With the evolution of so many customer support and service tools, why do we get fewer conversions?
The main reason lies in the fact that customers expect a quick response from the company. In fact, a study by HubSpot shows that 90% of users want an immediate response as a necessary service when they have a customer service question.
And that’s why rather than asking your customers to drop an email with their queries, you need to add a live chat feature on your sites to help them with their questions instantly.
Live chat software acts as the best response mechanism, and you can hook your customers to come back to you by giving them exemplary support and assistance.
With live chat tools, you can also gather real-time information and feedback from your customers. It can be a great lead generation tool, as well.
That being said, in this article, I have reviewed some of the best live chat software available in the market for small business websites.
Here are the best live chat software for websites –
| Live Chat Softwares | Starting Price |
|---|---|
| LiveChat | $16 |
| Jivochat | Free |
| Gorgias | $60 |
| Drift | Free |
| Intercom | $39 |
| Hiver | $15 |
| HubSpot Live Chat | Free |
| SendInBlue Chat | Free |
Now, let’s know these tools in detail.
1. LiveChat – Best live chat software for websites
Livechat is probably the most affordable and best live chat software that many small businesses trust and offers an exceptional live chat service to build your online sales and customer satisfaction.
LiveChat allows you to customize your chat widget according to brand color and themes, and it works best on mobile and desktops. You can also install live chat with their free live chat plugin for WordPress.
It also offers forms with which customers can contact you during offline hours. If there is an emergency, LiveChat will enable your customers to create tickets so that you can quickly resolve them.
Feature Highlights –
- You can manage all your chat widgets running on different websites with one LiveChat account.
- It helps you send personalized greetings based on the time spent by customers on your site, their location, etc., which ideally improves customer engagement.
- LiveChat allows you to send automatic replies as you can witness what your customers are typing in advance.
- You can check how customers are satisfied with your service with the help of chat ratings, and it gives detailed analytics on your chat volume, and average chat time duration. You can also adjust your agents to make them available during peak hours.
- LiveChat allows you to integrate with more than 170 tools, one of the most significant features.
Pros –
- LiveChat Marketplace offers tools with seamless integration with essential sales and marketing tools, including popular eCommerce platforms, CRM, email marketing, etc.
- It is effortless to install, and you can communicate with several clients simultaneously.
Cons –
- The automatic greetings feature is simple and does not offer extra features.
Pricing Plan – There are four pricing points: Starter, Team, Business, and Enterprise. For small businesses, the starter plan is suitable, starting at $16/month per agent, and for the customer service department, the business plan is popular, which starts at $50/month per agent.
2. Jivochat – Most affordable live chat software
If you are looking for live chat software and phone support, then Jivochat is the best option. Jivochat is used in almost all sectors like eCommerce, institutional websites, malls, schools/colleges, etc.
Jivochat widget supports all current modern browsers. It allows you to send proactive invitations to create a meaningful conversation with your customers and make them readily convert.
One of the remarkable features of Jivochat is that customers who wish to access your website via phone can use Jivochat’s mobile widget with which they can make calls or send messages via Facebook messenger, which ideally helps boost leads for your business.
Feature Highlights –
- The Jivochat widgets allow you to handle multiple chats, giving automated responses, color-coded charts, and much more.
- With the help of Jivochat Teams, your teammates can communicate effectively, and team chats are free to use in both open and pro versions of Jivochat.
- You can also connect Jivochat to your Whatsapp to sell your products/services and become closer to your customers.
- Jivochat allows you to make and receive phone calls and send SMS instantly.
- You can integrate Jivochat with your Facebook page, instantly reply to all messages and calls, and engage your customers.
Pros –
- Jivochat offers stunning integrations with CRM, Content Management Systems, Google analytics, and Zapier.
- The option to integrate with apple business chat is one of the fantastic features provided by Jivochat.
Cons –
- A few more customization options can be added to the Jivochat widget.
- The user interface could be slightly improved as it is unclear to locate some settings.
Pricing Plans – It offers Basic and Pro versions. The Jivochat basic is free forever and allows unlimited chats with upto five agents, and if you want to opt for advanced features, then the pro version would be the ideal match, costing you only $13/month/agent.
3. Gorgias – Best for eCommerce sites
Gorgias is a powerful helpdesk software for eCommerce sites. It provides a robust live chat feature that allows you to communicate with website visitors and help them find products or resolve other issues. It allows you to edit orders, modify subscriptions, or refund payments right from the dashboard.
With Gorgias, you can also communicate with your potential customers on social media. It enables you to respond to users commenting on your ads/posts and improve the marketing ROI. The best part of this feature is that you can track all sales generated across channels over text messages, social media, or live chat conversations on your website and provide a consolidated report.
Feature Highlights –
- You can view the customer order details, refund, cancellation, and duplication of orders without leaving the help desk.
- It also triggers live chat and contact forms on important pages of your store and provides the chat history details in a single unified view.
- Gorgias integrates seamlessly with three of the most popular eCommerce platforms: Shopify (as well as Shopify Plus), Magento, and BigCommerce.
- You can also connect your live chat with 50+ popular apps like Stamped.io, SMS Bump, Growave, Omnisend, etc.
Pros –
- It provides a centralized customer data interface from multiple channels, making customer service easier.
- Lets you set up automated responses that are hooked up with personalized messages.
Cons –
- It has a steep learning curve to make the best use of Gorgias.
- It is expensive compared to other tools on the list, but with its other features, it is a good value for the price.
Pricing – Gorgias has three plans, including unlimited user access. The Basic plan costs $60/month, with Shopify and social media integration. For advanced features like phone calls, surveys, and user management, you must opt for the Pro or Advanced plan, which costs $300 and $750/month, respectively.
4. Drift – Best Free Live Chat Software
Drift is one of the best conversational sales and marketing platforms, with a complete suite of stunning features like live chat, AI-powered chatbots, and custom chatbots to facilitate all your needs.
Drift offers live chat features where you can call or send a zoom link while chatting with your customers to speak directly and convert them into potential customers.
One of the most important features is that you can chat in real time with your targeted accounts by sending them personalized messages and scheduling a meeting with them. Drift enables you to do account-based marketing more effectively by automating the entire process.
Feature Highlights –
- Drift can be integrated with CRM software and email marketing tools so that you can gather insights about your prospects.
- You can create multiple drift inboxes for various conversations. For example, you can create a separate inbox for the marketing team or support teams to assist your customers.
- Drift offers ‘conversational analysis’ to analyze how your teammates have performed, and you can better train them to chat with your customers.
- The AI chatbot works 24/7 to keep all your customers engaged with you.
- Even if your sales teammates are not available, Drift live chat can book a meeting with your prospects, a much-needed feature.
- The AI-powered chatbots send only the best and most qualified leads to your sales/marketing team, significantly improving your ROI efforts.
Pros –
- You can view which customers are on your site in real time before starting a conversation with them.
- With automated chatbots, every process is streamlined and computerized, which reduces your manual efforts.
Cons –
- You need to upgrade to pro plans to get the most out of drift live chat features.
Pricing – Drift offers the Live Chat feature for free.
5. Intercom – All-in-one live chat software
Intercom is one of the most influential live chat software that provides chat services organized into three different types: engagement, marketing, and support.
Intercom is a conversational platform that offers tons of unique features. You can collect leads, automate your workflows, and provide excellent engagement for your customers.
Intercom offers the best-in-class live chat experience for both mobile and desktops. The chat interface is well-structured and offers detailed information about your visitors. It also allows you to remove pre-chat forms, and you can insert a small email capture form in the chat itself.
Feature Highlights –
- It allows you to chat with your customers across different platforms and send outbound messages on your website.
- You can use the intercom bots with which you can collect potential leads for your business.
- It allows you to track and filter your customer’s data based on the actions they perform in your application.
- The conversations you make with your users can be easily tagged, so it is possible to search via tag and group users via tagging.
- Intercom provides a highly flexible API, webhooks, and a robust framework for building apps to integrate into the messenger platform.
Pros –
- Intercom offers excellent integrations with platforms like Google Analytics, CRM software, Slack, etc.
- It also acts as an onboarding tool and offers many customization tools.
Cons –
- Pricing is very costly.
Pricing Plans – Intercom offers prices for both small and large businesses. The plan starts at $39/month for small businesses which offer basic live chat and outbound messaging.
6. Hiver – Gmail-based live chat widget
Hiver is the world’s first customer service software built for Google Workspace. Using Hiver, you can engage with your website visitors in real-time and provide timely support. Since Hiver works inside Gmail, your support team won’t have to undergo extensive training or learn to use a completely alien interface.
Support managers can assign incoming chat queries to agents with a single click and get a complete overview of what the team is working on, anytime anywhere.
In addition to helping teams manage live chat queries, Hiver also allows you to handle customer email queries inside Gmail.
But that’s not at all. Hiver also helps you manage queries on the go through its mobile app.
Feature Highlights –
- Assign chat queries to team members in a single click.
- Collaborate on customer queries with non-customer-facing teams using shareable transcripts.
- Provide timely support on the go with Hiver’s mobile app (Android & iOS).
- Use custom-built chat templates for recurring queries.
- Customize the live chat widget according to your brand guidelines and website design.
- Evaluate the quality of customer support by sending CSAT surveys at the end of every interaction.
Pros –
- Hiver brings all functionalities of a customer service solution to Gmail’s native interface.
- Hiver offers integration with familiar tools like Asana, Jira, Slack, and Zapier.
- Hiver lets you engage with your website visitors in real-time, positively impacting your conversion rate.
Cons –
- Hiver is only for businesses that use Google workspace.
- It can be expensive if multiple agents are required
Pricing Plan – Hiver has three pricing plans. It starts at $15/month/agent (Lite plan). This includes unlimited shared inboxes and other basic features for getting started with delivering great customer service. If you’re looking for more powerful functionalities such as automation and analytics, opt for Hiver’s Pro ($39/month/agent) or Elite plan ($59/month/agent).
7. Hubspot Live Chat – Popular Free Live Chat Software
Hubspot is one of the best industry leaders, offering excellent marketing and sales automation tools. The Hubspot live chat is integrated with HubSpot CRM software, which provides impressive features to enrich your business.
Hubspot live chat comes fully integrated with the chatbot builder, which doesn’t require any coding and is too free to use. Chatbots ease your work by collecting potential leads and giving automated responses, saving your time.
All your chats are stored automatically, and you can also set up visitor’s hours so that customers can know when you are available and set up email forms to respond to them when you’re back.
Feature Highlights –
- You can customize your chat widgets, send targeted messages to your users, and offer branding options.
- Hubspot offers free integration with Slack to quickly respond to messages, and you can also respond to users’ queries via HubSpot mobile app.
- You can track your user data by integrating your chats with the Hubspot CRM software.
- As chatbots are integrated with Hubspot’s CRM, they can send personalized messages to your users based on the information stored in the CRM software.
Pros –
- The chat flow builder is very easy to build, and you can manage your workflows effectively.
- You can easily integrate live chat with other HubSpot tools and contacts, which offers a complete power-packed suite of functionalities.
Cons –
- The chat interface can confuse your visitors if you create a chat flow and forget to uncheck the ‘disable free text input box.
- Sometimes it’s very easy to miss your entire conversation, leading to losing important key points.
Pricing plans – HubSpot offers a free forever CRM plan, including live chat, accessibility to store upto many contacts, and unlimited users.
8. Sendinblue Chat – Free Live Chat Software
Sendinblue is one of the best-in-class live chat software that allows you to chat with your customers seamlessly. It offers a complete set of marketing tools like email marketing, landing pages, live chat, and automation.
Sendinblue is very easy to install on your website with the help of a WordPress plugin. You can customize your chat widget with your brand colors and add your logo and brand name, giving you a unique brand identity.
You can also customize your chat operator profile and assign and remove conversations for your chat agents using Sendinblue’s chat platform.
Feature Highlights –
- As a chat operator, you can set up your notification settings to get notified every time a conversation is assigned to you.
- You can integrate your chat with Sendinblue marketing automation tools so that you can grab powerful leads.
- Sendinblue chat allows you to change your chat status between online and offline mode. When all your chat operators are offline, you can decide whether to show your chat widget or not on your website.
- You can also view concisely on which page of your website the users are, which readily saves your time.
Pros –
- Sendinblue is the best choice as it provides you with a complete suite of customer support tools.
- You can also hide your chat widget on specific pages of your website.
Cons –
- The chat options could have been even more added.
Pricing – Sendinblue starts with the free plan, and the live chat feature is available for all the plans.
Which is the best live chat software for you?
There are always things better than one another, but the one which you opt for matters ideally.
Instead of lavishly wasting your precious bucks on complex integrations to collect leads, you can instantly get more conversions with the help of a simple live chat tool like JivoChat.
LiveChat is my most recommended live chat software for small businesses and startups that aims to provide the best user experience to their customers at an affordable price.
An excellent live chat tool should simplify your sales and acquisition process and enrich customer support for your business, and LiveChat is exceptional. However, if you’re using CRMs like SendInBlue and HubSpot, you may not need to invest additionally in third-party live chat software.
All being said, you have a complete list of the best live chat software that you can use on your website. So, pick the one that fulfills your business need and comes within your budget.
If you like this article, you should also check out the list of best chatbot software for small businesses and startups.