A robust live chat software gives you a platform to connect with your already engaged website visitors, consequently improving customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention.
In fact, customers who chat with a business are likelier to spend 60% more than those who don’t. A live chat solution can help you leverage this opportunity.
However, adopting a live chat tool can seem overwhelming. So, we’ve done the heavy lifting and curated this buyer’s guide of the 10 best live chat software for customer support. It includes each software’s features, advantages and disadvantages (based on user reviews), and pricing.
"Extending live customer support over chat is the best and easiest way to help your customers resolve complex queries and enhance customer satisfaction. Finding the most suitable live chat software provider will be easy if you base your decision on your core business goals, usage, and budget."
What is live chat software?
Live chat software is a tool for real-time human assistance through a chat window. Visitors input messages promptly addressed by a human operator, enhancing engagement and customer satisfaction. It facilitates instant messaging for customer support, sales, and engagement purposes.
The best providers manage multiple conversations, track progress, and offer automated messages when representatives are unavailable. Implementing live chat reduces costs and enhances customer service efficiency.
Top 10 Live Chat Software for Customer Support
The market is brimming with live chat software for customer support. However, not all can fulfill your business needs or align with your budget well. Our buyer’s guide will acquaint you with the best live chat service providers that mostly fit all business sizes and have decent pricing. Let’s get started –
1. ControlHippo
ControlHippo is the best live chat support solution and WhatsApp Business solution provider with transformative capabilities. With ControlHippo, you can easily integrate with CRM and manage multiple WhatsApp accounts, streamlining your customer-agent communication. Its setup process is easy and can get you started within minutes.
Features
- Unified message management
- Group live messaging
- Real-time sales lead tracking
- Document storage
Pros
- ControlHippo centralizes all your WhatsApp conversations to enhance teamwork across support, sales, and marketing teams and improve customer experiences with its unified collaboration.
- This software provides real-time insights into customer interaction and team performance, driving strategy modification and data-based decisions.
- It seamlessly integrates with popularly used apps to help you provide centralized support, refine data accuracy, personalize workflows, etc., boosting productivity.
Cons
- ControlHippo has a few bugs in its system.
- This software freezes at times, leading to interruptions in support conversations.
Pricing
- $30/user/month
2. LiveChat
LiveChat is one of the best live chat tools that aims to make your customers happy while boosting your sales. It allows you to create an unbeatable chat experience for customers, solve customer problems proactively, and easily send customer details to CRM using 200+ app integrations like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Mailchimp. With LiveChat, you can expect a perfect blend of AI and humans.
Features
- Message sneak peeks
- Chat widget customization
- Inactivity messages
- Chat reports
Pros
- LiveChat is extremely easy to use as it gives relevant message suggestions when you type a hash with canned responses.
- This tool lets you track every chat by highlighting the conversation topic and problems with chat tags, keeping you updated.
- This software gives you quick access to a past conversation via chat archives by just typing time, phrase, or agent name.
Cons
- LiveChat is difficult to configure.
- It lags in receiving chat messages.
Pricing
- Starter: $20/user/month
- Team: $41/user/month
- Business: $59/user/month
- Enterprise: Contact Sales
3. ProProfs Chat
ProProfs Chat is a cutting-edge tool designed for real-time human assistance through a chat window. It provides a seamless platform for visitors to input messages promptly addressed by human operators, thus enhancing engagement and overall customer satisfaction. With a focus on customer support, sales, and engagement, ProProfs Live Chat facilitates instant messaging and efficient communication.
Features:
- Real-time interaction
- Unified collaboration
- Automation and insights
- Integration capabilities
Pros
- Centralized collaboration across teams for improved customer experiences.
- Real-time insights for data-driven decision-making.
- Seamless integration with popular apps for enhanced productivity.
Cons
- Like any software, ProProfs Live Chat may have occasional bugs.
- The system has technical glitches at times.
Pricing:
Free for 1 Operator Forever
4. Aquire.io
Acquire.io is a dedicated website chat software that seamlessly and strongly connects with social platforms. It enables your team to quickly and proactively resolve complicated sales, support, or service problems in real time across all channels. From automation and workflow optimization to routing, Acquire.io allows you to do it all.
Features
- Timeline view
- Business rules
- In-thread notes
- 25 language translations
Pros
- Aquire.io lets your team secretly input critical information about a specific conversation to facilitate quick resolution with chat notes.
- This software auto-sends replies to customers without any agent interference, saving effort and time.
- It allows you to seamlessly toggle between conversations in one live messaging platform with a multitasking feature for enhanced agent experience and quicker resolutions.
Cons
- Aquire.io’s desktop version gives you sporadic notifications.
- This software has bugs and issues.
Pricing
- Self-service: $500/month + $25/agent/month
- Integrated solution: $2000/month + $45/agent/month
5. Userlike
Userlike is an excellent live chat website software that gives you access to chat and AI to transform your customer experience. This software brings all your digital touchpoints, like WhatsApp and Website chat, together to help you generate more leads, enhance your service experience, and boost satisfaction. From personalized support to targeted campaigns on WhatsApp, Userlike helps you ace it all. (Discover what is B2C lead generation)
Features
- Individual and shared inbox
- Chat slots
- Chat macros
- Call with screen sharing
Pros
- Userlike allows you to create custom notifications based on your needs to stay updated on conversation progress.
- This software facilitates effective management and agility during high support times via bulk actions.
- This tool gives agents context on conversations upon call transfer to avoid customer repetition and boost agent efficiency with forwards with context.
Cons
- Userlike doesn’t have an attractive design.
- This software is a little more expensive than its competitors.
Pricing
- Team: $90/month
- Corporate: $290/month
- Flex: Contact sales
6. Podium
Podium is an outstanding live chat website software that offers various services–video chatting, SMS campaigns, and web chatting. The best part? It allows you to respond to all your leads within 5 minutes without wasting time toggling between communication channels with its single inbox. With its advanced features, your productivity is bound to boost. Oh, and you get access to their live chat app too!
Features
- Sentiment analysis
- Social network monitoring
- Co-browsing
- Conversation archiving
Pros
- Podium allows you to create messages from templates and send messages in bulk, helping you get more done in less time.
- This software offers message personalization for targetted groups, boosting customer engagement, increasing loyalty, and driving revenue.
- It ensures persistent growth of your marketing list with customer opt-ins on email, store, website, and more.
Cons
- Podium experiences downtime at times.
- It limits the number of promotional messages you can send for free.
Pricing
- Essentials: $249/month
- Standard: $409/month
- Professional: $599/month
7. Tidio
Tidio is live chat website software capable of connecting with different platforms and websites with dedicated plugins. It is specially designed for ecommerce businesses that want to focus on lead generation, website visitor interaction, and sales enhancement.
Features
- Live visitor list
- Customer database
- Pre-chat surveys
- Proactive chat
Pros
- Tidio facilitates communication personalization by tracking your website pages that visitors have recently browsed via viewed pages.
- This software makes communication more comfortable and understandable for agents by adding multiple languages to your chat widget to choose from via the multilanguage feature.
- It ensures that you never miss a message from your customers by notifying them that you’re offline, collecting their emails, and responding to them at your convenience via offline message.
Cons
- Downloading chat data besides lead information requires manual effort if done with Tidio.
- Its chatbot is not suitable for resolving complex customer issues.
Pricing
- Starter: $29/month
- Communicator: $25/month
- Chatbots:$29/month
8. Pure Chat
Pure Chat is one of the most amazing live chat apps that aims to improve the conversations between businesses and website visitors. It offers you a chance to capitalize on the benefits and features Pure Chat has to offer in order to turn website visitors into customers.
Features
- Powerful Operator Dashboard
- Unlimited chat history
- Chat alerts
- Visitor Information & Location Details
Pros
- Pure Chat has an easy setup process and an intuitive UI.
- This live chat tool helps you customize your chat window according to your brand by giving you complete control of how your chat widget looks and operates via its convenient editor.
- It facilitates quick and accurate replies to repetitive or frequently asked questions, saving agents’ time via canned responses.
Cons
- Pure Chat’s customer support team is unresponsive.
- This software logs you out if you haven’t been active for a specific period.
Pricing
- Growth: $39/month
- Pro: $79/month
9. Ada
Ada is one of the best live chat solutions that transforms the customer experience with AI. This customer service platform lets you leverage its AI to resolve most of your customer inquiries automatically across different channels. You can expect to build, optimize, and scale automation in one easy-to-use platform.
Features
- A/B testing
- Bot persona
- Training suggestions
- Summarization
Pros
- Ada collects available customer details, understands customer intent, and automatically takes action to instantly resolve complex queries with prebuilt workflows or generative AI.
- This live chat solution tracks critical insights like intent recognition accuracy, resolution rate, handoffs, and more so your teams can utilize it to optimize performance.
- It allows you to automatically create hyper-engaging and relevant content by clicking a few buttons, helping you save time writing and focus on resolving with content assist.
Cons
- Some of Ada’s satisfaction survey phrases are not editable.
- It allows you to pull limited data from some API calls or integrations.
Pricing
- Generative or Scripted: Contact sales
10. Tawk.to
Tawk.to is a free live chat software cut to help its users monitor and talk to website visitors, organize contacts, address support tickets, and create a help center to make customers self-sufficient. You can enhance customer engagement just by adding a JAVAScript snippet to your website.
Features
- High load dashboard
- Track sentiment
- Attention ubbble
- Scheduler
Pros
- Tawk.to gives you shortcuts and knowledge-based articles to conduct contextual customer conversations and deliver the best experiences.
- This live chat solution provides 24/7*365 quick customer support to resolve all your queries within minutes.
- It enables sales reps to seamlessly connect with decision-makers and other reps in case of any issue without having to leave the software with the group chat conversations feature.
Cons
- Tawk.to’s notification alerts do not work, sometimes leading to missed chat conversations.
- This free live chat software dashboard is slightly difficult to navigate.
Pricing
- Free
11. Chaport
Chaport is a website chat software and a better way to communicate with your customers. With this software, you can add a live chat widget to your website, automate sales and support with chatbots, and integrate with other communication channels. It integrates all the elements you need for support, sales, and engagement in one easy-to-use interface.
Features
- Brief visitor info
- Visitor notes
- Chat ratings
- Status auto-toggle
Pros
- Chatport gives you the freedom to talk to your customers in real time, solving problems more quickly and boosting sales via a live chat window.
- This live chat support software lets you create a knowledge base for your customers and set up an FAQ bot that suggests relevant articles, promoting customer self-service.
- It allows you to share videos, audio, and images with your customers to extend holistic customer support with file sending.
Cons
- Chatport’s configuration is a little difficult to navigate.
- It doesn’t allow admins to add saved replies for all the users.
Pricing
- Pro: $19/month
- Unlimited: $75/month
Wrapping Up
Live chat support software empowers your sales and service reps to communicate with website visitors in real time, resolve their queries, and provide them with accurate answers. When you persistently and promptly engage with your customers, the customer satisfaction and service quality level are bound to rise.
Hence, adopting an online chat support software is definitely beneficial for your business. For an easy choice of a live chat service provider, refer to our buyer’s guide mentioned above and choose the one that best aligns with your business requirements and budget. Go ahead and invest in the best live chat software today!
Frequently Asked Questions
Live chat software enables real-time communication between businesses and website visitors. It ensures instant messaging, allowing users to ask questions, seek assistance, or get information promptly. This tool enhances customer support and engagement. It helps businesses provide timely responses for a more interactive and responsive online experience.
An example of chat software is ControlHippo, a platform that facilitates real-time communication and collaboration. ControlHippo is a whatsapp shared inbox that offers features like messaging, file sharing, and team collaboration tools, enhancing communication efficiency within organizations.
Chat support software is a tool that enables real-time communication between businesses and customers. It facilitates text-based conversations, addressing inquiries, providing assistance, and enhancing customer service experiences.
Updated : April 15, 2024
Naina Khare is a full-time writer who fiercely believes in the power of storytelling and primarily holds expertise in creating content for B2B SaaS brands. She’s infinitely curious and happiest when reading, writing, or exploring spirituality and self-growth. Over the years, Naina has written content for various SaaS and B2B companies.
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