live chat

Undoubtedly, live chat software’s become a necessity for all businesses. They can see how 38% of visitors are converted into customers after having a session with a support operator through live chat.

However, if you’re a small business owner, you’ve probably found yourself in painstaking research trying to figure out if it’s really possible to find that one great solution that will make an optimal balance between your budget and the software quality.

So, to help you get through the research and selection process, we’ve prepared a list of the best live chat software solutions that you may want to consider.

Apart from providing different sets of convenient tools, the solutions we’ve picked are also considered affordable and profitable investments in the business.

Without further ado, let’s browse through the top options when it comes to live chat software for small businesses.

#1: ProProfs Chat

There are numerous reasons why ProProfs Live Chat is considered a highly convenient, flexible, and reliable live chat for small business owners. With ProProfs Live Chat, you get to increase the efficiency of your communication with customers in several ways. Features like:

  • Chat greetings let you take a proactive approach while canned responses and chat routing increase the resolution speed
  • Real-time visitor monitoring help you improve the understanding of customers’ behavior and keep track of your agents’ performance
  • With its advanced customization options, mobile support, and integration possibilities, it enhances the quality of your live chat support both visually and essentially

PRICING: from a forever free plan convenient for small businesses to $15/month per operator

 

#2: LiveChat Inc

With its convenient features, LiveChat Inc is a well-known SaaS-based live chat software that helps your brand understand and target the right audience effectively. This is owed to some awesome features, such as:

  • Real-time engagement monitoring that helps you learn how effectively has your brand engaged the website visitors
  • Simplified contact management that reduces the hassle at your operator’s end and makes instant contact with a qualified lead faster
  • In-chat surveys that help you take instant feedback once a chat is over

PRICING: from $16/month

 

#3: Zendesk Chat

Zendesk offers live chat tools that let you improve engagement rates and stay on top of your live chat sessions. This is owed to its flawless features that include:

  • Chat transcript database letting you analyze the history of customer’s requests
  • Agent monitoring which lets you keep track of their approach and results
  • In-chat file exchange that facilitates explaining problems and giving instructions

PRICING: from $14/month

 

#4: Olark

Helping you simplify your sales and support activities, Olark speeds up different purchase-related processes. Some of the essential features you can rely on if you choose this live chat software are:

  • diverse customization options that help your brand stand out
  • offline forms that help you stay on top of your customers’ requests when your agents are away
  • tracking and monitoring live chat tools

PRICING: from $17/month

 

#5: Drift

Just like ProProfs live chat, Drift is considered one of the best live chat software solutions thanks to numerous highly customizable options and features. Some of these are chat statuses, chat transfer options, as well as private notes that can be added to your contact archive. With Drift, you get to:

  • Speed up the resolution thanks to effortless chat escalation
  • Understand your customers better by saving the history of your conversations
  • Use chatbots when live support is offline

PRICING: from $50/month

 

#6: Kayako

Kayako is another great live chat tools provider that helps you create a web-centric customer support system. This chat software improves customers’ experience with its:

  • social media integration option which helps provide support on social networks as well,
  • visitor monitoring feature that facilitates understanding the moves they make on your website,
  • proactive chat invitations that help you engage with confused customers.

PRICING: from $15/month

 

#7: Acquire.io

live chatAnother amazing small business chat software, Acquire live chat, helps you capture customers’ attention and motivate them to engage owing to a practical set of features. Some of the options this chat software includes are:

  • The conversion of missed chats into tickets that will wait for your operators to solve them;
  • Screen sharing options that let agents effortlessly help website visitors in problematic situations;
  • Real-time, instant file exchange within the same window, without the use of third-party websites or tools.

PRICING: from $25/month

 

#8: Comm100

Helping you build an omnichannel support system that customers can easily access, Comm100 is an impeccable business chat software. And to let you provide the support using different channels, Com100, just like ProProfs live chat, relies on highly convenient features, such as:

  • Proactive chat invitations
  • Chat routing to the relevant departments to solve customers’ concerns more efficiently
  • Ready-made response templates that can be used to speed up the process of providing support

PRICING: from $29/month

 

#9: Intercom

live chatIntercom owes its popularity and reputation to the fact that it represents a wholesome communication platform. It doesn’t only offer a support tool, but it also provides useful services and products for sales, product, and marketing departments. When it comes to live chat software, some of the essential features are:

  • Possible integration with different email marketing platforms,
  • Real-time performance tracking and monitoring,
  • Proactive messages triggered by customers’ behavior.

PRICING: from $49/month

 

#10: Freshchat

live chatFreshchat is one of the best live chat software solutions in the market, especially for small businesses that try to go beyond the borders of the local market, as it offers multilingual support. Other convenient features of this business chat software are:

  • Automated customer routing among different operators that helps reduce wait time;
  • The possibility of saving individual chat session histories to increase personalization.

PRICING: FROM $19/MONTH

 

#11: Zoho SalesIQ

live chatZoho SalesIQ helps your small business realize how to improve customers’ journey by letting you enhance both your customers’ and your agents’ experience. This is succeeded by letting you:

  • Create different support systems for different departments,
  • Monitor live chat support sessions to improve their performance,
  • Integrate your chat software with Zoho CRM to keep your customers’ contacts easily accessible, at the same place.

PRICING: FROM $19/MONTH

 

#12: MyLiveChat

MyLiveChat is considered one of the best live chat software solutions owing to its user-friendly interface and a combination of all essential features that a business chat software may need, such as:

  • Proactive messaging system
  • Customizable elements of your chat window
  • Visitor tracking and monitoring tools that help you obtain valuable reports

PRICING: $99, one-time payment

 

#13: LiveAgent

live chatLiveAgent live chat simplifies the process of providing support offering convenient chat and help desk tools. Some of the features that make LiveAgent another popular choice when it comes to live chat software are:

  • Effortless email ticketing,
  • Customizable and visitor-friendly live chat windows,
  • Time-tracking and monitoring features,
  • Integrations with all major website building platforms, including WordPress

PRICING: from $14/month per operator

 

#14: Pure Chat

live chatWhat makes Pure Chat as convenient for small businesses as ProProfs Live Chat is the fact it offers a free version as well. Apart from this fact, Pure Chat also brings you:

  • Beautifully designed live chat widgets with white-label branding,
  • Unlimited chat history transcripts that help you keep track of your visitors’ requests,
  • A mobile app to help you stay in touch with customers on-the-go.

PRICING: a basic free plan for small businesses and a paid plan (from $39/month)

 

#15: REVE Chat

live chatThe last affordable yet highly efficient live chat software on our list, REVE Chat, is a cloud-based solution that helps you create an impeccable customer experience and boost sales by:

  • Keeping track of your past interactions with customers,
  • Monitoring your agents’ behavior and performance in live chat sessions,
  • Letting you make a simple yet appealing adjustment that will make your live chat window stand out and increase engagement.

PRICING: $13.50/month per license

Wrapping Up: What’s the Best Software for Your Business?

As you can see, there’s a lot of providers of diverse software solutions that come with varied sets of features.

What matters the most when choosing the best live chat software for your business is to analyze two important factors:

  • if its tools and components satisfy your business needs
  • if its price follows your business’ financial strategy and if it fits in your budget.

Only this way, you’ll make sure you’ll implement a solution that can bring your business positive results in the long run. So, accordingly, don’t search for a tool that offers the largest possible number of features. Instead, make sure that the one that you get has the features you’ll actually use.

Jason Grills is a technical writer. He enjoys writing about emerging customer support products, trends in the customer support industry, and the financial impacts of using such tools. In his spare time, Jason likes traveling extensively to learn about new cultures and traditions.

Live chat stock photo by wutzkohphoto/Shutterstock