Olark
AI website agent plus human live chat that answers visitors from your live site and docs, 24/7.
By Olark · 4.4/5 verified-buyer score
Positioning guardrails
Best for
- SMB and mid-market marketing teams that want AI chat plus a human fallback on the same thread
- Higher-education admissions and student-services teams qualifying prospective students
- E-commerce retailers answering product and order questions to lift conversion
- Teams that want setup in minutes with no logic-tree or flow builder maintenance
Ideal size: 1–50 people · SMB or mid-market with a marketing/support website and inbound leads
Not for
- Enterprises requiring formal SOC 2 / ISO 27001 attestations and FedRAMP
- Companies needing token-metered, BYO-model LLM control
- Contact centres wanting deep workforce-management and telephony routing
- Buyers who need a documented MCP or agent-to-agent API path
Value metrics scorecard
Time-to-Value
Same day (agent trains in about a minute)
~1 days to first production value
Total Cost of Ownership
$4,800/yr
Starts at $348 · Per human agent seat per month ($29); the Standard AI Website Agent is a flat $400/month including one human seat, billed annually.
Implementation Friction
1/5
Engineering + admin effort required
Buyer Score
out of 5 · verified buyers
Full cost breakdown
Mandatory implementation fee
None
Seat tiers
No seat minimum stated; one human agent seat is included with the AI agent, additional seats +$29 per agent per month.
Add-on costs
- Additional human agent seats: +$29 per agent per month ($429/month for two agents, $458 for three)
- Custom/enterprise package: regional routing, advanced integrations, custom workflows, SSO, custom SLAs (quote-based)
Company & support
Who is behind Olark, and how your team gets help once it is live.
Company
- Founded
- 2009 · 17 yrs in business
- Headquarters
- Not recorded
How you get support
- PhoneNot listed
- EmailAll plans
- Live chatAll plans
- Support portal / ticketsNot listed
- Community forumNot listed
- Help centre / docsAll plans
- Dedicated account managerPlan not stated
- In person / on-siteNot listed
- Hours
- Not recorded
- Response time
- Not stated
Human support from the team that builds the product; the Standard AI Website Agent plan lists white-glove support and account management, and enterprise packages offer custom SLAs. The AI agent itself runs 24/7.
“Not listed” means the vendor’s public pages don’t mention that channel, not that it is unavailable. Ask about it during evaluation.
Market position
Where Olark sits against its closest alternatives. Pick any two of cost, speed, friction and buyer score, and up to 9 companies to compare.
Quadrant view
Typical annual cost × Time-to-value
The lines cross at the median of the solutions shown, so about half sit on each side of each line. A dashed ring marks an outlier pinned to the edge; hover for its value.
Companies on the chart 6 / 10
- Olark
- LiveChat
- ActiveCampaign
- Close
- SlickText
- GoTo Webinar
Add or change companies
Up to 10 companies including Olark. Listed closest first.
Stack fit signal
Compatibility with standard B2B ecosystems.
No supported MCP path today, so it cannot be driven from an AI client.
AI & MCP readiness
What Olark ships in AI, and what it asks of your ecosystem.
AI features shipped
Olark's 'Aiden' AI Website Agent answers visitor questions from the customer's live site and docs, keeps its knowledge updated, does proactive behavioural engagement and lead capture/qualification, and hands off to a human in the same thread. No model provider, BYOK option or AI audit-log capability is published.
In your ecosystem
- AI connection
- Not supported
- Model key
- Not recorded
- AI usage audit
- Not recorded
Compliance attestations
* IAPP AIGP certifies individuals, not products. It means named staff hold the credential — not that the platform does.
Bottom line
Olark pairs a human live-chat product it has sold since 2009 with an AI website agent ('Aiden') that trains on a customer's live site and docs in about a minute. The AI plan is a flat $400/month including one human seat (extra seats $29/agent/month); human-only chat is $29/agent/month. Strongest in education, retail/e-commerce and SMB lead capture, with HubSpot, Salesforce and Slack integrations. It publishes no SOC 2, ISO 27001 or HIPAA attestation, so compliance-sensitive buyers must verify directly.
Frequently asked questions
What does Olark cost?
Human-only live chat is $29 per agent per month. The Standard AI Website Agent is a flat $400 per month, billed annually at $4,800, and includes unlimited AI conversations plus one human agent seat; extra human seats are $29 per agent per month ($429/month for two agents, $458 for three). Enterprise custom packages are quote-based.
How long does it take to go live?
Olark markets setup in minutes rather than weeks. The AI agent trains on your live site and documentation in about a minute, uses smart defaults with no logic-tree builder, and you can preview it on your own site free before paying. Human-only live chat has a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.
Is there a usage or token limit on the AI agent?
No. Olark states the Standard AI Website Agent includes unlimited conversations with no token limits and no overages, arguing usage-based token pricing creates an incentive to ration the agent. The flat price covers the AI plus the first human agent seat.
Which systems does Olark integrate with?
HubSpot, Salesforce, Slack (beta), Zendesk, Help Scout, Front, ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, Google Analytics, Google Meet, Zoom, Calendly, Zapier and webhooks, plus CMS and e-commerce platforms such as WordPress, Drupal, Squarespace, Webflow, Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and Magento. Custom integrations can be built against Olark's public JavaScript API.
Does Olark hold SOC 2, ISO 27001 or HIPAA certifications?
No such certification is claimed on Olark's security page, which currently covers responsible disclosure and bug bounties and notes that pages are being updated. Buyers with compliance requirements should request current attestations, a DPA and security documentation directly from the vendor.
Can visitors reach a human, or is it bot-only?
Both. Olark positions the AI agent in front of a human team: a visitor can ask for a human and get one in the same conversation thread, and the AI plan includes one human agent seat. Human-only live chat without AI is also available at $29 per agent per month.