Live chat for indie hackers and side projects

The best live chat tool for a side project automatically answers common questions, notifies you on your phone when a real conversation is happening, and costs nothing until the project earns enough to justify a bill. Krispy fits that spec: open-source, self-hosted on Cloudflare Workers for $0, with Telegram as the human-handoff channel.

Why does mainstream live chat price out solo builders?

Intercom starts at roughly $74/month before reaching the AI tier (Intercom pricing). Crisp runs $25–95/month depending on seats (Crisp pricing). Both are per-seat SaaS products designed for teams with a support budget — which is why per-seat pricing hurts solo founders: a side project making $0 to a few hundred dollars a month cannot absorb that as a fixed cost.

To be fair: Intercom and Crisp are solid products. They just were not built for this customer. The actual feature requirement for an indie project is narrower: automated answers at 2 am, a push notification when a human is on the line, and no recurring bill while the project is finding traction.

What does Krispy actually do for a side project?

Krispy is open-source AI live chat that self-hosts on Cloudflare Workers. The bot handles incoming questions using Workers AI — no external OpenAI API key, no external inference bill. When a visitor asks something outside the bot's brief, or when you spot a promising lead and want to step in, Krispy sends a Telegram message with the full conversation thread. You reply in Telegram; the visitor sees it live in the widget. The bot steps aside while you are active and resumes when you go quiet.

Deploy is one command:

wrangler deploy

The five-minute Krispy setup guide covers everything from git clone to a working widget — including the Telegram handoff. Most builders finish it during a coffee break.

What does it cost to self-host Krispy?

Self-hosted Krispy costs $0/month for the vast majority of indie projects. Cloudflare's free tier includes 100,000 Worker requests per day (Cloudflare Workers pricing) — more daily traffic than most side projects see in total. Workers AI inference is also included in the free tier up to its usage limits.

If a project grows past those limits — at which point it is probably past "side project" territory — the Workers paid plan is $5/month. Still not $74.

Krispy pairs naturally with the rest of a zero-cost support stack for indie projects: free-tier email, a public-repo issue tracker, and Telegram (free) cover the full loop with no subscription anywhere.

How does the Telegram handoff work?

When Krispy escalates a conversation, you get a Telegram message containing the full thread and a take-over button. Tap it, type a reply from your phone, and the visitor sees it in the widget within seconds. No support dashboard to log into, no browser tab to keep open.

Push beats pull for solo builders. A web inbox you have to remember to check is how real conversations fall through on a Tuesday evening. Telegram is already on your phone — that is why it is the handoff layer, not a compromise.

Can I run Krispy across multiple side projects?

Yes. Each project gets its own wrangler deploy, or shares a deployment via different data-krispy-project identifiers on the script tag — each with its own system prompt and its own Telegram notification channel. Three side projects: three deploy commands, not three subscriptions.

That is what open source actually buys you. You read the code, fork it, adapt it. No seat negotiations, no sales call. This flexibility is part of a self-hosted support stack that scales with your project without adding a new line item at each stage.

When does Krispy Cloud make more sense than self-hosting?

Self-hosting takes a few terminal commands and a Cloudflare account. If you would rather skip Wrangler entirely and paste one script tag, Krispy Cloud gives you the same open codebase, managed. The free tier needs no credit card.

buttr has already read the docs. twice. the bot is ready.

FAQ

What does live chat actually cost for a side project?

Self-hosted Krispy costs $0/month. Cloudflare's free tier covers 100,000 Worker requests per day (Workers pricing), which handles most indie-project traffic levels comfortably. The paid plan is $5/month if you outgrow it. Mainstream alternatives — Intercom (from ~$74/mo, Intercom pricing) and Crisp ($25–95/mo, Crisp pricing) — are per-seat SaaS tools built for support teams, not solo builders.

Do I need to be a developer to set this up?

Comfortable with a terminal and a GitHub clone? Yes — the live chat quickstart guide is written for builders who have deployed a project before. Not comfortable with terminals? Use Krispy Cloud's free tier: paste one script tag and you are done, no Wrangler required.

How does the Telegram handoff actually work?

When Krispy escalates a conversation, you get a Telegram notification with the full thread and a take-over button. Tap it, reply from your phone, and the visitor sees it in the chat widget in real time. No extra app to install — just Telegram, which you probably already have. The bot steps back while you are typing and resumes when you go idle.

Can I use one deployment across several side projects?

Yes. Each project can share a single Cloudflare Worker deployment using different data-krispy-project identifiers on the script tag, each with its own system prompt and Telegram notification channel. One Cloudflare account covers the whole portfolio — no per-project subscriptions.

Where is visitor conversation data stored when I self-host?

When you self-host, conversations live in Cloudflare KV under your own Cloudflare account. Nothing is sent to Krispy's servers — you own the data. If you use Krispy Cloud, its privacy policy covers what is stored. Self-hosting is the zero-trust option.

The repo is at github.com/lonormaly/krispyai — a ⭐ helps other indie builders find it. Prefer managed? Krispy Cloud has a 14-day free trial at $19/mo flat — paste a script tag and walk away.