Gist

What is gist.com

Gist.com is a customer messaging and marketing platform that combines live chat, email marketing, help desk ticketing, and a lightweight CRM into a single product. The platform is designed to let support, sales, and marketing teams manage inbound conversations, run targeted campaigns, and automate common tasks from one interface rather than separate systems. Gist emphasizes ease of setup, pre-built templates, and a consolidated contact database so small teams can move quickly.

Gist includes tools for real-time chat on websites and in-app, drip and broadcast email campaigns, behavior-triggered automation, and audience segmentation. It stores customer activity and conversation history in contact profiles so agents and marketers can personalize messages based on past interactions and events. The unified approach helps reduce context switching and ensures the same contact record is available across messaging and campaign channels.

The product is commonly used by SaaS startups, e-commerce merchants, and service businesses that want conversational support along with basic marketing automation. Gist positions itself as simpler and more affordable than enterprise platforms while offering more integrated capabilities than single-purpose chat widgets or email tools.

Gist.com features

Gist.com bundles a set of core modules that together support conversational support, lead capture, and automated outreach. The main functional areas are live chat and chatbots, email campaigns and automation, a shared inbox and help desk, and a contact database with tagging and event tracking. Each module is built to share data with the others so teams can act on the same contact timeline.

Feature highlights include persistent visitor tracking, conversation routing, saved replies, drip sequences for onboarding, campaign analytics, A/B testing for emails, and rich contact profiles that record pages viewed, events, and past conversations. Gist also provides a public knowledge base to host self-serve documentation and FAQ articles, which integrates with chat to suggest relevant articles in conversation.

The product supports visual automation builders for common workflows — e.g., send an onboarding drip after a signup event, create a ticket when a customer triggers a critical error, or add prospects to a lead list when they open a pricing page multiple times. Automation triggers can rely on events, properties, or manual list membership. The visual editor lowers the barrier for non-technical users to build multi-step flows.

Gist includes reporting and analytics on conversations, email performance, and funnel progression. Admins can see average response times, team workloads, email open and click rates, and conversion metrics associated with campaigns. Reporting is oriented toward operational monitoring and campaign optimization rather than enterprise BI-level deep analytics.

What does gist.com do?

Gist.com provides real-time chat and chatbots for website and in-app conversations, enabling teams to respond to visitor questions, capture leads, or route conversations to the right agent. Chat widgets can be customized and set to trigger on specific pages or behaviors, and chat transcripts feed into contact records for context.

The platform runs email marketing campaigns and automated sequences so you can onboard new users, nurture leads, and re-engage dormant customers without separate tools. Campaign logic supports segmentation, conditional branches, and basic personalization tokens that pull from the contact profile.

Gist's shared inbox and help desk let teams manage support tickets alongside chat and email. Conversations from multiple channels appear in one threaded view, with tags, internal notes, and assignment controls to coordinate team responses. The lightweight CRM stores contacts, properties, and event histories to support both support and sales use cases.

Integrations and a REST-style API connect Gist with external systems for event ingestion, contact synchronization, and conversation forwarding. Pre-built integrations commonly used include e-commerce platforms, analytics services, and third-party CRMs to keep data synchronized and automation triggers meaningful.

Gist.com pricing

Gist.com offers these pricing plans:

• Free Plan: $0/month with core chat, email credits, basic contact management, and a single-seat inbox (limitations on automations and advanced features)
• Starter: $29/month per workspace (billed monthly) or $290/year when billed annually — includes multi-seat inbox, standard automation workflows, and increased email/send limits
• Professional: $79/month per workspace (billed monthly) or $790/year when billed annually — adds advanced chat bots, audience segmentation, A/B testing for emails, and priority support
• Enterprise: Custom pricing for large teams and advanced security, onboarding, and SLA requirements

Check Gist's current pricing tiers for the latest rates and enterprise options.

How much is gist.com per month

Gist.com starts at $29/month for the Starter tier when billed monthly. That entry tier is intended for solo operators or small teams who need more than the Free Plan's limits and want multi-seat inbox features and basic automation.

For teams requiring advanced segmentation, A/B testing, and higher usage caps, the Professional plan at $79/month is the mid-market option. Enterprise customers who need SSO, audit logs, and dedicated onboarding are quoted on a custom monthly basis as part of a larger contract.

Monthly billing is suitable for short-term projects or trials, while annual billing typically gives a cost savings equivalent to roughly two months free when you commit for a year.

How much is gist.com per year

Gist.com costs $290/year for the Starter plan when paid annually. The annual rate is billed in a single transaction and generally reduces the effective monthly cost compared with month-to-month billing.

The Professional plan is available for $790/year when paid annually, which reduces overall spend for teams planning steady usage. Enterprise pricing is negotiated and invoiced according to the contract terms, which may include annual commitments, setup fees, and professional services.

Annual plans are commonly used by teams that want predictable billing and the savings that come with a yearly commitment.

How much is gist.com in general

Gist.com pricing ranges from $0 (free) to $79+/month. The Free Plan covers basic chat and contact management, Starter unlocks team inbox and standard automations, and Professional provides advanced engagement features for growing teams.

Costs scale with the number of seats, email/send volume, and usage of premium features like advanced bots, SSO, and dedicated support. For large businesses, Enterprise agreements add costs for security, compliance, onboarding, and service-level guarantees.

When planning budget, include estimated Marketing costs: email sends and campaign production, Support costs: seat licenses for agents, and Integration costs: developer time to set up API and webhooks if you plan custom integrations.

What is gist.com used for

Gist.com is used for conversational support and customer outreach across web, in-app, and email channels. Support teams use it to manage live chat, convert chats into tickets, and maintain a consistent response history per contact. The single conversation view reduces context switching for agents who handle both chat and email.

Marketing teams use Gist to run lifecycle campaigns — onboarding, activation, retention, and win-back sequences — using behavior-triggered automations and segmentation based on events and contact properties. The ability to combine chat-based lead capture with email sequences makes it practical for product-led companies to convert trial users into active customers.

Sales teams can use Gist as a lightweight CRM to qualify leads captured via chat and routing them into discovery flows. Activity timelines help sales reps understand recent product engagement before outreach, and simple tagging or lists can mimic pipeline stages for early-stage sales processes.

Product and growth teams use the visitor tracking and events to measure funnel progression and to trigger targeted messages when a user reaches specific milestones. This supports experimentation around messaging timing and content without needing separate analytics and messaging stacks.

Pros and cons of Gist.com

Pros:

• Unified conversation history across chat and email reduces fragmentation between support and marketing teams, making it easier to maintain context.
• Low barrier to entry and pre-built templates allow small teams to deploy conversational workflows and email campaigns more quickly than enterprise systems.
• Built-in automation and simple CRM features mean teams can run basic lifecycle marketing without a separate marketing automation platform.

Cons:

• Reporting is designed for operational visibility and campaign-level metrics rather than deep analytics; teams needing advanced BI will need external tools.
• While integrations exist, very large organizations with complex data needs may find the integration surface smaller than enterprise alternatives and may require custom development via API.
• Feature depth for specialized use cases (e.g., advanced IVR or omnichannel voice) is limited compared with dedicated contact center or enterprise marketing platforms.

Overall, Gist.com suits small-to-mid teams that want an integrated, cost-effective messaging and automation stack; it is less appropriate for organizations that need enterprise-grade analytics or heavy customization out of the box.

Gist.com free trial

Gist typically offers a Free Plan that allows teams to test core chat and email functionality without a time-limited trial. The Free Plan is useful for validating widget setup, routing behavior, and basic contact capture before upgrading. Free accounts normally include limited automation runs, email credits, or reduced retention for contact histories.

Paid plans usually provide a time-limited trial or money-back window for new customers who want to test advanced features such as chatbots, team inboxes, or A/B testing for emails. During trial periods, customers can evaluate whether the automation builder and integrations meet their needs under real traffic conditions.

When evaluating the platform in a trial, it is practical to load sample contact data, connect your website or staging environment for live chat traffic, and run a small targeted campaign to verify deliverability and tracking. Also test integration with your product analytics or e-commerce system to confirm events and properties are being captured correctly.

Is gist.com free

Yes, Gist.com offers a Free Plan that provides core live chat, limited email sends, and basic contact management features. The Free Plan is designed for very small teams and solo founders to get started without upfront cost.

However, the Free Plan often restricts automation runs, the number of seats in the shared inbox, and advanced features such as A/B testing and certain integrations. Teams will typically upgrade to Starter or Professional as volume and feature needs grow.

If you need enterprise features like SSO or dedicated onboarding, those are available only on Enterprise plans that are quoted separately.

Gist.com API

Gist provides an API and webhook system to exchange events, contact data, and conversation content with external systems. The API enables common use cases such as creating or updating contacts, sending conversation transcripts to a data warehouse, or programmatically initiating messages based on external events.

Developers can use the API to push product events (e.g., account created, plan upgraded) into Gist to trigger automations or to segment audiences. Webhooks allow real-time forwarding of conversation events to third-party services or custom endpoints for custom processing or archival.

Gist's API is RESTful and supports typical CRUD operations on contacts, conversations, and notes. SDKs or example libraries are available for common languages, and API keys or tokens control access. Rate limits and pagination are documented in the API reference to help integrate high-volume sources safely.

For more details on endpoints, authentication, and webhook payloads, consult the official Gist API documentation: Gist API documentation.

10 Gist.com alternatives

• Intercom — A full-featured customer engagement suite with deep product messaging, advanced routing, and enterprise-grade features.
• Drift — Focused on conversational marketing and sales, with strong real-time chat and conversational bot capabilities.
• HubSpot — An integrated CRM platform that includes a robust marketing hub, service hub, and strong reporting for larger teams.
• Zendesk — A mature help desk and customer service platform with extensive ticketing and contact center features.
• Sendinblue — Email-first marketing automation with chat and CRM features for SMBs that prioritize deliverability.
• Freshdesk — Support-focused help desk with multichannel ticketing and automation.
• Help Scout — Lightweight shared inbox and knowledge base aimed at support teams looking for simplicity.
• Tidio — Chat and chatbot vendor that serves small e-commerce and service websites with accessible pricing.
• Olark — Simple live chat solution for immediate website engagement and lead capture.
• Kustomer — A CRM-centered, conversation-driven support platform; geared toward customer service teams that need richer profile constructs.

Paid alternatives to Gist.com

• Intercom: Offers a broad set of product messaging, support, and marketing automation tools, typically at a higher price point suited to scaling teams.
• HubSpot: Combines CRM, marketing automation, and help desk capabilities into a single suite with tiered pricing from free to enterprise.
• Zendesk: Strong ticketing and contact center capabilities; pricing scales with add-ons for omnichannel support and analytics.
• Drift: Positioned toward revenue teams with conversational marketing and account-based engagement features at premium pricing.
• Kustomer: Focused on support-centric CRMs with strong automation and routing for large service teams.

Open source alternatives to Gist.com

• Chatwoot: An open source customer engagement suite that provides inbox, chat, and basic automation for self-hosting and greater control over data.
• Rocket.Chat: Primarily a team chat system that can be extended for customer-facing chat channels and self-hosted deployments.
• Mautic: Open source marketing automation for email campaigns and event-driven messaging; requires more technical setup to replicate Gist-style chat integration.

Frequently asked questions about Gist.com

What is Gist.com used for?

Gist.com is primarily used for customer messaging, support, and marketing automation. Teams deploy Gist to manage live chat, run email campaigns, capture leads, and coordinate support in a shared inbox. It is commonly used by small-to-medium businesses that need an integrated messaging stack without multiple separate vendors.

Does Gist.com integrate with Slack?

Yes, Gist.com offers Slack integration. You can forward chat notifications and new contact alerts into Slack channels, and send messages from Slack into Gist to create or update conversations. This helps teams stay informed without switching constantly between tools.

How much does Gist.com cost per month?

Gist.com starts at $29/month for the Starter plan when billed monthly. Higher tiers such as Professional are available at $79/month, and Enterprise pricing is custom based on company size and requirements.

Is there a free version of Gist.com?

Yes, Gist.com provides a Free Plan. The Free Plan includes basic chat functionality, limited email sends, and a single-seat inbox which is useful for solo founders and very small teams evaluating the product.

Can Gist.com be used for lead capture?

Yes, Gist.com supports lead capture through chat and forms. The chat widget can capture visitor details, qualify leads with bot-driven questions, and add captured contacts to automation sequences or lists for follow-up.

Does Gist.com provide analytics on campaigns?

Yes, Gist.com includes campaign-level analytics. You can see open and click rates for emails, conversation response times, and basic funnel metrics but heavy BI or custom reporting may require external analytics tools.

Does Gist.com support single sign-on (SSO)?

Yes, SSO is available on Enterprise plans. Organizations that require SAML or other identity provider integrations typically access these features through a custom enterprise agreement.

Can I import contacts from Excel into Gist.com?

Yes, Gist.com supports CSV import for contacts. You can map columns to contact properties during import, which speeds migration from spreadsheets or other CRMs into Gist’s contact database.

Is it possible to build chatbots in Gist.com?

Yes, Gist.com offers chatbot and bot flow builders. The bot tools let you create scripted flows for common questions, lead qualification, and routing; more advanced conversational AI integrations may require third-party tooling.

Where can I find API documentation for Gist.com?

Gist.com provides public API documentation. The documentation details REST endpoints, webhook payloads, authentication methods, and code examples for integrating contact events and conversation data with external systems. See the Gist API documentation for endpoint references and examples.

Gist.com careers

Gist hires across product, engineering, customer success, marketing, and sales roles. Career pages typically list remote-friendly positions as well as any on-site roles in their primary offices. Job descriptions provide responsibilities, required experience, and details about benefits and equity for roles at different seniority levels.

Candidate evaluation emphasizes product-fit, experience with SaaS tools, and familiarity with customer-facing operations for support or marketing roles. Engineering roles commonly require experience with web technologies, API design, and cloud infrastructure.

Interested applicants should check the official careers page for the most recent openings and application instructions. Many SaaS companies, including Gist, provide information about remote work policies, interview processes, and hiring timelines on their careers portal.

Gist.com affiliate

Gist offers an affiliate or referral program that rewards customers and partners for referring new paying customers. Affiliate programs typically provide a unique referral link or coupon code that tracks conversions and issues commissions or account credits.

Commission structures vary by provider; typical models include a percentage of the first payment, recurring commissions for the lifetime of the customer, or one-time credits toward account usage. Partners should review program terms for payment thresholds, cookie durations, and promotional restrictions.

If you plan to refer customers at scale, contact Gist’s partner or affiliate team to explore co-marketing opportunities, custom incentives, or reseller agreements that align with higher-volume referral activity.

Where to find Gist.com reviews

To evaluate user feedback and independent reviews, check marketplace review sites that aggregate customer ratings and detailed comments. For example, view Gist reviews on G2 to see user-reported pros and cons and ratings for ease of use and support.

Capterra and TrustRadius also host user reviews that highlight deployment experiences, customer service, and feature satisfaction across different company sizes. Reading both short ratings and longer reviews helps identify recurring strengths or pain points.

When reading reviews, pay attention to review date, company size of the reviewer, and which features they used (chat, email, automation). This provides context about how the product performs for teams with similar needs.