A complaints register has one hard requirement and it is a clock: the acknowledgment window, running from the moment the complaint arrives, visible to whoever has to meet it.
Support-desk software will do that and a great deal else, and charges accordingly.
What the vendors publish
HappyFox — read 2026-09-03 and again 2026-10-12. Help desk *"starting at $24 / agent / mo"*, service desk $49 per agent a month, contact-center suite $99 per agent a month. Then the AI: $14 per agent per month on top, and the chatbot billed per resolution at 33 cents.
Three meters on one product — the seat, the assistant per seat, and the bot per answer.
The compliance-specific vendors do not publish. The category was checked on 2026-09-03, and again on 2026-10-12, against a representative vendor (ProvePrivacy) and the finding was recorded as no public price, quote-gated, verified. That is the honest state of the category and there is no number to compare against.
The arithmetic, labeled as arithmetic
Entry figure × 60 months, one agent, before either AI meter.
| monthly | five years | |
|---|---|---|
| HappyFox help desk (1 agent, entry) | $24 | $1,440 |
| compliance vendors | no public price | not calculable |
| Complia | — | $79, once |
Add the AI assistant at $14 an agent and the entry line becomes $38 a month before a single chatbot resolution is billed.
What Complia is, and what it refuses to be
The acknowledgment window is a setting, not a hard-coded number. That matters more than it sounds: an acknowledgment deadline written into the code by a vendor is a deadline that belongs to the vendor, and the one your regulator or your own policy specifies is the one that has to govern.
It records; it does not determine. It keeps the complaint, the clock, the decision and the reason, and exports the audit trail. It does not tell you what the law requires of you.
Who should stay where they are
Stay with HappyFox if what you actually need is a support desk — channels, automation, agents at volume. Stay where you are if you need a full case-management suite with workload allocation, escalation between people and billing: Complia gives each complaint attachments, an append-only investigation log, one named owner and acknowledgment reminders, but it is a records aid, not case management, and the difference will show up in week one if you choose wrong.
The two links this guide owes you
Complia is $79, once, with the PHP source and a window you set. Open the demo — same application, with the clock running.
Try the Complia demo ↗Live, on sample data, no sign-up.