Best live chat software 2024

Introduction

Live chat is becoming a mainstay of customer service, and it’s no wonder. It can provide immediate help in an increasingly impatient world and it does it more cheaply than a call center. You’ve probably used live chat to resolve issues and questions and you’re not alone. So, is it time to add live chat to your customer service arsenal?

What is live chat?

Live chat is a medium that allows your business to engage with your website visitors in real-time, via messaging software. This software is commonly referred to as live chat software or customer messaging software.

You can use live chat software to initiate conversations with first-time website visitors, interact with returning customers, and support your existing users. It is a modern, continuous, and contextual way to drive more engagement, delight customers, and retain customers for the long haul.

• Live chat offers a personalized customer experience. With robust tools, agents can see the entire history of interactions and offer support based on this history.

• This channel offers fast and efficient support, which leads to better customer interaction and builds trust in your brand. Interactions can be as short as a minute or two compared with the days it can take going back and forth on email.

• A live chat solution is beneficial across your customer’s journey. It can be used by your marketing, sales, and support teams on various channels.

17 Best live chat software 2024

1. Freshchat

Freshchat is a powerful messaging software that allows consumers to have smarter conversations with businesses in real-time. Using Freshchat, businesses can connect with customers across live chat, their favorite messaging channels, provide intuitive deflection with AI-powered chatbots, and enable personalized and proactive self-service 24/7.

Key Features

• Unified support experience across channels including WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat, Facebook Messenger, and more.

• Intelligent Messaging bots to automate and resolve support queries.

• One inbox for all messages coming from different channels to provide you with complete customer context.

• Proactive messaging to engage with your customers and nudge them to action.

• Seamless third-party integrations with over a hundred apps to offer a consistent user experience.

• Native integration with Freshdesk (helpdesk) and Freshsales (CRM) to boost customer and agent experience.

• Data-driven analytics to measure your team performance and improve your customer service experience.

• Built-in templates so your team can respond quickly to common questions.

• Automated chant assignments based on specialities and current bandwidth using IntelliAsign.

• Speak your customer’s language with real-time translations using Live Translate.

Pricing

4 Plans

• Free: forever up to 10 users

• Growth: starting at $19 per user per month

• Pro: starting at $49 per user per month

• Enterprise: starting at $79 per user per month

Free Trial

14-day free trial

2. Zendesk

Zendesk Chat is the live chat software for the customer service company. Their chat system is both easy to set up and easy to use. It integrates seamlessly with their entire platform and is built to scale. It’s a solid choice for larger companies.

Key Features

• Multi-channel support

• Unified agent workspace

• Custom reports

• 24/7 support

Pricing

5 plans:

• Suite Team: $55 per user per month

• Suite Growth: $89 per user per month

• Suite Professional: $115 per user per month

• Suite Enterprise: $169 per user per month

• Suite Enterprise Plus: Contact Zendesk

Free Trial

30-day free trial

3. LiveChat

LiveChat is a leading customer service company that offers solid chat capability. Using their tools, your agents can access a wide variety of features. It's easy to use and offers a stunning array of integrations. However, the array of features can be a bit overwhelming.

Key Features

• AI-powered chatbots for automation

• Canned responses to facilitate fast service

• Over 200 third-party integrations including Shopify and MailChimp.

• Message Sneak Peek allows liveagents to see what customers are typing in real time and improve response time.

Pricing 

4 plans

• Starter: starting at $20 per user per month

• Team: starting at $41 per user per month

• Business: starting at $59 per user per month

• Enterprise: contact LiveChat sales

Free Trial 

14-day free trial

4. Intercom

Intercom is a support software that offers live chat service through their Business Messenger system. Business Manager facilitates interactions wherever your customers are and saves chat history across channels. The tool also comes with bots and in-app messengers to round out customer conversations.

Key Features

• Proactive support

• Self-serve support

• Customer data platform

• Inbox for all customer conversations

• Bots and in-app messages

Pricing

3 Plans

• Starter: Starting at $74 per month

• Pro: contact sales for a quote

• Premium: contact sales for a quote

Free Trial

14-day free trial

5. Drift

Drift is a live chat system that focuses on conversations with customers. With their platform, you can leverage live chat across the customer journey starting with marketing and lead generation. Then move through lead nurturing and conversion. Finally, deliver stellar customer service wherever your clients are.

Key Features

• Proactive support

• Internal notes for collaboration

• Multiple inboxes for different conversations

• Conversational analysis

• Canned responses

Pricing

3 plans

• Premium: Starting at $2500 per month

• Advanced: Contact Drift for more information

• Enterprise: Contact Drift for more information

Free Trial

Free plan with 100 contacts

6. Tidio

Tidio is an AI-powered customer service platform that combines live chat software with other tools. They work to solve 70% of your customer service issues with AI so your reps can focus on tasks that require human interaction. Tidio provides all basic features needed by most smaller teams.

Key Features

• Customizable widgets

• Proactive support

• Canned responses

• Third-party integrations

• Visitor information tracking

Pricing

5 plans

• Free: No charge

• Starter: $29 per month

• Communicator: $25 per seat per month

• Chatbots: $29 per month

• Tidio +: Contact Tidio for pricing

Free Trial

7-day free trial

7. Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk helps customers connect with support instantly through their live chat tool. With live chat, you can provide immediate access to your agents on all online platforms and apps. Enjoy the valuable customer service channel without coding and with easy branding and customization options.

Key Features

• Automation capabilities

• Canned responses

• Customizable widget

• Feedback forms

• Proactive support

Pricing

3 plans

• Standard: Starting at $14 per user per month

• Professional: Starting at $23 per user per month

• Enterprise: Starting at $40 per user per month

Free Trial

15-day free trial

8. Podium

Podium is an interaction management system that focuses specifically on local businesses to make support easier for their customers and agents. Webchat, their live chat tool also functions as a lead generation tool with a goal of increasing your inbound leads by 11x.

Key Features

• Unified inbox for multiple channels

• Customer data

• Proactive support

• Personalized support

Pricing

3 plans

• Essentials: Starting at $249 per month

• Standard: Starting at $409

• Professional: Starting at $599

Free Trial

14-day free trial

9. Acquire

Acquire is a customer support platform that offers a variety of tools including live chat, workflows, video and voice calling, and email. With their live chat software, you can customize routing to make sure the right people are handling the right conversations. Agents are supported by context every step of the way.

Key Features

• Unified support across channels

• Personalized support

• Customer context

• Third-party integrations

Pricing

• Self-service: $500 + $25 per user per month

• Integrated solution: $2000 + $45 per user per month

• Coming Soon: Contact Acquire for more information

Free Trial

Not currently available

10. Birdeye

Birdeye offers a live web chat software that caters to small businesses with room to grow and scale. With their live chat tools, your liveagents can chat directly with leads and customers to deliver personalized experiences. The software includes templates and automations for faster response time.

Key Features

• Omnichannel support

• Mass texting

• Proactive support

• Automation capabilities

• Customizable chat widget

Pricing

3 plans. Details are provided when you provide your contact information.

Free Trial

Not at this time

11. Ada

Ada is a customer service platform that leverages the power of AI to improve client and agent experiences. Using a wide variety of automations and integrations, your customer service team can resolve client issues as quickly as possible. Ada can integrate with your CRM to give live agents visibility into customer details.

Key Features

• Multichannel capabilities

• Communication in 50+ languages

• Out of the box integrations

• Lead generation and management tools

Pricing

3 plans based on your needs. Contact Ada for more information.

Free Trial

Contact Ada for more information.

12. Olark

Olark provides live chat software and customer management tools to help businesses of all sizes deliver personalized experiences. Their tools are customizable and scalable and come with a wide variety of features for the price point. With automations and reports, you can up your customer support game.

Key Features

• Customization to match your brand

• Automations

• Robust analytics and reports

• Custom forms and templates

Pricing

$29 per seat per month. Enterprise pricing is available. Contact Olark for more information.

Free Trial

Free trial available. Contact Olark for more information.

13. Gorgias

Gorgias provides helpdesk and support tools and software for ecommerce merchants. Their live chat tools are robust and customizable so you can impress your customers and offer a seamless branded experience. Routing tools include automation to increase efficiency. Multichannel capability lets you connect with potential clients whether they are on your website or browsing social media.

Key Features

• Easy integration with Shopify

• Self-service options

• Multi-channel capabilities

• Customizable widget

Pricing

5 plans based on support ticket volume

• Starter: $10 for 50 tickets per month

• Basic: $60 for 300 tickets per month

• Pro: $360 for 2000 tickets per month

• Advanced: $900 for 5000 tickets per month

• Enterprise: Contact Gorgias for more information

Free Trial

7-day free trial

14. SnapEngage

SnapEngage is the live chat and messaging arm of TeamSupport. All tools work together to support businesses of all types, with a special focus on the healthcare industry. Use their robust tools and reporting to support your sales and marketing teams deliver personalized experiences.

Key Features

• Multichannel capabilities

• Advanced routing

• Out of the box integrations

• Highly customizable

• Robust onboarding and support for your team available

Pricing

3 plans

• Essential: starting at $29 per user per month

• Enterprise:starting at $39 per user per month

• Complete: Starting at $49 per user per month

Free Trial

A free trial is available. Contact SnapEngage for more details.

15. Kustomer

Kustomer is a customer experience solution that leverages AI chat tools to support your clients and your teams. Proactive support and a wide variety of chatbot tools reduces the volume of inbound requests on your agents. Everything integrates with their CRM so your team can visualize customer activity across time and channels.

Key Features

• Omnichannel capabilities

• Proactive chat

• Easy access to FAQs for quick answers

• No coding required

Pricing

2 plans plus add-ons for AI chatbots

• Enterprise: Starting at $89 per user per month

• Ultimate: Starting at $139 per user per month

Kustomer IQ Add-on: AI-powered chatbot starting at $15 per month for 100 KIQ sessions

Free Trial

14-day free trial

16. Hubspot

Hubspot is a leading inbound marketing and sales company that provides a robust CRM as well as a variety of live chat tools that integrate seamlessly with their other solutions. They offer automated routing to make sure requests reach the right person as well as automations to reduce busywork and facilitate fast responses.

Key Features

• Lead and customer routing

• Automated chat functionality

• Customizable chat window

• Context-driven data for your support agents

Pricing

• Free: $0

• Starter: Starting at $18 per month 

• Professional: Starting at $800 per month

Free Trial

Free version available with no time limit.

17. Brevo Conversations

Brevo offers a customer relationship platform including Brevo Conversations, their live chat software. Their chat tools integrate fully with the platform to provide your agents with context-driven data. Multichannel capabilities allow you to interact with leads and customers in real time wherever they are.

Key Features

• Customizable chat widget

• Universal inbox

• Automated FAQs and canned responses

• Lead generation and management tools

Pricing

• Free: $0 limited to 1 user

• Pro: Starting at $15 per user per month

Free Trial

30-day free trial

Why do you need live chat software?

Customers need live chat to get quick and convenient answers to their questions on a website or on other channels like WhatsApp or Slack. Helpdesk teams need live chat to solve customer problems faster, support them better, and engage them better. Sales teams need live chat to capture and nurture leads.

Live chat is incredibly valuable for online businesses to capture visitor information, reduce bounce rates, and bring down the number of shopping cart abandonment. Similarly, live chat software can help B2B businesses to launch campaigns based on user behavior, deploy interactive chatbots to engage with them, or offer proactive support.

Benefits of live chat software

Get answers instantly

Live chat reduces the overall first response time to under three minutes for most businesses across all industries. Live chat is faster because it’s always-on yet asynchronous. Learn more on live chat etiquette.

Have continuous conversations

Unlike phone or email conversations, live chat preserves past chat history and context in threads that are accessible to agents and customers as soon as they get on a chat.

Give context to customers

Unlike calls, you can share rich media files like images, videos, or GIFs with live chat. And although you can do similar things over email, it’s more contextual over live chat.

Personalize every conversation

Just like instant messaging apps, live chat conversations are friendlier in nature. It breaks down the wall between businesses and customers.

Affordable real-time communication

A live chat platform is affordable for businesses of all sizes. Setting up live chat for your website should be easy and coding-free.

Cohesive customer experience

Live chat offers a singular experience to customers across their acquisition, onboarding, and support journey. It offers a cohesive customer experience regardless of which stage of purchase they are in.

Live chat use cases

Customer support

Customer support is the most common use case for live chat. Businesses use live chat to quickly and efficiently help leads and customers at every stage of their journey.

Live chat can deliver immediate help wherever your customers find you. This provides a positive customer experience and builds brand loyalty. Offer proactive support based on  customer behavior and use on-demand live chat to answer specific questions or concerns.

In addition, live chat can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your support team. It streamlines processes, decreases ticket times and gives agents a 360 degree view of each unique customer journey. Using live chat reporting capabilities, you can identify and solve issues at both a team and an individual level.

Customer engagement

Live chat can also help drive customer engagement and improve lead generation and nurturing. Use live chat to welcome visitors, suggest options, prompt visitors to schedule demos, and more.

Lead generation is another way your live chat software can help increase engagement. Your agents can collect user information with permission to use in future nurturing activities.

Choosing the best live chat software

The marketplace for consumer engagement is saturated with live chat software of all shapes and sizes. If you search for  “live chat software” in Google Search, you will get over one billion thirty million results!

But you don’t have to parse through the entire cosmos of Google Search results to pick the right tool for your business. The most effective way to identify the right chat solution for you is to define your requirements and map them back to the tools that match them. You may need specialized advanced features or a more basic tool might work for you. Consider the following features

Deployment model

Don’t pick a live chat vendor that hosts their solution on-premise unless you have strict operational and regulatory requirements that require you to do so. A cloud-based live chat software is faster to deploy, easier to set up, and integrates well with most modern tools.

Omnichannel capabilities

Pick up a live chat software that offers cross-channel capabilities such as mobile-readiness and integration with the top marketing and customer support software. Live chat shouldn’t be a siloed system; hence, it is necessary it works well with other players in your software stack to improve customer experience.

User-friendliness

When it comes to choosing a good live chat software, it’s very important to judge the book by its cover. Be very picky about the user interface, both on the end-user side and the agent side. Also, evaluate the level of customization the tool offers. For starters, you should be able to change the chat box color, add your brand logo, and disable features that you don’t want.

Budget

Some businesses struggle to find the right chat tool because of confusion around pricing. Avoid live chat vendors whose pricing is vague and confusing, or at least get on a call to understand the plans clearly. We recommend a SaaS-based live chat tool with clear agent-based pricing.

Features

The features you require depend on your needs. If you are going to use the live chat software for your engagement team, you might want to have features such as automated campaigns, chatbots, and event-based messaging. If your use case is support-heavy, you want to look for providers with options like intelligent chat routing options, chat transcripts, co-browsing, knowledge base integrations, screen-sharing, and priority inbox. Other features like video chat or a mobile app may also be of interest.

Analytics and reporting

Although most live chat tools come with some level of reporting features, not all vendors do a great job at it. Make sure to demo the reporting feature of a live chat tool to understand what advanced insights it offers. Options like CSAT rating could help you improve your existing processes.

Live chat pricing- How do you choose the right pricing plan for your business?

Live chat pricing can be confusing. It can be tricky to pick a live chat software that checks all the boxes when you have to choose among a sea of vendors selling the same set of chat options. Since live chat is a returns-driven investment, you should pay good attention to the pricing of the live chat tools you have shortlisted for your business.

Here are a few pointers to consider before you subscribe to a live chat tool:

Free plans

Most of the live chat vendors out there nowadays offer a free trial or freemium plan before you upgrade to a paid plan. Furthermore, many offer a ‘free forever’ plan that lets small business teams use its basic plan for an unlimited time. While free plans not for everyone since you are most likely to outgrow the number of seats or contacts the plan offers, it’s always a good idea to trial a product to see how it actually fulfills your everyday requirements.

Per agent pricing

Many live chat vendors charge their clients per agent per month, which means they bill their clients monthly based on the number of chat agents that will use the software. It’s a great plan for ambitious businesses on a steep growth trajectory. But if you are deciding on this kind of pricing, be mindful about certain live chat features that might change when you scale up or downsize your agent seats.

Pricing based on volume

This is similar to per agent pricing, but the cost here depends on your website traffic. It might not work great for e-commerce websites that expect and encourage a spike in traffic during holiday seasons and special sales. However, this type of pricing is great for niche businesses that have steady traffic and want predictability in their live chat spending. If that’s you, you may not need expensive plans with unlimited chats.

Pay-per-lead pricing

This pricing model works great for marketing teams who want to use a live chat tool to generate leads. It’s a variable pricing model where you don’t have to pay a flat fee every month or year. Instead, you have to pay only for the number of leads that you generate over a month or a year. The lead pricing can vary anywhere from $18 to $40 per lead, depending on the vendor.

Live chat software trends 2024

As customers spend more time on mobile (4 billion people in the world have a smartphone or smart device) and more time messaging (68% of smartphone users use messaging apps to communicate) they also expect to talk to brands using the same channels. This expectation is dramatically rising as in-store footfall decreases and more and more brands move the business online. For a brand, offline, online, or both, this means opening and sustaining their business on accessible and convenient digital channels.

In such times, where digital channels such as a website become a vital point of contact for sales teams, using live chat software provides a 150% increase in collecting information, 3X higher website conversions, and a 75% increase in demo requests and meetings. When it comes to customer support use cases, live chat software provides 73% customer satisfaction, much better than email (61%) and phone (44%), while costing 60% less than calls per interaction on average.

To fully gain the benefits of live chat software, it’s best experienced when integrated with messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat, or Facebook Messenger. You should also choose tools that work equally well on Android and iOS. This allows a brand’s customers to contact the business from wherever they are, resulting in average customer satisfaction of 4.7, which is around 60% more than those brands that didn’t.

Why Freshchat is the best live chat software

A fool-proof information collection mechanism

A live chat widget should be non-intrusive but easy to find and use when your customers need help or support. Live chat software should be able to do so by capturing information and automating it to your support team to act on requests and queries.

A modern live chat tool does all this by launching triggered messages based on user and event properties, deploying interactive chatbox at the right time, and sending in-app contextual campaigns. Your customer engagement teams can follow up the interactions to close more deals and make more sales.

Learn more about zero contact resolutions

A convenient, familiar experience

Your live chat tool should come with no learning curve for your consumers. It should offer the continuous, contextual, and instant messaging-like conversations that consumers are familiar with using. Furthermore, it should offer the convenience of time and speed to map their queries to the right team through the right Topics.

On the business side, quality live chat gives support teams a comprehensive view of all conversations in one dashboard so that they can prioritize responses and work more efficiently. It also has your knowledge base close at hand so agents can easily shart information with clients. A great product interface is just as important on the agent side so your team can offer engaging conversations that feel natural and friendly.

Learn about friendlier conversations

A fulfilling self-service experience

A live chat tool shouldn’t be just about agent-to-customer chat experience; it should also allow the customer to explore information at their own pace. A modern live chat tool should include self-service offerings such as chatbots, self-help guides, tutorials, and help videos for customers to find quick and easy answers.

Freshchat offers AI-powered chatbots that understand intent and can offer precise answers while keeping the conversation engaging. The bot pre-learns from existing resources and ongoing conversations to give better answers during every interaction. For businesses, chatbots are a tool to go beyond customer service to sales and marketing and sales as well. Chatbots can constantly provide information to the website visitor to facilitate a sale.

Learn more about Freshchat's chatbot offering

Unbridled team collaboration

While live chat is a doorway for your customers to talk to your brand, it should also help your team be more productive and collaborative. It should allow your sales and support teams to categorize conversations, prioritize threads, tag team members, attach private notes (visible only to the team), and do much more.

Freshchat's live chat tool takes team collaboration to the next level by offering IntelliAssign, a rule-based, automated task-routing feature that allows you to balance chat conversations among agents or teams based on their workload or expertise. This allows teams to perform at their optimum level while making sure that customers get the best experience when engaging with your brand.

Learn more about IntelliAssign

Go beyond website chat

While live chat is popularly used on websites, its capabilities can extend to other channels. When picking a live chat software, make sure it offers integrations with messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Apple Business Chat, and Line. 

These apps enable businesses to be where the customers are. Using live chat software grants businesses the opportunity to connect with the billions of users that are connected to these apps.

Learn more about messaging channels with Freshchat

Reports and analytics

A quality live chat software should be able to produce measurable metrics for improvement and optimization. It should provide useful data points for decision-makers to analyze and identify the best practices and anomalies in their live chat operations.

It should enable live chat teams to look back at their performance such as their first response time, customer satisfaction rating, and visual insight into their processes. Finally, a live chat software should be able to produce data on the real-time chat volume, conversation trends, and historical metrics for business teams to learn from and calibrate their performance.

Learn about Freshchat reports

Seamless integration

A live chat tool should fit into your all-star business toolkit and connect with existing tech stack. It should integrate with your CRM software to manage and nurture customers, your helpdesk software to offer great customer support, and other business-critical apps.

A live chat tool should help your business pull and push data seamlessly and help you make data-driven decisions. It should function as one of the spokes in the wheels of your business instead of as a standalone, siloed product.

Learn about Freshchat integrations

Go beyond live chat

Live chat is just the beginning. Freshchat’s messaging software offers AI chatbots to help you automate queries and supports integration with popular messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat and Instagram to serve your customer on their preferred messaging apps.