June 5, 2024
Live Chat, Support - 6 Mins READ
Live Chat Software Compared: Find the Best Fit for Your Needs
Damilola Oyetunji
Content Marketer
Live chat software offers many benefits, including answering questions, offering support, guiding people through the buyer’s journey, and communicating in real time. These platforms are becoming more important if businesses want to boost sales/conversions and provide excellent customer service. Overall, these tools can help businesses build long lasting relationships with clients.
Offering instant assistance when it’s needed can resolve customer problems more efficiently. In turn, this can generate leads because businesses are proactively engaging with their visitors.
While there are other tools you can use for your business, such as a knowledge base, live chat apps promote communication using a faster route. When selecting the right software, it’s important to compare features to find the perfect solution. Let’s look at them now.
Key Considerations When Choosing Live Chat Software
Before coming up with live chat responses your agents can use, it’s important to choose the right platform. Here are a few crucial factors you should consider:
- Budget – Whether you own a startup or have a large corporation, budgetary constraints are important to consider. Many live chat apps have forever-free options that help you test them before deciding on one. Likewise, you might find freemium versions, which offer basic features without paying. Lastly, the paid plans allow you to customize the platform to meet all of your needs.
- Target Audience – B2B and B2C interactions often require different features. For example, instead of tracking people’s activity, you might focus on how many other businesses look at your website. Prospecting could also take other forms. Still, most live chat software solutions can be used for both types of interactions.
- Support Needs – Live chat apps should meet your support needs. How many support agents do you have working for you? What is your volume like? Will you need specific functionalities, such as file sharing or ticketing? Answering these questions now will help you determine which platform is most suitable. However, you must consider how things could change in the future, allowing for growth.
- Platform Integrations – You’ll likely use other platforms and tools for your business, and the live chat solution chosen should easily integrate with them. Most of these tools offer many integrations, but it’s best to check each one to ensure it will work well with what you already have.
- Ease of Use – Is the live chat app easy to use? User-friendliness is something to consider for both support agents and customers. The website visitor must be able to quickly see the tool and know where to type. Likewise, your employees should get notifications and popups to start answering questions.
Though you may never completely eliminate traditional support channels, live chat software wins in almost all situations. Therefore, you need the right features to allow agents to easily tackle customer issues. These are the most popular ones to consider:
- File sharing
- Canned responses
- Visitor tracking/analytics
- Customizable widgets
Top Live Chat Software Compared
Ultimately, live chat solutions can help you, but it’s important to understand what mistakes you should avoid. Likewise, you’ll want to thoroughly test each potential option before deciding to use it full-time. Below, you’ll see a comparison of the top software choices:
| Platform Name | Pricing | Key Features | Integrations | Ease of Use |
| Chatway | * Forever-free plan for small teams with one Customer Support Representative* Pro Plan – $9/agent/month | Agents receive notifications for new chats, messages within conversations, and more.c It’s easy to customize the look and feel of your chat window, matching your brand seamlessly. Chatway also allows you to block contacts and delete conversations. | Shopify WordPress Wix Facebook Messenger Duda Square | It’s easy to use Chatway. Visitors will click on the widget, your team receives the notification, and they can provide real-time responses. |
| Intercom | * Free 14-day trial* Essential – $39/seat/month * Advanced – $99/seat/month* Expert – $139/seat/month | It’s easy to collaborate with the team using Intercom. The inbox holds all conversations, regardless of the channel. There’s advanced automation for routing conversations to agents and more. | Stripe Jira Software Salesforce Aircall Zendesk Support Statuspage X (fka Twitter) GitHub | Intercom is easy to use, though it can take time to set it up. There is a slight learning curve for new agents, but this is easily tackled during regular training. |
| Tawk.to | * Forever-free plan that includes all of its features | With message filtering, agents can quickly find a conversation and refer back to it. Agents can create aliases to protect their personal information. Group messaging is helpful because it allows managers to quickly enter the chat. It’s possible to ban and unban visitors as needed. | Shopify Javascript API (to create integrations) | Tawk.to is very easy to set up. In fact, you can get a free widget with just a few clicks. Though it might take a few minutes for agents to check out the system, they will be helping customers in no time. |
| Shopify Inbox | * Free trial available* $1 for first month* Basic – $39/month* Shopify – $105/month * Advanced – $399/month* Plus – $2,300/month | You can drive conversions with instant answers because it suggests FAQs and responses for your store. Smart replies make it easy to quickly respond to your live chat inquiries. Automated messages let you welcome visitors, telling them you’re available. | Facebook Messenger Shopify Apple Business Chat Freshchat Instagram Shopney | Using Shopify Inbox is quite easy. Simply set it up on your site, chat with others on the web or through your mobile app, and answer questions instantly. |
| LiveChat | * Free 14-day trial* Starter – $24/month* Team – $49/person/month* Business – $69/person/month* Enterprise – Call to get quote | Canned responses help you answer customer questions without tying up your agents. Agents can quickly “peek” at the message to see what they might have to look up before serving the customer. File sharing makes it easy to send information quickly without having to use another system. | Shopify BigCommerce WhatsApp Business Facebook Messenger Stripe PayPal Mailchimp Pipedrive HubSpot | LiveChat is quite simple to use and set up. |
| Zendesk | * Free 14-day trial * Suite Team – $55/agent/month* Suite Growth – $89/agent/month* Suite Professional – $115/agent/month | Proactive messaging allows you to send outbound notifications. Third-party integrations let customers serve themselves. Easily transfer conversations between departments and agents, ensuring customers get the help they require. | Shopify Featurebase Microsoft Teams PagerDuty Klaus Kaizo Many others | Zendesk can be challenging to set up. Though there are many integrations, you must take the time to get everything ready. |
| Tidio | * Forever-free plan for startups* Starter – $29/month * Growth – $59/month | You can manage various channels with Tidio. Canned responses allow you to answer common questions. Video calls help you close deals faster because you can demonstrate how products work. | Shopify Instagram WordPress Facebook Messenger Many others | It’s quite easy to set up and use Tidio. |
Making Your Choice: Matching Your Needs to the Perfect Software
Live chat solutions can help you win over customers easily, but you must ensure you choose the right platform. Focus on your budget and specific needs. Affordability is the most important aspect, but it’s also important that the tool has advanced features that will scale with you as the business grows.
Conclusion
With many live chat app options available, it’s important to focus on your target audience, budget, ease of use, integrations, and support needs. Likewise, having appropriate features will ensure that your team works effectively.
Finding the best live chat solution that fits your specific business needs will help you improve customer interactions. If you’re looking for the best live chat software option to try out. Give Chatway a try.
