HelpCrunch Competitors & Alternatives
HelpCrunch is one of the best live chat and customer engagement solutions for small businesses. It combines live chat—where website visitors converse with company representatives in real time—with email marketing, website pop-ups, and a hosted knowledge base.
HelpCrunch received a SoftwarePundit Analyst rating of 93. It received this strong rating because it delivers significant value for its price, was easy to install and navigate, and offers more advanced analytics than some of its competitors.
While HelpCrunch is a very strong product, there are many excellent alternatives in the live chat market. HelpCrunch doesn’t offer a free plan, which many competitors do, and most direct competitors also have slightly more advanced features like chatbots or A/B testing.
This article will offer one-to-one comparisons between HelpCrunch and its main competitors, which are:
- Gist
- Crisp
- Intercom
- Tidio
- Drift
If you’d like to read an in-depth analysis of HelpCrunch before learning about its main competitors, check out our full HelpCrunch review. To learn more about our research and reviews, read about our unbiased review process.
Table of Contents
- HelpCrunch Features
- HelpCrunch Competitor Overview: Features
- HelpCrunch Competitor Overview: Pricing
- Top HelpCrunch Competitors
- Bottom Line
HelpCrunch Features
The main HelpCrunch features are live chat, email marketing, website pop-ups, and a knowledge base. While HelpCrunch lacks a chatbot feature, which many of its top competitors have, the automated messages and knowledge base can achieve a less sophisticated self-help option for your customers during non-business hours.
The table below provides an overview of HelpCrunch’s features.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Live Chat | With HelpCrunch’s live chat feature, you can send files, knowledge base articles, or canned responses to website visitors. With the Premium Plan, you can also have up to five separate widgets, which is helpful if you need to have separate inboxes. |
| Email Marketing | With HelpCrunch, your outbound email messages can be created with rules, which will allow you to target certain segments of customers. Each message will have comprehensive metrics to allow you to understand message performance. |
| Automated Messages | Automated messages are a great way to engage with customers and catch their attention. Automated messages can be scheduled to appear when a customer has lingered on a page for a while, when they’ve abandoned their cart, and more. |
| Knowledge Base | A hosted knowledge base provides customers with a self-help option while your team is offline. You can write answers to frequently asked questions, create guides about how to use your product, or list your contact information with the knowledge base. This can also be directly integrated into the chat widget so that customers can open the widget and take themselves directly to the knowledge base. |
| Website Pop-Ups | HelpCrunch’s website pop-ups are highly customizable, as customers can alter the position on the screen, display rules, animation rules, and apply custom CSS code. This feature isn’t found in every competitor, so it’s noteworthy that HelpCrunch has the pop-ups. |
| Analytics | Analytics regarding message performance, email marketing performance, knowledge base engagement, and general chat ratings are included with HelpCrunch. Compared with competitors, the reporting section is fairly average. |
HelpCrunch Competitor Overview: Features
The chart below outlines the features offered by HelpCrunch, Gist, Crisp, Intercom, Tidio, and Drift. You’ll notice that HelpCrunch competitors offer chatbots, which HelpCrunch does not. Intercom and Drift are the most advanced, so those tools will provide your team with the most functionality.
HelpCrunch Competitor Overview: Pricing
HelpCrunch pricing ranges from $15 per agent per month to $49 per agent per month. One downside to HelpCrunch is that there’s no basic free plan, which many competitors offer. However, for the functionality and ease of use, we found that HelpCrunch is well worth the price.
For the top HelpCrunch competitors, we’ll provide a breakdown of plans and the estimated monthly cost per plan.
| Company | Pricing Details |
|---|---|
| Gist |
|
| Crisp |
|
| Intercom |
|
| Tidio |
|
| Drift |
|
Top HelpCrunch Competitors
Below are one-to-one comparisons between HelpCrunch and its top alternatives. We’ve researched and hand-tested these tools ourselves and our comparisons are based on that firsthand research.
#1: Gist
Gist and HelpCrunch are quite similar, though Gist offers a chatbot product. Gist also has a free plan, which is more robust than other competitors’ free plans. Overall, we recommend both solutions for those looking to combine support with marketing.
- You can pay per user
- You don’t mind a more outdated interface
- You need quick support replies
- You need to use chatbots
- You’d like a live view of your site visitors
- You’d like to make use of the free plan
#2: Crisp
Crisp is very similar to HelpCrunch, offering live chat, email marketing, chatbots, and a knowledge base. There are also a few unique features with Crisp, called MagicMap and MagicBrowse, which allow you to view visitors’ locations and view their actions on your website. For $95 for unlimited access and unlimited seats, Crisp is a great value. Overall, HelpCrunch is more streamlined and more reliable.
- You want a more reliable product
- You’d like to use website pop-ups
- You have a team of fewer than five people
- You’d like a chatbot feature
- You don’t mind a more fickle product
- You want unlimited users for $95
#3: Intercom
Intercom is a highly advanced marketing and messaging tool that's more technically robust than HelpCrunch and is accordingly more difficult to learn to use. There are unique features like product tours and A/B testing, which HelpCrunch doesn’t have. However, for strictly live chat, HelpCrunch is the better choice as it’s more straightforward. Choose Intercom only if you’re technically savvy or have lofty goals for cross-channel messaging and data tracking.
- You want a cheaper tool
- Your main goal is to provide support
- You prefer a tool that’s easy to navigate
- You can afford to pay a high price
- You’re technically savvy
- You want A/B testing and product tours
#4: Tidio
Tidio is much like HelpCrunch, though with chatbot features. While testing Tidio, we found the interface to be easy to work with and the chatbots simple to configure, though message notifications were unreliable. HelpCrunch is a more reliable tool that’s better for those who want to be immediately notified when website visitors need assistance.
- You want reliable message notifications
- You don’t need a chatbot
- You’d like up to five chat widgets
- You want to utilize chatbots
- You don’t mind an outdated interface
- You want to pay by the features you use
#5: Drift
Drift is a highly advanced software with powerful segmentation capabilities. It’s ideal for sales-focused teams because the segmentation capabilities enable rich targeting for marketing campaigns. It’s very expensive and therefore is likely cost-prohibitive for small companies. HelpCrunch is better suited for smaller companies who are looking to perform less complex targeting actions.
- You’re a smaller support team
- You prefer a tool that’s easy to use
- You don’t need advanced segmentation tools
- You’re focused on sales
- You need something particularly advanced
- You have the budget to pay at least $600 per month
Bottom Line
HelpCrunch is a reliable live chat tool for small businesses that combines live chat with email marketing, website pop-ups, and more. We broadly recommend it for most small businesses.
While HelpCrunch is a dependable product, there are more affordable alternatives, which often also provide a free plan, for companies on a budget. If you want unlimited agents to be able to use the tool, we recommend Crisp’s $95 Unlimited Plan. If you’d like a chatbot feature, we recommend using Tidio and purchasing the Chatbot Add-On because their chatbots were one of the most user-friendly that we tested.
If you’re interested in signing up with HelpCrunch, click here.