Best Live Chat Software for Small Business
A small business that wants live chat without a bill can start with tawk.to or HubSpot Live Chat: both cost $0, both include ticketing, and neither caps seats. Once you are ready to pay, LiveAgent has the lowest paid starting price the table lists, $15 per agent a month, and that seat already carries ticketing and an AI chatbot.
Across all 13, the biggest difference is how the bill grows. Six charge per agent (LiveChat, Olark, Zoho SalesIQ, Freshchat, Intercom, LiveAgent), which is fine for one or two people and adds up once part-timers join. Crisp, Chaport and Smartsupp charge a flat workspace fee that covers a set number of seats, and Tidio and Gorgias charge by conversation volume, where headcount stops mattering but a busy month costs more than a quiet one. Then look at what comes in the box: a bot and a ticket queue are standard on some plans and extra purchases on others.
Our picks
- Trying live chat for free: tawk.to. The whole chat product is $0 with built-in ticketing and no seat limit; you pay only for extras such as $29 a month to remove the badge.
- Logging chats into a free CRM: HubSpot Live Chat. Costs $0 with a chatbot builder included, and every conversation is saved against a contact record.
- A support inbox on a small budget: LiveAgent. $15 per agent with ticketing and an AI chatbot included, plus a 30-day trial, the longest here.
- Three or four people on one bill: Crisp. The flat $45 Mini plan includes four seats, so it undercuts $19-per-agent pricing once a team reaches three.
- Shopify stores with seasonal rushes: Gorgias. Priced by volume, never per agent: the $40 Starter covers 50 tickets a month, and agents can refund or edit an order inside the conversation.
At a glance
| Option | Starting Price | Pricing Model | Free Plan | Free Trial | AI Chatbot | Ticketing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $24.17source | By conversation volumesource | Free plansource | 7source | Paid add-onsource | Built insource | |
| Freesource | Free core productsource | Free plansource | Paid add-onsource | Built insource | ||
| $19source | Per agentsource | Free trial onlysource | 14source | Paid add-onsource | Separate productsource | |
| $45source | Flat monthly feesource | Free plansource | 14source | Higher plans onlysource | Higher plans onlysource | |
| $29source | Per agentsource | Free trial onlysource | Paid add-onsource | Separate productsource | ||
| Per agentsource | Free plansource | 15source | Includedsource | Separate productsource | ||
| $19source | Per agentsource | Free plansource | 14source | Paid add-onsource | Built insource | |
| $29source | Per agentsource | Free trial onlysource | 14source | Paid add-onsource | Built insource | |
| $29source | Flat monthly feesource | Free plansource | 14source | Higher plans onlysource | ||
| $17source | Flat monthly feesource | Free plansource | 14source | Paid add-onsource | ||
| $15source | Per agentsource | Free plansource | 30source | Includedsource | Built insource | |
| Freesource | Free core productsource | Free plansource | Includedsource | Built insource | ||
| $40source | By conversation volumesource | Free trial onlysource | 7source | Includedsource | Built insource |
Per-agent, flat-fee, or pay by volume
Sorting this table by Starting Price alone will mislead you, because the numbers are not on one basis. LiveChat's $19 is per agent, so a team of three pays $57 a month, while Crisp's $45 Mini covers four seats and Chaport's $29 Pro covers four operators. Smartsupp's $17 Solo is one operator, meant for a single person answering website chat, WhatsApp, Messenger and email from one inbox.
Each price is the annual-billing rate where the vendor offers one; a team that won't sign up for a year pays LiveChat $25 instead of $19, Chaport $39 instead of $29, and Smartsupp $24 instead of $17. Gorgias's $40 Starter is monthly only, covers 50 tickets, and charges per ticket after that. Tidio's $24.17 looks oddly precise because it is an annualized monthly figure, exactly as Tidio states it.
What an AI chatbot adds to each bill
Seven of these tools list their bot as a paid add-on, and that one label covers very different costs. Intercom's Fin charges $0.99 for every conversation it resolves. Freshchat includes the first 500 Freddy AI Agent sessions, then charges $49 per 100. tawk.to's AI Assist is $29 a month, Smartsupp's Mira starts around $16 for 100 conversations a month, and Olark's Standard AI Website Agent is $400 a month flat.
If you want the bot inside the plan price, four tools include it: LiveAgent's $15 seat, Gorgias's $40 Starter, Zoho SalesIQ's cheapest paid tier, and HubSpot's free chatbot builder. Crisp and Chaport hold theirs for higher plans, at $95 and $99 a month.
Chat widget only, or a support inbox too
The Ticketing column tells you whether a tool can replace your support inbox or will sit beside it. LiveChat sells email ticketing as a separate product, HelpDesk.com, so a team that wants both pays two subscriptions. Olark has no ticketing of its own and pushes conversations to the help desk you already use, Zoho SalesIQ leaves ticketing to Zoho Desk, and Crisp keeps its customer-facing ticket portal for the $295 plan. Seven tools build ticketing in, including both free ones, and LiveAgent's free tier keeps unlimited agents but only one email address, one chat button and seven days of ticket history.
The options in detail
Tidio
Tidio is the tool most often recommended to small online stores that want a chat bubble and a shared inbox without hiring anyone to run them. Its paid plans are sized by billable conversations rather than seats, so a two-person shop and a six-person shop pay the same as long as the volume matches, and you can put up to ten agents on a self-serve plan. Lyro, its AI agent, is the headline feature but is bought as a separate conversation quota on top of the plan, which makes the real monthly cost harder to predict than the sticker price suggests. Live chat, email and social messages all land in the same ticketing view.
tawk.to
tawk.to gives the whole live chat product away and makes its money elsewhere: $29 a month to remove the small "Powered by tawk.to" badge, $29 a month for its AI Assist bot, or $1 an hour for trained human agents who answer chats on your behalf. There is no seat limit and no plan to outgrow, which makes it the obvious first install for a business that is not sure chat is worth paying for yet. Free ticketing and a knowledge base come with it. The trade-off is that the free tier is the product, so polish, reporting and support are thinner than at the paid tools it sits beside on this list.
LiveChat
LiveChat is the long-running specialist: a fast, well-built chat widget with the deepest set of agent tools here, sold per person from $19 a month on annual billing. It is the one option on this list with no free plan at all, so the 14-day trial is the whole evaluation window. Everything beyond chat is a separate purchase from the same company: HelpDesk.com for email ticketing, ChatBot.com for a customer-facing bot. That keeps the chat product itself uncluttered, but a small team that wants chat and a support inbox will end up paying for two subscriptions.
Crisp
Crisp prices by workspace rather than by seat, which is the single reason small teams pick it: the $45 Mini plan includes four seats, and Essentials includes ten, so adding a part-time helper costs nothing. The free tier gives two seats and a shared inbox indefinitely. The catch is that the features small businesses usually want next sit two tiers up: the omnichannel AI chatbot and the WhatsApp and Instagram inbox arrive at $95, and the customer-facing ticket portal only at $295. Mini does include a small monthly allowance of AI credits.
Olark
Olark has sold the same human-staffed live chat since 2009 and still does: $29 per agent per month, no free tier, no ticketing of its own. It is the plainest option here, and the one to shortlist if you want a chat box that works and nothing else bolted to it. Conversations push out to whatever help desk you already use rather than becoming tickets inside Olark. Its AI is sold as a wholly separate product, the Standard AI Website Agent at $400 a month flat, which is priced for traffic volume rather than for a small team and is what pushes most small businesses back to the $29 plan.
Zoho SalesIQ
Zoho SalesIQ approaches chat from the sales side: it tracks who is on your site, scores and segments those visitors, and lets you open a conversation before they ask. Its free plan is the most generous starting point here at three operator licences, and paid plans are priced per operator above that. A codeless chatbot builder is included from the cheapest paid tier rather than held back for higher plans. It assumes you are, or will become, a Zoho customer: ticketing lives in the separate Zoho Desk product, and the wider suite is where the integrations point.
Freshchat
Freshchat is Freshworks' messaging product, and its free plan is unusually roomy: ten agents at no cost, which covers a lot of small businesses outright. Paid plans start at $19 per agent per month billed annually and bring the routing, SLA and reporting machinery of a full support desk, which is more structure than a two-person shop needs but exactly right for a team that is about to grow. The AI is metered separately: Freddy AI Agent includes the first 500 sessions and then charges $49 per 100, so heavy deflection is a real line item rather than a plan feature.
Intercom
Intercom is the polished, expensive end of this list, and the one built entirely around its AI agent. The Essential seat is $29 a month billed annually (a 35% new-customer discount was showing at the time of writing) and includes a shared inbox, ticketing and a help centre. Fin, the AI agent, is not part of that price: it bills $0.99 for every conversation it resolves, which is either excellent value or an unbounded bill depending on your volume. There is no free plan, only a 14-day trial, so it is a deliberate choice rather than something you drift into.
Chaport
Chaport is the quiet budget pick: $29 a month on annual billing buys the Pro plan with four operators included, so a small team pays roughly a quarter of what a per-seat tool would charge for the same headcount. The free plan keeps two operators and unlimited chats forever, with a 60-day history limit as the main squeeze. Email and messenger integrations arrive on Pro. Chatbots and the FAQ bot are held back for the $99 Unlimited plan, which is the main reason to look elsewhere if automation is what you came for.
Smartsupp
Smartsupp is built for one person covering everything: the $17 Solo plan is a single operator with unlimited conversations, website chat, WhatsApp, Messenger and connected email in one inbox. The free tier is a genuine try-before-you-buy at 25 conversations a month rather than a long-term home. Mira, its AI agent, is bought as a conversation pack on top of the plan, starting around $16 for 100 conversations a month on annual billing. It is a European company with EU data handling, which matters to some small businesses more than any feature on this table.
LiveAgent
LiveAgent is a full help desk that happens to include live chat, which makes it the best value here for a business whose real problem is a shared support inbox rather than a chat bubble. The $15 Small Business seat already carries ticketing, chat, a knowledge base, a customer portal and AI agents, features other tools reserve for plans three times the price. It also has the longest trial on this list at 30 days, and a free-forever tier with unlimited agents but only one email address, one chat button and seven days of ticket history. Social channels and the call centre are held back for the $29 and $49 tiers.
HubSpot Live Chat
HubSpot gives live chat and a chatbot builder away free, with no seat cap and no trial clock, because the point is to get you into its CRM: every conversation is logged against a contact record you can then market and sell to. Free ticketing sits alongside it. For a small business already keeping customers in a spreadsheet, that bundle is hard to beat at the price. The cost shows up later, in the jump to paid Starter and Professional tiers once you want branding removed, automation, or reporting, and in the fact that you are committing your customer data to one vendor's ecosystem.
Gorgias
Gorgias is the ecommerce specialist: it plugs into Shopify and the rest of a store's stack so an agent can see an order, refund it or edit it without leaving the conversation. Pricing is by ticket volume, never per agent, which suits a shop with seasonal spikes and several part-time helpers far better than seat pricing does. The $40 Starter bundles 50 tickets a month of help desk with an AI agent, then charges per ticket beyond the limit, so a busy month costs more than a quiet one. There is no free plan and the trial is only seven days, the shortest here.
How we researched this
This set was chosen to cover the four ways a small business actually pays for chat: free-forever widgets (tawk.to, HubSpot Live Chat), per-seat chat, flat fees that include several seats (Crisp, Chaport, Smartsupp), and volume pricing (Tidio, Gorgias). Intercom and Gorgias sit at the top of the range on purpose, to show where the ceiling is. The prices are the ones each vendor's own pages showed on 3 September 2026. Intercom is listed at its standard $29 seat rather than the $19 promotional price showing that day, since a 35% new-customer discount can end before this page is next updated. LiveAgent's free tier is described on the vendor's own blog rather than its pricing page.
Zendesk was left out because it is sold and configured for support organizations, not two-person teams. Help Scout and Re:amaze were cut as email-first help desks where chat plays a supporting part, JivoChat because we could not find a current pricing page for it, Drift because it has moved out of the small-business market, and Chatra because it has grown too thin to earn a row. Each gap in the grid has its own reason: Zoho SalesIQ shows no price in its page text, Chaport and Smartsupp never mention tickets, Olark offers a trial without stating its length, and tawk.to and HubSpot have no trial because they are free. AI allowances, promotions and trial lengths move quickly; the vendor's own pricing page is the one to trust on the day you sign up.