A website chatbot budget needs more than the monthly plan price. It also needs room for preparing source content, checking answers, maintaining policies and handling the conversations that still need a person.
Start with a simple model: first-month cost = setup work + recurring software and operating costs. For later months, remove the one-off setup work and update the usage assumptions with actual data. The worksheet below helps you do that without inventing a return on investment or assuming that every website visitor becomes a billable conversation.
Separate the provider’s bill from your team’s work
A predictable software bill can still require regular staff time. Keep these costs separate so you can tell whether a change comes from demand, a plan upgrade or the work needed to keep answers current.
- Software: the subscription, any deliberately purchased extra capacity, and separately priced features you actually enable.
- Initial preparation: correcting source pages, resolving conflicting policies, configuring the assistant and installing the widget.
- Ongoing review: checking conversations, updating knowledge and retesting important answers after changes.
- Human follow-up: enquiries, exceptions and account-specific questions handled by your team.
RobiFox’s standard service does not include custom development, consulting or content writing unless separately agreed. If you need outside help with those tasks, add the actual quote rather than treating it as part of the subscription. The service terms describe that boundary.
Understand the billable unit before estimating usage
A visitor, a message and a billable conversation are different things. Someone can browse without opening chat. A conversation can contain several messages. The same person can return and begin another conversation.
RobiFox’s published pricing uses conversation credits rather than a charge for every message. For standard text chat, one credit covers one conversation. Refusal-only conversations do not consume that credit. If the assistant has already given a chargeable answer, a later refusal or human takeover does not refund the credit already used.
Human messages during live takeover do not consume AI conversation credits, and the pricing page lists live chat as included without a per-agent fee. Your staff’s time still belongs in your operating budget.
Before modelling voice or other optional modes, confirm their credit rules separately. Also confirm when a long or resumed exchange becomes a new conversation. Do not multiply a message count by a conversation price, or assume one customer can only consume one credit in a month.
Use current plan limits, not a generic chatbot price range
The following examples were checked against RobiFox’s pricing page on 29 October 2026. They are monthly EUR prices excluding VAT. The final tax-inclusive amount is shown at checkout and depends on the billing details. Check the current page and checkout before buying; these are dated reference figures.
On a small screen, scroll the tables sideways to see every column.
| Plan | Monthly fee, excl. VAT | Credits per month | Projects / crawlable pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nano | €9 | 200 | 1 / 350 |
| Micro | €19 | 500 | 1 / 700 |
| Starter | €79 | 2,500 | 2 / 2,800 |
A plan must fit your sources and number of websites as well as your conversations. A low-volume site can still need a larger page allowance. The linked pricing page includes the other plans and current limits.
RobiFox’s published terms say there is no automatic overage billing: when the allowance is exhausted, the assistant becomes temporarily unavailable and offers to collect contact details. You can choose to change plan or top up. Do not budget an invented per-credit overage rate. Obtain the current top-up price and validity rules before adding that purchase to your worksheet.
Unused monthly allowance does not carry into the next period. Subscriptions renew monthly until cancelled; cancellation keeps the plan available until the end of the paid period. Those rules affect how much capacity you should buy and when to review it.
Build a demand baseline from a defined period
Use a recent period that represents the customers and pages you intend to serve. Record its dates, traffic sources and any unusual promotion. If you already have chat, use its actual conversation and credit records. If you do not, mark chat demand as unknown and measure it during a pilot.
As an initial planning estimate, you can use:
Estimated conversation starts = eligible website visits × assumed chat-start rate.
That estimates starts, not billable usage. A second estimate needs the observed billable share and the rules for repeat conversations and different modes. Validate both against the account’s credit records. An analytics visit count and a chatbot conversation count need not have the same measurement boundaries.
Do not treat all support enquiries as removable workload. Some involve account access, judgement or exceptions that a website knowledge assistant cannot resolve. Our guide to a website knowledge-base chatbot explains the source-based use case.
Copy this budget worksheet
Choose one reporting currency. Fill the blank inputs with your own time estimates, internal hourly cost or supplier quotes. An unfilled input means unknown, not zero. Keep supplier charges and staff time separate to avoid counting the same outsourced work twice.
| Cost line | Your input and calculation | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| Source cleanup and policy review | ___ hours × ___ cost/hour = ___ | One-off setup |
| Configuration, installation and launch testing | ___ hours × ___ cost/hour, plus any separate quoted fee = ___ | One-off setup |
| Subscription | Chosen plan ___; monthly fee in reporting currency ___ | Monthly |
| Approved additional capacity or optional features | Confirmed quote/rate ___ × authorised quantity ___ = ___ | When purchased |
| Knowledge maintenance and answer review | ___ hours/month × ___ cost/hour = ___ | Monthly |
| Human follow-up | ___ cases/month × ___ minutes/case ÷ 60 × ___ cost/hour = ___ | Monthly |
| Tax and payment/currency charges | Use the checkout, invoice and payment-provider amounts; record tax treatment separately. | As applicable |
| First-month total | Setup subtotal + recurring first-month subtotal = ___ | Launch month |
| Ongoing monthly total | Subscription + approved extras + maintenance + follow-up + applicable charges = ___ | Following months |
If you report in GBP, USD, CAD, AUD or NZD, record the EUR conversion rate, its date and any actual payment fee. Do not assume a fixed exchange rate. For a cash budget, include the tax actually paid; for an expense budget, use the tax treatment your accountant confirms. Keep those two views distinct.
Test low, base and high demand without inventing savings
Copy the following table alongside the cost lines. Use measured ranges where available. If a rate is only an assumption, label it and give it a review date.
| Driver | Low | Base | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eligible visits and period | ___ | ___ | ___ |
| Chat-start rate; evidence or assumption | ___ | ___ | ___ |
| Estimated conversation starts | Visits × rate | Visits × rate | Visits × rate |
| Expected credits, using verified billing rules | ___ | ___ | ___ |
| Plan fit: credits, projects and pages | ___ | ___ | ___ |
| Maintenance and follow-up hours | ___ | ___ | ___ |
| Monthly total from the cost worksheet | ___ | ___ | ___ |
In a high-demand case, the decision may be to upgrade, authorise a top-up or accept temporary unavailability. Record the operational consequence alongside the price. A hard billing cap protects the bill; it does not guarantee uninterrupted answering after the allowance runs out.
Do not subtract a guessed number of “hours saved” to make the total look attractive. Measure workload and customer outcomes separately. Our guide to reducing support tickets without guesswork explains how to assess that question.
Close the billing questions and assign an owner
Before approving the budget, confirm the conversation boundary, optional-mode credit costs, current top-up terms, page-processing limits and the final checkout amount. Confirm any automatic top-up setting and its cap separately; “no automatic overage” does not mean a separately authorised purchase setting should be ignored.
Name one person to review usage and one to approve spending. Set a practical review trigger: before a campaign, when the expected allowance is no longer sufficient, or when source updates increase the review workload. Replace assumptions with actual conversation credits and logged staff time after the pilot.
Compare the current RobiFox plans once you know the conversation, website and page capacity you need. If the fit is unclear, ask for clarification before paying. A useful budget makes both the price and the remaining work visible.
