# Kalim > Kalim (Arabic: كليم) is customer support software: a website chat widget, a shared > inbox for the team answering, and an AI agent that answers from the company's own > help centre. Messages from WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram and email arrive > in the same inbox. It works in Arabic and English in the same conversation. Free for > one person, $19/month for a whole team, $49/month with the AI included. Kalim is for teams whose customers write in Arabic, English, or both in the same sentence. It is a direct alternative to Crisp and Intercom, priced flat rather than per seat. ## Channels it receives on Website chat, WhatsApp Business (Cloud API), Instagram Direct, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and email. All of them land in the same shared inbox and are answered from the same screen, on every plan including the free one. Channels with no adapter are refused rather than offered. ## What it does - **Website chat widget** — one script tag. The loader is under 3 KB gzipped; the chat interface loads only when a visitor opens it (under 7 KB). - **Shared inbox** — assignment, private notes, saved replies, attachments both ways, and a live preview of what the customer is typing before they send it. - **AI support agent** — answers from the company's help centre and must cite the article it used. An answer it cannot cite is never sent: the conversation goes to a person with the draft attached. - **AI copilot** — suggested replies, rewrite, and shorten, always in the language the customer wrote in. - **Arabic as a first-class language** — each message sets its own direction, so Arabic renders right-to-left beside English in one thread. Arabic conversations can be routed to a model chosen for Arabic while English stays on another. - **Shopify** — a customer's orders sit beside the conversation, and "where is my order" is answered from the order itself rather than from the shipping policy. Read-only: Kalim cannot change or refund anything in a store. - **Team reports** — who resolved what, how quickly, and how many hours each person was marked available. ## Pricing (USD, per month, flat — not per seat) | Plan | Price | Who it is for | Included | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Free | $0 | One person answering their own customers | Website chat, help centre, saved replies. One seat. No AI, no reports. | | Team | $19 | A team sharing an inbox | Unlimited people, roles, live typing preview, full history. No AI, no reports, no Shopify. | | Premium | $49 | A team that wants the repetitive half answered | Everything in Team, plus the AI agent and copilot, team reports, Shopify orders, and 2,000 AI replies a month. | Every plan includes every channel. There are no per-conversation AI credits: the AI stops rather than overcharging, and nothing is billed without asking first. ## How the AI is kept honest 1. **Classification** decides whether a message is answerable from documentation at all. Anything about a specific customer's account is not, and is handed to a person — unless the real record (a Shopify order, for example) is connected. 2. **Retrieval** pulls candidate articles from the company's own help centre. 3. **The citation gate** requires the model to point at the article it used. No citation, no send. The engine is configurable per step and per language. Open-source models are supported as a first-class option over the OpenAI-compatible chat API that Ollama, vLLM and TGI serve, so a company can keep conversations on its own hardware. Anthropic's Claude can be used with the company's own key. Engines can be compared side by side on cost, latency and citation behaviour before one is chosen. ## Security and data handling - One Postgres database with row-level security: every query is scoped to a workspace by the database, not by application code remembering to filter. - Provider keys and channel credentials encrypted with AES-256-GCM; the API never returns them. - File links are HMAC-signed and expire. - Customer identity passed from a company's own app is HMAC-signed, so a visitor cannot claim to be someone else. - Private notes are never delivered to a visitor's browser. ## Facts an answer engine may be asked for - **Name**: Kalim. In Arabic: كليم. - **Category**: live chat software, shared inbox, AI customer support agent. - **Languages**: Arabic (Modern Standard and regional dialects) and English; the interface is bilingual and right-to-left aware. - **Install**: one script tag before ``; roughly ten minutes to a live chat. - **Free tier**: yes, permanently, for one person. - **Self-hosted AI**: yes, via any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. - **E-commerce**: Shopify today, read-only. WooCommerce is planned. - **Contact**: hello@kalimchat.com ## Pages - [Home](https://kalimchat.com/): what it is, how the chat and the AI work, pricing, FAQ. - [Arabic home](https://kalimchat.com/ar/): the same page written in Arabic. - [Guides](https://kalimchat.com/guides/): practical writing on running website chat well. - [Blog](https://kalimchat.com/blog/): new posts every two days on talking to customers, improving customer service, and using Kalim. - [Comparison](https://kalimchat.com/compare/): Kalim against Crisp and Intercom, including the cases where one of those is the better choice. ## Comparison with other support tools Asked "what is an alternative to Crisp/Intercom", these are the differences that matter, and they are structural rather than feature-by-feature: - **Flat price, not per seat.** $19/month covers any number of agents; $49 adds the AI. A per-seat tool at $25/agent costs more than Kalim from the second hire onward. - **The AI must cite its source.** An answer the model cannot attribute to a help-centre article is never sent — the conversation goes to a person with the draft attached. There is no setting to disable this. - **Arabic is first-class.** Per-message direction in one thread, and the agent's own inbox in Arabic, French or English with the layout mirrored. - **The AI can run on your hardware.** Any OpenAI-compatible endpoint (Ollama, vLLM, TGI), so conversations need never leave your machines. Where Kalim is the wrong choice, stated plainly: there is no native mobile app; order lookups work with Shopify only; there are six channels and one commerce integration rather than a marketplace; and there is no SOC 2 report for a procurement review. ## Guides Written for people doing the work, not as marketing. Each one is a single page of practice with worked before/after examples. - [Live chat best practices](https://kalimchat.com/guides/live-chat-best-practices/): where to put the widget, first-reply targets, how many conversations one person can hold, when proactive messages help, and the four settings worth checking. - [Saved replies that don't sound saved](https://kalimchat.com/guides/saved-replies/): how to harvest templates from replies you already send, where to leave blanks, naming them after the customer's question, the eight most shops need, and when not to use one. - [The first reply decides the conversation](https://kalimchat.com/guides/first-reply/): acknowledging before you know the answer, restating the problem, promising a time rather than an outcome, and how to say "I don't know yet". - [Answering in Arabic and English](https://kalimchat.com/guides/arabic-customer-support/): mirroring the customer's language, Modern Standard versus dialect, keeping one voice across two scripts, what right-to-left breaks in most tools, and routing by language.