A WordPress chat plugin is a great way to communicate with customers through your website. Live chats are ideal for answering presales questions and providing live support. Customers can get answers quickly, which increases confidence. Fortunately, there are lots of chat plugins to choose from. In this article, we’ll look at the 10 best WordPress chat plugins to help you decide which is best for your needs.
Why Use a WordPress Chat Plugin?
Customers that have questions need an easy way to get answers. Many of those questions may be answered in an FAQ, but there’s always a question that isn’t answered on the website. Email communication is often a slow process.
Plugins allow you to automate the communication between you and your customers. Chatbots can manage the communication and hand it off to you when needed. This is a great way to capture leads and increase customer satisfaction.
A live chat feels more personal than an email. It’s easier than communicating over the phone. With phone conversations, it can be difficult to know when the other person has stopped talking, so you don’t talk over each other. Also, it can be difficult to understand someone. Customer support often needs a screenshot, a file, a link, etc., so the conversation needs to revert to a text-based conversation anyway.
A WordPress chat plugin solves these issues by bringing a live chat feature to your website. Let’s take a look at some of the best live chat plugins available.
1. HubSpot
HubSpot is a marketing behemoth; they provide live chat, CRM, and a ton of other content management system (CMS) functions.
Live chat, help ticketing, automated bots, and much more are all included in the Service Hub package, which is available in the free HubSpot WordPress plugin. They have garnered 4.5/5 stars with over two hundred thousand active users.
This plugin is reliable and adaptable, and with its no-cost live chat plugin for WordPress, it’s a great choice, especially if you’re familiar with the Hubspot platform. HubSpot only has a downside if they offer more than you need in its entire feature set. Of course, sticking with HubSpot’s ecosystem make sense if you currently utilize its other services.
Features:
- Multiple services, including chat
- Popups
- Live chat
- Lead generation
- Lead capture
- Chatbots
- Lead management
- Live support
Price: Free | More Information
2. Tidio
Tidio is a WordPress chat plugin that includes email marketing tools to help grow your business. The customizable widget works with your branding. It includes templates and an editor. A mobile app lets you use iOS or Android to respond to customers. Notifications show you when customers come to your website. It notifies you when customers visit your site and provides a live typing preview. You can see the page your visitors are looking at to give them specific help. Email marketing tools help you stay in touch with your visitors.
This plugin gives you all the tools you need to create aesthetically pleasing and functional chat boxes; it’s a lightweight and customizable solution and is 100% mobile-friendly. Additionally, a variety of third-party connectors are readily available for you to take advantage of.
Features:
- Customizable widget
- Notifications
- Live typing preview
- See a list of viewed pages
- Email marketing tools
- Free mobile app
- Templates
Price: Free | More Information
3. JivoChat
JivoChat is an all-in-one business messenger plugin that handles live chat, phone, email, and social media chatting platforms. Make and receive calls through the live chat widget. An offline message lets customers know when you’re available. Provide options to call the customer back. You can have multi-agent and team chats. A live typing indicator shows when someone is typing. The live chat will automatically translate into the language of the visitors and back into yours. It supports 25 languages.
The pro version adds canned responses that can handle the chat automatically. You can transfer the chat between agents. Monitor the site in real time. It includes smart triggers and lots more.
Features:
- All-in-one business messenger
- Live chat widget
- Connects to social media chat apps
- Make and receive calls
- Offline message
- Callback options
- Multiple agents
- Team chats
- Reminders
- Premade responses
- Live typing indications
- Automatic translator
- Pro version available
Price: Free, the pro version starts at $13 per month | More Information
4. LiveChat
The LiveChat plugin is a flexible and effective solution for adding live chat to your WordPress website. It is simple and easy to implement because it is compatible with almost all WordPress site builders and themes. Additionally, LiveChat has agreements in place with important e-commerce programs like WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and others, making this an ideal solution for those working with e-commerce.
The plugin welcomes users with a pleasant chat window at the bottom of the page on the customer side. That box is constantly visible and easily accessible. Plus, canned auto-responses save you time by responding to your visitors in an instant.
Features:
- Ticketing system
- Customizable
- Connects with multiple websites
- Canned responses
- File upload
- Ratings
- Tracking
- Transcripts
- Reports
- Translation ready
Price: $20 per month and up | More Information
5. Live Chat by Formilla
Live Chat by Formilla is a free and premium plugin that adds lots of services. Most of the features are available in the premium edition. Chat is done through a customizable mobile-ready widget. Real-time visitor monitoring lets you see the number of visitors on your website. Pro-active chat lets you trigger automatic chats. It has marketing automation for email and in-app messaging. You can add private comments, offline chats, custom attributes, etc. It also adds desktop and mobile apps, canned messages, blocking, file sharing, multiple live agents, and more. It integrates with hundreds of apps and it’s multilingual.
Features:
- Premium plugin
- Mobile-ready widget
- Real-time monitoring
- AI chatbots
- File sharing
- Chat transfer
- Customizable
- Offline chat
- Integration
- Multilingual
- Pro version available
Formilla is great if you’re looking for a solution that can easily integrate with the style of your website but is ideal for those with more modest site traffic. Chatting is made simple with tools like preset responses, smart responses, and bots.
Price: Free, pro version starts at $15 per month | More Information
6. Chaty
Chaty adds a floating chatbox and call-to-action messages to your website. Set the display trigger to determine when the chatbox displays. Choose from 8 different effects. Customize the icons, choose different buttons, and change the size of the widget. A pending messages icon works as a CTA. It connects to different channels so your visitors can use the chat apps of their favorite social networks and platforms. It also includes a contact form.
The pro edition adds 25 different social channels and apps, widget customization, Google Analytics, page targeting, traffic source targeting, location targeting, and lots more.
Features:
- Floating widget
- Custom CTA
- Display trigger
- Multiple visual effects
- Customize icons
- Pending messages icon
- Contact Us form
- Connect to multiple channels
- Too many features to list
- Pro version available
Price: Free, the pro version starts at $49 per year | More Information
7. Tawk.To Live Chat
Tawk.To Live Chat is a free WordPress chat plugin that lets you manage multiple websites and agents from a single dashboard. Agents can monitor and chat with visitors through computers and mobile devices using the free apps. The apps work with iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac OS; you can log in through any browser.
With this WordPress plugin, you can control numerous websites and agents from a single dashboard making this an incredibly simple and easy plugin to use. Plus, you can customize where chat boxes are available on specific pages on your site.
Features:
- Use it on your computer and mobile devices.
- Monitor visitors in real time.
- Multiple agents and websites from one dashboard.
- Apps for the most popular operating systems.
Price: Free | More Information
8. 3CX Live Chat
3CX Live Chat is a free plugin that works on its own, but you can also integrate it with the 3CX Communications Suite to add voice and video. This WordPress chat plugin has unlimited agents, and they can transfer the customer to another agent. You can set up departments to guide traffic to the right agent. Create offline messages to keep the customers informed.
You can customize the style of your chatboxes along with a ton of other features via the dashboard; this plugin is definitely a contender for the top free chat plugin available.
It keeps records of chats so you can refer to them. You can set the chatbox to automatically pop up. Add photos and logos to the chats. Chats can also include surveys and polls. This one has more features than can be covered in a description.
Features:
- Unlimited agents
- Transfer to another agent
- Set up departments
- Offline messages
- Retains records
- Automatic popup
- Surveys and polls
- Enterprise-level reports
- Integrates with Communications Suite
Price: Free | More Information
9. Crisp
Crisp is a WordPress chat plugin that was designed to grow your email list and generate leads. It includes desktop and mobile apps, real-time notifications, and an availability schedule. You can tag the conversation to build a contact list. It shows what your visitors are typing in real-time, so you don’t have to wait for them to finish and hit Send. The chatbot builder lets you create an automated chatbot.
You can also expand it with integrations that connect with other platforms. Integrate with Slack, Messenger, Twitter, Telegram, SMS, and your email. The pro version also adds triggers, blocking, canned responses, audio, customization, and lots more.
Features:
- Tag conversations
- Mobile and desktop apps
- Real-time notifications
- Availability schedule
- Real-time typing
- Team inbox
- Expandable with the pro version
- Integrates with other platforms
Price: Free, the pro version starts at $25 per month | More Information
10. Olark
Olark is a less-known but equally strong live chat solution. It boasts one of the sleeker looks and functionalities of any live chat plugin currently available.
You can use data gained from your encounters to improve your customer service moving forward. You can implement target support by creating comprehensive user profiles for more precise customer assistance, potential future sales, and other things.
It enables you to organize the data you’ve collected from your users either within Olark or your preferred CRM.
This plugin is a fantastic solution for companies that depend on customer service interactions to support their sales plan. More so, you can translate information given in your chatbox to the language of your choice.
Features
- Customizable alerts
- Easy automation configuration
- Route chate to the right agents
Price: Free. Pro features start at $29/month | More Information
WordPress Chat Plugin Ending Thoughts
Live chat usage is growing for a variety of reasons. It’s a terrific method to attract assistance-seeking clients, provide a way for them to self-resolve problems, and allow access to your support funnel in a way that you can manage. Looking for the best solution will be a unique journey for every website.
We suggest trying one of the solutions with free trial runs, like HubSpot or JivoChat, and seeing if those work out before shelling out any money for a premium service.
We want to hear from you. What’s your favorite WordPress chat plugin? Let us know in the comments.
Featured Image Illustration via Yuliia Konakhovska / shutterstock.com
The post 10 Best WordPress Chat Plugins in 2023 appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.
