A flat-priced Kayako alternative for UK email teams.
Kayako has no free plan and prices around outcomes, billing roughly USD 1 per ticket its Kay AI agent resolves on top of a Starter fee, and it is largely sales-led. Solves takes the opposite approach: a focused, email-first support desk with owned tickets, SLAs and multi-brand, on a flat GBP team band that does not climb with your ticket count.
Kayako figures are lower confidence and dated 13 June 2026. Confirm current pricing on Kayako's own site.
The short answer
Two honest, different models
Kayako and Solves solve overlapping problems in different ways. Kayako is a broader, sales-led suite that prices around AI-resolution outcomes. Solves is a focused, email-first desk that prices around the size of your team, in pounds. The right choice depends on your channels, your ticket volume and how predictable you need the bill to be.
Kayako has no permanent free plan. Its current direction around its Kay AI agent, charges roughly USD 1 per ticket the agent resolves, on top of a Starter fee reported at around USD 99 per month, and buying is largely handled through sales. These figures come from third-party trackers, are lower confidence, and may lag, so treat them as a dated snapshot and verify them on Kayako's own pricing page.
Solves charges a flat monthly fee by team band: Starter GBP 29, Team GBP 79, Growth GBP 149 and Agency/MSP GBP 299, all ex VAT, with annual billing priced as twelve months for ten. There is no charge per resolved ticket, so a busy month does not inflate your bill. Before you commit, a Starter at GBP 29 lets three users run one brand, one mailbox and up to 1,000 tickets a month for small teams.
This is not a claim that Solves does everything Kayako does. It does not. Solves is email-first and deliberately leaves out live chat, phone and social. What it offers a UK SME is a predictable price and a tight, owned email workflow.
What Solves ships today
The email support desk, end to end
Everything below is live in Solves now, not a roadmap promise.
Owned email tickets
Shared support addresses become owned tickets with an assignee, a clear state and a priority, so nothing slips between two people both assuming the other replied.
Replies and private notes
Public replies and internal notes are kept hard apart, with a wrong-brand guard and stale-reply prevention, so a private note can never reach the customer by accident.
SLA timers and a breaching view
First-response and resolution timers with per-brand or organisation targets, plus a breaching view that surfaces overdue tickets and shows ageing.
Multi-brand
Run several brands from one login and one unified queue, each with its own mailbox, brand-locked sending and contact history grouped by brand.
Saved replies
Reusable replies scoped per brand or across the organisation keep tone consistent, with no broken placeholder tags to clean up after sending.
Saved queue views
Build and save the filtered views your team actually works from, so the right tickets surface without rebuilding a filter every morning.
Reports
See volume, response and resolution at a glance, so you can spot a backlog building before customers feel it.
Encrypted at rest
Customer support content is encrypted before it reaches the database, with authorised access only and metadata-only logs that never carry message bodies or addresses.
Team permissions
Give each teammate the access they need, including light collaborators who can add notes only, without learning an enterprise role builder.
Pricing, plainly
Flat bands versus outcome-based billing
The clearest difference between the two is how the bill behaves as you grow. One stays flat for the band; the other moves with how many tickets your AI resolves.
With Kayako's reported model, cost is tied to outcomes: a Starter fee around USD 99 per month plus roughly USD 1 for each ticket the Kay AI agent resolves. If AI resolves a large share of your volume, that can be attractive, because you pay in line with work the agent takes off your team. It can also make a busy month cost more, and it makes forecasting harder. Buying is largely sales-led, so expect a conversation rather than a self-serve checkout.
With Solves, you pick a team band and the price holds whatever your ticket volume does that month. Team at GBP 79 is the core tier; Starter is GBP 29, Growth GBP 149 and Agency/MSP GBP 299, all ex VAT, with annual billing priced as twelve months for ten and VAT shown on every invoice. The first twenty pilot customers get Team at GBP 49 for six months, then GBP 79, with setup help and guided mailbox setup.
- Choose flat GBP bands when you want a predictable bill and your value is in owned email workflow, not AI-resolution volume.
- Choose Kayako's outcome model when paying per AI-resolved ticket genuinely suits your numbers and you are comfortable with sales-led buying.
- Either way, re-check Kayako's live pricing before deciding, because the figures here are a lower-confidence, dated snapshot.
Honest comparison
Solves vs Kayako, side by side
Where a focused email desk helps a UK SME, and where Kayako is the better fit. Kayako figures are lower confidence and may lag.
| Solves | Kayako | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Paid Starter at GBP 29 for small teams | No permanent free plan; free trial only |
| Pricing model | Flat GBP team bands, no per-resolution charge | Resolution / AI-outcome: roughly USD 1 per AI-resolved ticket plus a Starter around USD 99 per month |
| How you buy | Self-serve sign-up | Largely sales-led |
| Primary channel | Email-first: owned tickets, notes, SLAs, multi-brand | Broader suite beyond email |
| Live chat, phone, social | Not included, by design | Available; outside Solves' scope |
| Outcome-based AI pricing | Not offered | Core to its model, and a genuine strength if it suits you |
Competitor facts last verified 13 June 2026. Re-check the vendor's current plans before deciding.
Solves does not claim feature parity with Kayako and does not claim to win for larger or enterprise teams. Kayako figures come from third-party trackers, are lower confidence, and should be re-verified on Kayako's own pricing page.
Where Kayako is the better fit
If outcome-based pricing genuinely suits you, paying roughly USD 1 per ticket the Kay AI agent resolves can be the right shape for your team, and Kayako is built around that. Solves does not offer per-resolution billing, and it is email-first, so it leaves out live chat, phone and social entirely. If those channels or that pricing model matter to you, Kayako or another broad suite is the better choice.
Moving across
How a move to Solves actually works
The honest, shipped way to start is forwarding-first mailbox setup. You point your support address at Solves, verify the mailbox with plain-English DNS steps, and new email lands as owned tickets straight away. Moving off a Gmail or Outlook shared inbox this way is a well-trodden, working path.
A fuller migration from another helpdesk is offered as guided help during the pilot, not as a one-click automated transfer. We work through it with you rather than promising a button that lifts everything across untouched. That keeps the promise truthful and the result predictable.
FAQ
Kayako alternative questions
Does Kayako have a free plan?
No. Kayako does not publish a permanent free plan. It offers a free trial whose length is not consistently published, then moves you onto paid pricing built around resolutions, with a Starter from roughly USD 99 per month and roughly USD 1 per ticket resolved by its Kay AI agent. Those figures come from third-party trackers and are lower confidence, so re-check Kayako's own pricing page before you decide. Solves takes a different line: a Starter at GBP 29, then flat GBP team bands.
How is Solves priced compared with Kayako?
Solves charges a flat monthly fee by team band in GBP, ex VAT: Starter GBP 29, Team GBP 79, Growth GBP 149 and Agency/MSP GBP 299, with annual billing priced as twelve months for ten. The price does not move with how many tickets your AI resolves, because Solves does not bill per resolution. Kayako's model ties cost to outcomes, so your bill rises with volume. Neither is automatically cheaper; it depends on your ticket numbers and how predictable you need the bill to be.
Is Solves a like-for-like Kayako replacement?
Not in every respect. Solves is a focused, email-first support desk: owned email tickets, assignment, notes, SLAs and multi-brand. It does not run live chat, phone or social channels, and it does not bill on AI-resolution outcomes. If your value from Kayako comes from those wider channels or from outcome-based AI pricing, Kayako or another broad suite is the better fit. If your support is email and you want a predictable GBP bill, Solves is built for that.
Can I move off Kayako to Solves today?
A guided, in-pilot migration is how we help early customers move across. It is not a one-click automated transfer. The shipped, reliable path is forwarding-first mailbox setup: point your support address at Solves, verify the mailbox with plain-English DNS steps, and start owning new email as tickets straight away, while we help with the rest during the pilot.
Why is this comparison marked as not for search engines?
This page carries competitor pricing that changes often and is partly drawn from third-party trackers, so we keep it out of search indexes and show the date it was last checked. We would rather you trust a dated, honest snapshot than an out-of-date figure ranking in Google. Always confirm current Kayako pricing on their own site before making a decision.
Predictable pricing for email support
Start Solves at £29, then keep a flat GBP band that does not climb with your ticket count.