13 Best Live Chat Software for Small Business Compared (2021)

Did you know that more than 67% of users on eCommerce websites abandon their shopping carts without checking out?

Customers want their questions to be answered instantly, and any uncertainty with their purchase can result in losing a sale.

Using a live chat support software helps you instantly answer user questions and convert them into paying customers. In this article, we will share our pick of the best live chat software for your small businesses. These live chat services work perfectly with any WordPress site.

Why Add Live Chat Support to Your Website?

According to eConsultancy, live chat has the highest satisfaction levels of any customer service channel at 73%, compared to 61% for email and 44% for phone.

It is a no brainer that live chat feature has such a significant impact on online sales and marketing. It allows customers to get instant answers without leaving your website. A positive live chat experience can effectively help customer make the buying decision.

Adding live chat support can definitely reduce cart abandonment, increase sales, and boost conversion rates. But a lot of it depends on the live chat software that you use.

A poor live chat customer experience can have an adverse impact. You can lose sales, customers may leave with a bad impression of your brand, you may end up paying too much for the service, or fail to utilize the live chat platform due to technical skills.

Basically, you want to find an affordable live chat service, that is easy to use, works with WordPress, and comes with all the functionality to help you make more sales.

That being said, let’s take a look at our expert pick of the best live chat software providers that you can use to grow your business.

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1. LiveChat

LiveChat is the industry leader in live chat software. It’s very easy to set up and install with their free LiveChat plugin for WordPress.

LiveChat also offers beautifully designed live chat support apps that you and your agents can use on your laptops, tablets, and mobile devices. That means you can chat with customers while on the go, without having to login to your WordPress dashboard.

You can add survey forms before and after a live chat session, so you can evaluate how your support team and sales team is performing. During your off-hours, you can setup a workflow so users can easily send a support ticket directly from live chat.

LiveChat integrates with dozens of other services like popular CRM software such as Hubspot, Google Analytics, Zendesk, all the top email marketing services like MailChimp, and many more. This will save you time since you won’t have to enter customer details manually into your other systems.

Perhaps the best feature of LiveChat is speed. Their chat window loads extremely fast, works on all devices, and offers a much better user experience than most other live chat software.

We use LiveChat on our eCommerce websites. Their customization tools allow us to customize our chat pop-up to match our website branding which is a huge plus.

They have many other support tools that help us improve our customer communication such as visitor tracking for goals, proactive chat to increase conversations, smart API that integrates with our knowledge base, and more.

Pricing: LiveChat has different plans for businesses of all sizes including startups. Their starter plan starts from $16 per agent per month billed annually, or $19 for month-to-month. Each plan comes with a 14 day free trial.

Special: WPBeginner users get 30% off the first payment when you use our LiveChat Coupon.

2. HubSpot

HubSpot is a popular all-in-one marketing platform that offers both live chat and chat bot builder.

You can customize the live chat design to match your website brand, create automated chat bot flows with no-code, and seamlessly integrate all customer data in the HubSpot CRM platform.

HubSpot’s on site personalization features also makes it easy for you to personalize the website chat experience for returning visitors which is proven to boost your sales conversion.

Aside from live chat features, HubSpot also comes with email marketing automation, sales CRM, landing page software, and many other powerful marketing features included for the same price.

This allows you to have multi-channel communication with your customers via live chat, email ticketing system, as well as email automation.

Because of that HubSpot is an appealing option for both small business owners as well as large enterprise businesses.

The best part about HubSpot is that there’s a free version for you to use if you’re just getting started.

Pricing: HubSpot offers its chatbot builder as part of its Sales Hub plan. You can get started with HubSpot chatbots for free, but to access additional tools like ticket creation, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan. These start at $45/month.

The plans’ price can increase quickly, but HubSpot offers far more than chatbots in its Sales Hub software, and the customer reviews are consistently high. If you are looking for a CRM and email solution in addition to both live chat and AI chatbot, then we recommend HubSpot.

3. ChatBot

ChatBots are the future of live chat software because they allow you to engage with your customers 24/7.

ChatBot.com makes it easy for small businesses to use the power of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots to boost customer engagement and overall customer satisfaction with a self-service help interface.

It comes with an intuitive drag and drop interface that you can use to create your own ChatBot. They also have dozens of ready-made templates for various industries that makes it easy for you to design custom conversation scenarios and chat routing that fits your business needs.

For example, you can use the eCommerce bot template to help walk the customers through the entire buying process. You can use the lead generation bot to power-up your sales and book calls. Their sales bot template allows you to sell products directly from the chat window which is a really powerful feature for making sales from social media profiles.

Their other bot templates include customer service bot, restaurant bot, package tracking bot, coffee shop bot, recruitment bot, and many more. Chatbot templates are truly one of the best parts about this platform because it levels the playing field for small businesses. Previously making chatbots were hard for small business, but this makes it easy.

Simply put, ChatBot.com allows you to add a virtual assistant for your websites, facebook pages, and messaging apps. If the user wishes to communicate with a real person, then you can seamlessly forward them to your customer support agent, Facebook messenger, phone call support, or one of their many other live chat tools integrations.

ChatBot also integrates seamlessly with WordPress and WooCommerce.

Integrating ChatBot within our businesses is a big priority for us in 2021.

Pricing: ChatBot has various plans for businesses of all sizes. Their starter plan starts for $50 per month which gives you access to 1000 chats per month (essentially $0.01 / chat). Each plan comes with a 14 day free trial.

4. Sendinblue

SendinBlue offers a powerful yet beginner friendly live chat software. Simply set up your chat box under your account and then add it to your website using a WordPress plugin.

Sendinblue allows you to easily convert your website visitors into customers by answering their last minute questions via live chat. The chat integrates with Sendinblue marketing automation which enables you to capture more leads.

It comes with built-in email marketing integration, retargeting for Facebook ads, segmentation, and complete marketing automation.

Sendinblue offers a complete marketing package with CRM, SMS and email marketing, landing pages, and more. This powerful toolkit helps you convert even more visitors into paying customers.

Pricing: Sendinblue offers different pricing plans, but you’ll need their Premium plan to access Chat feature. Pricing for premium plan starts from $66 / month and includes upto 10 team members.

5. Olark

Olark is a popular live chat solution for online businesses. It’s easy to use, and adding Olark to a WordPress site is simple. All you need to do is copy and paste a code snippet into your WordPress sidebar widget or in your child theme.

If you’d rather not work with code, then there is also a free Olark Live Chat plugin which makes setup even easier.

Olark offers integration with other services such as Salesforce, Zendesk, Highrise, etc.

There are third-party mobile apps which allow you to connect to Olark chat from almost any iOS or Android device, so you can chat with customers on the go.

Pricing: Olark offers simpler pricing plan starting from $17 per agent each month. There is a 12% discount if you choose annual billing and 29% discount for two-year billing. They also offer 2-week free live chat support trial.

6. LiveAgent

LiveAgent is one of the leading omnichannel live chat and help desk software. They offer a suite of software including email ticketing, live chat, video chat, time tracking, call center, and more.

If you do not have a support desk system already, then using the LiveAgent suite can make things easy because it’s an all-in-one platform similar to Zendesk chat and others.

LiveAgent offers seamless integrations with WordPress and other popular website builders. They also integrate with top email marketing services, CRMs, and other marketing platforms.

Pricing: LiveAgent has a limited free plan and their paid plans start from $15 per month per agent.

7. Chaport

If you are looking for a free live chat support software for WordPress, then you may want to checkout Chaport. They offer a free forever plan with unlimited chats, history, notifications, unlimited registered operators, and up to 5 operators online at the same time.

Their software covers all the basic requirements. They have live chat support apps for mobile devices, beautiful multilingual chat widgets, reporting and analytics, third-party integrations through Zapier.

Paid plans give you access to more features like typing insights, visitor notes, saved replies, file sending, auto-invitations, and more.

Pricing: They offer a free plan and a Pro plan starting from $9.80 per agent / month.

8. Intercom

Intercom is a flexible tool that helps you capture leads, engage users, and boost conversions. It offers messaging services with live chat widgets that you can automate with your own flows, add chatbots, and engage customers.

It is not just a live chat support software. It can be used as an onboarding tool, support assistant, lead generation tool, marketing automation, and user-engagement software.

If you are just looking for a live chat software, then you may not be able to utilize Intercom’s full potential. On the other hand, if you want your live chat support software to do all these tasks, then you’ll love Intercom.

It is easy to use, integrates with Google Analytics, CRM software, Slack, email marketing services, and more.

Pricing: Their essential plan starts from $87 / month, after which pricing is calculated based on your usage and add-ons you purchase.

9. Freshchat

Freshchat is another good live chat support service with awesome features that rival some of the more well-known companies on this list.

Designed to be a conversation and messenger app, it allows you to start real-time chats with customers using agents or AI-powered bots. It also offers customer timeline views, live profiles, in-app campaigns, co-browsing, and customizable bots for automated conversations.

You can connect chats to support tickets on Zendesk or on a slack channel. Your team can use smart plugs, canned responses, labels, private notes, and desktop notifications to be more productive.

Pricing: They offer a free live chat support service plan for up to 10 team members. Their paid plans start from $15 per user per month and are billed yearly.

10. LivePerson

LivePerson is another powerful live chat support software with tons of awesome features to help you engage customers and increase sales.

It allows you to engage your customers via live chat on your website but also through SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and more. You can use chatbots to create automated conversation flows and save customer information in your other third-party apps.

LivePerson is targeted towards medium to large businesses and enterprise level clients.

Pricing: You will have to request a quote to get pricing information based on your needs.

11. Smartsupp

Smartsupp is a low-cost live chat support software that allows you to track and record user sessions on your website. This helps you see how potential customers use your website and what’s preventing them from making a purchase.

It also helps you track chat conversations in Google Analytics to see your performance. It works with WordPress, Magento, Shopify, and other popular eCommerce platforms.

Pricing: A basic free-forever plan and their paid plans start from $8 per month per agent.

12. Pure Chat

If you are looking for a free live chat software, then Pure Chat is another good alternative. It allows you to easily add beautiful live chat widgets to your websites and the free plan allows you to add 3 operators with unlimited chat history.

It comes with mobile apps so that you can stay connected with customers. Your customers can send you email messages when you are offline and pre-chat form helps you collect user information to reach out later.

Pricing: A basic free plan, and their paid plan starts $79 / month billed annually.

13. Drift

Drift is a conversational marketing platform that combines the power of live chat with an automated chat bot to help you save time and increase conversions. It comes with powerful features to help you convert more website visitors into sales leads.

Drift integrates with all popular CRM and email marketing services.

They offer several powerful features including Drift bot, anonymous visitor intelligence, account based marketing, scheduling for meetings, and more.

While it has a lot of powerful features, Drift is not affordable for small businesses.

Pricing: The Standard plan starts at $50 / month billed annually, and it comes with 2 seats. If you want the bot feature, then you will have to upgrade to the Pro plan which starts at $500 / month billed annually, and it comes with 5 seats.

Which is the Best Live Chat Software? (Expert Pick)

For small businesses, we recommend LiveChat Inc as the best live chat software. They’re the top rated in our list because we use them on our own websites. It has all the necessary features for the right price.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one marketing & CRM platform that also offers both live chat software and no-code chat bot builder, then look no further than HubSpot. You can use their live chat for free.

If you’re looking for a dedicated chatbot software, then we recommend that you look at ChatBot.com. They’re one of the best chatbot platforms in the market, and it’s actually relatively easy to setup compared to other solutions.

If you’re looking to hire live chat agents, but not sure where to start, then we recommend using LTVPlus. We use them to hire affordable 24/7 live chat agents for our eCommerce website.

Pro tip: Make sure that you have a professional business email address along with live chat to boost your credibility.

We hope this article helped you choose the best live chat support software for your WordPress site. You may also want to see our list of the best business phone services for small business, and the best SEO tools to increase your website traffic.

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