The problemYour chatbot sounds sure of itself, then promises a refund you don't offer.
In shortAI chatbot development at Pixel & Oak means a website assistant trained on your own content, connected to your calendar or CRM, and set to hand over to a person instead of guessing. It suits small businesses that lose after-hours inquiries or answer the same questions all day. Builds start at $2,500, fixed price, in 2–5 weeks.
Most people who look for a chatbot development company have already tried a do-it-yourself bot. It was trained on the website, it sounded confident, and then it told a customer the opposite of what the site says. A useful chatbot is not the one with the cleverest model. It is the one that knows your prices, hours and policies, and stops when it does not.
We build assistants that answer only from your own content, read live data such as bookings or order status from your systems, and hand over to a person with the conversation attached. The handover rule matters more than the model, because a confident wrong answer costs you a customer. You own the code, the knowledge base and the AI provider account.
Maintained by Haider Ali, Founder & CEO · Updated
These are the problems business owners describe after their first chatbot, in close to their own words.
A prospect gets a confident wrong answer and leaves. You only find out when someone complains, and by then the lead is gone.
What we doAnswers come only from one current, dated copy of your content. The bot is told to decline when a fact is missing, and we test it against your real questions before launch.
You can be held to it. In 2024 a Canadian tribunal made Air Canada honor a refund policy its chatbot made up, and rejected the idea that the bot was responsible for itself.
What we doPolicy answers are limited to your written policy and link to it. The bot may not invent terms or exceptions. Anything outside the policy goes to a person.
Per-conversation and per-resolution fees rise with your traffic, so the bill is highest in your busiest month and hard to budget.
What we doOne fixed price for the build. Model usage is billed to your own provider account at the provider's rates, with no markup from us. We estimate your monthly usage before you sign.
People who type "human" again and again get angry, take it out on your staff, and some take their business elsewhere.
What we doHandover rules are written before the build. A visible "talk to a person" option, words like refund or cancel trigger it, and the conversation goes across so nobody repeats themselves.
Jobs go to whoever answers first. An inquiry sent at 9 p.m. and answered at 9 a.m. has often already booked someone else.
What we doThe bot answers from your content at any hour, collects the details you need, and books into your calendar or sends a qualified lead to your inbox or CRM while the person is still there.
You redo the setup, retrain the bot and pay again for features that disappeared, because you cannot leave the vendor cleanly.
What we doYou own the code, prompts, knowledge base and provider account, hosted in your account. If you stop working with us, the bot keeps running.
We would rather tell you now than take the project and disappoint you.
| Starts from | $2,500, fixed price for build and setup |
|---|---|
| Typical timeline | 2–5 weeks, with tuning in the first two weeks after launch included |
| Best for | Small businesses losing after-hours inquiries or answering the same questions all day |
| Not for | Replacing a support team, or questions that need systems with no API |
| What you get | A website assistant trained on your content, with lead capture, booking and human handover |
| What you own | The code, prompts, knowledge base, conversations and the AI provider account |
| Running costs | Model usage billed by your provider at its own rates, with no markup from us |
| How pricing works | One quote up front. More connected systems, live lookups and channels move it toward $8,000 |
Worth knowing: The honest limitation, stated up front: language models can be confidently wrong, and you are responsible for what your bot tells customers. That is why ours are scoped to your own content, told to say "I do not know, let me get someone", and pointed at a real handover. Grounding reduces the risk of a made-up answer. It does not remove it, and any vendor promising a bot that never errs is overselling.
Your site, documents, pricing and FAQs in one dated source, so answers reflect your business rather than the internet's average.
Order status, stock or availability read from your system at the moment of the question, never from a stale copy.
Collects what you actually need and passes it to your CRM or inbox while the person is still interested.
Connected to your calendar so a conversation can end in an appointment instead of a promise to call back.
Clear rules for when to stop and fetch a person, with the conversation history attached.
Configured to decline rather than invent, and never allowed to make up prices, terms or exceptions.
Run before launch and after every change, so a wrong answer is caught by us and not by a customer.
You see what people actually ask, which also tells you what your website is failing to explain.
A 22-second look at a chatbot we build: trained on your content, honest about its limits, tested on your real questions, with a handover to a person. From $2,500, 2–5 weeks.
Your chatbot just promised a refund you don’t offer. Wrong answers send prospects away. You can be held to its promises. Customers stuck in a loop, no human. There’s a better way. An AI chatbot that hands off instead of guessing. Trained on your content. Human handover built in. Tested on your real questions. From $2,500 · 2–5 weeks · fixed quote. Get a fixed quote. pixelandoak.com/services/ai-chatbot-development
A chatbot trained on your website usually goes wrong for one of three reasons. It reads an old copy of a page, it fills a gap with a plausible guess, or it blends your content with what the model learned elsewhere. Better prompts alone do not fix this. We build in layers, so each one catches what the last one missed.
Our own site assistant works this way. It answers from a facts file, so it quotes our published prices instead of making them up.
Subscription bots are quick to start and fine for simple questions. The trade-offs show up later, in the bill and in what you can connect. Here is how the options compare on the things owners tell us matter.
| Option | How you pay | Good for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tidio | Monthly plan, with AI conversations sold as add-ons | A simple FAQ bot on a small store | The bill rises with traffic; live data and handover rules are limited |
| Intercom Fin | A fee per AI resolution, on top of help desk seats | Teams already running Intercom | Cost grows with every chat it resolves |
| Chatbase | Monthly plan with message limits | A quick bot trained on your documents | Plan limits, and your setup lives on their platform |
| Custom build (us) | Fixed build from $2,500, plus model usage at your provider's rates | Live lookups, booking, CRM, handover rules and ownership | Higher cost up front; someone has to maintain it |
Check each vendor's current pricing page before you decide, because these plans change often.
You can build your own. If you need a bot that answers a short list of FAQs, a tool like Chatbase or Tidio will do it in an afternoon, and paying a developer would be a waste of money.
Hire someone when the bot has to do real work: read live prices, stock or order status, book into a calendar, write leads into your CRM, follow handover rules, and stay yours if you change providers. That is the work we do. These are the things that move a build from $2,500 toward $8,000:
Deliberately mainstream choices. You should be able to hand this to any competent developer later without them needing to learn something exotic first.
Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS
Node.js, Next.js API routes, Cloudflare Workers
Postgres, Supabase, Cloudflare D1 and KV
Sanity, Payload, headless WordPress, or plain Markdown
Stripe, Shopify, WooCommerce
OpenAI, Anthropic, and open models where they fit better
Vercel, Cloudflare Pages — in your account, not ours
Plausible, Fathom, GA4, Search Console
We work with any business that wins work on trust. These are the ones we have written about at length.
Not sure whether an AI chatbot is what you actually need? Send over what you are trying to fix and we will tell you straight — including if a smaller job would do it.
Ask us first →We read your real inquiries and choose the narrow set of questions that covers most of the volume. Narrow works; broad disappoints.
One price for build and setup before work starts. Model usage is billed to your own provider account.
We connect your content, calendar and CRM, then run the test set and try to make it answer wrongly. Haider reviews it and signs off before launch.
Real conversations reveal gaps in the first two weeks. Tuning is included, and the test set is re-run after every change.
AI agents from our Engineering and Quality & Security divisions do the work, in parallel. Haider Ali, founder and CEO, agrees the plan with you and signs off everything before it reaches you.
Real work that uses the same skills. Every card links to something you can open and inspect yourself.
Quotes our published prices from a facts file, never invented ones, and emails Haider the conversation the moment a visitor leaves an email. Try it: it opens on this page.
AI toolingWhich graphics card holds which open model, how fast it runs, and what each token per second costs.
Build and setup typically runs $2,500–$8,000, fixed price, depending on how many systems it connects to, whether it needs live lookups, and whether it books appointments. You get one quote before work starts. Model usage is billed separately to your own provider account, so we never mark it up.
The main running cost is model usage, billed by your AI provider at its own rates. At small-business volume that is usually tens of dollars a month, not hundreds, but it depends on how many conversations you get and how long they are. We estimate it from your real traffic before you sign.
We limit answers to one dated source of your content, read live data from your systems, tell the bot to decline when a fact is missing, and test it against your real questions before launch and after every change. This reduces wrong answers a lot. Anyone who says they can remove the risk entirely is overselling.
In practice, yes. In Moffatt v. Air Canada (2024), a British Columbia tribunal made the airline honor a refund policy its chatbot invented and rejected the argument that the bot was a separate entity. That is why ours answer policy questions only from your written policy and send anything else to a person. This is not legal advice.
Yes, and we design that first. Customers get a visible "talk to a person" option, words such as refund, cancel or complaint trigger a handover, and the full conversation goes to your inbox, help desk or CRM so the customer does not have to repeat themselves.
Yes, when your store or system has an API. The bot reads the answer at the moment the customer asks instead of relying on an old copy. Refunds, discounts and order changes still go to a person, and every answer logs what the bot looked up.
We build for your website first. It is a small script that works on your existing site, whatever it is built with. Other channels such as WhatsApp or Messenger can be added where the platform offers an official API, and we quote that as a separate line.
You do. The code, prompts, knowledge base and AI provider account are yours, and the bot is hosted in your account. Conversations are stored where you choose, and we walk you through your provider's data-use terms before launch. If you stop working with us, the bot keeps running.
Usually 2–5 weeks. The first week goes on choosing the questions it should handle, the next two on building and testing it, and the first weeks after launch on tuning from real conversations. A simple bot with no live lookups sits at the short end.
Tell us about your business and we'll design a custom homepage concept within 48 hours — free, no strings attached.