Best Live Chat Software for Small Businesses
Live chat software is designed to help organizations of all types connect with their website visitors in real time. Companies that want to go the extra mile to engage with customers will benefit from having this type of software.
However, it’s important to find the live chat product that offers the most value for your money. Throughout this article, we’ll provide you with our top five live chat picks for small businesses.
All of our recommendations are based on research, product demos with the software companies, and dozens of hours spent hand-testing these live chat solutions. More details regarding our research process can be found on our live chat category page.
Table of Contents
- What is Live Chat Software?
- What Features are Found in Live Chat Software?
- Best Live Chat Software for Small Businesses
What is Live Chat Software?
Before getting started, it's important to understand exactly what live chat is and what it's used for. Live chat software allows company representatives to converse with website visitors. This happens through an inbox or dashboard on the company side, and through a chat window, called a “widget”, on the visitor’s end.
Many live chat solutions will combine chat and other support tools, like ticketing and a knowledge base, with marketing features. These include email marketing, website pop-ups, and other interactive elements for your website. Such solutions are particularly beneficial for small businesses that want to handle all support and marketing features from within one platform, rather than having multiple systems at once.
What Features are Found in Live Chat Software?
Live chat software ranges from fairly rudimentary to full-featured and complex. For example, some solutions might only offer live chat capabilities. Others are equipped with the more advanced features mentioned above. Below is a table that describes features found across live chat software.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Chat Inbox & Widget | The inbox and widget facilitate messaging between your company and visitors. Within these two options, it would be helpful to look for features like file sharing, live typing previews, and quick responses (predetermined chat shortcuts that save typing time). You should also be able to customize the widget to fit with your website’s design |
| Visitor Information | Every solution will collect some basic information about your website visitors, like their name and location. Other tools will go a step further and provide a live visitor view so you can see where visitors are located and proactively chat with them. |
| Chatbots | Some solutions are equipped with chatbots, which are designed to interact with your customers while your team is offline. Chatbots can be programmed to collect visitor information, route visitors to the correct department, and answer questions. |
| Email Campaigns | Email campaigns are particularly effective for engaging customers and boosting sales. The solutions that have this feature included are helpful so that you won’t have to utilize another external solution, like Mailchimp. |
| Website Pop-ups | Website pop-ups notify visitors of promotions or company updates and often collect contact information. This isn’t found in many solutions, so be thoughtful when choosing a solution if this is a must-have. |
| Analytics | Almost every tool provides analytics so your team can understand performance. Live chat software options are not created equal in this regard, as many have fairly basic analytics. However, all tools will have this included, so you won’t have to integrate with other tools like Google Analytics if you don’t want to. |
Best Live Chat for Small Businesses
Below is a list of our top five live chat solutions for small businesses. We’ll note the price of each, any standout features, and describe why each pick made the list. If you see one that interests you, we’ll attach our full reviews that you can decide if the tool will effectively support your business.
1: HelpCrunch: If You’re Looking for an All-in-One Solution
We chose HelpCrunch as our #1 live chat solution for small businesses due to its ease of use and wide range of features. Rather than needing to handle multiple tools for marketing and messaging, you can use HelpCrunch for live chat, email marketing, website pop-ups, and more.
HelpCrunch is a bit expensive for the combined Chat + Marketing plan, which costs $49 per team member per month. However, this price point allows you to host a help desk and knowledge base, whitelabel the chat widget, and send unlimited chat and email messages. In spite of a few minor drawbacks, this is our top pick. We highly recommend signing up for a 14-day free trial to test the software.
2: Crisp: If You Want Unlimited Seats Without Breaking the Bank
Crisp is high on this list because for just $95 per month, you’ll get unlimited seats. Having unlimited seats is particularly beneficial for small businesses where many team members across various departments are contributing to customer support and marketing efforts.
Features include but are not limited to:
- Chat inbox and widget
- Easy-to-build chatbots
- Live visitor information
- Email campaigns
- Help desk & status page
- Analytics
The main drawback we noticed while testing the software is that the MagicBrowse tool, which lets you see your visitors’ screens, often did not function properly. However, this was one small fault in an otherwise helpful product. To read more about Crisp, check out the full review below.
3: Gist: If You’re Looking for Marketing and Support Combined
Gist is built specifically for small teams and offers a wide range of features from chatbots to email templates. When testing the tool, we found that it has a robust free plan along with a variety of paid plans. This tool is beneficial for small teams since it’s easy to use and implement.
At a current discounted price of $128 per month, you’ll get unlimited seats for combined support and marketing features. We have it ranked third on this list due to limited integrations and long customer support wait times, but these drawbacks don’t outweigh the value the tool offers.
4: Tidio: If You Want Flexible Pricing Options
Tidio’s flexible pricing options will benefit SMBs that want to be strategic with money allocation. It’s the only live chat plan with email marketing, chatbots, and visitor information priced separately, meaning that you can choose which features you want and only pay for those. The pricing information is as follows:
- Live chat: Free
- Email Marketing: $10 per month
- Chatbots: $18 per month
- Visitor information: $18 per month
This choice isn’t without some drawbacks. Tidio has limited integrations and we found that chat notifications were unreliable, meaning that we sometimes missed incoming messages. If these drawbacks aren’t a deal-breaker, however, then it’s certainly worth considering.
5: LiveChat: If You’re Looking for Something Advanced
We recommend LiveChat for those who want a modern live chat tool with a streamlined appearance. It should be noted that this tool lacks built-in email marketing capabilities, so the previous four choices should be considered first if that’s a requirement of yours. LiveChat is solely for live chat and ticketing purposes. We recommend the Team plan, priced at $39 per agent per month, for capabilities like file sharing, chat routing, and reports.
Features like chatbots and a knowledge base cost extra, which makes this tool far more expensive compared with its competitors that include such features in the monthly price. However, it’s still one of the best options out there. Small teams with a higher budget for support tools will want to check this one out.