FreshWorks are a platform that have really exploded onto the scene in the past few years.
What can be a bit confusing is rather than a dedicated chat platform themselves. Freshworks is actually made up of a bunch of complex products, one of which being FreshChat which is their dedicated chat offering.
Freshchat is a great product that ticks a lot of boxes for a support tool, however there is a quite a bit of complexity in their pricing with quite a few scaling factors including a Base Plan cost, Seats, MUV (the number of unique visitors to your website ), Bot Sessions, plus bolt ons for Automations.
With all of those factors, costs can scale up very quickly so we wanted to provide some alternatives for those companies that may have a smaller budget or want more predictable costs.
Full disclosure, With FreshWorks offering such a broad array of services some of GoSquared’s functionality overlaps, so we can’t provide an entirely independent or unbiased opinion. However, we’re also well aware that depending on your business, different tools are better at solving your specific needs, so here are the key players:
1. GoSquared
Your go-to for: A simple integrated solution offering Live Chat, Automated Messages, Email Campaigns, User level Analytics, Web Analytics, and a support Team Inbox.
If you’re not looking to combine or bolt on additional products and services, GoSquared may be a simpler solution for you.
With a single Suite plan to make use of all of GoSquared’s integrated features, it’s a lot simpler to predict and manage your costs.
If your looking for how the automation features compare between the two, GoSquared’s Automation uses real-time behaviour analytics (essentially what a visitor has done and is doing on your website) to trigger automated messages and campaigns.
For analytics, GoSquared offers Marketing Analytics for each user that is captured, including which marketing campaign they came through to help optimise further marketing efforts.
Of course, GoSquared also includes a Team Inbox for live-chat that can be used for both Support and Sales.
2. Intercom
Your go-to for: Enterprise, all-in-one tool.
The other, bigger Enterprise offering in the space, Intercom offers a broad range of features that include Marketing focused features, like Automated Messages. They offer chat bots, like Operator helping to solve support queries and the ability to create custom bots yourself. On top of the Marketing features, it also offers a plethora of support features like Knowledge Base and Product Tours.
Pricing info
Intercom pricing starts at £79/month but, similar to FreshWorks, that pricing can scale significantly on numerous factors like seats, profiles and features, which tends to make it more suitable from a budget perspective to enterprise level clients.
3. Tawk.to
Your go-to for: free live chat
If you just want free live chat that without the any real automation, then you should consider Tawk.to. Keep in mind that you’ll need to use some of the other tools on our free and paid list to handle everything that FreshDesk does.
Pricing info
Tawk.to’s live chat is free forever. If you want to use their live chat agents (which isn’t required), then you’ll pay $1 per hour.
4. Crisp
Your go-to for: Broad support features.
If you’re looking for a general support tool. Crisp is a good alternative. A good basic live chat offering coupled features like a Knowledge Base and Ticketing make it a good support tool. There are limitations around their ability to send proactive or automated messaging, but for small teams it, it can be a cost effective support solution.
Pricing info
Crisp has a free plan with some basic functionality, with premium features starting at £25/month. Keep in mind there is per seat pricing, so cost can scale as your team grows.
5. Olark
Your go-to for: Simple chat and chat automation
If you just use FreshChat, then Olark could be a great fit for you. It includes great, basic chat tools like file attachments and team and conversation management.
Pricing info
For $15 per agent per month, you get access to all of the core features.
If you’re thinking of an alternative to Drift, why not try a tool that can help you automate a lot of the process. @
The GoSquared platform allows you to drive powerful automation triggered by advanced real-time analytics. That allows you to automate conversations with your users, based on their real time behaviours, sending better more effective messaging – feeing up resource for your team to do what they do best.
