We were disappointed by all the current content on free live chat alternatives, because so many of the tools listed in these articles aren’t actually free. Talk about not doing your research.
To satiate your need for truly free live chat software, we scoured pricing pages and reviews to pull up the best of the best.
While all of these companies have paid services as well, they do offer free live chat subscriptions, so no worries there.
Read on to learn more about what to look for in an alternative and grab our list of the top 15 tools (with details on what the software does and what you can get in the free plan).
How to compare live chat alternatives
In a live chat case study, we showed exactly how Packwire closes more sales using GoSquared’s Live Chat.
Of course, this type of software can be used for answering customer support questions too.
Should you sign up for a live chat alternative that’s built for marketing teams, sales teams, or customer service teams?
Should your free live chat alternative also include email marketing features, communication channels, or SMS notifications?
To compare live chat alternatives and choose the right one, you need to get clear on what’s missing in your tech stack.
Before you sign up for one of these live chat software options, consider your goals. Do you want to proactively message the right prospects before they ask a question? Do you want to improve customer service? What teams will be using the software?
Knowing your goals will help you make the right decisions, as many of these alternatives have additional features besides just free live chat.
Top free live chat alternatives
Here’s our list of the top providers of free live chat software. Look for the products that match your needs, and check the subscription and pricing section for each to be sure it fits within your budget, based on your number of team members or monthly chat counts.
1. GoSquared
Best for: SaaS companies that want to increase sales and reduce churn
GoSquared’s Live Chat feature lets you connect with leads and customers right on your website and manage conversations as a team. Even better, it plays nicely alongside GoSquared’s website analytics feature so you can proactively message hot leads when they’re on your site or customers at risk of churn.
Subscription and pricing options
Live Chat is free up to 100 profiles in Customer Data Hub, the GoSquared CRM that collects information about customers’ and leads’ activity on your website. GoSquared does offer an Early Stage plan that you can apply for, and this covers all major features at just $49 per month.
See full pricing and sign up for our free plan.
2. Freshchat
Best for: ecommerce companies
Freshchat offers plenty of live chat software features that are great for ecommerce companies, including proactive delivery notifications, chatbots, SMS, and social channels. If you want to get started on a free live chat software that will help you scale your customer support, this is a great option.
Subscription and pricing options
Freshchat is free up to 10,000 monthly unique visitors (meaning visitors to your website, not people who chat with your team). Their $19 per agent per month plan buys you 100,000 monthly unique visitors plus Facebook Messenger features.
3. Tawk.to
Best for: small businesses with basic customer support inquiries only
Tawk.to has a unique business model. They provide free live chat software, and charge you for the optional use of their live chat agents.
Keep in mind that this is only a good idea for basic customer support questions, not for reducing customer churn or converting leads into customers. This is why it’s not recommended for most B2B companies.
Subscription and pricing options
You pay $1 per hour for having a live chat agent staff the support channel for you, but the software itself is totally free.
4. Userlike
Best for: ecommerce companies
Userlike offers website chat, chatbot API, and support via WhatsApp. Because of its focus on social media support channels and ecommerce-centric direct integrations, it’s a great fit for ecommerce companies.
Subscription and pricing options
Userlike is free for one agent and one widget. For up to 4 widgets and 4 live chat seats, you’ll pay $107 per month.
5. LiveAgent
Best for: omnichannel customer support for large brands
Do your customers expect to get customer support where they want, when they want? Do you frequently field customer support questions via Twitter? If so, LiveAgent could be a great fit for you. It helps you bring all your support channels under one roof, so it’s the perfect option for large consumer brands.
Subscription and pricing options
The free plan only offers 7 days of ticketing history, which could be a huge problem for providing great customer service. But, unlimited ticketing history begins at just $15 per agent per month.
6. Hubspot
Best for: B2B sales teams
As part of their CRM offer, Hubspot has free live chat software. It includes features to help you welcome website visitors, book more meetings, and qualify leads automatically. For these reasons, it’s best suited for B2B sales teams.
Subscription and pricing options
You can use Hubspot’s CRM and live chat for free up to a million contacts, but many of the advanced sales and marketing features are gated. Paid plans start at $45 per month.
7. Crisp
Best for: companies that want to offer live video chat
Crisp has several cool live chat features, but what makes it a notable free live chat alternative is its focus on video. If you take a quality over quantity approach to customer relationships, this could be a game changer for your business.
Subscription and pricing options
The free plan includes 2 seats. For up to 4 seats as well as unlimited ticketing history and multichannel customer support management, you’ll pay $25 per month.
8. JivoChat
Best for: omnichannel customer support for large brands
JivoChat is a true omnichannel customer support software and offers live chat, phone callbacks, email, incoming telephone calls, Apple Business Chat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram. It’s not designed to re-engage customers at risk of churn so we can’t recommend it for SaaS.
Subscription and pricing options
With the free version, you can store up to months of chat history and collaborate with 5 agents. The paid plan at $13 per month per agent offers unlimited chat history storage as well as proactive chat prompts.
9. LiveSupporti
Best for: small ecommerce companies
LiveSupporti is a simple free live chat solution with multi-language features and location detection. With lots of direct integrations, LiveSupporti can be easily added to just about any website type, including a Shopify website, Hubspot website, Squarespace website, and more.
Subscription and pricing options
As one of the more generous free live chat alternatives, LiveSupporti includes chat history and unlimited chats in its free plan. Plus, the free plan also allows up to 3 agents. For $5 per agent per month, you get chatting between agents as well as support ticketing.
10. Respond.io
Best for: consumer brands
Respond.io offers live chat features that are a great fit for consumer brands, including shared inboxes, complex permission controls, chat assignments and transfers, send and read receipts, and canned response snippets.
Subscription and pricing options
The free plan gives you up to 5 agents and 100 contacts, but for $29 per month you get unlimited agents and 1,000 contacts.
11. onWebChat
Best for: easy style customisations.
onWebChat is a very simple-to-use free live chat alternative that includes quick and easy style customizations, file sharing via chat, and real time visitor website history browsing. While you can review what pages site visitors have been looking at recently, you can’t use these to setup proactive chat prompts.
Subscription and pricing options
With the free plan you’ll get 100 chats per month and limited chat history, while on the $6 per agent per month plan, you get unlimited chats and chat history.
12. ClickDesk
Best for: companies that want to increase their social media followings
Usually, the best time to ask a customer for a favor is after you’ve helped them. With ClickDesk, you can ask customers to follow you on social media right inside of your chat widget. You’ll only want to use this feature if you man your chat 24/7, otherwise you could accidentally encourage people to go complain on social media if you’re not available.
Subscription and pricing options
On the free plan, you get 30 chats per month and up to 10 team members, while the $14.99 per month per user plan gives you unlimited chats as well as chat transfers and groups.
13. Smartsupp
Best for: ecommerce companies
With its chatbots, live chat, and email support features, Smartsupp is a great option for ecommerce companies that want to both improve sales and manage customer support inquires around the clock.
Subscription and pricing options
With the free plan, you get up to 3 agents but only 14 days of conversation history, which could be an issue for some businesses, especially in the B2B space where issues might involve multiple company contacts and take longer to resolve. For $10 per month, you get up to 3 agents, 1 year of conversation history, and chat analytics.
14. Zoho SalesIQ
Best for: companies that need live chat and a CRM
Zoho SalesIQ is a free live chat alternative that also includes visitor analytics so you can see what pages website visitors are on and get a better understanding of how to help them. Because Zoho has so many other support features, it’s a great option for companies who are looking to use live chat for support, but not necessarily sales.
Subscription and pricing options
With the free plan, you get 100 chat sessions per month and 30 days of conversation history. The $17 per month plan includes 3 operators and 1000 chat sessions per month.
15. MyLiveChat
Best for: consumer tech brands
MyLiveChat offers some live chat features that are a perfect fit for consumer tech brands: live co-browsing, chat transcripts, and file sharing via chat. Plus, this platform doesn’t charge extra for using the product on multiple websites, meaning brands with lots of sites can pay for the seats they need, without being charged more for having different sites for their products and geographical markets.
Subscription and pricing options
Get a 3-year chat history and unlimited chats (but no whitelabelling) with their free plan, or pay $15 per month to remove their branding.
How to choose the right free live chat alternatives
All of these options include paid subscriptions or services. That’s why the number one question you should ask yourself is not just what do I need today, but what will I need in the future?
Picture your business 1 to 3 years from now. Certainly, your need for chat contacts, agents, sessions, and history will grow. What other features might you need?
It makes sense to choose the software that lets you get started for free but offers features that will impact your business in the paid plan, that way when you do start paying for the software, you’re getting other benefits too.
So many live chat software companies are only thinking about things from a customer service perspective. It’s important to consider how the software could help you improve sales too.
Want to use the free live chat software designed for scaling SaaS businesses? Sign up for GoSquared Assistant.
