What is a custom AI chatbot?
A custom AI chatbot is a bot that reads your own documents, policies and records to write each answer, where a scripted bot can only walk the decision tree someone drew for it. Ask a scripted bot something its builder didn’t predict and it loops back to the menu.
Scripted bots are fine for a booking form with five fixed options. Once customers type real questions in their own words, you need one that understands the question, knows where to look and says “I don’t know” when the answer isn’t there.
Chatbot or AI agent: which one do you need?
A chatbot answers. An agent acts: it updates the CRM, issues the refund or books the job. If the bot only needs to tell people things, a chatbot is cheaper, faster to test and much harder to break.
Most clients start with a chatbot and give it one or two actions later, such as creating a ticket or checking an order status. When the work is mostly doing things across several systems, we scope AI agent development instead, which runs $18,000 to $40,000 for an agent with two or three integrations.
How it answers from your data
The bot doesn’t memorize your business. Each time someone asks a question, it searches your help articles, product data, PDFs and policies, pulls the few passages that matter and writes an answer from them, with a link to the source. Update a policy page and the bot gives the new answer the same day.
For a few hundred pages, that retrieval layer is part of the chatbot build. When the bot has to answer from thousands of documents, contracts or manuals with access rules, we build a full production RAG system, which costs $18,000 to $35,000 on its own.
What it connects to
A chatbot that can’t see your systems ends up telling customers to email support. We connect it to the tools your team already uses, read-only by default, and add write access only where you ask for it.
If your product has its own app or portal, we put the bot inside it through your existing login, so it knows who is asking. Our AI integration work covers the harder cases, like older systems without a clean API.
- Help desks such as Zendesk and Freshdesk, with handover to a person that carries the transcript
- CRMs such as HubSpot and Salesforce, for leads and customer lookups
- Your website, as a widget styled to your brand
- Slack or Microsoft Teams for internal bots
- Order, booking and inventory systems through their APIs
Where your data lives
We host US clients in US cloud regions and Australian clients in Australian regions such as AWS Sydney or Azure Australia East. Your documents, the search index and the chat logs stay in that region, and we pick model endpoints that don’t train on your data.
Personal details can be masked before a message reaches the model, and chat logs are kept only as long as you decide. You own the code, the prompts and the data from day one.
What does an AI chatbot cost to build and run?
Every build is quoted as a fixed scope at a fixed price after a free discovery call. Australian clients can expect roughly A$22,500 to A$60,000 for a focused bot (approximate, at about A$1.50 per US$1).
Running costs are separate and usually small. One bot typically costs about $200 to $1,500 a month including hosting, and model fees are the cheapest part: on OpenAI’s GPT-6 Luna at $0.10 per million input tokens, a short conversation costs a fraction of a cent. Our guide to what an AI chatbot costs a small business shows when a monthly plan is the better deal.
- Focused custom chatbot on your own data: $15,000 to $40,000, 4 to 8 weeks
- Chatbot added to an existing app or platform: $10,000 to $25,000
- Production RAG for large document sets: $18,000 to $35,000
- Support retainer after launch: from $2,500 a month
What you receive
- Deployed chatbot on your website, app or help desk
- Retrieval pipeline over your documents with source links in answers
- Integrations with your help desk, CRM or booking system
- Test set of real customer questions with an accuracy report before launch
- Admin panel for transcripts, content updates and handover rules
Technologies we use
Who builds your project
Zeebrix was founded in 2017 by Emad Rashid, our Founder and CEO, and has delivered 200+ projects for 150+ clients. US clients work with our San Jose, California office (+1 650 713 6601) and Australian clients with our Perth, Western Australia office (+61 402 606 978). We are available 24/7 at info@zeebrix.com.
Custom AI Chatbot Development: frequently asked questions
How much does custom AI chatbot development cost?
A focused chatbot on your own data costs $15,000 to $40,000 at a fixed price. Adding one to software you already run costs $10,000 to $25,000. If it must answer from very large document sets, budget $18,000 to $35,000 for the retrieval system. Running costs are usually $200 to $1,500 a month.
How long does it take to build an AI chatbot?
Four to eight weeks for a focused bot. The first week or two goes on collecting your content and real customer questions, then we build, connect your systems and test against those questions. Bots with several integrations or strict review rules sit at the longer end of that range.
Will the chatbot make things up?
Not if it’s built properly. Ours answer only from retrieved passages of your content, show where each answer came from, and say they don’t know when the answer isn’t there. Before launch we score the bot against a set of real questions from your customers, and we rerun that test after every change.
Can the chatbot be hosted in Australia?
Yes. For Australian clients we host the bot, the search index and the chat logs in Australian cloud regions, and US clients get US regions. We choose model endpoints that don’t use your data for training, and you set how long transcripts are kept.
Should we buy a chatbot platform or build a custom one?
Buy one if you get a few hundred conversations a month and your answers live in a single help center. Build when volume pushes per-resolution fees up, when the bot needs data from your own systems, or when you want to own the data and the code. We will tell you on the discovery call if a platform is enough.
Talk through your AI chatbot project
A free 30-minute discovery call with one of our engineers in San Jose or Perth. You will leave with a clear scope and an honest view of the risks, followed by a fixed-price quote.
Book a free discovery call
