Olark review 2026: AI website agent and live chat for sales and support. Compare pricing, features, pros, cons, and top Olark alternatives.
Olark was founded in 2009 through Y Combinator by four co-founders operating out of a Palo Alto house, initially as a straightforward live chat widget for websites. Over more than fifteen years the company has grown into a fully remote team serving over 11,000 paying businesses, while staying deliberately small compared to venture-backed rivals like Intercom and Drift.
The product has evolved from pure human-staffed chat into an AI website agent that answers visitor questions around the clock, with the option to fall back to human agents for more complex conversations, all managed from Olark's chat dashboard and mobile apps.
Olark's AI Website Agent answers unlimited visitor questions by drawing on a business's existing FAQs and knowledge base, automatically keeping its answers up to date as content changes. It captures and qualifies leads, proactively engages visitors based on browsing behavior, and routes conversations to human agents when needed.
Beyond the AI layer, Olark provides real-time visitor insights, chat transcripts and reporting, targeted proactive chat triggers, and integrations with CRM, help desk, and e-commerce tools. Enterprise customers can add regional routing across multiple teams, custom workflows, SLAs, and single sign-on.
Olark's primary plan, the Standard AI Website Agent, costs $400/month when billed annually ($4,800/year) and includes the AI agent plus one human agent seat with no token limits or usage-based overages; additional human seats cost $29/agent/month.
Businesses that only need traditional human live chat, without the AI layer, can choose the Live Chat Only plan at $29/agent/month. Larger organizations with complex routing, integration, or compliance needs can request a custom Enterprise plan. A free trial is available with no credit card required.
Olark is a live chat and AI website agent platform that lets businesses answer visitor questions, capture and qualify leads, and route conversations between AI and human agents on their website.
Olark's Standard AI Website Agent plan costs $400/month billed annually and includes one human agent seat, with extra seats at $29/agent/month. A Live Chat Only plan without AI is available for $29/agent/month, and custom Enterprise pricing is available.
No. Olark uses a flat-fee pricing model with no token limits or usage overages, so a business's bill does not spike during high-traffic periods.
Olark was founded in 2009 as part of the Y Combinator accelerator by four co-founders working out of a house in Palo Alto, California.
Yes, the AI Website Agent can hand off conversations to a human agent when a visitor's question needs personal attention.
Common alternatives include Intercom, Drift, LiveChat, Tidio, and Zendesk Chat.
Yes, Olark offers a free trial with no credit card required before committing to a paid plan.