The Future of Live Chat: Top 10 free live chat apps for 2022
We are in a digital arena. So, it’s time for businesses to invest in online channels and digital customer support to stay afloat.
The live chat app needs no introduction I guess. We all are aware of it!.
However, with the advent of technology, there are various live chat apps out there that come free and freemium. And it’s no doubt that many businesses will confuse and make a mistake when choosing the right live chat app that fits their needs.
If you have budget constraints and are looking for free live chat apps, here we have provided the list of such. Before we head start to the list of the best free live chat apps, let’s dive into its basics.
What is a live chat app?
A live chat app is an application that allows businesses to communicate with their customers online in real-time within the website and mobile application. Through this live chat app, chat agents or customer support representatives provide support by answering customers’ queries and addressing their issues or problems.
There will be a dedicated customer support agent for every website visitor who responds to customers on time. Besides, chatbot integration to the live chat can deliver a stellar customer support experience for website visitors.
Benefits of live chat app for businesses
Live chat apps offer myriad benefits for both customers and businesses. That’s why its adoption is ever-growing. Benefits of using live chat for businesses include:
Streamlined customer support
Saves time by automating tasks related to customer support
Can be available round-the-clock
Improved UX and customer satisfaction
Makes visitors stay on the website for a long time and convert them into leads with warm greetings and proactive conversation.
Increased conversion rates and sales
Boosts the productivity of customer support service teams
Provides an advantage over the competition
Decreases the costs and improves revenue
Helps in expanding market presence
Provides in-depth insights to improve customer support service and business
Who should use live chat?
Live chat can be used by all businesses of any size and form such as startups, B2Bs, e-commerce stores, and SaaS businesses. It is an effective solution for every business that wants to connect with their customers, provide a good customer support experience, drive conversions, and improve sales and revenue.
How does live chat work?
First of all, you need to integrate a free live chat solution into your website. After it is added, you will come across two interfaces.
Monitor/Operator Window
Visitor/Customer Window
Monitor/Operator Window:
This interface allows customer support representatives to track and monitor website visitors. Free online They can view
the status of other chat agents or customer support representatives
the duration of customer stayed on the website
the page the visitor is viewing currently
the number of chats a chat agent is handling
the total chat duration of all agents
Note:
Admin can also join the ongoing conversation and monitor whether they are performing well or not.
Chat agents can recognize visitors who have been on a webpage for a long time and invite them to chat to provide information or assistance. This is how they provide a customized customer support experience.
Chat agents can view the chat history of returning visitors and accordingly, they can provide a personalized experience while keeping the conversation in mind.
These chat transcripts can be viewed by all in the team. The team can help themselves if they need any assistance during an ongoing conversation.
This operator-to-operator feature offered by a free live chat solution minimizes the efforts of other operators or chat agents in understanding the customer's needs in case the chat is routed to him. And the customer can get an instant solution to their queries.
Visitor Window:
It is an interface visible to your website visitor or customer alone. Here, visitors can initiate chats or accepts them in case any chat agent requests them manually.
In the chat window, a visitor will come across pre-chat forms, offline forms, and self-help articles.
Pre-Chat form: To capture visitors’ basic information such as name, email, phone number, etc.
Offline form: To capture customers’ issues or problems even when chat agents are offline. These offline messages are considered tickets and the chat agents need to resolve them as soon as they receive them.
Self-help articles: These are the articles that are used by customers for the knowledge base. They can find answers instantly and it helps in reducing the number of tickets.
Post-chat survey: In addition, after a chat, a visitor comes across a post-chat survey and chat agent rating to get real-time and instant feedback and customer support experience. It reveals customer satisfaction.
Best free live chat software solutions:
Here we have curated the list of top 10 free live chat apps after considering a variety of factors such as ease of use, features, user interface, API access, support options, integrations, reliability, scalability, affordability, customer satisfaction, and real user testimonies.
Let’s get started!
1. Click2magic
Want to have a crystal clear view of every interaction and all chat transcripts? Click2magic is one of the free live chat apps in India, that is widely used across multiple domains. Being one of the leading free live chat apps, this live chat offers enterprise-grade features, customization options, and robust security to all your communications.
It all starts with a good conversation. Because a good conversation delivers a stellar customer experience. So, this best free live chat app initiates a chat with proactive greetings and can organize the chat requests in the best way so that chat agents or customer support representatives can respond to customers at the right time.
Its mobile application lets you keep in touch with your customers on the go. Moreover, businesses can leverage its benefits for marketplaces, to maximize sales, to improve customer service/support.
Pros:
Easy to set up and install
Powerful dashboard
Proactive chat
Chat routing
Visitor and Operator (Chat agent) monitoring
CRM integration
Widget Settings
File transfers within the chat window
Advanced Reports and Analytics
Cons:
No flip side as of now.
Pricing:
Free
2. Tawk
It is a free and simple way to interact with visitors and customers. And you can monitor the activity and view the complete conversational history of all visitors. You can also help customers through video and voice add-ons, knowledge base articles, and tagging or assigning a chat to anyone in your team who can respond and solve customers' issues.
Overall, with this free live chat app, you can be there where your customers are and help them when they require your assistance.
Pros:
Chat agents can chat with multiple visitors/customers at a time.
Cons:
It would be better if this live chat offers has more features
Notification glitches
Pricing:
It is a 100% free live chat solution.
3. Tidio
Tidio has both desktop and mobile applications. With this free live chat app, you can track visitors, have personalized conversations, and view a real-time support overview of all visitors or customers and their activities.
Also, you can see the message of your visitors while they are typing in real-time which helps you respond faster and provide better CX. In addition, you can create and send pre-defined answers for FAQs. Tidio's free plan has prompted a few small business owners to look at it as a free live chat app in India.
Pros:
28+ integrations such as CRM, e-mail marketing, and e-commerce.
You can widget with Messenger, Shopify, WordPress, and all other integrations.
Cons:
The free plan supports three operators only.
Pricing:
This live chat offers limited features in the Free plan. For premium features, the paid plan starts at $19. If you want to add a chatbot feature, the plan will be available at $49.
4. Purechat
Pure chat is ideal for sales and marketing teams. You can make the best use of its contact history and user analytics to deliver a great customer experience. These analytics can provide you insights into UX, traffic, marketing campaign effectiveness, etc.
You can leverage this information to identify the prospects. After identifying quality leads, you can use the visitor alert feature and triggered chat to convert them into your customers. Thus, you can improve sales and revenue for your business with this free live chat software.
Pros:
Intuitive and easy to use
Unlimited chats
Advanced dashboard
Customizable widget
10+ integrations such as Salesforce, Zoho, Google Analytics, Hubspot, Infusionsoft, etc.
Cons:
It has few functionalities when compared to other leading free live chat apps.
Sometimes the system slows down.
Pricing:
It is free for 30 days! And it has two paid plans - Growth Plan ($39/month) and PRO Plan ($79/month)
5. Olark
Despite Olark being found in the USA, Indian users consider it the best free live chat app in India thanks to its standard free plan. Olark has a rich feature set such as automation rules, triggered messages, integration with popular tools such as Google Analytics, Slack, Zoom, Salesforce, and Mailchimp, chat transcripts, customization, PowerUps, Security, automation, team management features, and many more.
You can group your chat agents, limit the number of chats per agent, monitor all their activity, route chats between team members, and get agent performance reports. Moreover, you can ask visitors to provide their real-time and instant feedback through a customer satisfaction survey.
Pros:
Hassle-free data access
10+ integrations
Chat transcript archives
Cons:
Unlike free live chat apps, the premium plans and add-ons (powerUps) are expensive.
Pricing:
Standard Plan- Free
Pro plan-$29 per agent per month
All plans will get core features of Olark and a 14-day free trial. You can save 35% if you make a 2-year commitment.
6. Live Chat
Live chat has great chat tools, chat widget customizations, powerful reports and analytics, robust security features, a ticketing system, Sales & eCommerce integrations, Livechat APIs, messaging channels, team management functionalities, and many more. You can automate your customer service and handle unlimited chats with Chatbot.
In addition, this live chat app lets you connect with visitors and customers through multiple channels such as WhatsApp and other instant messaging app. So, you can manage all interactions under one roof in an effective manner.
Pros:
Easy to set up and install
200+ integrations
Automated follow-ups
Chat routing
Sales tracking
Cons:
Free trial days but not a 100% free plan
Expensive for companies who have multiple agents
Pricing:
It has different plans-Starter, Team, Business, and Enterprise.
For the Starter plan: $16 per agent per month (when billed annually), $19 (when paid monthly).
For Team: $33 per agent per month (when billed annually), $39 (when paid monthly).
For Business: $50 per agent per month (when billed annually), $59 (when paid monthly).
For Enterprise: It is for Fortune 500 companies. It is an individual contract with annual billing. Businesses need to contact Live Chat managers directly for the price.
Note: Each plan offers a 14-day free trial.
7. LiveAgent
Live Agent is known for multi-channel communication in a unified inbox!. You can sneak peek of incoming messages while customers are typing in real-time. This free live chat app allows you to think about your response and provide an answer before your customers submit their questions/queries.
This online chat platform is fully customizable and scalable. Its other features include automatic chat routing, Ticketing, a cloud-based call center, chat widgets, etc. You can monitor all conversations, integrate required tools, automate repetitive tasks, collaborate as a team, and make better business decisions through real-data insights.
Pros:
No setup fee
This customer support software offers 24/7 customer service
200+ integrations
Tagging and categorizing chats
File transfer directly via the chat window
Its rich feature set won’t impact the site loading speed.
Cons:
Its UI is not intuitive.
We face issues with overall functionalities.
Pricing:
This free live chat app has four plans as mentioned below.
Free Plan with limited features
Ticket Plan – $15/agent/month
Ticket+Chat Plan – $29/agent/month
All-inclusive Plan – $49/agent/month
8. Zendesk
This free live chat app is ideal for customer support which can be provided through Zendesk Suite and Zendesk Sell.
You can connect and chat with your customers whenever and where they are via Zendesk Suite. It provides seamless support for all customers across various channels.
Zendesk Sell allows chat agents to have an effective conversation with their visitors, identify prospects, and gain more qualified leads and sales.
This free live chat app lets you have a casual customer relationship. The other features of this online chat platform include AI-enabled chatbots, triggered messages, offline forms, file transfers, chat analytics, and others. Analytics provide complete information on customer satisfaction, chat agents’ efficiency, duration of chats, etc.
Pros:
UI is easy to navigate
Live visitor tracking
Excellent triggers
Premium plans have great feature sets.
Cons:
The free plan is limited to one operator or chat agent.
Setup glitches
Pricing:
Free with limited features and allows a single agent.
For Service:
- 1. For Everyone: Suite Team ($49), Suit Growth ($79), Suit Suit Professionals ($99)
- 2. For Enterprises: Suite Enterprise ($150), Customized or Elite plan ($215)
For Sales: Team ($19), Growth ($49), Professionals ($99)
Note: All pricing is per agent per month when billed annually.
9. Kayako
Chat agents can connect with customers through integrated live chat, help desk ticketing, and email. This online chat platform provides contextual customer data and more personalized customer support.
Through Kayako’s Single View and Performance Dashboards and Reports, chat agents can view the entire customer activities, their every interaction, and teams’ performance, and visualize all this information in one place. All these insights let chat agents provide personalized and proactive support.
Moreover, customers are available with Help Center where they can search and find the relevant information at ease.
Pros:
Easy-to-search Help Center
Visualization of the entire customer journey under one roof
In-depth performance dashboards and reports
Cons:
It has no free plan but you can sign up for a 14-day free trial.
Infrequent updates
Pricing:
Unlike other free live chat apps, it has a single plan. The plan starts at $60 per agent per month.
10. Intercom
Like click2magic, you can also use this live chat app for sales, marketing, and support together. It is one of the flexible and scalable live chat tools which is best for user engagement. Its features include personalized support, pre-defined answers to FAQs, Follow-ups, self-help articles, and many more.
With Intercom, you can provide instant support, engage customers, and convert them into paying customers. Thus, this live chat app helps capture leads, and boost conversion rates and sales.
Pros:
14-day free trial
Easy to integrate and setup
250+ integrations with apps and third-party tools.
User-friendly interface
Cons:
Premium plans are expensive.
Lack of customization options
Pricing:
Starter: $74/month when billed annually
Add-ons: WhatsApp ($9/month/seat), Surveys ($49/month), product tours ($199/month)
Conclusion:
In this digital world, speed and accuracy are key players in improving the customer support experience. Be in your customer’s shoes. They want instant, personalized, and accurate support. Live chat software can make it happen. And choosing the best live chat app for any business vary depending on their specific needs.
However, as a businessman, you need to consider essential features such as conversation management, chat routing, reporting and analytics, integrations, pricing, add-ons, etc. while selecting the right live chat app. Choose the best one among those mentioned above free live chat apps and leverage its benefits for your business.
