Hatch vs Chiirp: 6 Key Differences

When comparing communication platforms for home service businesses, Hatch and Chiirp often emerge as top contenders. While both offer automation, the differences in AI, scalability, integrations, usability, support, and ROI set them apart.

Chiirp is geared more toward small businesses with basic automation needs, while Hatch provides a robust, customizable AI solution tailored for companies looking to scale efficiently.

This article will break down those six components in more detail.

The TLDR summary

1. AI: Chiirp’s AI handles simple questions before transferring to a human, with limited customization. Hatch’s AI CSRs are fully customizable and manage complete conversations, ensuring accuracy and brand alignment.
2. Scalability: Chiirp suits small businesses but struggles to scale. Hatch is designed for multi-location and high-volume operations, with features to handle growth and maintain efficiency.
3. Integrations: Hatch offers 37+ native integrations, including CRMs and lead sources, while Chiirp relies on fewer and often uses Zapier, impacting lead response speed.
4. Usability: Chiirp is simple but can feel disorganized. Hatch has a Trello-style interface for streamlined communication, making it easy to manage complex workflows.
5. Support: Hatch provides a dedicated onboarding manager and ongoing support, while Chiirp lacks this level of hands-on guidance, making Hatch a better fit for those who need continuous assistance.
6. ROI: Chiirp is cost-effective upfront but can incur long-term time and missed opportunity costs. Hatch’s comprehensive features and efficiency drive better ROI for scaling businesses.

6 key differences between Hatch and Chiirp

1. AI

Chiirp offers AI, but the bots are not robust. They can handle a few easy questions before needing to be passed to a human rep. There is also limited customization and prompting, which leads to frequent hallucinations. 

Hatch AI constitutes AI CSRs that handle complete conversations with your contacts—all the way to booking. They are fully customizable with a persona, a business profile to reference, custom scripting, and rules to ensure accuracy and brand alignment. As you build your bot and make refinements, you can converse with them yourself to make sure they’re behaving as intended.

Below is a real example of a conversation between a bot and a customer for Point Loma Electric and Plumbing. The bot is able to answer off-script questions due to having a business profile to reference.

What our customers say

“We’ve worked through a few kinks, but now the bot is doing a great job, and we're watching it learn and get smarter as it interacts with our customers." - Chelsea Muniz, Point Loma Electric and Plumbing.

Read the Point Loma Electric and Plumbing success story here.

2. Scalability

Chiirp is primarily an SMB platform. It has a lower price point, but it isn’t set up to scale alongside the businesses it helps to grow. 

Hatch, on the other hand, is designed for scaling. 

• The interface is set up to support organizations with multiple locations and/or service offerings.
• Hatch has a thorough compliance program, which is especially important for businesses with high message volumes.
• Hatch has over 59 strategic partnerships with a wide range of vendors, including Angi Leads, Angi Ads, Service Nation, Socius Marketing, EverConnect, Porch, and more.
• With AI CSRs, you can handle higher lead volumes without having to increase headcount.

With Hatch, you can program your AI CSRs to handle lead qualification and other level one interactions so you can process leads efficiently.

What our customers say:

"I chose Hatch because I needed to make sure that we were able to deliver the kind of service that was expected of us without necessarily having to expand a ton of office-based positions." -Dennis Garza, Apple Aire

Read the Apple Aire success story here.

3. Integrations

Both Hatch and Chiirp integrate with ServiceTitan and have the same API access and automation capabilities (i.e. campaigns that trigger based on behaviors and events). However, with Chiirp, you have to build your audiences in ServiceTitan and import them into Chiirp; whereas with Hatch, you can build the audience in Hatch and contacts will automatically enroll into audiences and campaigns when they meet the criteria.

Aside from ServiceTitan, Chirp has native integrations with three CRMs: Jobber, HousecallPro, and ServiceMonster. They do not have native lead source integrations. These rely on Zapier workarounds which can delay speed to lead outreach and require ongoing maintenance.

By contrast, Hatch has over 37 integrations with both lead sources and CRMs. Native integrations include ServiceTitan, Angi, ThumbTack, Yelp, Google LSA, HomeBuddy, HomeYou, and more.

Hatch integrates directly with lead sources so you can be the first to new leads.

What our customers say:

• “With Hatch, we can literally touch any contact in our database for any reason. We use it to reach out to leads, to do rehash, to send coupons, you name it.” - Casey Sprabary, Strittmatter HVAC & Plumbing

• “We have created many custom campaigns across the customer journey, and the messaging is tailored to their individual journey.” - G2 review

4. Usability

As an SMB-focused platform, Chiirp has simplicity in areas that Hatch may lack, but it is commonly noted as lacking in usability and intuitive design. Chiirp users find it hard to keep things organized, causing conversations to get lost which leads to revenue slippage.

Hatch offers a clean interface with workspaces that enable you to separate out different initiatives (for example, you may have a dedicated workspace each for speed to lead, sales follow-up, nurture, and memberships; or you may separate out your HVAC vs plumbing initiatives. Within each workspace there is a sales board with cards and columns. All correspondence for a particular contact is contained in one card, and you can drag and drop cards into different columns in accordance with your pipeline.

Hatch's Trello-style interface is easy to customize to your pipeline and stay organized.

What our customers say:

• “It’s really easy to train people to use, and it makes it so easy to communicate with customers. I can have someone run Hatch who knows nothing about air conditioning or plumbing, and they're still able to communicate and get jobs sold." - Michael Hirsh, Rescue Air and Plumbing

Read the full Rescue Air success story here.

5. Customer experience

Hatch is not without a learning curve—especially the AI configuration component of things, but it offers built-in tools and guidance on top of dedicated support.

This is another difference between the two platforms. Hatch offers a dedicated onboarding manager, dedicated account manager, and ongoing support via email, in-app chat, and regular video calls. Many customers who switch to Hatch note that this level of support is not available with Chiirp.

What our customers say:

• “From set up to integration with existing apps/CRM's they've got it down to a science. “ C Burke, Google review
• "I have built out interfaces with many APIs over the years and Hatch is one of the easiest to set up, and their team is definitely one of the most responsive. I set up 5 or 6 integrations over a couple of days and it was virtually seamless.” Kory Anderson, Google review
• “The integration process and the set up process was super seamless and I can reach out to our rep Heath anytime and I'll get a prompt response.” -Elizabeth, Google review

6. Return on investment

Company price points are made to keep organizations afloat, but they also usually reflect the scope of features and capabilities.

Chiirp is an affordable communication platform that scales nicely for local or small businesses. As such, it offers an affordable set of services, anywhere from $350 to $650 per month.

While the costs are low upfront, this does not take into account the longer-term time costs of manual implementation and contact management, or the resulting additional costs of missed opportunities and employee burnout. This, combined with its limited scalability make it difficult for businesses looking to grow and get a positive ROI on Chiirp. As a result, it’s more viable for single location or local businesses that do not use advanced or personalized communication strategies.

Hatch is more expensive than Chiirp, but this is a reflection of our platform encompassing all of the features we’ve covered above, which are essential for not only achieving a positive ROI on the platform, but also on your other sales, marketing, and customer service spend (think about your lead aggregators, CRM, and payroll). More importantly, Hatch is designed to increase your revenue with lower overhead costs, allowing you to maximize profitability. This makes Hatch more viable for medium, large, or multi-location businesses with advanced communication needs who are looking to scale and stay competitive in the market.

All that being said, if you’re a small business with the future sight to scale, building with Hatch may still be a good fit for your business.

What our customers say:

• “We’re booking five times more appointments without increasing our budget.” - Bath Fitter San Diego
• “We’ve tripled our response rate and brought in an additional $140,000 in revenue per month with Hatch.” -Paramount Builders
• “We’re making an additional $50k per month in additional sales with Hatch and we’re saving hours per week.”  -ABC Seamless

Choosing between Hatch vs Chiirp 

Ultimately, the choice between Hatch and Chiirp comes down to the specific needs of your business. If you’re a small operation seeking basic automation, Chiirp might fit the bill. However, for companies focused on scaling and maximizing efficiency, Hatch offers advanced AI, seamless integrations, and comprehensive support. Hatch empowers growing teams to manage high lead volumes and complex workflows with confidence. Carefully consider your business size and long-term goals to choose the platform that aligns with your growth strategy.

If you found these Hatch features and business benefits to be in alignment with your business needs, you can book a demo here.