best live chat software for small business

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.