7 Best Live Chat Widgets for 2023 Reviewed

We reviewed the top 7 live chat widgets in the market to help you choose which one is the best for you!

Getting to speak with your clients exactly at the decisive moment of the purchase is crucial for a successful business.

For online businesses without a physical presence, a live chat widget can do exactly that, increase conversions through support.

Adding a live chat widget is like having staff in your shop ready to help your clients and:

  • Engage with your visitors,
  • Support your customers while browsing, or
  • Sell your products and services.

And, the most important bit is being there 24/7 and answering accurately, politely, and quickly. That’s what an A.I. chatbot can do for you while reducing your support costs by up to 90%. In this article, we are comparing the top live chat widgets and help you choose the right one for you.

Best Live Chat Widgets Pricing Comparison Table

We are comparing the top live chat widgets based on their customer reviews, whether they offer A.I. support, a free plan, and their cost.

What is a live chat widget?

A live chat widget allows your website visitors to directly contact support agents, sales, or an AI chatbot. Usually, a live chat widget shows as a button on the bottom right of the screen or a message with a call-to-action.

If the visitor interacts with the widget, they will open up a conversation pop-up and can connect with an agent or a chatbot.

Why do you need a live chat widget for your website?

A chat widget can increase conversions, improve support time, and create a better user experience for your customers.

It’s an important function of both the sales and after-sales process.

Human Chat Vs. A.I. Chat

It’s important to have someone behind the desk to answer customer queries, but there are many times when an A.I. is a better choice and can help you improve customer service:

- Cost-saving: You can save up to 90% of support costs by using A.I. chat.

- Immediate response: Customers don’t need to wait for someone to be online or wait in queue for answers.

- Vast knowledge database: Even the best human support can’t know the full use cases and JTBD of your business, an A.I. can!

Now you know! Without further ado, let’s go directly to the best live chat widgets in the market. We tried each one and reviewed their best features, advantages, and disadvantages, and are comparing the cost to use each one!

YoChats

YoChats is an A.I. chatbot platform that can learn from your knowledge base and answer your site’s visitors in place of a support representative. It can take the place of sales & customer support personnel, and automate all the processes for you.

The chatbot is built on top of ChatGPT and is ideal to provide 24/7 customer support. It’s the top choice for any SaaS, e-commerce, or data-driven company that wants to reduce its overhead.

Pros
  • Best price
  • Easy-to-use
  • Fully automated with AI
  • User-friendly interface
  • Powered by GPT-4
Cons
  • Currently in beta

LiveChat

LiveChat is a great option for managing multiple live support channels such as Facebook messages, email support, website chat, and in-app support. It offers all the features and automations you can expect from a live chat widget for your website and can integrate with your tech stack. It supports various automations, especially ones that can help with sales. It is ideal for companies with a sales focus looking to support multiple languages from multiple channels.

Pros
  • Offers a 14-day trial
  • Multilingual support
  • Great documentation
  • Very customizable
  • 200+ integrations
Cons
  • Limited features
  • Limits on user agents connecting simultaneously
  • Some users report issues of not working properly
Pricing

Comes with 4 plans and the pricing is per user (agent) per month. The below prices are for monthly plans, but there are discounts for yearly subscriptions:

Starter: $24 / month

Team: $49 / month

Business: $69 / month

Enterprise: Not available

Pricing information was retrieved from Livechat’s pricing page in August 2023.

Tidio

Tidio is a live chat software and customer service platform for any kind of business. Tidio is an easy-to-use software and can be easily added to your Shopify store or Wix website. It also comes with a mobile app to manage custom questions on the go.

Recently, Tidio also added Lyro, their own A.I. chatbot that can take the place of any customer support agent. They even offer a free plan, but comes with a limit of 50 users or AI chatbot conversations. Tidio is suitable for bigger companies with higher margins over small businesses.

Pros
  • Free plan
  • Powerful platform
  • Many templates & automations
  • Great for sales-led live chats
  • Mobile app
  • 24/7 support
Cons
  • Quite expensive
  • Many features come as add-ons
  • Chatbot’s UI is not easy
  • Not suitable for small businesses
Pricing

Comes with 6 plans and the pricing is per seat per month. The below prices are for monthly plans, but there are discounts for yearly subscriptions:

Free: $0 / month

Starter: $29 / month

Chatbots: $29 / month

Communicator: $25 / month

Chatbots & Communicator: $54 / month

Tidio+: $394 / month

Pricing information was retrieved from Tidio’s pricing page in August 2023.

Olark

Olark is a live chat platform designed for small companies and startups. It’s the cheap choice to add live chat on your website, but lacks lots of features the most expensive competitors have.

Olark is pretty straightforward to use and easy for any customer support team. It also comes with all the basic features you can expect like automations, user tracking, and integrates with many popular tools like Mailchimp, HubSpot, Jira, Google Analytics, and more.

Pros
  • Cheap
  • Easy & simple to use
  • Good customer support
Cons
  • Outages & features being down
  • Lack of customization
  • Missing features
  • No mobile app
Pricing

Olark’s pricing starts at $29 per month per seat with basic features and a discount for a 2-year commitment.It did not have more information about the Olark Pro pricing.

Pricing information was retrieved from Olark’s pricing page in August 2023.

Intercom

Intercom is an all-in-one customer support solution for your company that offers a live chat widget as well. Recently, Intercom announced its own AI-powered chatbot, Fin. It allows for multi-channel live chat support and allows for WhatsApp and SMS integration, product tours, and surveys as add-ons. Intercom is a great full-featured solution for established and big businesses, and it’s not suitable for smaller businesses and startups.

Pros
  • All-in-one support solution
  • AI chatbot
  • Ticketing system
  • Unbranded option
Cons
  • Expensive
  • Not suitable for small companies
  • Users report multiple bug issues
Pricing

Intercom is one of the most expensive options on this list starting at $74 per month and higher plans require a sales call.

Pricing information was retrieved from Intercom’s pricing page in August 2023.

Drift

Drift goes beyond the live chat category and created its own category for conversational marketing. The Drift Chatbot collects and qualifies leads, integrates with marketing automation software, and is ideal for filtering visitors and converting them to paid customers.

Unfortunately, the pricing for Drift is prohibitively expensive for most companies.

Pros
  • Easy-to-use with drag & drop features
  • Playbooks & automations
  • Many advanced features
  • Auto-booking meetings
Cons
  • Prohibitively expensive
  • Over-reliance on automation
  • Sometimes adds incorrect information
Pricing

Drift’s pricing begins at $2,500 per month and gets more expensive on the advanced & enterprise plans, as well as with each user added. It is not clear if it has a free plan.

Pricing information was retrieved from Drift’s pricing page in August 2023.

Tawk.to

Tawk.to is a unique late-comer to the live chat scene, coming with a unique offering of a free forever plan. They offer all the features you might expect from a live chat platform like customization, canned messages, mobile app, integrations, and an AI chatbot.

Pros
  • Forever free
  • Unlimited agents
  • Easy-to-use
  • Plugins for all major platforms
  • 24/7 support
Cons
  • You need to be online to keep it live
  • Not great UI
  • Basic visitor analytics
Pricing

Tawk.to comes with a very unique offering of a forever free plan, and offers some additional services to generate revenue. The prices below are per property:

Free forever: $0

Remove branding: $19 per month

Video + Voice + Screen Sharing: $29 per month

Hired agents: $1 per hour

Pricing information was retrieved from Tawk.to’s G2 page in August 2023.

Conclusion

The most important thing when choosing a live chat widget is whether it fits your business purpose. You want a live chat that can support 24/7 hours and in 2023 you should have the option for an AI chatbot to answer your customers' queries quickly. Then, you need to look at the pricing and whether it makes sense for your business.

In this article, you can find live chat widgets that fit every budget, from small businesses to enterprises. Be sure to also test-drive the tool by using the free trial and see whether it fits your needs and is easy to use! But, our opinion is that YoChats, our own tool, is the best AI-powered chatbot in the market and will help you grow your business. Sign-up to be the first to use it in beta!

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