10+ Best Live Chat Software Solutions for 2022 (Free,Paid & Open Source)
If you are looking for something more on Live Chat software, then this post is for you!
Yes, Live chat software! The key that boosts your sales, marketing and customer support.
In other words, a supportive hand for all kinds of businesses, from retail e-commerce to B2B software. They are the perfect tool that ensures the businesses with real-time conversion of leads with personalized assistance that can increase businesses efficiency. Moreover, this way of communication is mostly preferred by customers nowaday.
In this post we’ll have a look at some of the top live chat software providers that you can opt for — from Self-hosted, hosted, free to paid, and take your business to the next level of success.
Directly diving into the Live chat solution, will not make any sense here. So, it’s better to investigate the background stuff like type of solutions, etc., before diving in depth.
What Types of Chat Software Could be the Best Fit for Website?
Well, if you are planning to add a live chat solution to your business websites and apps, only to increase your revenue and customer satisfaction, then I must say it’s not a right move. As there are many other surrounding criterias to have a look at before getting into the final decision.
Amongst all, one of the major highlights would be to have a check on hosting services.
Of course, comparing the expensive hosted live chat software to a free solution will not make sense. Thus, it’s alway better to have an equal and legit comparison when it comes to types of solutions. Let’s see the legit ones in detail,
- Hosted vs. Self-hosted — Whether you want to have your live chat software on your own infrastructure or let the provider have that hosted and maintained on cloud?
- Free vs. Paid — It’s up to you whether you decide to go for a solution that offers a “free forever” option or will you be able to opt for a paid solution. Of course, the paid one will have some extra added benefits to look upon.
- Open-source vs. Proprietary code — Whether you want to access and modify the source code, or leave it up to a vendor? It’s your choice.
Now, to be specific let’s have a closer look at the distinctions among these options. However, you can find some or the other overlaps between the categories. Sometimes, some of the open-source solutions are free whereas some of them are paid, but this will not always be the case.
Therefore, in the upcoming section let’s have a look at some of the top-most live chat solutions concerning hosted, self-hosted, free and paid separately for better understanding with a variety.
What is a Hosted Live Chat Solution?
Handling all the responsibilities for the server and other infrastructure starting from rolling the costs of upgrades, maintenance, and security with monthly fee structure, is not that easy as it seems to be. Thus, here arrives one of the better hosting options of hosted live chat solution, where the provider takes care of everything from the server till other infrastructure.
That’s the reason for many businesses to go for this simplest and cost-effective option to keep running without a drop.
Top-Most Hosted Live Chat Software
Now, if you are in search of something in terms of features, scalability, reliability, user experience, with minimal manual setup and maintenance, then here are your best options with hosted live chat solutions. Let’s dive in,
#1 — Drift
Transform Your Funnel with Live Chat
Image Source: drift.com
Drift is a cloud-based chat solution that has been designed to support B2B businesses to automate marketing and sales processes with the integration of its live chat APIs windows to websites for any enterprises like elearning platform, e-shopping, etc. The Drift chat UI offers several advanced features with customization options.
Moreover, Drift has also been used as an alternative to form fills mainly to capture lead contact information from website visitors. One of the most appreciative parts of Drift is that it eliminates the waiting time with its most personalized assistance
- Cost — Free and paid plans
- Hosting — Hosted
- Source Code — Proprietary
#2 — Intercom
With Intercom Business Messenger, you can reach more customers more personally
Image Source: intercom.com
Intercom is an all-in-one customer communication platform that supports the businesses with messenger. It engages the customers with chat support using the most popular features of GIFs, emojis, typing indicators, etc. All its efficiency adds up some extra human touch to every conversation.
It offers a collaborative inbox that allows the sales teams to connect with technical support where you don’t have to switch to any app and everything can be done over a dashboard.
- Cost — Begins from $39 per month
- Hosting — Hosted
- Source Code — Proprietary
#3 — Zendesk
Engage your customers with live chat software
Image Source: zendesk.com
Zendesk is another top hosted live chat software that provides a customizable UI and components that any developer needs to build sales and support inquiries. Zendesk is a supportive platform that is also available as a standalone service apart from it’s chat facility.
It’s high-end customization is built to match any chat widget UI as per the brand’s need. Zendesk is highly flexible to integrate with any popular CMSs that includes Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, Shopify, etc.
- Cost — Free and paid plans
- Hosting — Hosted
- Source Code — Proprietary
What is a Self-Hosted Live Chat Solution?
However, today the hosted solutions are well-known when compared to live chat software mainly for their key benefits that suit any organization’s requirements. The self-hosted infrastructure lets you have a complete control to customize your implementation, that includes chat UI and the URL that’s been launched on the chat window.
This option is very much beneficial to highly regulated fields like healthcare and financial services, as they add-up a lot of security measures to the industry. These self-hosted live chat software are not cheaper than a hosted solution so it depends upon the businesses to opt as per their requirement.
Top-Most Self-hosted Live Chat Software for Website
These self-hosted live chat software allow you to scale without obtaining any additional fee as long as there is safety with infrastructure and technical aptitude to support the growth. Now, let’s have some better understanding with a few real-time solutions,
#4 — Rocket.Chat
largest open source communications community in the world
Image Source: rocket.chat
Rocket.Chat is an open-source platform that provides a fully customizable communication being developed in JavaScript with high standards of data security protection. The idea of combining with Rocket.Chat Omnichannel allows the team members to respond to sales as well as supportive queries right from their specific end.
However, for small businesses with minimal incoming live chat volume, this Rocket.Chat Omnichannel has proven to be a great source for multitask where it ensures not to miss out on any incoming messages
- Cost — Free and paid plans
- Hosting — Hosted or self-hosted
- Source Code — Proprietary
#5 — Live helper chat
Open source live Support chat for your website
Image Source: livehelperchat.com
Live Helper Chat is an open source platform that has created an image of being highly reliable to scale for any enterprise usage. GitHub shows that Live Helper Chat’s source code is very adaptable and is full of positive feedback.
This chat solution assists the mobile app integration with Flutter, back-end customization using modern technical languages of node.js, which can be configured to support SSO authentication. In the meantime, if anybody wants to skip the development work, the solution also sells a managed version.
- Cost — Free and Managed paid plan
- Hosting — Hosted or self-hosted
- Source Code — Open source project
#6 — Mibew Messenger
open-source live support software
Image Source: mibew.org
Mibew Messenger is a free open-source live support app which has been created with PHP and MySQL. This feature has made it a great fit for WordPress sites. It is also available as a plugin, with which it can be comparatively deployed more easily than any other open-source options.
- Cost — Free
- Hosting — Self-hosted
- Source Code — Open source project
What is an Open Source Live Chat Solution ?
Open source is an open accessible platform for the developers to go with their development process. It allows the adopters to copy, modify and update the source code on their requirement.
Mostly, these open-source chat solutions are a good place to resolve one specific problem that the developers had in mind, with certain different functionalities. These open source are entirely different from the paid hosted solutions.
Top-Most Open Source Live Chat Solution
Where these open source solutions are free up front, they require most of the labor to implement and maintain. Now, let’s have a note on some of them
#7 — sChat (Simple Chat)
SimpleChat helps you can chat with people from all over the world
Image Source: simplechat365.com
SimpleChat.support is an incredible one among the open source live chat platforms. Being written in JavaScript/Meteor this is a very basic application which is free with complexities. If you are just looking out for something free with flexible options and simple Meteor integration then this could be your best choice.
As with all other open-source, even here you have to manage your own updates and codes, but still can have a check on with the original developer built content services.
- Cost — Free
- Hosting — Self-hosted
- Source Code — Open source
#8 — Converse.js
A free and open-source XMPP chat client in your browser
Image Source: conversejs.org
Converse.js is a free open source XMPP chat that is most intensive to implement, but it is preferred for its advanced features that’s not available with other free solutions. It can be configured and opened in a new tab as a full-page app. It also allows you to post hours of operations and custom away messages.
It is a great fit for enterprises that prioritize security for their instant messaging solution. Its high-level of security disables the hackers to track the IP addresses and the message history which will stay in only for a month.
- Cost — Free
- Hosting — Hosted and self-hosted
- Source Code — Open source
What is an Free Live Chat Software ?
The businesses that require only basic functionalities and also expect a low level of chat sessions to be handled by an agent, these free live solutions could be the best fit for them. As always the free products will not be a delight all the time, even these free live chat solutions will have drawbacks to keep a record off.
Some of these free chat software providers will sell your data alongside your customer’s data, so there is very less chance for security. It works on both websites and mobiles and also from a customizable page.
Top-Most Free Live Chat Software
However, these free live chat solutions are relatively safe to use based on the customer reviews and industrial reputations. Now, let’s have a look at some of these providers
#9 — Chaport
Live Chat Software and Chatbots for Business
Image Source: chaport.com
Chaport free live chat solution is a top-rated one for small businesses as they provide them with the basic need to have a single operator answer customer queries across multiple devices. They allow you to customize the chat widget to match your brand, where it gets you a reliable functioning platform to use. Some of it’s features include language translation, sharing, CRM integrations, etc.
- Cost — Free and Paid
- Hosting — Hosted
- Source Code — Proprietary
#10 — Chatra
Live chat, chat bots, email & social messaging for business
Image Source: chatra.com
Chatra is a forever free plan that has all the chat features like typing indicators, read receipts, emailable transcripts, and much more all with a customizable chat widget. These features are highly flexible to integrate with WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, etc. If desired they can go for a paid premium version for additional capabilities.
This platform allows the users on the free plan to interact with Chatra’s JavaScript API, which is chargeable with other providers. But if you want to have their REST API or want to use their outgoing webhooks for your chatbot, then you need to go for an upgrade.
- Cost — Free and Paid
- Hosting — Hosted
- Source Code — Proprietary
#11 — Hubspot
Connect with your website visitors in real time to convert new leads
Image Source: hubspot.com
HubSpot is a powerful suite of marketing and sales tools, and it provides a great way for many businesses to grow and explore. It is a platform which has almost all the tools the business demands for. So, if someone ever moves across the platform with managing, storing and organizing tools using live chat, then automatically will be drawn to have a try with the upgraded paid version.
- Cost — Free and Paid
- Hosting — Hosted
- Source Code — Proprietary
So, if you find this post helpful and guided one with more clarity concerning variety in live chat solution. Then, I must say that it’s your time to think about which one to opt for, to build your live chat application.
Good Luck !!
