10 Best WordPress Live Chat Plugins Compared for 2023
The Power of Live Chat in WordPress: An Introduction
Why Use a WordPress Chat Plugin?
Live chats transform WordPress into a real-time customer engagement tool. With a woocommerce live chat, WordPress evolves into an instantaneous haven for customer interaction. It’s noteworthy to realize that a whopping 51% of customers pledge loyalty to businesses offering chat automation through live chat support. It’s elementary to understand the rising popularity of help chat functions in these plugins—they mitigate cart abandonment, boost sales, amplify leads, and generally enrich the customer experience. With the possibility to integrate your plugin with other platforms such as chatbot systems, the added leverage of automation and AI can effortlessly handle simple customer queries. This saves time for your agents to address more complex issues. These plugins, particularly those with WooCommerce integration, are swiftly revolutionizing customer support interactions.
How to choose the best WordPress chat plugin for website?
Finalizing the best WordPress chat plugin for your website boils down to a few crucial considerations. Consider a plugin that integrates with your website theme, tools like email marketing services, and notably, a robust chatbot builder. This would allow businesses to create custom bots enhancing customer support. Keep an eye on features like widget customization—a live chat suite that enables you to coordinate your live chat widget with your website’s theme is a beneficial feature. Prioritize affordability, but also think about a tool’s prospective integration with your pre-existing systems and workflow, both current and future. Ensure an optimized user experience, creating a smooth journey for both agents and customers. Ultimately, it boils down to these elements: integration effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and user experience.
Top 10 Standout Live Chat Plugins for WordPress
LiveChat: Seamless Conversations and Support
LiveChat – the epitome of seamless conversations and highly efficient support service. This is much more than a simple chat page; it’s a dynamic platform that lets you initiate real-time livechat olark experiences with customers, reducing waiting time and significantly enhancing customer satisfaction. Woven seamlessly within its design, Smartsupp Live Chat abilities provide robust functionality, something essential for the modern business operation. Highly compatible with multiple site builders, LiveChat’s design is intuitive, easy to install, and is compatible with a range of communications platforms. It extends your outreach beyond your website, on to Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and even iMessage. With an array of AI and chatbot features, this software ensures swift and efficient chat messages exchanges and query resolution at a pocket-friendly price of $16 per agent per month. Perfect for mass scale support with a human touch.
Tidio: Live Chat Made Personal
Tidio – an ultimate customer interaction tool designed to make your live chat personal, proactive and efficient. From displaying a visitor list to seamless integration with Instagram and Facebook Messenger, Tidio offers easy setup and real-time responses. The shared inbox allows convenient collaboration among your team members while chat history and ticketing system ensure no customer query gets lost. Tidio gels well with different content management systems and offers pre-built chatbots making sales a cakewalk. With free and premium plans starting at $19 per month, delight your customer the ‘Tidio way’.
To maximize your ROI – use Tidio’s chat transfer feature. Transferring conversations between agents or to emails from live chats, makes follow-ups a breeze and ensures smooth transitions between different support channels.Tidio- tailored chat solutions for every business!
Chaport: Effortless Setup and Instant Integration
Chaport is your go-to option for a no-fuss friendliness. The simple structure devoid of any complicated settings makes quick setup and incorporation into your WordPress site a reality. Despite its simplicity, Chaport thrives on essential chat features such as robust chatbot integrations and party integrations. It offers automated replies, group chats, and a remarkable stack of over 2000+ helpful integrations including google analytics for tracking.
Chaport’s affordability takes it a notch higher. The free plan caters to a single operator, and the paid plans range from just $15 to $23 per operator per month, making customer support through effective chat transcripts and apt responses to FAQs accessible and efficient for businesses of all sizes. With Chaport, effortlessly engage and assist your customers in real-time.
The striking balance between robust functionality and simplicity, complemented by its affordable pricing, sets Chaport apart from other live chat platforms. This platform skillfully meets customer support needs while also serving as a lead generation system. So, if you’re seeking a chat solution that’s not just about ‘chat’, but about transforming conversations into potential leads, Chaport is worth a try.
JivoChat: Chat That Drives Sales
JivoChat, the omnichannel plugin designed to demystify sales for you. This interactive live chat software, much like instant messaging for your desktop and mobile devices, helps you cater to numerous customers concurrently with its dedicated widget and color-coding system. For quick responses, trigger automated messages or canned responses; similar to auto-responses in email forms. These features can address routine inquiries, thereby improving team efficiency and integrating seamlessly with your CRM and email marketing tools like Mailchimp. The JivoChat platform is optimized for mobile devices, allows seamless customer-agent call transitions, and keeps you connected even when you’re offline, making it more effective than relying solely on Twitter or other social media platforms for customer engagement.
JivoChat’s real-time translator supports more than 25 languages, bringing down linguistic barriers in customer interactions. The basic plan kicks off free for five agents while the professional plan starts at $19 per agent per month. With JivoChat, you get more than just an interactive chat; it’s a powerful toolkit that converts your website chat into a potent sales channel.
Boost your sales like a pro with JivoChat, an all-in-one business messenger plugin that brings all communication channels, including phone, email via email form, and social media such as Twitter, under one roof. It enables live chat, shows when someone is typing, and allows chat transfers between agents. Furthermore, with JivoChat, you get detailed visitor profiles, response options, reminders, and premade responses. Integrations to email marketing tools and platforms like Mailchimp offer complete omnichannel support. Both free and pro versions are available for use, making JivoChat a good fit for businesses of all sizes.
Pure Chat: Simplified Real-time Support
Pure Chat, as the name suggests, remains purely committed to facilitating excellent real-time customer service. A standout in the roster of live chat plugins, Pure Chat goes beyond just communication by offering useful features such as marketing automation and real-time visitor details and behavior monitoring. It uniquely provides unlimited chats, canned response management, with updates happening in real-time on your site through its significantly designed plugin page. Keeping tabs on the user’s activities for data analytics and ensuring seamless communication by managing multiple chats, Pure Chat ensures the customer’s history remains intact.
The Formilla Live Chat software isn’t far behind, with real-time visitor tracking. Its key features include marketing automation, multi-channel communication, and visitor tracking, all of which are available on your plugin page. Additionally, with free mobile apps for Android and iOS, Pure Chat allows you to offer support to your customers on the go. The friendly UI ensures faster replies and enables offline email responses whenever you can’t be live, including marketing automation features.
Pure Chat offers a free starter plan that allows 3 users and 15 trips per month. For those requiring more, the Pro Plan starts from $39 per month and includes unlimited chats, coupled with several other marketing automation features. Thus, Pure Chat assures that quality real-time customer support integrated with marketing automation is always at your fingertips. With Formilla Live Chat and Pure Chat features combined, your customer service game will be unstoppable.
WP Live Chat by Chaport: Customizable and User-friendly
WP Live Chat by Chaport is all about user-friendliness coupled with extensive customization options. Taking a rather interesting spin-off of Chaport, WP Live Chat has marked a distinct presence among WordPress users due to its sleek appearance, ease of use, and relevancy for small businesses offering reliable chat stats.
Quick to install, WP Live Chat provides a platform for memorable customer experiences with its templates that enhance chat engagement rate. Once installed, you are one step away from creating a customer-centric atmosphere.
Use Chaport’s WP Live Chat to capture your brand essence with customizable chat widgets that invite customers to interact. It offers live notifications, operator pictures, multilingual support, and encryption for a guaranteed secure chat environment. As an additional edge, the RevE chat feature upscales the quality of your customer service.
The plugin has a freemium pricing model serving basic requirements while offering premium features including saved replies and auto-invites starting from $15 per operator. WP Live Chat by Chaport: Turn every chat into a winning customer story!
Zendesk Chat: More Than Just Conversations
Ever considered transforming chat into a core part of your sales and support strategy? Zendesk Chat, an integrated component of the Intercom CRM tools, does precisely that. Being part of the complete sales, support, and customer management suite offered by Zendesk, this dynamic plugin amplifies personalized customer interactions with its CRM features by allowing conversations across various channels without customers having to repeat their stories. A popup window could be initiated, for instance, if a customer is stuck on the checkout page ensuring a smoother customer journey.
Zendesk Chat is packed with several innovative features like predefined triggers for automated messaging, live views of customer activity, chat routing, tagging, file transfers, and Zendesk’s advanced analytics. It seamlessly integrates with diverse web forms to boost your relationship with your customers. Using this CRM tool, one can see the volume of webpage views, visits, and chat sessions while also allowing your customers to rate the chat sessions.
Some might point out a couple of limitations such as slower admin load time and challenges handling multiple chats; however, Zendesk outweighs these with a unique blend of proactive communication, customizable bots, and group messaging. Start exploring Zendesk today to ensure your web conversations are more than just talks!
Zendesk Chat, similarly to Intercom, offers different pricing tiers, including a free plan with basic features and premium plans starting at $14 per month per agent.
HubSpot Live Chat: Conversion-Focused Conversations
HubSpot Live Chat is an acclaimed player in the Pandemonium of WordPress live chat plugins owing to its focus on conversion-centric conversations. Built around CRM or customer relationship management, HubSpot turns every chat into a hyper-focused business opportunity.
HubSpot abounds in features like automated chat routing to ensure efficient customer query resolution. Besides, you can tailor your own chat widgets to reflect your brand’s persona. HubSpot’s unique universal inbox stores every conversation, creating a treasure trove of crucial customer insights. This free and easy-to-use WordPress chat plugin also enables team members to add comments to the chat history, ensuring a collective effort towards customer satisfaction.
HubSpot’s chatbots add a unique spin to your off-hours customer queries. Having the ability to qualify leads, answer questions, book meetings, or send queries as emails for follow-up, these bots ensure unbroken engagement.
HubSpot Live Chat does have a few limitations like limited use cases for bots on its free tier. But given the benefits– targeted messaging, mobile response capabilities, hundreds of integrations, and a comprehensive CRM solution– HubSpot Live Chat is a strong contender in the WordPress live chat plugin space.
Tawk.To: Free Live Chat Solution
Checkout Tawk.To, the live chat plugin that promises a zero-cost solution for proactive and personalized customer interactions. Offering premium live chat features for free, Tawk.To catapults your business into real-time customer engagement and support proficiency.
With Tawk.To, stay relevant in the eyes of your global customer base via its support in over 45 languages. It presents an opportunity to get close with leads, engage with them real-time, and capitalize on chats to increase sales. Not just that, you can use Tawk.To to assign incoming chats to operators, ensuring efficient knowledge sharing for a superior support experience.
Notably, the plugin lets you go mobile too, offering mobile apps for real-time answering of incoming chats. Tracking customer sentiment, pinpointing pain points, and using canned responses to reduce your response time works wonders in improving overall customer experience. Ranking high on downloads with an impressive 4.6-star rating, Tawk.To is perfect for budget-conscious businesses.
So what’s the catch with the free offer? Well, Tawk to reserves the right to limit or disconnect the service if it detects non-use or abuse. However, if used appropriately this tool can serve as a free, effective, and permanent live chat solution for your WordPress website. Get started with Tawk.To and leap forward in your customer interaction game today!
Olark: Enhancing User Engagement
Throw a stone on the WordPress live chat scene, and it will inevitably hit Olark – the synonym for enhanced user engagement. Known for its robust yet user-friendly interface, Olark encourages businesses to enrich their help chat function with real-time communication.
Notably, Olark’s glory lies in its customizable chat boxes, _chat automation_ greetings, and real-time reporting. These chatbot features allow businesses to create a chat ambiance that matches their brand style, similar to the sleek and highly customizable design seen in services like LiveChat Olark. With Olark, customer interactions are not just monotonous chores but are transformed into unique, appealing, and memorable engagements.
The other stand-out feature is its seamless integration capacity. Olark pairs well with an array of popular tools and platforms, including Salesforce, Hubspot, and Zendesk. Fortunately, this integration capability extends to other digital resources too, enabling businesses to leverage automation, AI, and machine learning for handling customer queries efficiently.
Olark’s impressive report generation, coupled with integrated chat analytics, allows businesses to make data-driven decisions to enhance their customer experience. While it doesn’t have a free plan, its flexibility with pricing plans makes it accessible for business operations of every size. With starting costs of $19 per agent per month, Olark is your go-to for improved customer service through higher engagement and smart insights.
Feature Comparison
User Interface and Experience
In an app you’ll be spending much time with, the user interface (UI) – the point of human-computer interaction and communication – is vital. Picking a live chat plugin that provides a clean yet powerful UI can dramatically affect the effectiveness of your customer-interactive efforts.
A chat platform with a poor UI can be like navigating an alien world where nobody speaks your language. On the other hand, one with a good UI feels intuitive, like second nature, and encourages the user to interact more.
Remember, UI isn’t just about nice aesthetics. It’s also about how well users can navigate the software and complete tasks without getting confused or lost. So, when selecting a live chat plugin, consider if it’s easy to use, provides visual guidance, and complements your style guide.
Choosing the right user interface becomes extra critical when mobile users come into the picture. Your live chat should not just function, but function well on any device. If it interrupts the user experience, customers will continue their conversation elsewhere.
Customizability and Branding
Brand recognition starts with consistent design. That’s why it’s essential to choose a live chat plugin that offers various customization options. This could include the ability to match the chat box colors to your brand, customize the chat icons, or include your logo in messaging boxes, creating a seamless and uniform brand end-to-end.
Customizability extends beyond aesthetics. It also includes allowing you to set up features that suit your chat management style, such as enabling pre-chat surveys or customizing auto-responses. Simultaneously, some chat plugins may even offer the freedom to align the features according to customer requirements.
Remember that while customization options are inherently good, too many options can be overwhelming and may lead to disorderly branding. Choose a tool that allows you to adapt the fundamental elements necessary for effective brand integration.
Having a highly customizable live chat plugin is critical in presenting a cohesive brand experience to your customers. So, consider the customization degree of a live chat plugin when selecting the best fit for your brand. Choose wisely to communicate your brand effectively to visitors!
Reporting and Analytics
In the customer communication landscape, having data-rich reports and analytics is nothing short of a treasure trove. A sturdy chat plugin should offer comprehensive, yet easy-to-understand reporting that enables data analysis, helping businesses to reflect on their service and improve upon any weak spots.
Key metrics like chat volumes, response times, chat durations, and customer ratings offer direct insights into your live chat performance and customer satisfaction. Even more insightful is data on customer location, frequent inquiry timing, common issues, and customer sentiment, aiding in strategic decision making.
Not only does insightful reporting allow managers to provide data-driven feedback to agents but it creates a transparent overview of customer interactions. Having such data on hand helps identify pain points, pinpoint opportunities for improvement, and predict customer behavior.
Therefore, while picking a WordPress live chat plugin, choose one that provides strong reporting and analytics capabilities, ensuring it becomes your right hand in data-driven decision-making.
User Support and Customer Service
In the world of live chat software, steady user support and customer service form the spinal cord. You could have the slickest interface and top-tier analytics, but if you can’t get help when something breaks, those strengths cease to matter.
Moreover, the kind of support a provider offers is as essential as its availability. Check if the company offers multiple channels to reach out for help– email, phone, live chat, or support tickets. Additionally, verify whether they offer 24/7 support or if it’s limited to specific hours or days.
Also, examine whether support is included in the plan or is an add-on service. Many providers include basic email support in all their plans but charge extra for priority or dedicated support.
Besides, it can be helpful to look up reviews about their customer service. Often, other users’ experiences can provide useful insights into the reality of a company’s “always available” support.
Strong user support is a lifeline in moments of crises, so take a cautious approach when checking that box in your plugin selection criterion.
Achieving More: Integrations and Extensions
WordPress Hooks or App Integration
Chat plugin’s integration ability is an unsung hero of seamless customer conversations, with WordPress Hooks and App Integrations taking center stage.
WordPress Hooks allow developers to create, modify, and manage code in the WordPress codebase without directly changing the core code. It allows customization of WordPress by creating or modifying default behaviour. They are effective in triggering chat visibility, personalizing visitor data, or routing chats based on the webpage.
App Integrations, on the other hand, span across various user-friendly apps such as Zendesk, HubSpot, or Slack. For instance, some chat plugins offer native integration with major email marketing services so that you can directly add your chat visitors to your mailing list.
Therefore, it’s essential to review which integrations are supported as per your business needs when considering a chat plugin. Whether it’s WordPress Hooks or App Integration, choose a plugin that offers extensive integration to power up your customer service game.
Ecommerce Extensions
For Ecommerce websites, integrating live chat isn’t just a fancy add-on; it’s an absolute game-changer. It matters not just regarding customer service, but also in guiding visitors through the sales funnel and turning carts into cash!
Therefore, when browsing for your perfect live chat plugin, look out for extensions that adapt to your Ecommerce needs. These might include features that enable real-time advisory for shopping decisions, resolve order queries instantly, or even recover abandoned carts.
For instance, WooCommerce integration allows you to view cart contents or purchase history in chat, while Shopify extension might offer customer profile views while chatting. Integrations with tools like Cart Recovery, can help drive customer decisions towards purchases.
Ecommerce extensions in live chat thus work magic in turning bounce rates around while increasing your conversion rates!
Price Considerations: Making the Most of Your Budget
Free versus Paid – Weighing the Perks
Facing the conundrum of Free versus Paid live chat plugins? Here’s the trick – Consider your specific needs. Free live chat plugins are undoubtedly tempting as they allow you to test the waters before making a commitment. They are excellent for small businesses or startups on a tight budget. Free plans mostly cover basic functionalities like chat history, canned responses, mobile apps, and integrations.
However, as your business grows, you’d eventually need advanced features like detailed reporting, automation, customization, and premium support, which come packed only with paid plans.
So, weigh your options and specific needs against what’s on the table. Consider factors like what number of users the plugin would support in its free versus paid version and the depth of customization allowed. Moreover, evaluate the potential of your chat volume growing in the future, perhaps necessitating a more robust, paid plan.
Choosing between Free and Paid is crucial for your bottom-line. Thus, select wisely to get the biggest bang for your buck!
Understanding Different Pricing Structures
In the plugin universe, pricing structures can be a maze. In general, you could stumble upon freemium, monthly or annual memberships price structures, or even the ones based on per “seat” or user.
Freemium models offer basic features for free while charging for advanced functionalities. One needs to evaluate if the advanced features in the premium plan are essential and worth paying for. If your business is small and needs merely basic functionalities, the free version may serve you well.
Meanwhile, many chat plugins use a monthly or annual subscription model offering a range of features. Such plugins may even provide discounts if you opt for an annual subscription. The downside of subscriptions is that they are a long-term commitment, and some may not offer refunds upon cancellation.
Some pricing structures rely on the ‘per user’ or ‘per seat’ principle. So if your team is large, these can get quite expensive.
Evaluate the pricing and feature trade-off of the plugin against your budget and business needs to select your perfect fit.
The Final Word: Our Top Recommendations
Best Overall Live Chat Plugin for WordPress
After comparison and consideration of numerous factors such as features, pricing, user reviews, and overall usability, our vote for the best overall live chat plugin for WordPress in 2023 goes to LiveChat.
LiveChat stands out owing to its user-friendly interface, versatility, and wide array of features. Incorporated with robust analytics and reporting, extensive app integrations, and superior chat management options. In addition, it offers a unique blend of AI and human touch, ensuring real-time customer engagement even during off-hours.
Wrapped in an attractive and customizable chatbox, LiveChat proves to be worth every penny of its cost, starting at $19 per agent per month. Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, LiveChat has a plan for you.
Best Free Live Chat Plugin for WordPress
After considering various contenders, our recommendation for the best free live chat plugin is Tawk.To.
Justifying its tagline “to talk to customers”, this plugin does not compromise when it comes to basic live chat features despite being free. Tawk.To covers everything from customization capabilities, mobile apps, automation of greetings and away status, a robust ticket system to a built-in translator—all under no direct cost.
Tawk.To’s large community of users and positively-rated reviews further add to its credibility. However, while the plugin is free to use, some premium features like removing the Tawk.To branding or video/voice calling are unlockable at a cost. But even as a free user, you can add as many agents as you want, and it doesn’t cost you anything extra unless you wish to avail the premium features.
We believe Tawk.To delivers great value, making it the strongest contender in the best free live chat plugin category for WordPress websites.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you use live chat in WordPress?
Using live chat in WordPress is simple—thanks to numerous user-friendly plugins available. Firstly, select the chat plugin that suits your business requirements and install it on your WordPress site. After installation, follow the setup wizard for the initial configuration including chat customization, setting up operators, and defining chat triggers.
Once configured, your chat widget becomes live, allowing real-time interactions with your site visitors. By using the plugin’s dashboard, you can manage incoming chats, keep track of conversations, and respond instantly.
Keep in mind, some chat plugins might require you to create an account with their service, offering more controlled management and advanced features.
In a nutshell, using live chat in WordPress, you simply need to find a suitable chat plugin, install, and customize it to fit your specific business needs.
Does my business need a live chat app?
Considering the lightning-fast pace of digital communications and customers’ craving for instant responses, yes, your business most likely needs a live chat app. Irrespective of the business size or sector, a chat app can provide significant benefits.
Firstly, it aids in building trust in your brand, provides instant customer support, and breaks down barriers to communication. Secondly, live chat can increase conversions, enhance customer satisfaction, and give you a competitive edge. Plus, it helps decrease cart abandonment rates and boosts overall sales.
Most importantly, live chat apps serve as more than just a customer query resolution tool; they are a trove of customer insights– helping businesses to understand their customer concerns better and gather feedback.
In the digital world where time equates to money, live chat certainly proves to be a winning decision!
Is a live chat plugin free?
Yes, there are various free live chat plugins available for WordPress. For example, Zendesk’s best live chat plugin for WordPress proposes an interactive experience, even sensing customer hesitations on the checkout or any other plugin page. However, it’s important to note, most “free” live chat plugins do have a paid version that offers advanced features.
Often the free version serves as a teaser — showcasing the plugin’s potential while somewhat limiting its functionality. The appearance of the chatbox, among other features, can be manipulated more extensively after a plugin update in these paid versions. The basic, free version might cover general requirements like chat history, canned responses, and a limited number of seats, whereas the paid version might offer extensive customization, real-time analytics, and AI-powered chatbots.
Ultimately, it boils down to the specific needs and budget of your business. In short, yes, a live chat plugin can be free, but you get what you pay for.
How does live chat increase conversions?
Live chat explores the power of real-time conversation and personal interaction in increasing conversions. On a broader level, a live chat gives your business a human touch, making it more approachable, reliable, and engaging for customers. This presence of a real human on the website boosts customer trust, increases their comfort level, and often nudges them toward a purchasing decision.
Furthermore, by delivering instant responses and help, live chat reduces purchase abandonment and customer churn. Your agents can clear misinformation about your products or services, gently guide potential buyers through the purchasing process, and increase conversion numbers.
Visitors who chat are 2.8 times more likely to convert into customers, and their cart value is typically 60% higher. So, by enhancing your website’s conversion rate, live chat contributes to the growth and profitability of your business.
How to integrate live chat?
Integrating live chat into your website involves a simple, streamlined process. While the exact steps might vary slightly based on the specific chat plugin chosen, the general path follows these steps:
- Select: Identify which live chat plugin best suits your business requirements considering factors like ease of use, customization, price, and support offered.
- Install and Activate: Within your WordPress dashboard, go to ‘Plugins’> ‘Add new’> Search the plugin> ‘Install Now’> ‘Activate’. Another way could be to download the plugin from the provider’s website and upload it to WordPress.
- Configuration: Upon activation, open the plugin settings for initial setup. Configure it as per your needs; this could involve designing the chat window, providing operator details, setting chat triggers, and other preferences.
- Integration: If the chat plugin supports integrations, ensure it’s paired with all necessary tools. Integrations could include email marketing software, sales CRMs, or social media websites.
- Go Live: Finally, save all changes, and you’re good to go! Your live chat is now integrated and ready to engage customers.
