The hidden cost is probably the maintenance. A chatbot can fit the $100 budget on paper, but if the team is constantly fixing answers or updating workflows, that changes the equation pretty quickly. Chatbase seems interesting here because of the testing and analytics side.

The part about what happens after deployment is the real test. A chatbot can look impressive in a demo, but the quality of the knowledge behind it and how often that knowledge needs updating make a huge difference in production.