To be fair, Chatbase has strengths:
- Larger ecosystem — more integrations (Slack, WhatsApp, Zapier)
- More mature product — been around longer, more polished in some areas
- Team features — better suited for larger teams with multiple chatbots
If you need Slack or WhatsApp integration, or you're a larger team managing multiple chatbots across different products, Chatbase's ecosystem is more developed.
But if you're an indie maker or solo developer who wants a support chatbot that's affordable, owns your data, and gets smarter over time — LaunchChat is built specifically for you.
Making the Switch
Switching from Chatbase to LaunchChat is straightforward:
- Sign up for a free LaunchChat account
- Connect your data sources — Notion via OAuth, crawl your website URL, or upload files
- Configure the widget — customize colors, greeting, and behavior
- Embed — replace the Chatbase script with LaunchChat's 2-line embed
- Done — your chatbot is live with the same content, better pricing, and knowledge gap tracking
No data export from Chatbase needed. Just point LaunchChat at the same source documentation.
The Bottom Line
Chatbase is a solid product that pioneered the "train a chatbot on your docs" category. But its pricing model — monthly subscriptions with message caps — doesn't align with how indie makers build and scale products.
LaunchChat offers the same core functionality with three key advantages: lifetime pricing, BYOK for unlimited messages, and knowledge gap tracking. For bootstrapped products where every dollar and every support interaction matters, that combination is hard to beat.
Try LaunchChat free — no credit card required. Or check out the lifetime deal on our pricing page.