# Orka Chat Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/orka-chat/ · added 2026-11-05 · updated 2026-11-05 **In short.** Orka Chat (Shared support inbox with an AI agent for founders who run several products, France): US$236 a month recurring revenue, November 2026. Evidence grade A: disclosed by a company or a filing, or verified by a payment processor. Team: 2 co-founders, Charles and Marc; TrustMRR lists a team of 2 to 5 people. Launched 11 May 2025; still running, revenue growing. Shared support inbox with an AI agent for founders who run several products · France · AI-native · team of 2 to 10 · still running, revenue growing · group: Customer support agents - Outcome: US$236 a month recurring revenue, November 2026 (evidence grade of the headline number: A; headline in US dollars: 2832) - Launch: 11 May 2025; months from launch to the outcome: 18 - Team: 2 co-founders, Charles and Marc; TrustMRR lists a team of 2 to 5 people - Outside funding: None (bootstrapped) - Main factor: Own pain first - Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 3, copyable pattern 2, capital needed 1 - Tags: AI-native, Small team, Bootstrapped, Running, B2B, Customer support Links: - Visit orka.chat: https://orka.chat/ - App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id6473671891 - Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.orka.chat - Verified revenue on TrustMRR: https://trustmrr.com/startup/orka-chat **The product.** A live chat widget and one shared support inbox for people who run several websites, apps or stores. Every product is a separate project with its own widget, and all conversations arrive in the same inbox. An AI agent called Orky drafts replies, answers familiar questions when the team is away and hands the conversation to a person when it cannot help. On the Pro and Max plans the customer can connect an own OpenAI, Anthropic or OpenRouter key, and Orka adds no markup on that usage. **Why it worked.** The two founders built it first for their own SaaS products and Shopify apps, because they had to keep one support workspace open for every product and felt they had to answer at night. They then opened it to other founders with the same problem, with unlimited projects on every plan and a fixed price per team size. Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; E = no revenue figure found, so the headline is a non-money fact and the other facts carry their own grades; calc = computed on this page from graded facts. ## Summary Orka Chat is a live chat tool, a small chat window on a website through which visitors write to the company, combined with a shared inbox, one list in which several team members read and answer all incoming conversations. Its focus is the founder with several products: each website, app or store is a "project" with its own widget, and every project lands in one inbox. An AI agent, a program that uses a large language model to write and send answers by itself, called Orky, learns from the customer's website, help articles and FAQs. It drafts replies for a person to approve, or answers automatically when the team is offline and hands the conversation to a human when it cannot help. A customer can use bring your own key: the customer pastes an own API key from OpenAI, Anthropic or OpenRouter, the model provider bills the customer directly, and Orka adds no margin. The company behind the site is BIGMO SAS in Paris. The website names two co-founders, Charles and Marc, by first name only, and says their team also builds Shopify apps used by more than 35,500 businesses; the site states that this is not Orka's customer count. The iOS app was first released on 11 May 2025. On TrustMRR, a site that reads revenue directly from a company's payment provider, the payment data come from Paddle: the first payment was US$29 on 7 October 2026, total revenue was US$98.44 on 5 November 2026, and the stored snapshot shows US$236 a month in monthly recurring revenue (MRR), the subscription income that repeats every month, from 4 active subscriptions. The figures are verified (grade A) but very small and very new: about one month of paid history. The page shows a small team selling an AI support agent with no AI cost of its own, and what happened to earlier live chat and support automation companies that competed with larger, funded tools. ## Pricing Orka plans on 5 November 2026, from the company's pricing page (grade C). Prices are in euros, billed monthly | Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit | |---|---|---|---| | Free | | 0 euros | 1 team member, unlimited projects, no AI features | | Light | | 9 euros | 2 team members, team chat, saved replies, visitor map, no AI features | | Pro | | 29 euros | 3 team members, AI drafts and automatic replies, translation, summaries; AI usage separate | | Max | | 99 euros | 12 team members, extra members 8 euros each, custom AI name, no Orka branding; AI usage separate | The company page shows only monthly billing in euros (€0, €9, €29 and €99); TrustMRR writes the same plans as $9, $29 and $99. Every plan has unlimited projects, a help center and the iOS and Android apps. AI features start on Pro. AI usage is billed apart from the plan: with an own OpenAI, Anthropic or OpenRouter key the customer pays the provider and Orka adds no markup; with Orka-managed AI the customer pays the named model's standard API rate multiplied by two. Max includes 12 members, and each extra member costs €8 a month. Taxes may apply. ## How much revenue does Orka Chat make? The numbers, graded A bootstrapped French support inbox with an AI agent: four paying subscriptions and US$236 a month in recurring revenue one month after its first verified payment | Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources | |---|---|---|---|---| | Monthly recurring revenue, 5 November 2026 | US$236 | A | TrustMRR metric snapshot, payment data from Paddle through an API key, last synced 5 November 2026. TrustMRR shows +84.4% MRR growth in the last 30 days. | [1] | | Run rate from that MRR | US$2,832 a year | calc | Calculated: US$236 times 12. This is the outcome value used on this page. | [1] | | Active subscriptions, 5 November 2026 | 4 | A | TrustMRR metric snapshot. Average MRR per subscription: US$236 divided by 4 is US$59 (calculated). | [1] | | Total revenue, all time to 5 November 2026 | US$98.44 | A | TrustMRR verified revenue. All of it was collected in October 2026: US$29.00 on 7 October, US$61.06 on 29 October and US$8.38 on 30 October. November 2025 and September 2026 show US$0.00. | [1] | | MRR 30 days earlier | about US$128 a month | calc | Calculated: US$236 divided by 1.844, from the +84.4% growth figure. A derived value, not shown by TrustMRR. | [1] | | Founded date on TrustMRR | 1 October 2026 | C | Entered by the founder on the profile. The company's About page says: "Launch year not published. Originally built for the founders' own products." | [1, 3] | | First release of the iOS app | version 1.0, 11 May 2025 | B | App Store version history. The developer shown on the listing is PENIDA. The listing shows 1 rating (5.0) and version 1.2.12 as the latest. | [8] | | Team | 2 co-founders, Charles and Marc; 2 to 5 people on TrustMRR | C | The About page: "Charles and Marc build and support Orka, bootstrapped in France with no outsourced support." TrustMRR team size field: 2 to 5 people. | [1, 3] | | Company | BIGMO SAS, 14 Rue Charles IV, 75004 Paris, France | C | Terms and conditions, updated 18 September 2026, and the About page key facts. | [3, 7] | | Outside funding | none | C | TrustMRR funding field: Bootstrapped. The About page: "Bootstrapped, hosted customer-support software (SaaS)". | [1, 3] | | Shopify apps of the same team | used by 35,500+ businesses in 145+ countries | C | Company statement. The site says these figures describe the team's Shopify apps and are not Orka's customer count. | [2, 3] | | AI providers for customers | own OpenAI, Anthropic or OpenRouter key, or Orka-managed AI | C | With an own key Orka adds no markup. Managed AI costs the named model's standard API rate times two. The pricing calculator names GPT-5 mini and Claude Haiku 4.5. | [4, 5] | | Example AI cost from the company's calculator | US$16.65 for 1,000 conversations a month with managed AI | C | The company's own estimate on the pricing page, about US$0.017 per conversation in that example. | [4] | | Payment provider | Paddle | A | TrustMRR: "Verified payment provider API source: Paddle (API key)". | [1] | | Public metrics page | all counters at 0 on 13 October 2026 | C | The Open Orka page tracks a new period from 13 October 2026 and excludes customers who started before that date. It was last updated on 13 October 2026. | [6] | | Time from the first iOS release to the headline figure | 18 months | calc | Calculated: May 2025 to November 2026. | [1, 8] | How to read this table: grade A values are read by TrustMRR from the company's Paddle account. Grade B values come from Apple's App Store listing or the company's public code repository. Grade C values are the company's own statements on its website. An "X" value was computed on this page from the rows above it. ## When did Orka Chat launch, and how did it grow? Timeline From an app for the founders' own products to a paid product with verified revenue, in 18 months. Each entry carries its grade. - **Before 2025** (grade C [2, 3]): Charles and Marc run their own SaaS products, Shopify apps and online stores, and build a chat tool for their own support so they do not have to switch between workspaces. - **11 May 2025** (grade B [8]): Version 1.0 of the Orka Chat iOS app appears on the App Store, published by the developer PENIDA. - **18 September 2026** (grade C [7]): Terms and conditions updated; they name BIGMO SAS in Paris as the operator of Orka. - **23 September 2026** (grade C [3]): The About page records that its comparison with Crisp and Intercom was checked on that date. - **1 October 2026** (grade C [1]): Founded date entered on the TrustMRR profile. - **7 October 2026** (grade A [1]): First verified payment: US$29.00. - **13 October 2026** (grade C [6]): The Open Orka page starts a public log with every counter at zero: posts, threads, paying customers and MRR of the new period. - **29 and 30 October 2026** (grade A [1]): Payments of US$61.06 and US$8.38. October total: US$98.44. - **5 November 2026** (grade A [1]): US$236 MRR from 4 active subscriptions, +84.4% in 30 days. ## Why did Orka Chat work? ### Own pain first The founders built the tool for their own portfolio of SaaS products and Shopify apps. The founder letter on the home page says that switching between projects was "both a nightmare and costly" and that messages at 11 PM affected his mental health. The product's two main features answer exactly those two problems: one inbox for all projects, and an AI agent for the hours when nobody is there. ### Price by team size, not by project Competitors often charge per workspace or per seat. Orka gives unlimited projects on every plan, including Free, and sells fixed team sizes: 1, 2, 3 or 12 people. A founder who adds a new product pays nothing more. ### No AI cost on the company's books With bring your own key, the customer pays OpenAI, Anthropic or OpenRouter directly. The company does not carry the model cost, so a €29 plan does not lose money when a customer has many conversations. Customers without a key can use Orka-managed AI at twice the standard API rate, so that option also covers its own cost. ### Human control over the AI Drafts are never sent without a person, automatic replies can be turned on per conversation, and the agent hands over to a human with the conversation history. The site markets this as support from "real humans" with AI help, which suits small teams that fear wrong automatic answers. ## How it was built These details come from TrustMRR's tech stack fields (entered by the founder), the company's pages and the public code repository of the marketing website. - The product uses React and React Native for the web dashboard and the mobile apps, and Node.js with MongoDB on the server, according to the TrustMRR profile. - The marketing website is plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, built with Node.js and served by Cloudflare Pages, with a small Worker for a preview function (public GitHub repository charlesmdp/orka). - The website's own question box sends visitor questions to OpenAI's gpt-5-mini model through the Responses API, with answers limited to excerpts from the site. - Inside the product, Orky uses the customer's choice of OpenAI, Anthropic or OpenRouter models; the AI page shows gpt-5.4-mini as the recommended example. - Payments go through Paddle, which TrustMRR reads to verify the revenue. - Orka has iOS and Android apps included on every plan, and an SDK that lets a customer's app show plan, install date and other user data next to the conversation. - Import tools copy help articles from Crisp, Intercom, Help Scout, Gleap, Gorgias, GitBook, Fernand and tawk.to. Sources: [1, 9, 5, 2] ## Who tried this before Orka Chat, and why did they fail? Four companies in our database of failed startups sold live chat, support automation or a single inbox for many channels. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified. The failed startups come from our database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade. ### Hipmob (2012 to 2015; funding US$120K; cause: Competition) - Promise: Customer support chat inside mobile apps and websites. - Why it died: Intercom and Zendesk added the same chat features with far more money, and Hipmob could not get noticed. - Record: ### Answerly (2013 to 2016; funding US$550K; cause: Product/Tech Failure) - Promise: Automatic answers from FAQs to cut the number of support tickets. - Why it died: The language technology of 2013 to 2016 could not handle real customer questions, and the bots deflected tickets without solving them. - Record: ### RightHello (2014 to 2022; funding US$600K; cause: Ran Out of Cash) - Promise: Live chat for online stores to turn visitors into buyers. - Why it died: It offered nothing structurally different from many other chat tools and could not outspend Intercom. - Record: ### Flux (2015 to 2018; funding US$7M; cause: Team/Founder Conflict) - Promise: One inbox for Slack, email, WhatsApp and other messaging services. - Why it died: The money went into keeping integrations with outside platforms working, while management lacked focus. - Record: ## What changed Hipmob and RightHello sold live chat into a market where Intercom and Zendesk had far more money, and Answerly tried to automate answers before language models could understand real questions. Orka is in the same crowded market and names Crisp, Intercom, Tidio and others as competitors on its own pages. Three things differ. Large language models now write usable answers from a company's own help articles, which is what Answerly could not do. Bring your own key moves the model cost to the customer, so a two-person company can offer an AI agent at €29 a month without paying for usage. And the target is narrow: founders with several products, who pay per workspace elsewhere and get unlimited projects here. Whether that niche is large enough is not yet shown: the verified history is one month long. ## Can one person copy Orka Chat now? **Verdict: Yes, with a narrow niche and patience.** A live chat with an AI agent is not hard to build in 2026, and the founders did it as a small team with their own products as the first test case. What a copier cannot buy is the founders' existing audience of Shopify app merchants and their own need for the tool. The verified revenue is small, so this is an example of a start, not of a proven business. 1. Build the support tool you need for your own products first, and use it every day. 2. Pick one group that existing tools charge too much: here, founders with several products who pay per workspace. 3. Let customers bring their own AI key, so model costs are never yours; if you resell AI, price it above your cost. 4. Keep a person in control: drafts for approval, automatic replies that can be turned off per conversation, and a handover to a human. 5. Publish your numbers through a payment-verified profile so that early buyers can trust a small company. **What is still open.** Support tools for other groups that run many small properties: app studios, agencies with client sites, owners of several online stores, and makers of browser extensions. ## What could go wrong for Orka Chat? - **AI is one of two main parts.** The home page headline is "Every product you run. One support inbox.", and the AI agent is the second main feature. The Free and Light plans have no AI features; AI starts on Pro (€29). The AI agent is central to the pitch (a separate Orky AI page, "You sleep. Orky's got this."), but a customer can use Orka without any AI. - **A very small and very new figure.** All verified revenue, US$98.44, was collected in October 2026, so the paid history is about one month. TrustMRR reports MRR of US$236, higher than the cash collected; the profile does not explain the difference. The public code of the website describes a launch discount campaign, which may explain part of it (not verified). The profile's estimated user count field shows 0. - **Older product, new revenue record.** The iOS app was first released on 11 May 2025, but TrustMRR gives 1 October 2026 as the founded date, and the company's About page says the launch year is not published. The Open Orka metrics page counts only customers from 13 October 2026 and excludes earlier ones. So earlier revenue, if any, is not shown. - **Names and companies.** The website gives the co-founders' first names only, Charles and Marc. TrustMRR shows the founder under the display name "Charles Password" with the X handle charlesmdp, and the co-founder as Marc (marcsaas). The site is operated by BIGMO SAS in Paris, while the App Store lists the developer as PENIDA; no source read here explains how the two are related. - **35,500 businesses is not Orka's count.** The 35,500+ businesses in 145+ countries use the team's Shopify apps. The company itself says this is not the number of Orka customers, and it should not be read as such. ## Sources 1. TrustMRR: Orka Chat profile (payment data from Paddle), synced 5 November 2026 — https://trustmrr.com/startup/orka-chat.md (grade A). Read the markdown profile. The Verification Sources and revenue sections are grade A; the description, team, funding, founded date and tech stack are founder-written, grade C. 2. Orka home page: Every product you run. One support inbox. — https://orka.chat/ (grade C). Read in full on 5 November 2026. Source for the product, the AI features, the founder letter and the FAQ. 3. About Orka: live chat for multiple products — https://orka.chat/about (grade C). Read in full. Source for the co-founders, the company, the key facts table and the 35,500 note. 4. Orka pricing page — https://orka.chat/pricing (grade C). Read in full. Source for the plans in euros, the AI billing rules and the cost calculator. 5. AI Customer Support for Small Teams: Orky by Orka — https://orka.chat/ai (grade C). Read in full. Source for the AI agent's functions and the provider options. 6. Open Orka: public growth, revenue and shipping metrics — https://orka.chat/open (grade C). Read in full. A hand-updated metrics page, last updated 13 October 2026. 7. Orka terms and conditions, updated 18 September 2026 — https://orka.chat/terms (grade C). Read in full. Source for the operating company BIGMO SAS and the AI review terms. 8. App Store: Orka Chat, live chat with your visitors — https://apps.apple.com/us/app/orka-chat/id6473671891 (grade B). Read the listing and its version history. Source for the first release date and the developer name. 9. GitHub: charlesmdp/orka, the Orka marketing website — https://github.com/charlesmdp/orka (grade B). Read the README on the repository page. Source for the website's hosting, its OpenAI question box and the launch campaign configuration. 10. Database of failed startups, local export — /method/#dead (grade C). Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors. Contact: aiolum@livyden.com. Run Orka Chat? Send corrections or a verified figure to aiolum@livyden.com (subject: Correction: Orka Chat).