If you're an agency adding chatbots to your service menu, the hardest part usually isn't the tech, it's figuring out what to charge. Charge too little and you're subsidizing a tool cost out of your own margin. Charge too much with no clear value story and clients balk. Below is how agencies that resell chatbots profitably actually structure pricing.
Start from your own tool cost, not the client's budget
Whatever chatbot platform you resell (ChatForger, Chatbase, Stammer AI, or otherwise), you're paying a flat monthly fee that covers a pool of bots and messages across all your clients. That's your cost basis. A Chatbase alternative or ChatForger's own Pro plan runs $99/mo for 10 bots and 10,000 messages a month, split across however many clients you put on it. Your job is to mark that shared cost up per client, not pass it through at cost.
The math is simple once you see it: if your tool costs $99/mo for 10 client bots, your per-bot cost is under $10/mo. Charging each client $150-400/mo for their bot isn't overcharging, it's pricing for the setup work, ongoing tuning, and support you provide around the bot, not the software itself.
Two pricing models agencies actually use
Cost-plus. You take your per-bot software cost, add a flat markup (often 10-20x), and charge that per client per month. Simple to explain, easy to scale, but it caps out how much value-based pricing can capture if a client's bot is driving real revenue for them.
Value-based. You price based on what the bot replaces or generates for the client: a part-time chat support hire, after-hours lead capture, or a measurable lift in form-fill conversion. This is harder to pitch upfront but supports much higher prices ($300-800/mo isn't unusual) once you have a case study or two showing leads captured or tickets deflected.
Most agencies start cost-plus for their first few clients (it's an easier "yes"), then move later clients to value-based pricing once they have proof points to sell against.
Tip
Track leads captured and after-hours conversations handled for your first client. That number, not your software cost, is what justifies a price increase for client two.
What to bundle into the price
A monthly chatbot fee that's just "hosting the bot" is a commodity and easy to compare against a DIY tool. Agencies that hold their pricing well typically bundle:
- Setup fee ($200-750 one-time): training the bot on the client's site/PDFs, picking colors and copy, installing the widget.
- Monthly retainer: hosting, message allowance, and a fixed number of monthly revisions (updating answers, adding new pages to the knowledge base).
- Lead routing: wiring captured leads into the client's CRM or inbox, which is invisible work clients rarely value until it's missing.
- Reporting: a monthly summary of conversations and leads, either as a PDF or a client portal login.
Example tiers
Here's a simplified version of what a small agency running 15-20 client bots on a single reseller account might charge:
| Client tier | Setup fee | Monthly price | What's included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $250 | $149/mo | 1 bot, monthly revisions, email lead alerts |
| Growth | $500 | $299/mo | 1 bot, weekly revisions, CRM integration, monthly report |
| Multi-location | $750 | $499/mo | Up to 3 bots, priority revisions, client portal login |
Note these client-facing prices are 3-5x what the agency is paying per bot on their own reseller plan, which is the normal range for a service business layering support and account management on top of software.
Disclosed vs. undisclosed reselling
Decide early whether clients will know a third-party platform powers their bot. Most agencies keep the underlying platform undisclosed: the widget and client portal carry the agency's branding, not the platform's. This is the entire point of using a white-label tool instead of a generic chatbot SaaS: your client relationship, and the recurring revenue that comes with it, stays yours. If a client ever asks, most agencies frame it honestly as "we built this on a chatbot platform we license," which is true and doesn't undercut the value of the service you're providing around it (setup, tuning, support).
Contract length
Month-to-month is the norm for the first 1-3 months, since clients want to see it work before committing. After that, moving clients to an annual contract (often with a small discount, 1-2 months free) reduces churn and gives you predictable revenue to plan your own reseller plan tier against.
Getting started
If you're pricing your first client bot, undercharging is the more common mistake, not overcharging. Start with a setup fee plus a monthly retainer in the ranges above, track what the bot actually does for that client, and use that data to price the next one higher. Start a free trial to build and price your first bot without committing to a paid reseller plan yet.