Best Live Chat Software Based on In-Depth Reviews
- 200+Hours of research
- 30+Sources used
- 31Companies vetted
- 3Features reviewed
- 4Top
Picks
- Security measures are essential for live chat software
- Review GDPR compliance if dealing with EU consumers
- Pick a provider with a good customer service record
- Live chat and chatbots are not mutually exclusive
How We Found the Best Live Chat Software
Our Top Picks: Live Chat Software Reviews
In today’s business world, email and phone support are the two most common customer support channels. Live chat is another type of communication channel and one that has found increasing levels of popularity—especially among younger generations.
Millennials, in particular, are more inclined to use live chat for their customer service needs. In a survey conducted by eMarketer among US females, live chat showed a lead of more than 10% over the phone and email support among the 18–29 and 30–39 age groups. It ranked as the second most-preferred method, with more than three out of10 respondents saying they used it. According to a 2017 report from the live chat company Kayako, younger consumers are more avid adopters of live chat because it reminds them of the experience of talking with friends through messaging apps.
Support isn’t the only thing organizations use live chat for, though. Sales and marketing are two other reasons for adding live chat to your business’ website. According to a 2018 Zoho survey, 63% of respondents reported that they used live chat software for customer support, whereas 78% reported they used it for sales. Marketing, although not as popular in business-to-consumer commerce, also reported high usage in the business-to-business sector.
We evaluated live chat software based on the premise that their primary use would be connecting organizations with visitors and providing customers with instant support. While this does mean we placed less weight on sales and marketing tools, we still took these into consideration when making our final evaluations. After all, no matter what your primary use for live chat is, having the software on your website will always help you support and interact with consumers.
LiveChat, Inc. review
Best for Text-based Live Chat
Screenshot Livechatinc.com, February 2020
Not every business needs live chat software with video, audio, and co-browsing. A straightforward, robust text-based experience is often more than enough for many enterprises. LiveChat offers just that: it excels at providing a secure and easy-to-use platform with numerous tools that work on multiple systems natively.
LiveChat has all the essential features we looked for when evaluating live chat software. Proactive chat, canned messages, chat routing, customization, and rating—it’s all there. But the platform also has tools that are harder to find among competitors.
For instance, administrative users can set smart triggers to fine-tune when and where the chat will engage visitors. The platform’s chat window supports rich messages, which allow conversations to go beyond plain text; think interactable surveys, menus, and meeting schedules. Agents can also see what visitors are typing as they do so, aptly called message “sneak peaks”.
Screenshot Livechatinc.com, February 2020
LiveChat launched in 2002, when live chat software was still an up and coming technology. Now, it is at the forefront of the help desk software market and the company is one of the largest in the industry.
More than 28,000 companies in over 150 countries use its customer service platform. This includes companies across industry lines—from education to retail and food—that operate at scales both large and small. Adobe, Sony, the BBB, Huawei, IKEA, CBS, PayPal, the University of Windsor, and many other important organizations and businesses use LiveChat software for their support, sales, and marketing needs.
HubSpot review
Best Bundled Live Chat
Screenshot https://www.hubspot.com/products/service, February 2020
Live chat is often used to convert visitors into customers and drive sales in addition to supporting visitors to your website, but most live chat companies don’t provide actual sales and marketing software. If you’re looking for a way to save both time and money on these, bundling is the best way to do so. HubSpot, an industry leader with years of experience and tens of thousands of clients, offers all three individually or bundled as a package.
True to its name, HubSpot excels as a “hub” for a company’s marking, sales, and support solutions. The company’s customer relationship management (CRM) software is designed to integrate all three pieces of software. In fact, because the CRM is the underlying database that powers the three products, all the contact, company, deal, and task information is already accessible across them.
Screenshot https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/growth-suite?edition=starter&term=monthly, February 2020
Businesses and organizations that are interested in HubSpot’s software need to book a meeting with one of their sales representatives. Only then will they receive a quote based on what software they will be implementing on their website. However, companies can get a rough estimate of how much they’ll be spending by using the calculator on the pricing page.
HubSpot’s calculator is the only one of its kind we saw during the entire research process. It uses a variety of metrics to fine-tune results and give an accurate an estimate as possible. For instance, the calculator asks for the number of users on each of the software platforms you are interested in—which can be chosen from or bundled altogether for the biggest discount. It also has options for adding the price of several add-ons, like a greater ad spending limit and the HubSpot Content Management System, as well as other services they recommend.
Acquire review
Best Comprehensive Live Chat
Screenshot Acquire.io, February 2020
The size and industry of your business dictates its needs. This is no exception when it comes to live chat; what you’re looking for may be more than just text-based live chat. Many large companies have readily adopted live video to target baby boomers and millennials alike, for example. Providing different methods of interaction can also give you an extra edge over the competition by offering consumers support with a more personal touch.
Acquire offers an all-in-one customer engagement platform through its combination of live chat, video and voice chat, and co-browsing. The company’s live chat is the centerpiece of the platform; it’s a powerful and versatile tool in its own right. Its standout features include adaptive canned responses suggested by AI and one of the most visually intuitive agent interfaces among all the software we evaluated.
Video, voice, and co-browsing are all easily accessible from agents’ chat windows and run in-browser on the visitor’s end. Additionally, all calls and co-browsing sessions can be recorded and are accessible across devices on the platform’s dashboard. All this ensures a smooth transition from one type of engagement method to the others and that sessions are easily accessible by agents at all times.
Screenshot Acquire.io, February 21, 2020
Of all the live chat software we evaluated, Acquire showed the greatest level of concern for users’ security. The company meets all major data and security regulations, including SOC2, HIPAA, and GDPR. It also complies with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework. The platform is secure enough that the UK government uses the software for its online resources.
Acquire’s co-browsing showcases the extent of their optimizations for security purposes. Supervisors can restrict what their team has access to during sessions. They can choose to mask specific elements of a page, like credit card input fields and other confidential information. All the data that is shared during co-browsing sessions is secured by end-to-end encryption. As for video chats, agents have the option of enabling ID verification for companies that handle sensitive information, like those in the banking, financial services, and insurance industries.
In addition to the software, Acquire’s employee training and physical infrastructure demonstrate a security-forward mentality. Acquire performs security and privacy training both as part of the hiring process and on a semi-annual basis. They include training on device security, data privacy, incident reporting, and data breach procedures. Moreover, Acquire’s live chat platform is hosted on Microsoft Azure data centers. These have multiple levels of security in place, such as video surveillance, badge access, multiple security clearances, and 365/7/24 service.
Help Scout review
Best Live Chat for Start-ups
Screenshot Helpscout.com/startups, February 25, 2020
Newly established companies are constantly looking for ways to scale up their business. Live chat might initially seem like a counterintuitive solution to this: start-ups usually grapple with resources—live chat isn’t cheap—and their small manpower makes it hard to deal with a higher volume of inquiries. However, live chat is exactly the kind of tool that can help up-and-coming companies secure long-lasting relationships and engage with their audience.
Help Scout’s startup program offers start-ups a platform that is as affordable as it is scalable. Eligible companies get access to its Plus plan, which normally costs $40 per user, per month, at a flat rate of $50/mo. The plan includes custom fields and themes, more mailboxes, and integrations with Salesforce, Jira, and HubSpot apps, in addition to all of the platform’s features available in its standard plan.
In order to qualify for Help Scout’s startup program, companies need to meet the following requirements:
- They must be new Help Scout customers (i.e. have no previous accounts with the company);
- They must have established the startup in the last two years; and
- They must have raised $1 million or less in said time frame.
Screenshot Helpscout.com/for-good, February 2020
As a B-Certified corporation, Help Scout is expected to “meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.” They are also expected to work towards charitable causes, thereby creating a positive impact on its employees, on the community, and on the environment.
Help Scout lists three main issues they champion as a business: human rights, environmental sustainability, and underrepresentation in tech. Organizations that also advocate for any of these causes as part of their core mission can get discounts of up to 100% for access to Help Scout’s live chat and help desk software.
Only non-profits and certified public benefit corporations are eligible for this discount, and they must undergo an application process to qualify. Nonetheless, all NGOs and B Corporations get at least a 10% lifetime discount on Help Scout’s software.
Further Insight Into Our Methodology
Live chat as we know it today has been around since the inception of the World Wide Web. The technology grew from the University of Illinois’ Talkomatic and CompuServe’s CB Simulator to what would eventually become our current-day instant messaging platforms. As technology increased in popularity, businesses saw in it a fast, efficient way of communicating with consumers without having to bother with e-mail or phone calls.
In the early 2000s, businesses offering their live chat software to other businesses began to appear. The number of these businesses has risen dramatically in the past twenty years to satisfy demand in the market. This means deciding which software is best for your site or business has become all that much harder. Thankfully, comparing live chat software is relatively easy, as most companies have comprehensive lists of all the features they offer. What’s the catch? The terminology they use is often different for what may be exactly or nearly the same feature. These lists of features are typically long, and the way that features are listed can vary from company to company.
We spent more than 200 hours researching the technology of live chat software and the companies currently competing in the market. For our sources, we looked for research about the difference in user markets and their response to live chat software vs communication via email, phone call, and other methods, such as social media and SMS.
In addition, we spoke to Gabriel Sanchez and Ana María Yapur, previous live chat operators in the financial and retail sectors, respectively. We also spoke with Gina Vencer, a marketing and social media specialist at BOLD, who directly interacts with the company that provides their live chat software. Talking with all three of these individuals, we got a sense of what the software meant to them, as well as what features or tools they did and did not like on their ends.
We divided our evaluation criteria into three groups:
Cost
Cost is the first thing a business should consider when looking for live chat software. Because most live chat companies charge clients per number of agents, per month, the cost of live chat increases exponentially the more agents there are working with the software. As a rule of thumb, your business should first consider how many agents will be operating the software.
Different use cases and needs reflect different price ranges, so we didn’t automatically favor cheaper software. We did appreciate companies that offer a selection of plans since that gives businesses the opportunity to choose what best suits them. We also favored live chat companies that not only provide quotes but also offer estimates of what their service could cost based on certain parameters.
Another thing we looked at was price transparency. Live chat companies usually offer their software bundled with other tools, such as marketing and sales software. Sometimes, users have the choice of individually adding or eliminating specific software they don’t want to pay for. When added to the number of agents, price tiers, and add-ons base plans don’t include, this can quickly get out of hand. Live chat companies that featured a simple but comprehensive display of prices got much better marks with us. This includes, for example, having a calculator on their pricing page.
In addition to price, we also considered the length of each software’s free trial or demo. Live chat isn’t like other software in that you can’t just boot it up and test it for a day or two before making a final decision. As a product primarily intended for business, it requires an onboarding process and a much longer testing period to see if it can properly accommodate your needs. Two weeks is the standard in the industry, so we gave positive marks to those with trials that last longer than that.
Features
Features dictate what software is worth your time and what software is not suitable for the needs of your organization or business. First, we considered the basic tools: chat routing, chat customization, proactive chat canned responses, and online forms.
We then looked for features that were less common, such as smart triggers, mobile agent apps, and specific analytics-based features. Ultimately, these unique features set most software apart and got them to our final list.
Because features were our largest field of criteria, we decided to split them into three additional groups.
1. Operational - This category of features included those that agents don’t regularly use or interact with, such as analytics, branding, and supervision tools. Examples of operational features are third-party software integrations, operator monitoring, smart trigger settings, and whether a software’s servers are cloud or self-hosted.
2. Security - Security was a major concern for us while researching live chat companies, so we put a lot of weight on this particular set of features. With cybercrime at an all-time high, it’s important that any and all information between businesses and their clients stays confidential. Even regular consumers—who may just be asking basic questions—need their data kept under lock and away from prying eyes.
Encryption is the most basic of security features we considered. Live chat companies need to encrypt all communication between clients and agents with the best technology available today, such as 256bit SSL protocol. IP banning is another security measure we looked for in every software. Furthermore, we checked to see if each software had the tools to keep client companies GDPR and HIPAA compliant.
3. Chat - Chat features form the bulk of our criteria. Half of the features focus on the different tools agents can use to interact with visitors. This includes canned responses, which are preset answers for rote questions, routing chats to other agents, transferring files, tracking visitors, and mobile apps for agents. The other half concerns the consumer-side of the equation, with chat rating options, chat boxes that proactively reach out to visitors, and support for offline communication.
Support
Evaluating client-side support was hard, namely because testing every product we researched was unfeasible. Instead, we searched for reliable sources that could tell us what clients thought about their live chat company’s support. We also considered how intuitive each platform’s operator and agent panels were.
More importantly, we made sure all the software making it to our final list had some type of onboarding process. This is an essential element of good customer support for live chat customers. Businesses and their teams need to be taught how to use live chat software so they can make the best use of it. Otherwise, they’ll be lost as to how to engage consumers with it.
Helpful Information about Live Chat Software
What is live chat software?
If you’ve spent any time surfing the web, you’ve probably seen those little bubbles on company websites. You may even have gotten a targeted message from them asking if you need help with something while browsing. Click one of these bubbles and you’ll find yourself in what is known as a “live chat window,” where guests can write to a person—or interact with a chatbot—and expect a reply usually within the span of a minute.
Live chat software provides a business or organization with a way of interacting with the users visiting their online platforms. It functions as an alternative to the traditional e-mail and phone channels by introducing a chat window which is almost always tucked in the lower-right corner of one’s screen. Generally, live chat is used to provide consumers with guidance as they navigate a website or social media page and for sales purposes, such as securing purchases and offering help to potential customers.
On the company-side, live chat is a platform with various dashboards and tools that agents, be they operators or supervisors, can refer to and use to interact with visitors on a website. The information and tools offered in these dashboards will depend on the company providing the live chat solution. However, nearly all leading live chat software can do the following:
- Track visitors as they navigate your website;
- Gather information on visitor behavior and present it visually;
- Create custom chat windows that reflect your organization or business’ brand;
- Proactively engage visitors when they enter your website to ask if they need help;
- Rout a visitor’s chat with one agent to another who may have more expertise in a given topic;
- Transfer files, such as pictures and pdf documents; and
- Integrate with third-party tools, such as Facebook Messenger, Salesforce CRM, Dropbox, and WordPress.
In addition to connecting agent operators with visitors, live chat software has begun to adopt chatbots as part of their contingency plans. Many companies can’t afford to have their customer support lines manned 24/7, and even those that do may find themselves exhausted from responding to rote questions over and over. Chatbots help operators by answering basic questions.
Furthermore, some live chat software providers have expanded their service to include additional methods of interaction within their platform. Video calls and co-browsing sessions are the two most significant examples of this. Although not essential by any means, they are a novel way of communicating with users.
How does live chat software work?
On the back end, live chat is implemented through a line of code that is inserted on the pages of a website. This line of code determines where the live chat bubble is placed, as well as what the chat window will look like. The code for live chat software is provided by the vendor of your chat.
On the front-end, things get more interesting. The design of the live chat bubble and window is largely left up to the client. Depending on how customizable the software is, this design may vary widely from company to company, even if they use the same base software.
Chat windows can be “inline” or “pop-up”. The former is embedded onto the website and follows the person who is chatting around as they explore your website. The latter opens in a separate window, hence the “popping-up.” Inline chat requires that its code is present on all of a website’s pages to create a seamless chat experience that doesn’t end abruptly. Pop-out chat has more freedom design-wise and only needs to be present on the pages you want it on but can feel disjointed from the user’s browsing experience. It can also cause problems with pop-up blockers.
Omnichannel vs. Multichannel
Spend any amount of time researching live chat software and you’re sure to come across the word “omnichannel.” A “channel” is any medium you can use to communicate with consumers, be it live or not. Email, phone, social media, live chat, forums, knowledge bases—these are all different types of channels.
Omnichannel means that live chat software has the ability to connect multiple channels online that would normally be isolated from each other. WhatsApp, live chat, and email, for example, are not connected by nature. With an omnichannel chat you could start a conversation on your website’s live chat window, only to pick it up at a later point on Facebook messenger, and the finalize a conversation via email.
Multichannel, on the other hand, is just a word that means a company offers customer support via more than a single channel. Consumers can choose the method of communication that best suits them.
Ultimately, the question of multichannel vs omnichannel is one of cost. Omnichannel is by default a more expensive alternative because of the technology that entails bringing all your channels together into one, cohesive support ecosystem. Multichannel may not allow for that, but if your organization or business doesn’t have that many channels to begin with—or simply isn’t interested in connecting them—then it’s a wiser, more affordable decision.
Why get live chat software?
There’s a simple reason why every organization or business should at least consider implementing live chat software: people want and expect it. Several studies have shown that live chat is one of the most popular communications channels online. In 2016, Forrester Research found that “Online chat adoption among customers has significantly risen in the past few years, from 38% in 2009 to 43% in 2012 to 65% in 2015.” A 2013 press release from data analytics and consumer intelligence company J.D. Power, linked rising levels of satisfaction with wireless carriers' customer care service to their frequency of use and performance of live chat software.
Live chat has also been shown to increase conversion rates significantly. Kayako’s 2017 Live Chat Statistics study states that 79% of the businesses they surveyed said live chat “had a positive effect on sales, revenue, and customer loyalty,” while 38% of the consumers they surveyed “were more likely to buy from a company if they offer live chat support.” A third of respondents to Zoho’s 2018 survey on live chats said they noticed a “significant change in revenue” thanks to the software.
Between a Bot and a Hard Place: Chatbots vs Live Chat Software
Chatbots are usually thought of as an alternative to human support through live chat. In fact, chatbots are ideal companions to live chat support. It’s why several companies now offer chatbots as an add-on to their regular live chat software.
Chatbots can fill in the blanks that regular support can’t. For instance, chatbots can take over customer support when regular agents are unavailable. They can also handle questions that are asked frequently so that regular agents can focus on more complex requests. Ideally, though, they’ll be used for tasks that lie outside the standard boundaries of customer support.
Gina Vencer, a social media specialist for the tech company BOLD, told us that she thinks “chatbots are a very useful tool, provided that it’s not used for actual customer service. Customer service should be the most human part of any business.” She added: “Chatbots are useful for queries that are highly repetitive and always have the same answer, though. That’s the very type of issue that automation wants to address.” Vencer then mentioned several ways that chatbots can expedite consumer queries, such as making appointments, asking for contact or location information, and generally automating the process of purveying information to consumers
Companies that are still going through their infancy may be tempted to default to chatbots because of their cost and automated nature. However, we recommend that they consider getting a few live agents first and then get a chatbot if they need it. For larger companies, whose number of operators simply isn’t enough for the number of requests that come in, chatbots can be massively helpful.
What to Watch Out for With Live Chat Software
Free Live Chat Software
While it’s common practice for live chat companies to offer a demo or trial of their software, some have begun to offer free versions of their platform instead. These versions are not meant to replace the actual thing.
Take, for example, the JivoChat free version plan. Up to five agents can use it and the platform includes features such as multi-language functionality, unlimited chats, and apps for various devices. However, it lacks other essential features like canned messages, file sharing, and visitor monitoring, which the paid version includes. Even for more robust free chat software, there is usually a caveat, such as the lack of an uptime guarantee and lackluster support for clients.
FAQs About Live Chat Software
What is the difference between text messaging and live chat?
Live chat support is a synchronous channel, very much like phone support. This means that both parties need to be present for a conversation to initiate. Compare this to SMS (texting) or instant messaging, where both parties are free to wait as long as they want to respond. Moreover, once a person leaves a live chat window, their session is terminated forever, whereas conversations through messaging are kept on record unless removed manually.
Can I save a live chat conversation?
Most live chat software has the option of saving chat transcripts. Transcripts include all the messages that were sent from one party to the other and may or may not include any additional files sent during the conversation. Whether this is done automatically or manually depends on the software.
Do I need to know code to use live chat?
Aside from knowing how to access your website’s source code, live chat clients require no previous experience with coding to implement live chat on their website. When you pay for a live chat company’s software, you receive an HTML code that enables your chat bubble when placed on a page’s source code. This must be done manually for each page of your website.