Been in the same spot with a few stores doing around that volume. Most live chat tools try to act like CRMs, which is overkill when all you really need is quick replies that don’t break flow. For one brand, we ditched Intercom and built a lean setup using Tidio + Google Sheets + Gmail automation through n8n. Here’s what worked: If a customer asks something like “shipping time” or “return policy,” it auto-sends a short response pulled from your FAQ. If the message looks custom, it forwards straight to the owner/VA on Gmail with a link to reply from phone instantly. Every chat logs into a Google Sheet, so no one forgets to follow up later. Result: faster replies, fewer missed leads, and no $200/month overhead. You can easily scale that kind of setup later once the volume justifies Gorgias or Zendesk. If you want, I can drop the workflow steps, it’s 100% free minus maybe a few GPT credits.