Best Live Chat Software

Live chat software delivers a slick, modern way for visitors to contact you directly within your website. If you want a bot to field common questions (and take work off of your reps’ plates) or an easy way for prospects to talk to a real person on your team, there’s a live chat solution for you in this post. We identified Gorgias as the best option out there. It can handle any form of customer communication you need, including both live chat and chatbots.

The Best Live Chat Software for Most

Any form of customer service and support can benefit from the live chat features in Gorgias. It delivers the best combination of live representative chat and automated chatbots so you can help more customers, better and faster.

Gorgias is a platform for centralizing all your external conversations, be they with prospects, leads, customers (new and returning), users needing support, or even the internet at large. This software covers more than just live chat—use it for managing email interactions, social media presence, and phone and SMS customer support.

The Best Live Chat Software Options to Consider:

1. Gorgias – Crazy Egg favorite
2. Salesforce – Best all-around live chat software
3. Tidio – Best simple live chat software
4. HubSpot Live Chat – Best free live chat software
5. LiveAgent – Best for 24/7 problem solving
6. Olark – Best for anticipating customer issues
7. Podium Webchat – Best for moving the conversation to mobile
8. Sendinblue – Best for converting visitors to email subscribers
9. LiveChat – Best for converting website visitors into buyers
10. Chaport – Best for improving the bottom of your sales funnel
11. Social Intents – Best if you’re already using Slack or Microsoft Teams
12. Pure Chat – Most effortless way to add live chat services

When It Makes Sense to Invest in Live Chat Software

Running a successful online business can sometimes feel like throwing money into a bottomless pit.

You’re already paying for SEO services, ads, email marketing, and social media monitoring.  

And there are still more must-have services in the pipeline.

So how do you know if you should prioritize live chat software? Well, the first thing to consider is how live chat can improve your conversion rates. There’s tons of proof to back that up.

The other thing to ask yourself is if you’re overwhelmed with customer support emails, live chat can help you offer speedy support and de-clutter your inbox. Which can help calm any feeling of anxiousness you might have about needing to get to them all.

Now, live chat can cut down the flood of support emails you’re getting, and 79% of businesses agree that it’s positively impacted their sales, revenue, and customer loyalty.

If your customer satisfaction score isn’t up to par, live chat support will make your customers happier. According to Zendesk data, live chat boasts a customer satisfaction rating of 85%—a figure that comes second only to phone support.

Plus, if your customer service budget is spiraling out of control, live chat software costs far less per interaction than phone support.

#1 – Gorgias — Crazy Egg Favorite

If you need an all-in-one tool for centralizing customer communications that also excels at live chat features, then meet your next favorite software in Gorgias. Handle email, social media, phone calls, and text messages, as well as both live chat and chatbots, from one dashboard.

Each of those facets of the software are strong, but let’s start by homing in on Gorgias’ live chat prowess first.

If you’re looking for live chat software that smartly connects your live reps to customers, this platform does the trick. The Gorgias live chat widget (which is easy to embed on your websites) can handle up to three quick reply options. If a site visitor chooses one of those, they’ll be connected to the rep you want handling that conversation topic.

Plus, if you unlock automations—they’re an add-on to any Gorgias plan—you can set rules for your live chat widget. That allows you to get even more granular with routing conversations, like making sure initial prospect inquiries go to one sales rep while qualified leads go to another.

It’s easy to set those up with Gorgias’ visual logic editor, which is simple enough for new users to pick up quickly while also allowing for broad customization.

You can set rules with trigger words or phrases, automated intros, and chatbot sequences that precede having a live rep step in. Or, use chatbots to deliver information to visitors and customers without any need for your team to get involved, like for shipment and fulfillment updates.

That level of convenience extends beyond live chat and chatbots. Since Gorgias syncs so well with Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, you don’t need to play a game of telephone with your social media coordinator to field and answer questions or comments.

That allows your team to respond on the fly to new social sentiments right within the Gorgias platform. Plus, no one will be in the dark about who they’re interacting with—Gorgias will pull social media users’ entire message histories into any conversation, and you can even connect those details to others gained via email, chat, and even your ecommerce platform.

That’s a huge win for Gorgias on its own. It integrates with over 60 platforms, including the big names in ecommerce: Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce. Beyond those, you can also connect Gorgias to platforms like Trustpilot (to gather and respond to reviews), VoIP platforms like Aircall and RingCentral, Yotpo, and Gmail, among many others.

The Starter plan is perfect for small organizations with limited need for live chat support. At $10 per month, it’s essentially everything you need to get started with customer service. Although there are limited integrations and no automation add-ons, Gorgias’s Starter plan offers the support reporting (i.e., live stats, analytics, and satisfaction surveys) that enable you to improve the customer experience over time.

The Basic tier includes many of the features listed above, making it an impressive value at just $50 per month (with an annual billing plan). You can create up to 300 responses to customers per month in this tier (what Gorgias calls tickets). You can purchase extra tickets if needed as well. If you would like to add automated instant answers to the Basic tier, it costs $25 per month extra.

Whereas the Basic tier offers integrations with Shopify and BigCommerce, you can add an integration with Magento when you move to the Pro tier, which starts at $300 per month. It includes the ability to create statistical reports about revenue generated as well. This tier includes up to 2,000 tickets per month. The automation add-on costs an extra $150 per month in this tier.

With the Advanced tier, you will pay $750 per month for up to 5,000 tickets per month. The automation add-on is an extra $375 per month. The Basic and Pro tiers offer integrations with Facebook and Instagram, while the Advanced tier includes Twitter integration. It has integration with Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento, just like the Pro tier.

For those who need the ability to customize the features in Gorgias, the Enterprise tier is available. You will need to call the Gorgias sales team for a price quote.

Get the most powerful solution in live chat and customer interaction by starting a seven-day free trial of Gorgias today.

#2 – Salesforce – Best All-Around Live Chat Software

Salesforce is a full customer relationship management (CRM) platform with some of the best live chat solutions on the market.

Give your customers the ability to start a chat conversation on your website or app. Chatbots can answer many common questions, or direct customers to the appropriate agent.

And it won’t take anything more than pointing and clicking to set up chatbots for dozens of purposes. Take a demo of Salesforce today to see how easy it is to build bots.

Connecting live chat with your CRM data is where Salesforce goes the extra mile. On the front end, customers interact with chatbots using natural language processing to automatically direct customers to resources that can help them.

If someone just wants to speak to a person, bots can guide customers to the correct agent by picking up key information about their query. 

For agents, Salesforce automatically surfaces relevant information from customer histories, past cases, and related documentation in real-time.

All of this can be enabled using clicks–not code–so you aren’t on the phone with Salesforce every time you want to alter a flow or test out an idea.

As you might expect, Salesforce is a good deal more expensive than standalone live chat software. The live chat features come as part of Salesforce Service Cloud, which is one of the many editions of Salesforce CRM software. 

Service Essentials starts at $25/month per user, and comes with a limited version of the live chat software. 

Keep in mind that the Service Essentials plan gives you access to all of the core Salesforce CRM features: sales pipelines, contact management, customizable reporting dashboards, and so on.

Premium versions of Salesforce live chat software are available as an add-on with Service Enterprise and included with all Service Unlimited plans.

Try Service Essentials today for free to get a sense of how Salesforce can help you step up your live chat game right now.

#3 – Tidio — Best Simple Live Chat Software

Tidio is the live chat solution for companies that want a straightforward way to engage directly with customers on their site, store, or social network.

It’s user-friendly with chat templates you can start using right away. You pretty much just turn it on, and now you can chat with visitors on your site.

Setting up chatbots, if you want to, requires zero coding at all. It’s plug-and-play technology at work. There is no long deployment, and no complex licensing–just a simple, affordable, and very capable live chat platform.

It’s a customer relationship tool that allows your employees to cut response times down to minutes. More importantly, you learn more about your customers through conversation, discovering what really matters.

Relieve any stress your chat agents have about customer information visibility because they can see a live visitor list of everyone on the site. Which can include contact info, location, browser, and the last page they visited. 

This allows agents to reach out in the right way at the right time. Customers don’t have to repeat themselves, and when there is an issue, knowing what browser they are on saves a lot of trouble.

Feel that? That’s the release of any tension you had about your agents not wanting to use this software.

Tidio is so flexible, allowing you to incorporate email marketing tools, or have live chats directed to your inbox. Some of the other standout features include:

• Chat routing for departments
• Email inbox integration
• Multichannel shared inbox
• Instagram integration
• FB Messenger integration
• Built-in ticketing

On top of all this, you get pre-built integrations with Shopify, Wix, WordPress, BigCommerce, and other ecommerce platforms.

Off the shelf, Tidio is going to work really well for companies using social media to draw traffic to their stores.. 

Can Tidio build the most complex chatbot workflows ever? No, but most small businesses will be able to build what they need in minutes without writing a line of code. 

And, unlike more powerful live chat software, Tidio has affordable, predictable pricing. In fact, you can start using limited versions of both live chat and chatbots for free today before deciding which Tidio plans make sense for you. 

The Communicator plan starts at $19 per month per operator and includes all of the excellent live chat features we mentioned. 

The Chatbots plan is $39 per month, which supports conversations with 40,000 unique website visitors.

Mix, match, upgrade, downgrade, or change plans at any time.

In short, Tidio offers whatever combination of live chat and chatbots you think is going to work well for your business. Start your free trial of Tidio today.

#4 – HubSpot Live Chat — Best Free Live Chat Software

HubSpot is one of the most well-known and reputable names in the marketing world—and for good reason. HubSpot Live Chat software is included with its free-forever CRM.

Even if you’re not currently using HubSpot, you can still use this live chat software without paying a dime.

This is an excellent option for any business that isn’t quite ready to invest too much money into a live chat solution. You can try it at no risk and see if it makes sense for your business.

As a HubSpot tool, you can rest easy knowing the software is powerful and user-friendly—despite its $0 price tag. 

It still comes with everything you need, including a custom live chat widget for your website, targeted welcome messages, customer routing rules, and built-in meeting scheduling.

The live chat and chatbot option provides a professional look as visitors interact with your website. 

You can also leverage existing information you have about repeat visitors to personalize their live chat experience by integrating with your CRM or using HubSpot’s built-in CRM solution. This makes all of your customer interactions feel natural, personalized, and on-brand.

Managing your chat inbox is easy. All chats are stored in a universal inbox with enhanced data, so every rep knows everything they need to know in just a few seconds.

You can use saved conversations for training purposes, to get other reps up to speed if the same person reaches out again, and to keep a record of your team’s interactions for continuous improvement. But the best part is that there are no limits to the number of conversations you can have on HubSpot’s free plan.

Plus, you can drag and drop your live chat widget in just a few minutes with no coding or development skills. From the look and feel to how it behaves, you’re in complete control.

HubSpot Live Chat makes it easy to:

• Follow up with visitors
• Take notes about their conversations
• Make phone calls
• Turn conversations into tasks
• Automatically create support tickets

With Slack, this is even easier. Since HubSpot Live Chat integrates directly with Slack, users can engage with customers and respond to inquiries on the go, save conversations directly in the app, and manage them in real-time as though they are regular parts of the everyday workflow.

All of this is possible from within your universal chat inbox.

This is, without a doubt, the most powerful free chatbot service on the market. We wrote a full HubSpot review, too, if you want to learn about its CRM and other features beyond these.

HubSpot’s chat platform can drastically improve your productivity and visitor experience overnight. No more switching back and forth between hundreds of tabs trying to email, call, and chat with visitors.

Sign up today and get started for free.

#5 – LiveAgent — The Best for 24/7 Problem Solving

LiveAgent is an all-in-one customer support solution that includes a comprehensive live chat widget. The widget works hand-in-hand with all of your support documentation to deliver unprecedented 24/7 customer support on autopilot.

Branded as “the fastest live chat on the market,” it turns your live chat channel into an around-the-clock support center that doesn’t need breaks, vacation, or overtime pay.

Automation is at the core of LiveAgent’s chat software, giving you thousands of ways to introduce chat routing to the right reps, so your customers get the right answers to their questions the first time. Segment your audience, build custom chat flows, and suggest relevant support articles all while giving your agents more time to focus on bigger issues that actually require the human touch. Brilliant.

The widget itself is highly customizable, letting you choose your own colors, set a custom welcome message, create custom rules, track users as they browse your site, and initiate conversations at the right time.

LiveAgent’s live chat functionality even includes basic video chat so customers or leads with advanced issues can share their screens, chat face-to-face, and get personalized help in a way that makes the most sense for the situation.

You can even see a live text preview as users are typing so your reps can proactively work to find a solution before the person on the other end ever hits send.

But the best part is that it’s fully integrated with LiveAgent’s ticketing and customer support solution with no extra APIs or developers required. Everything’s 100% plug-and-play ready to go out of the box, taking less than a minute to install the live chat widget on your website.

If you’re looking for a comprehensive customer support solution, LiveAgent is the way to go. Use the 14-day free trial period to try it out, play around with the widget builder, and see how things work.

Here’s a closer look at LiveAgent’s plans and pricing:

• Ticket — $15 per agent per month
• Ticket+Chat — $29 per agent per month
• All-Inclusive — $49 per agent per month

#6 – Olark — Best for Anticipating Customer Issues

Olark is a modern and relatively simple live chat solution, which makes it a popular choice for smaller businesses and websites that are new to live chat. 

Its simplicity and ease of use make building customer relationships seamless, even if you’re not quite sure what you’re doing.

Despite its wealth of features, it takes just a few minutes to create your live chat widget and publish it on your website. From there, you’ll automatically start collecting data and analytics you can use to improve the customer experience.

One area where Olark really shines is in searchable transcript technology. This best-in-class feature makes keeping tabs on customer issues simple and enhances the ability to address common problems other customers might face in the future. 

In just a few clicks, you can literally create a database of frequently solved issues so you can lower the number of requests you get for those issues to free up your agents’ time for loftier inquiries.

By easily being able to search through chats and find issues customers have mentioned before, every agent can have a solution at the ready without a customer having to relive the problem they already talked about. Searchable transcript software can also help you build iterative new best practices for service. 

An agent simply reopens a previous chat, finds the problem plaguing the customer, and manages the solution on the spot. 

The platform also integrates with SalesForce, HubSpot, Groove, HelpScout, MailChimp, WordPress, and Google Analytics. So regardless of the other tools you’re already using, adding Olark is a seamless process.

Plans start at just $29 per agent per month and you can save 10% by opting for an annual plan.

Though it is not marketed as a support provider, Olark really makes teams’ lives much easier in solving problems. They are also stellar at bolstering sales and marketing efforts when your team is chatting with prospects about pricing and services you provide.

Try Olark free for two weeks.

#7 – Podium Webchat — Best for Moving the Conversation to Mobile

Podium is smart enough to know that chat widgets can never convert and communicate as well as good old-fashioned texting from your mobile phone.

No matter your reasons for using live chat software—be it sales conversations with prospects, client support, or setting up appointments or meetings—why not give both your prospects or customers and your employees the ability to do it all via SMS.

That’s why Podium’s Webchat widget really has one screen. When site visitors click on the icon (which you can customize to fit your branding), they’ll simply see a form for entering their name, mobile number, and introductory message.

After they click “Send”, your team will receive the info so a member can text them back. Visitors will even see the number your representative will text from, so they can know where your response will be coming from.

The widget is so simple to implement. All you have to do to get started is place a piece of code on your website, customize your button, avatar, greeting, and after-hours message, integrate it with your CRM, and you’re good to go.

If you have ever had a problem that needed solving in a New York minute, you know the stress of playing phone tag or waiting on answers because the availability of your provider was under time constraints.

Or, you know too well the pain of missing out on a hot lead or sale because other contact methods on your website aren’t as immediate and convenient for both parties as texting.

Podium makes this a non-issue because your team can always be there to help your customers, whether they’re in the office or only have their mobile on them. This ability makes your support or sales efforts superior. 

On the support or scheduling side of things, your Podium-enhanced ability to handle problems so quickly will go a long way to helping generate positive customer reviews. Plus, you can send a review link in the chat and navigate customers towards leaving a rave review in real-time after you have helped them solve an issue. 

It’s a no-hassle way to build your collection of glowing customer reviews. 

Furthermore, Podium Webchat contains a wide range of robust features, including:

• Accurate tracking with Google Analytics
• Automatically send warm leads to your CRM
• Transfer conversations from one location to another
• Daily performance emails
• Smart canned responses
• An autoresponder

We’ve written a detailed Podium review if you want to go even deeper into its features.

Pricing for Podium’s products is only attainable via a custom quote. You can just elect to use its Webchat service or bundle it with some of their more advanced offerings, like Teamchat, Videochat, and Payments.

Or, get started for free! Podium’s free version comes with Webchat, a messaging manager, and its features for generating more and better customer reviews.

Sign up for a free account to get started with Podium today!

#8 – Sendinblue — The Best for Converting Visitors to Subscribers

Sendinblue is an email marketing engine with live chat, text messaging, and landing pages included in the service.

This live chat solution helps maximize conversation management and the growth of your business through email. Cold emailing is prehistoric in nature and has all but fizzled out as a marketing strategy. Autoresponders are hip to this approach and are protecting the users from spam.

Sendinblue cuts through the noise and helps you wield both email and chat messaging to drive visitors towards becoming long-term customers. 

Lean on their live chat widget to greet and interact with website visitors, then capture their contact info. This will deliver already-warmed subscribers into your email list.

Then, whip up effective messages within Sendinblue’s drag-and-drop builder (which includes support for creating transactional emails) and then send them off to your new contacts. Plus, since they’ve opted into your marketing efforts from their live chat conversation, you know your emails will hit their inbox.

Email is still the king of ROI. When you have a live chat widget on your website that primes visitors through great customer support, it will improve your customers’ amenability toward future email communications. 

Furthermore, their live chat feature is easy to install (in just a few seconds) and allows you to start conversations with visitors on your website.

And you can combine live chat with a wide variety of email marketing features to seamlessly meet your customers where they are. All without paying a single penny.

• Unlimited email contacts
• Send up to 300 emails a day
• Drag-and-drop email designer
• Live chat widget for your website
• Advanced audience segmentation
• Transactional emails and SMS messages
• One shared inbox

You can learn more about all of the available features by reading our Sendinblue review.

Sendinblue’s paid plans include:

• Lite — $25 per month
• Premium — $65 per month
• Enterprise — Custom pricing

Those prices accommodate up to 20,000 monthly email sends. If you need more than that, your monthly rate will be higher than what you see above.

However, on the flip side, Sendinblue also offers a free forever plan. It’s understandably limited in some ways—you’re capped at 300 sends per day and Sendinblue’s branding will be on anything you send, among other limitations—but it still allows you access to the live chat feature.

So, instead of a time-constrained free trial, just sign up for that free forever plan and take Sendinblue for a test drive today.

#9 – LiveChat — Best for Converting Visitors into Buyers

LiveChat is an all-in-one customer service platform. Over 35,000+ businesses, such as Ikea, Mercedes-Benz, McDonald’s, and PayPal, trust LiveChat for their customer support needs.

LiveChat works by combining questions and chats from any platform you integrate it with into a single inbox, so your customer support team can answer them quickly and efficiently. That ability to see everything at a glance gives your team incredible agility to strike while the iron’s hot. 

When visitors make any sort of contact, you’re ready to provide the information they need to confidently purchase.

The software is state-of-the-art—LiveChat makes selling easy with features like product cards, custom forms, AI automation, and advanced sales analytics. All of these are available to use during live chats.

Their powerful AI tools let you automatically route inquiries to the right team, segment visitors, and generate leads. Some sales can be made directly from the chat software itself. 

This level of automation leads to more conversions and enables businesses to focus on building long-term relationships with their customers.

Here’s a quick overview of LiveChat’s plans and pricing:

• Starter — $16 per agent per month
• Team — $33 per agent per month
• Business — $50 per agent per month
• Enterprise — Custom pricing available

Each plan includes a built-in ticketing system, daily summaries, automated greetings, top-notch security, and 24/7/365 customer support.

Start your 14-day free trial!

#10 – Chaport — The Best for Improving the Bottom of Your Sales Funnel

Chaport is all about increasing sales through better chat communication. They help your small business or startup incorporate the chat services they need to grow effortlessly. 

When you’re starting a business, you need to build your client base, close sales, and scale your business with the least amount of complexity. Chaport does this with customizable widgets that easily allow you to chat live or incorporate chatbots that automatically interact with visitors, solve problems quickly, and increase sales. 

This maximizes the efficacy of the bottom of your sales funnel because, once a question is quickly resolved, your visitor can make a buying decision with confidence.

And if you are not a large business that needs to offer live chat, the option for a chatbot is perfect, filling the void to always be present online to help your surging traffic. 

Furthermore, it’s incredibly affordable and you can start with the free forever plan until you’re ready to upgrade. The free plan has all of Chaport’s essential features including:

• Use on unlimited websites with unlimited chats
• 60-day chat history
• Basic Widget customization
• Web, desktop, and mobile apps

The Pro plan costs $19 per operator per month with a minimum of four operators. It includes everything in the Free tier, as well as an unlimited chat history, automatic invitations to chat, detailed reports about the team’s performance, and integrations with Facebook, Viber, and Telegram. 

The Unlimited tier costs $75 per operator per month, and there is no limit on the number of operators you can have. It includes everything in Pro, but many of its features focus on giving you chatbot capabilities, so it goes beyond live chat features. The features in the Unlimited tier include:

• Access to chatbots
• A knowledge base bot
• An FAQ bot
• Ratings for chat results
• Integration with Zapier
• On-demand reports
• Advanced custom reports

You can also chat with your customers from any device including iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and more with instant synchronization from one device to the next.

So whether you’re looking for basic live chat or advanced chatbot features and in-depth visitor insights, Chaport has a solution for you.

Sign up to get started for free today.

#11 – Social Intents — Best if You’re Using Slack or Microsoft Teams

We all know how much of a pain decentralized communication can be. Sometimes, it seems half your day is making rounds of checking multiple email inboxes, team chat, PM software notifications, and other messaging platforms.

Social Intents is the live chat tool that will reduce some of that headache for you.

That’s because it’s made with two of the most popular team messaging platforms—Slack and Microsoft Teams—in mind. Social Intents allows your team to chat with customers and website visitors directly within those two pieces of software.

And, it’s crazy easy to set up. After you’ve signed up, just connect Social Intents to Slack or MS Teams (it only takes one click on Social Intents’ homepage for that), embed the code for its live chat widget onto your website or landing page, and you’re all set.

Seriously, just two steps and your team will have unparalleled response times.

You can customize the channel that chat notifications and requests push to, as well, so reps don’t lose anything in the shuffle.  

And don’t worry about website compatibility. As we said, Social Intents just requires a simple code injection to display on most websites. Or, if you use WordPress, Wix, Shopify, or BigCommerce, just download and install the free plugin for whichever site platform you’re using.

The main appeal here is its fantastic integration with Slack and MS Teams, but Social Intents doesn’t slack off (pardon the pun) on live chat features.

You can set custom rules for live chat availability, timers that trigger notifications to website visitors, canned and automated responses, and detailed reporting.

Plus, with that ability to conduct chats in Slack and Teams, your reps can easily respond to inquiries on the fly from their mobile devices.

Social Intents offers a 14-day free trial before you have to commit to one of their paid plans:

• Starter: $39/month — one widget, one domain, two agents, 150 chats/month
• Basic: $59/month — two widgets, two domains, unlimited agents, 1,000 chats/month
• Pro: $99/month — five widgets, five domains, unlimited agents, 5,000 chats/month
• Business: $199/month — unlimited widgets, unlimited domains, unlimited agents, 10,000 chats/month

You unlock quick replies at the Basic tier and custom chatbots and custom-branded widgets at Pro.

If you’re using Slack or Microsoft Teams and have a need for live chat software, Social Intents is a no-brainer.

Give Social Intents a two-week test drive today.

#12 – Pure Chat — Most Effortless Way to Add Live Chat Services

Pure Chat focuses on one thing and one thing only—and that’s live chat. For those of you looking for a simple live chat solution without all of the confusing bells and whistles, Pure Chat will be a top choice for you to consider. 

Starting and trying to build a successful business from the ground up is hard enough, so whenever you can avoid complexity in your day, it’s a win. Pure Chat takes the guesswork out of implementing live chat so you can focus on what matters in your business.

Top features of Pure Chat include:

• Unlimited chat
• Customizable chat widget
• Native iOS and Android apps
• Security rules
• Unlimited chat history and transcripts
• File transfer
• Trigger-based alerts and actions
• Real-time analytics
• Visitor tracking

You can customize the tool to accommodate your needs. Pure Chat integrates with 1,000+ apps like Slack, Salesforce, MailChimp, HubSpot, Zoho, and more. Start using the dead simple way to leap into the world of live chat for your small business, or small team today with this simple yet feature-rich live chat solution.

Pricing for Pure Chat can look a little complicated at first, but it simply breaks down into two main packages.

The Growth plan is either $39 per month if you pay for a year upfront or $49 when paying month-to-month. That supports a single website, allows up to four users and 100 SMS notifications, and comes with every live chat feature that the software offers. You can also add additional users for an extra monthly fee of $13 to $15.

The main downside of this plan, beyond only being able to support one site, is that you’re stuck with Pure Chat’s branding on your live chat widget.

If you opt for the Pro package from Pure Chat, you’ll pay $79 per month (annually) or $99 per month (monthly). This removes Pure Chat’s branding while also allowing for usage of the software on unlimited websites.

This plan also allows for up to 10 users and 1,000 monthly SMS notifications. Again, you can add more users by paying a bit more per month ($8 to $10, depending on if you’re paying annually or monthly).

You can try Pure Chat free for 30 days.

Methodology for Choosing the Best Live Chat Software

There are certain factors that must be taken into consideration as you’re shopping around and evaluating live chat solutions. 

We explain these features in greater detail below so you can weigh them according to your personal needs. 

Chatbot vs. Live Chat

When you begin your search for live chat software, it’s necessary to understand the differences between leveraging a chatbot or live chat functionality.

Chatbot

Chatbots automate your communication once they’re set up and customized to your brand.

When you use chatbots, they help you simulate a larger staff than what you actually have. 

For example, customers who need answers to detailed questions can log on to your website 24/7 and get answers without having to wait for normal business hours. Chatbots give you the power to have unlimited personalized interactions at scale.

It’s time to give your business a sales team that never sleeps with chatbot integration that sells your products online seamlessly with no human interaction needed. 

Cart abandonment is a big problem in ecommerce. Chatbots can be used to offer incentives before a customer gets to the checkout or leaves the page.

You can offer free shipping, keep your customers interested by offering special promotions through your chatbot, and answer common questions about a product, helping them to confirm it’s the best purchase to make. 

Chatbots can even help after the sale. Give your customers the power to track orders and even streamline the return process, eliminating the need to wait on hold or email customer support. 

Live Chat

If you own a small business with an even smaller support team but you want to be more available to online visitors, incorporating live chat is the way to go. 

Unlike chatbots, you have a live person available to respond to your visitors’ questions. What’s great about live chat is the conversations you have with your visitors will uncover additional details to help your business grow. 

Pure Chat, for example, is built just for small business owners with a handful of support staff. Its live chat capability gives you real-time sales support data. 

So, even with a smaller salesforce, you can maximize every detail about the customer to improve your bottom line. 

And, if you have higher call volumes than you would like, live chat will slow that down and increase productivity, because agents can manage multiple conversations at one time with live chat.

Searchable Transcripts

Reputation is everything in business. One bad review can haunt you for a long time and cost you hundreds—if not thousands—in new revenue.

Imagine going on Facebook and seeing a full-page post about how your business doesn’t listen to its customers and how that customer chatted with three different agents but none of them knew about their issue. 

How much collateral damage will that cause for your brand and how much will that shake your current customers’ faith in you? 

On top of that, new customers will see it and immediately be hesitant to do business with you.

Searchable transcripts solve this problem by making sure every detail is stored when a customer interacts in your chat and that those details are retrievable with just a few clicks. Gather valuable data from interactions and search for previous chats to establish a baseline from a prior conversation.

Your agents will better understand the big problems your customers are facing and swiftly address them without a customer having to repeat themselves again and again.   

Searchable transcripts will confirm what several customers need and want from your business, thus helping with marketing efforts as well. Plus, it makes record keeping and reporting a snap.

If you want to keep improving your sales and support processes, get a live chat tool with transcripts like Olark. 

Conversation Management

Chatbots offer some amazing features, but none more beneficial than conversation management. 

Automation tools allow you to automatically route customers to the right team and separate the visitors to your website based on team members’ specialties. 

This helps generate leads and puts the right client in touch with the right agent to help them correctly the first time. 

Chatbots also help manage conversations through pre-sale marketing. This works by preventing incoming sales inquiries from being abandoned because of long wait times. A sales bot can be your visitors’ first point of contact, helping to drastically reduce response time and connect with customers before they think about leaving your site. 

Your sales chatbot can set up promotions your business is offering, answer common questions about the product, and proactively communicate details that will make your live chat agent more effective during the close of a sale. 

If you leverage ecommerce channels and also have a sales team on standby for further assistance, conversation management is an essential feature to consider. You can tailor messages based on web pages to personalize your customers’ experience even more, making them stay on the chat until your sales team agent is ready to close the deal.  

Branding

Custom branding for your chatbot and live chat software is very popular and many business owners love this feature.

But, be careful—there is a difference between live chat widget customization and custom branding for your website.

Branding incorporates your business website colors and logo in the chatbox for your website,  while advanced live widget customization can offer several other features, but does not include adding images for your logo or custom color schemes to match your website design. 

Branding is at the forefront of any business and including a chatbot or live chat without it is folly. 

Some live chat platforms make this easy for businesses who only care about setting up simple-to-use live chats, while others are a bit more robust. 

If you are looking for a simple way to brand your live chat experiences, consider the recommendations on this list, as they all offer custom options for your live chat and chatbot integration. 

Easy Review Requests

Online reviews are extremely critical to the success of your business. 

But, as a business owner, you know how valuable your time is. Gambling with it to call customers over the phone to ask for a review is expensive and inefficient, especially if you don’t get what you’re looking for. 

Sending emails is no better; you’re lucky if it makes it to their inbox. What’s worse is they may only read your email a week later, well after the freshness of their purchase has worn off, leading to a bland and flat review of the service you provided. 

Live chat makes getting that elusive, high-quality customer review much easier while your incredible service is fresh in their mind. The right chat tool will allow you to create your own script and easily send links to paying customers over chat or text to quickly get the review you want. 

You can even use pre-made templates to simplify the process even more. If you are a business owner who is having trouble getting solid reviews that enhance your credibility, live chat software will change the review request process for you virtually overnight. 

Integrations

Live chat is about improving sales and creating a more efficient support team to help your customers. The right integrations make this a walk in the park, while a lack thereof limits your business growth. 

The live chat platforms on this list integrate with many of the popular CRMs seamlessly, keeping your customers’ data synced at all times. For example, a Salesforce integration can send leads directly from a live chat so you never miss out on a hot prospect again. SugarCRM can manage sales tasks directly from the chat, offering a more enjoyable buyer’s journey. 

If you use the HubSpot CRM, your team can easily manage contacts and create CRM records through the integration with LiveChat. This cuts out unnecessary steps in your workflow, saving time and revenue. 

It’s best to make sure your live chat tool offers all the integrations you need in order to make your life easier. Else, what’s the point of having this tool to begin with?

Summary

So, which live chat software is right for you? The answer, of course, depends on your needs.

Gorgias is our top pick for most users, while HubSpot Live Chat is a fantastic free option.

However, there are plenty of other excellent alternatives to consider. 

All the live chat solutions featured in this guide offer a free trial or the ability to request a free demo. So if you’re having trouble deciding, give them a try to evaluate their performance.

And don’t forget to use the methodology we talked about as you sort through finding the best live chat software for you and your customers.