Pricing transparency index
We read 15 vendors' pricing pages and wrote down everything they left unstated. Then we ranked them. The cleanest pages belong to the quiet vendors, not the famous ones, and the single costliest gap belongs to the biggest name in the list.
Cleanest: Zoho SalesIQ and Teachable state everything checked. Last: Mention states no prices at all. Costliest gap: Zendesk's $19 plan includes no live chat.
Links on this page are plain homepage links. No affiliate links appear on this page, so the ranking cannot be read as paid.
Rank 1 is the most transparent pricing page. Rank is by number of gaps found, ties broken by judgment of cost to a buyer, as disclosed in the method below. Every gap is taken from the full audit, linked at the bottom of this page.
| Rank | Vendor | Gaps found | The gap that costs most |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Zoho SalesIQ | 0 | None found. Monthly and annual prices, free plan, and 15-day trial all stated. |
| 1 | Teachable | 0 | None found. Monthly and yearly prices, transaction fee, 7-day trial, and 30-day guarantee all stated. |
| 3 | LiveChat | 1 | Trial length for legacy plans unverified. Current Text plans state a 14-day trial with no card. |
| 4 | Brand24 | 1 | Annual badge says up to 3 months free. Stated rates work out to about 2.4 months. |
| 5 | Systeme.io | 1 | Free plan student limit contradicts itself on the same page: 500 students in one place, unlimited in another. |
| 6 | Thinkific | 1 | No transaction fee stated on the pricing page checked. |
| 7 | ClickFunnels | 1 | Trial length not stated. A 30-day money-back guarantee is verified, which is not a trial. |
| 8 | Freshchat | 1 | Paid agent limits not stated, so a growing team cannot confirm headroom from the page. |
| 9 | Crisp | 1 | Annual prices not publicly shown. Yearly payment is enabled in the app after subscribing, with no price stated. |
| 10 | Intercom | 1 | Headline prices are new-customer rates. The annual list price is about 50 percent higher than the headline. |
| 11 | Zendesk | 1 | The $19 Support Team plan includes no live chat. Chat starts at Suite Team, $55 billed annually ($69 monthly). Monthly prices are now published in the comparison table, verified November 2, 2026. |
| 12 | Tidio | 2 | Plus annual discount unverified, and Plus per-conversation rates unverified. |
| 13 | Olark | 2 | Billing period unstated for per-agent prices, for human-only chat and for extra seats. |
| 14 | Skool | 3 | Groups per subscription unstated, annual lump sums unstated, and card-required-for-trial unstated. |
| 15 | Mention | No prices stated | No prices stated at all. A single demo-only offering, and the 30-day figure on its trial button belongs to an Agorapulse trial page, not a Mention plan. |
Zoho SalesIQ and Teachable are the only vendors whose pages state everything checked: both billing periods, free plan terms, and trial terms. Neither is the loudest name in its category. Transparency here correlates with nothing but the decision to write the numbers down.
Zendesk ranks 11th, and its gap is the only one on this page that charges a buyer for something they do not get. A buyer who picks the $19 Support Team plan for live chat pays $19 per agent and still has no chat. Every other gap on this page costs a buyer comparison, not cash.
Mention ranks last because its page states no prices at all, only a demo. That is not a missing detail, it is a page that refuses comparison entirely. A buyer cannot price Mention against any rival without a sales conversation, which is the point of the page as designed.
Two vendors break comparison the same way, by leaving the period out. Crisp shows no annual prices. Olark states per-agent figures with no period attached. Zendesk used to be the third, until its November 2 re-check found monthly prices published. In each case the buyer cannot place the vendor's number next to a rival's number without signing up first.
Checked items. Each vendor's pricing page was read on October 27, October 29, or October 30, 2026, and Zendesk was re-read November 2, 2026, and checked for the same items: prices for both billing periods where applicable, free plan terms, trial terms, plan limits, and whether the named plan includes its headline feature. A gap is something the page did not state. Nothing is inferred from directories, blogs, or other vendors' pages, and no gap is filled with an estimate.
Ranking rule. Rank is by number of gaps found, fewest first. Ties are broken by our judgment of cost to a buyer: a gap that charges money ranks worse than a gap that only inconveniences. That tie-break is judgment, not measurement, and the table shows every vendor's gap so a reader can reorder the ties.
Judgment calls disclosed. Three ranks are judgment rather than counting. Zoho SalesIQ is listed before Teachable in the joint first place because it is a live chat tool and this site's main subject, not because it is more transparent. Mention is placed last because a page with no prices cannot rank above any page that states prices. Zendesk is placed last in the one-gap tier because its gap charges a buyer for a plan that lacks the headline feature, which costs more than an unstated figure or a confusing badge. The full gap list behind this index is on the pricing transparency audit page.
What this index is not. It is not a product ranking, not a review, and not a test. No vendor was used, trialed beyond reading its public page, or contacted for this index, except where a trial term is itself stated on the page.
No. It ranks pricing pages only, by what they leave unstated. A vendor can rank last here and still sell a good product. The rank says how hard its pricing page makes comparison, nothing else.
Because its pricing page states no prices at all, only a single demo-only offering. A page with no prices cannot rank above any page that states prices, so it is placed last by judgment, and that judgment is disclosed in the method.
Ties are broken by judgment of cost to a buyer. A gap that costs money, like Zendesk's $19 plan with no chat, ranks worse than a gap that only inconveniences, like an unstated trial length. The table shows every vendor's gap so a reader can reorder the ties.
No. This page carries no affiliate links at all, only plain homepage links, and the ranking comes from the audit alone. LiveChat links elsewhere on this site are affiliate links, but none appear on this page.
Yes, when vendors change their pages. It is re-checked alongside the comparison pages, and the price-change log records dated changes.
Method. Same as the audit: each gap is something the vendor's pricing page did not state on October 27, October 29, or October 30, 2026. Stated figures are quoted from those pages. The Brand24 saving is arithmetic from stated rates: Individual $199 times 12 is $2,388 against $249 times 12 at $2,988, a $600 saving equal to about 2.4 months at the monthly rate; Pro $399 times 12 is $4,788 against $499 times 12 at $5,988, a $1,200 saving equal to about 2.4 months. Links on this page are plain homepage links.