# Enterprise support chat pricing example

This example shows pricing for enterprise customer support chat with 50,000 customers, with 5 conversations per customer, per month. It uses Ably's per-message and per-minute billing model.

## Scenario

- **Customers:** 50,000
- **Conversations:** 5 per customer/month (250,000 total)
- **Per conversation:** Average 20 minutes long with 20 messages exchanged

**Total cost: $52.50/month**

---

## Cost breakdown

The following breakdown shows the cost of connections, channels and messages in this scenario.

### How messages are counted

Every chat message counts as a billable message. Messages are counted when they're sent to Ably and when they're delivered to users. Usage is billed in increments of one million messages, rounded up.

A support agent sends one message to a customer it equals three messages (one sent to Ably + one received by the customer + one echoed back to the agent).

In 1:1 chat, there's no fan-out - each message goes to one recipient.

#### Messages generated by this scenario

| Feature              | Calculation                               | Messages   |
|----------------------|-------------------------------------------|------------|
| Messages sent        | 250,000 conversations × 20 messages       | 5,000,000  |
| Messages delivered   | 250,000 conversations × 20 messages × 2   | 10,000,000 |
| **Total messages**   | 5,000,000 + 10,000,000                    | **15,000,000** |
| **Total message cost** | **15,000,000 × $2.50/M**               | **$37.50** |

---

### How connection and channel minutes are counted

Both connection minutes and channel minutes are rounded up per million minutes used.

### Connection minutes

[Connection minutes](https://ably.com/docs/chat/connect.md) are billed based on how long users remain connected.

| Item                 | Calculation                       | Total              |
|----------------------|-----------------------------------|--------------------|
| Customer connections | 250,000 conversations × 20 mins | 5,000,000 mins |
| Agent connections    | 250,000 conversations × 20 mins   | 5,000,000 mins  |
| Total                | 5,000,000 + 5,000,000             | 10,000,000 mins |
| **Cost**             | **10,000,000 mins × $1.00/M**          | **$10.00**         |

### Channel minutes

[Channel minutes](https://ably.com/docs/chat/rooms.md) are billed based on how long channels are active for.

| Item            | Calculation                       | Total          |
|-----------------|-----------------------------------|----------------|
| Channel minutes | 250,000 conversations × 20 mins   | 5,000,000 mins |
| **Cost**        | **5,000,000 mins × $1.00/M**           | **$5.00**      |

<Aside data-type='note'>
A channel is equivalent to a room
</Aside>

---

### Total cost

The total monthly cost of this support chat.

| Item               | Cost           |
|--------------------|----------------|
| Messages           | $37.50         |
| Connection minutes | $10.00         |
| Channel minutes    | $5.00          |
| **Total**          | **$52.50/month** |


<Aside data-type='further-reading'>
Useful links for exploring this topic in more detail.
- [Talk with our sales team](https://ably.com/contact) to get a personalized quote.
- [Learn how HubSpot uses Ably to enable 128,000 businesses with live chat that just works](https://ably.com/case-studies/hubspot)
- [See how doxy.me turned realtime from a liability into a strategic asset](https://ably.com/case-studies/doxyme)
</Aside>

## Related Topics

- [AI support chatbot](https://ably.com/docs/platform/pricing/examples/ai-chatbot.md): Calculate AI Transport pricing for conversations with an AI chatbot. Example shows how using the message-per-response pattern and modifying the append rollup window can generate cost savings.
- [Livestream chat](https://ably.com/docs/platform/pricing/examples/livestream.md): Calculate Ably Chat pricing for livestream events with high-concurrency chat. Example shows 5K concurrent viewers, message batching reducing costs by 95%, and total cost of ~$92.50 for a 1-hour major event.
- [Data broadcast](https://ably.com/docs/platform/pricing/examples/data-broadcast.md): A pricing example that uses Ably Pub/Sub for data broadcast. Example shows how message conflation reduces message costs from ~$1,800 to ~$374/month for 10K users across 50 matches.
- [Realtime dashboard](https://ably.com/docs/platform/pricing/examples/realtime-dashboard.md): Calculate Pub/Sub pricing for healthcare patient monitoring dashboards. Example shows realtime vitals tracking for 100 patients monitored by 5 care coordinators, with total cost of ~$98/month including presence and history features.

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