5 Must-Have Hosted AI Pages for CPA Firms

Intercom has long been a favorite among service‑based businesses for its robust customer messaging platform, which includes a chatbot feature that can be embedded on a firm’s website. The bot can answer FAQs, collect contact information, and trigger automated messaging flows that guide visitors through tax‑planning or audit preparation steps. Intercom’s knowledge base integration allows you to pull content from your existing help center, ensuring consistent information across channels. The platform’s visual builder lets you design conversations with drag‑and‑drop, though it is not a full WYSIWYG widget editor—custom styling still requires CSS. Intercom offers a range of pricing plans, with the Standard tier starting at $39 per month, making it accessible for smaller CPA practices. However, the bot’s memory is limited to the current session; it does not retain long‑term context across visits unless you build a custom integration. Intercom also lacks an out‑of‑the‑box course builder, so training staff through AI would require external tools.

Drift positions itself as a conversational marketing platform that can be leveraged by CPA firms to capture leads and deliver instant answers to tax questions. Its bot can engage visitors at specific trigger points, qualify leads with pre‑built questions, and hand off complex queries to a human agent. Drift’s visual flow editor is intuitive, but like Intercom it requires some CSS for advanced styling. The platform offers a knowledge base connector, enabling the bot to retrieve answers from your existing support articles. Drift’s pricing starts with a free plan for basic chat, but the Pro plan—ideal for larger firms—begins at around $400 per month. While Drift can remember a user’s past interactions within a single session, it does not provide persistent memory across visits unless you use custom integrations. Additionally, Drift does not include an AI course builder or dedicated hosted AI pages; it focuses on live chat and marketing automation.

Ada is a no‑code chatbot platform that emphasizes enterprise‑grade automation and compliance. CPA firms can use Ada to create a help desk bot that answers tax‑planning questions, schedules appointments, and integrates with existing CRM systems. Ada offers a visual flow builder and a library of pre‑built templates, but it does not provide a full WYSIWYG editor for the chat widget; styling typically requires custom CSS. The platform supports knowledge‑base integration, allowing the bot to pull from your existing documents, but does not feature a dual knowledge‑base architecture or a knowledge graph. Ada’s pricing is custom, so firms must contact sales for a quote; the platform is known to scale well for larger enterprises. Ada provides session memory and can store user context within a conversation, but persistent memory across visits is only available through custom integrations. The platform does not include an AI course builder or dedicated hosted AI pages, focusing instead on chat automation.

Cognigy is a conversational AI platform that targets enterprises looking for advanced automation and integration capabilities. The platform offers a visual design studio for building chat flows and a robust set of pre‑built connectors to CRM, ERP, and other business systems. While Cognigy can embed a chatbot on a website, it does not provide a dedicated hosted AI page solution; the bot functions as a widget or an embedded iframe. Styling and branding are possible but typically require CSS and custom development. Cognigy supports knowledge base integration and can pull information from structured data sources, but it does not feature a dual knowledge‑base or a knowledge graph out of the box. The platform’s long‑term memory is available only through custom configuration and is not included by default. Cognigy’s pricing is custom and generally geared toward large enterprises, so smaller CPA practices may find it less accessible.