Many of us know about LiveChat. It is a popular customer communication platform that has existed for 20 years. Businesses love this tool for a wide range of features and integrations.
But every bean has its black. Free plan absence and outdated system app are only a few of the issues LiveChat users face. Consider 13 alternatives with the same features but better conditions!
LiveChat is an application that helps customers to chat with support. Sellers and marketers can use it to capture leads and implement their best customer engagement strategy. LiveChat has more than 34,000 users. And it works with such companies as IKEA, Nikon, and Mercedes-Benz.
About peculiarities: your customers can pay, schedule meetings, or book seats right in the live chat widget!
LiveChat offers a trial period of 14 days. After that, the cost of service depends on the chosen plan. This soft provides four plans: Starter, Team, Business, and Enterprise.
LiveChat doesn’t offer a free plan.
What’s good | What’s bad |
— Auto greetings to customers are personal and come specifically from one of the reps. — LiveChat software is fast and perfectly integrated with business. — Large functionality and opportunities for business. | — The inability to customize the visitors’ window for your staff. You couldn’t see info without having to click on each visitor. — The mobile version is outdated and limited in features. — No free plan. |
Now let’s take a look at the top of alternatives!
Dashly is a conversational platform. It suggests convenient solutions for SaaS and eCommerce companies. You can find a full-fledged tool kit for your sales, marketing, and support teams. There are SureTask, Wowfare among Dashly users.
As well as a LiveChat alternative, Dashly provides:
Dashly users bring all their conversations in messengers, socials, email, and live chat in one inbox. Keeping customer requests in one place helps to boost the time to resolution. In addition, among live chat features are:
Thanks to conversation history, a system of tags, lead cards, and requests notes, your agents can provide high-level customer communications.
You don’t need a developer to launch marketing campaigns in Dashly. Thanks to numerous visual builders and ready-made templates you can create chatbots, pop-ups, emails in a few clicks.
Don’t forget to A/B test and analyze your campaigns to find the best option.
The price depends on the features and monthly website traffic. No agents seats limit. With Dashly, you can start for free if you have up to 1000 visitors/month.
Forever free plan provides:
Then there are three paid plans: Business chat, Automation, Premium.
By Business chat, you get
Automation, the same as Business chat, has complete live chat tools and customer support. But Automation gives
Finally, Premium enables all possibilities in
Dashly gives its users a 7-day free trial. As well, this LiveChat alternative takes only 5 minutes to install and doesn’t require a credit card.
What’s good | What’s bad |
— Support team 24/7 in touch. — Rich feature focus on eCommerce. — Powerful API for integrations. — Free plan. | — No multilanguage live chat translation. — No AI. — Insufficient functionality around the email campaigns. |
Zendesk is an easy-to-use live chat service. It has vast opportunities for integration. Zendesk is a proven service with such customers as Siemens, Shopify, and more than 100,000 other businesses.
As a LiveChat alternative, Zendesk also has basic features:
Zendesk chat has some specialties. For example, 20+ chart types, from bar to pie. They help display data in reports more visually. In this area, it is a bit similar to LiveChat.
If we talk about ease of use, reps can make notes and call scripts directly in Zendesk. Also, use intelligent lists to stay focused on the hottest opportunities they need. The live chat software users receive real-time push notifications when some prospect reads or clicks on an email. So an agent can catch him at the right time and close the deal.
In sales, Zendesk may calculate performance metrics for your pipeline. In turn, you make forecasts, fix the bottlenecks, and control necessary indicators. Talking about the opportunities ― Zendesk provides access to over 20M businesses, 200M professionals, and intelligent lead recommendations, which you can apply to enhance revenue.
Another unique opportunity: by using this LiveChat alternative, you can make your app!
This LiveChat alternative has three pricing categories: Foundational Support Only, Zendesk Sell, and Zendesk Suite. Foundational Support Only has three plans: Support Team, Support Professional, and Support Enterprise.
Support Team plan gives full features of communication channels, reporting, and analytics. Almost complete agent workspace’s tools, except:
The plan suggests automation and intelligence functions without business rules analysis.
Support Professional and Support Enterprise have similar functions. But Professional provides limited tools in workflows, workforce, and change management.
Zendesk Sell, as well as Support, has three plans: Sell Team, Sell Professional, and Sell Enterprise.
Sell Team plan suggests:
Sell Professional receives all email tools and more features in reporting, data and team management, API, and integrations. Sell Enterprise provides all functions in the main directs. But there we have one more plan — Sell Elite ($199 per user per month). It suggests:
That’s not all. You can add to your plan with Reach. With Reach, live chat reps can create targeted lead lists to discover new opportunities. We discussed this above, touching new opportunities and enhancing revenue.
Finally, Zendesk Suite. Exist in four plans: Suite Team, Suite Growth, Suite Professional, Suite Enterprise. With Suite Team, you get:
But you don’t get access to custom apps and integrations, collaboration tools, or community forums. Enterprise provides an enormous list of functions, opportunities, integrations, and settings.
Zendesk offers a 14-days trial and no free plan.
What’s good | What’s bad |
— Easy to use platform. — Nice API integration, automation, and trigger. | — Limited customizing of UI. — The pricing is relatively high, especially the licensing costs. |
Сloud-based software provides multiple tools for support agents, marketers, and sellers. Freshdesk is a great ticketing system for businesses of all sizes. It offers solutions for enterprises, SMB, e-Commerce, healthcare, educational companies, and others. Hamleys, Ridgestone, Pearson trust Freshdesk.
As well as a LiveChat alternative, Freshdesk provides:
Freshdesk strives to automate live chat work as much as possible. Automating repeated actions and sales campaigns can ease reps’ workload. It also offers an AI-powered assistant Freddy. It analyzes sales data, activities, engagement, and tags tickets by a readiness to close a deal.
Freddy also helps with the forecast ahead. Thereby, salespeople can keep track of sales numbers and make monthly and quarterly forecasts based on AI insights.
This live chat alternative has one main peculiarity ─ managing field service operations. Soft users can:
You can start working with a free plan. All in all, Freshdesk has four plans and several add-ons.
With the free plan, you get a relatively wide range of ticket management and agent productivity features. You can use a mobile app and create a knowledge base.
The Growth offers almost all ticket management, social channels support, and agent productivity tools. As well, the plan provides:
Pro and Enterprise provide all tools kit. Excepting Freddy AI service, change management, advanced ticket scope, quality coach, approval workflow, IP range restriction in Pro plan.
A 21-day trial with all features available for you. Freshdesk doesn’t need a credit card.
What’s good | What’s bad |
— The long trial period. — Many functions. — Artificial Intelligence. — Features for different types of business. | — The integrations can be limited, so you need a dev to build custom apps. — Live chat is expensive in terms of chatbots. |
Intercom service supports teams at more than 25 000 businesses in eCommerce, financial services, education, and healthcare. This live chat alternative offers a lot of ways to connect with customers and analyze their behavior. Intercom is especially fond of surveys and product tours.
As well as other alternatives Intercom releases:
One of Intercom’s peculiarities is its rich feature focus on ways of communication (in-product, mobile, and email). With Intercom software, you get access to:
This alternative to livechat has complicated pricing. Price is calculated by a separate system based on Seats and People Reaches. So, you may consider the Intercom alternatives.
The platform suggests four plans: Support, Engage, Convert, and for minimal business Starter Plan ─ all of them can be customized with add-ons.
Support provides reporting tools without leads and team performance reports. It has all customer data platform features, security, integrations (except Mailchimp Clearbit Reveal, Marketo), and messenger configuration without email templates.
Engage has no ticketing functions, heavy limited conversation management tools, and non-messenger channels. But it provides an extended tool kit in campaigns and targeting.
Convert has no ticketing and help center functions, but still releases a wide range of opportunities in messenger and non-messenger channels:
What about Starter? Support, provide client onboarding, and engage in one solution. This plan has everything a small business needs.
This alternative provides a 14-day trial with two seats, unlimited conversations, and 1,000 people reached/month.
What’s good | What’s bad |
— Allows a significant amount of customer support to be automated. — Customers can review our team members in a live chat. | — Complicated pricing. A lot of the features cost a good amount of additional money. — Some things aren’t super intuitive as far as navigating. |
LiveAgent serves over 150 million users and over 40,000 businesses worldwide. It’s a helpful livechat service for the support team. You can make different notes for your colleagues and organize mass actions within the system without poring each ticket. Also, agents can use Slack notifications and other instruments in full force.
As well as a LiveChat alternative, LiveAgent suggests:
— Website user’s data tracking;
— Chat routing, LiveAgent also has call routing;
— Integrations;
— Email templates;
— 10+ reports;
— Mobile app.
LiveAgent doesn’t release chatbots. But has interesting peculiarities in ticket and conversation management. For example, agents can use GIFs in tickets, drag and drop attachments, and copy-paste images inside tickets. Use sounds for customizing. Soft provides gamification opportunities in customer service. Agents attain levels over time as they solve queries. For example, companies could give out badges and rewards to the most hard-working reps.
LiveAgent releases comprehensive calling instruments, like unlimited call recording or call routing.
Off-charge, you get
The Free plan doesn’t allow integrations with messages and social media. Also, you can use essential features of conversation management.
LiveAgent suggests three paid plans: Ticket, Ticket+Chat, and All-inclusive.
The Ticket has unlimited live chat history and email ticketing but doesn’t allow live chat. If we talk about customization, you get access to:
Ticket+Chat releases unlimited live chat and almost complete conversation management. Total integrations and the possibility of an audit log.
LiveAgent provides a 14-day trial. It doesn’t require a credit card, contracts, or setup fee. This LiveChat alternative is upgraded and paid as you go and can be canceled at any time.
What’s good | What’s bad |
— Free plan. — Many live chat design options. — Great backend system security. — Internal call and message capabilities. | — Support hangs many times. — The interface isn’t much easy for a non-technical person. |
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Zoho Desk works with over 50,000 businesses around the world. Daimler, McAfee trust this software. It suggests solutions for companies of all sizes: from freelancers to enterprises. So the customer service provides plenty of instruments for support, sales, and marketing teams.
As a LiveChat alternative, Zoho Desk gives:
Zoho Desk likes to automate all repetitive activities (as well as Freshdesk). For example, Zoho Desk provides a unique system that organizes open tickets by itself to save agents time. Also, Zoho Desk has its own AI ─ Zia. Zia can:
Zoho Desk has a free plan. You get:
The Free plan doesn’t have any reports, telephony, and live chat.
All paid plans don’t have agent limits. Standard is increased by:
In addition, the Plan has an entire product tool kit and integrations. Finally, Standard provides connections with a few social media and community forums but still doesn’t have access to telephony and live chat.
The Professional plan provides almost all instruments, but only the Enterprise plan has AI and livechat functions. You can also buy add-ons and increase the number of light agents (internal employees who can work with tickets but not respond directly). That costs $6/light agent/month.
As a LiveChat alternative, Zoho Desk gives 15 days off-charge and doesn’t ask card.
What’s good | What’s bad |
— Free plan. — Good live chat automation. — Ticket tracking and escalation matrix enable a company to track and manage customer complaints on time. | — Searchability of tickets doesn’t work correctly. — The graphical interface isn’t particularly appealing. |
It is a clear and concise live chat service alternative without unnecessary things. Intuitive to configure. Over 300,000 brands are using Crisp, like Boston University and JohnDeere. The platform provides an essential tool kit:
Crisp has three unique features:
Soft provides four plans: Basic, Pro, Unlimited, and Enterprise. The paid plans start at $25.
Basic is free. It gives:
Pro plan suggests:
The Unlimited plan increased by:
Enterprise allows all features plus dedicated instruments, custom onboarding, and personalized SLAs. Suitable for large companies. A 14-day trial.
What’s good | What’s bad |
— Intuitive to configure. — MagicMap and MagicBrowse. | — Notifications do not go away. — Not all the elements of the live chat widget are translatable. — Email inbox is unable to render rich content/HTML emails. |
Drift is a one of chat alternatives focused on customer communication. Over 50 000 users trust the software, including Zenefits and Smartling.
We noticed that Drift likes videos! So, use them to improve contact, get acquainted with a customer immediately, and close the deal fast. Also, you can send short (GIFs) and personalized videos in live chat to impress visitors or increase loyalty. (It is a bit similar to the LiveAgent service).
As a LiveChat alternative, Drift allows:
Drift provides its own AI services. For example, they proactively engage, qualify, and convert leads. In addition, due to Drift Meetings, potential customers may book a sales meeting with the rep any time right in a live chat. The Fastlane feature qualifies your prospects. If they are “ready,” the system instantly routes them to sellers. So, prospects can jump straight into a conversation without leaving the website.
Off-charge, you get:
Premium allows more than Free. In this plan, you use:
But A/B testing is still unable for you. It costs from $400/month to $1,500 per month/agent. But you can add more agent seats by an extra $80 per month. Advanced is about A/B testing and lead routing. The Enterprise plan provides AI tools and the full features kit. It costs $4,800/year.
By the way, Dashly can solve your tasks for less money.
Drift doesn’t provide a trial period.
What’s good | What’s bad |
— The easy chatbot builder. — Measurement of the efficiency of live chat agents. — Livechat widget works on any browser and every mobile phone. | — The price is too high. — The onboarding process at Drift is a bit aggressive. — Impossibility to hide the restrictions within an account. |
Userlike is a clear, logical customer service chat software alternative with an intuitive interface. Nivea and Hermes confirm this. It has small but essential and convenient functions. About them in the peculiarities below.
As a LiveChat alternative, Userlike has basic features:
Userlike provides the Operator groups, which means a user chooses with whom to talk right now.
Operator skills feature supplies connecting between visitors and best qualified in their question reps. You tag your agents by their abilities and strengths to make your prospects happy at the right moment.
When customers provide any contact information, Userlike automatically builds the profile based on public information.
On-page guidance helps you to close a deal fast. Cause you guide customers to the right page of your website without clumsy explaining where to go. Userlike’s live chat analytics to track key live chat metrics and teams efficiency.
This alternative gives five plans: Free, Team, Corporate, Business, and Flex. Off-charge, you get fantastic tools:
The Team plan gives four widgets, four seats, and one channel. You can use messengers. There are also add-ons like integrations to buy for the extra price.
With the Corporate, you have ten widgets, ten seats, and three channels. Analytics, live translation, video calls, and screen sharing are at your service.
The Business plan provides even more seats, widgets, and channels. Chatbots are available only within the Business and Flex plans. By the Business, you access white label, full API, and advanced routing.
Finally, Flex with a total toolset including a flexible solution for all company needs.
Userlike provides 14 days of Team features, then auto switches to Free after trial. This platform doesn’t need your credit card.
What’s good | What’s bad |
— Free plan. — Nice design. — Balanced feature set. | — Broken livechat sessions: every request from the same client creates a new conversation. — Critical alert system doesn’t work correctly. |
Olark is a livechat service with great features for support teams. Olark lovely suggests their Chatbot CoPilot, explaining how to combine the work of a robot and a human. Where is the first needed, and where is the second.
The software especially suits educational teams. Northeastern University, Tulane University, and The University of Michigan confirm this statement. As well as other alternatives, Olark provides:
Olark is convenient for big teams. All information at your fingertips: the analytics, a customer profile context, saving greetings, links, and product pitches ─ help to align the team workflow.
Also, Olark gives current data on livechat analytics and reporting. You may filter information as you need and learn from satisfaction ratings or most coming up topics. Subscribe and receive live chat reports daily, weekly, or monthly by email.
The alternative suggests two plans: Standard and Pro. In addition, there are PowerUps if you want to add some extra features to the chosen plan. The Standard, as well as the Pro plan, has a list of main features. In addition, Pro provides Chatbot Copilot’s services and custom terms. Among the main features:
The Standard plan costs $29/month per seat. The Pro is flexible. As for add-ons:
For a fee, you may:
Olark gives a 14-day trial and doesn’t provide a free plan.
What’s good | What’s bad |
— Affordability. — The live chat transcripts. — Ease of use. | — No image sharing. — Automatically closes open livechat conversations if agents haven’t responded in over five minutes. |
15 customer engagement platform to boost your website conversion.
Tidio is a live chat alternative highlighted on Forbes and Fox News. It has over 300 000 users. Tidio provides everything you need to boost conversion from the website. As well as a LiveChat alternative, Tidio suggests:
Tidio suggests an intuitive chatbot builder with a drag-and-drop visual editor so that you may quickly get down to the business.
35+ chatbot templates help you stop 60% of your customers from abandoning their carts by offering a discount. They can recommend products, upsell them, and accept orders.
Tidio suggests the standard four plans: Free, Starter, Team, Scale. For price free, the alternative provides
As a LiveChat alternative, Tidio has a 7-day trial.
What’s good | What’s bad |
— This live chat alternative provides simple chatbot templates, that you can customize to your needs. — Chatbots can be triggered on anything you want. — Free plan. | — No opportunity to set multiple triggers for one chatbot. |
REVE Chat has its vision of chatbots and their use. This is confirmed by separate pricing for chatbot services. Together with chatbots, this software gives convenient opportunities for effective live chatting and converting prospects into loyal customers. Such companies as Getac and EyeMyEye confirm the statements.
As a LiveChat alternative, REVE Chat provides the standard features:
Three features of REVE Chat help visitors and reps faster conclude and close the deal. There are screen sharing, calling, and video calling. Your prospects may at one click show what happened, or what they are interested in, and just call.
This live chat alternative provides sentiment analysis. Chatbot determines the mood of the visitor and helps to enhance contact. You may set it by adding words and emojis for your chatbot to identify users’ sentiments during the conversation.
Also, your chatbots may look for unstructured data in your system and regulates it, sanitizing excess.
REVE Chat offers live chat and chatbot pricing. In livechat pricing, three plans allocate Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise.
Talking about chatbot pricing, there are similar three plans plus a Custom plan.
AI services are not available for the Standard plan at all. You can count on
As a live chat alternative, REVE Chat gives its users a 14-day trial.
What’s good | What’s bad |
— Product setup is easy and intuitive. — Instant video calls. | — No free plan. — No AI. — The UI of the widget needs more improvement. |
HappyFox is the livechat tool for the excellent support team. Accessible queues, surveys, SLA, reports, etc. Whirlpool, Owler, and Leapfrog trust it. As well as a LiveChat alternative, HappyFox provides:
HappyFox’s SLA Management is easy to set. You build service standards without unnecessary complications. Then, you prescribe the time frame required for each stage of communication with the prospects in the appropriate spaces.
For the good results, this live chat alternative advises setting four points: what to do, how to do them, how to measure them, and when to measure them. SLA reporting helps you analyze SLA results and improve them. Happy Fox users can overview all the tickets assigned to them in one go and track its statuses, priority, and deadlines.
HappyFox pricing depends on the agents’ number (min five), team type (customer service, IT Support, operation support), and billing cycle. The platform suggests four plans for agent-based pricing and four unlimited agents plans.
If we talk about five seats of support service teams, Mighty, Fantastic, Enterprise, Enterprise Plus plans.
What about unlimited plans?
The main differences between unlimited plans are in sizes and quantities.
Happy Fox gives a 14-day trial.
What’s good | What’s bad |
— The LiveChat alternative provides unlimited agent seats. — Automatic live chat translation. | — No free plan. — It is problematic to add an attachment to the chat message. — Mobile app has too many bugs. |
Chatbots | Mobile app | Goal tracking | Reports | Team inbox | Knowledge base | Integrations | Pop-up builder | Free plan | |
LiveChat | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | – |
Dashly | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + |
Zendesk | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | – |
Freshdesk | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | – | + |
Intercom | + | + | – | + | + | + | + | – | – |
LiveAgent | – | + | – | + | + | + | + | – | + |
Zoho Desk | + | + | – | + | + | + | + | – | + |
Crisp | + | – | – | + | + | + | + | – | + |
Drift | + | + | – | + | + | – | + | – | – |
Userlike | + | – | – | + | + | – | + | – | + |
Olark | + | – | – | + | + | – | + | – | – |
Tidio | + | + | – | – | + | – | – | – | + |
REVE Chat | + | + | – | + | + | – | + | – | – |
Happy Fox | + | + | – | + | + | + | + | – | – |
LiveChat is a software that provides tools for communication with customers to increase sales and help orchestrate support, sales, and marketing teams. Read how live chat works in an ultimate guide.
They are reasons to consider LiveChat alternatives:
— LiveChat doesn’t suggest a free plan,
— the system app is outdated,
— the price is a bit high for some companies,
— and notifications are delayed or don’t appear,
— difficulties with setting up customer lists, you can’t see the history without clicking on it.
Find out why Dashly is a more functional solution.
How to choose the live chat software for your team? It depends on the size and type of company, and the team’s needs. There is a list of simple criteria you may note.
— Intuitive and convenient interface.
— Ability to customize basic features without developers or designers.
— Simple onboarding.
— Mobile version works smoothly as well as the desktop version.
— Omnichannel support with integrations.
— Clear and balanced pricing.
Mind the mistakes when choosing live chat.