Live chat software
The best live chat software depends on how you will staff it: Intercom for scaling teams that want AI answering in the widget, LiveChat and Tidio for sales-led chat, Crisp for a low-cost all-in-one, Tawk.to when the budget is zero, and AcornReply when chat is one channel beside the support email you actually run.
Live chat looks like a widget and behaves like a staffing commitment. Which tool you pick matters less than whether somebody is there: a chat box nobody answers for an hour is worse for a customer than no chat box at all.
The list below spans real-time platforms built for rostered teams and lighter options where a chat quietly becomes an email out of hours. Match the row to how you will genuinely staff the channel, not to how you would like to.
What is live chat software?
Live chat software puts a messaging widget on your website or in your app and gives your team a console to answer from in real time. What separates the products is mostly what happens at the edges: the fallback when nobody is available (a form, a captured email address, or an AI answer), routing between agents and shifts, visitor context such as the page they are on or what is in their cart, triggers that open a chat proactively, and whether the transcript is stored alongside the rest of that customer history. Nearly all of them blur into email, because outside business hours a chat becomes a message you answer later. That hybrid is sometimes called async chat, and it is how most small teams actually run the channel.
Live chat tools, and who each is for
The first question is not features, it is whether chat will be a staffed channel or a convenience that falls back to email.
| Tool | Best for | Pricing model |
|---|---|---|
Intercom The most complete messenger, with Fin answering directly. The pricing model rewards high volume and punishes casual use. | Scaling teams that want AI resolving chats in the widget | Per seat, plus a charge per AI resolution |
Crisp A lot of product for the money, with breadth rather than depth in any single area. | Small teams wanting chat, an inbox and a knowledge base together | Per workspace, tiered |
Tawk.to Genuinely free and very widely deployed, funded by paid extras such as removing the branding or hiring agents. | Anyone who needs chat today and cannot spend anything | Free, with paid add-ons |
Tidio Chat plus bots aimed at converting browsers, with solid ecommerce integrations. | Small online stores mixing chat with sales automation | Per seat, tiered, with a free tier |
LiveChat A mature, focused chat platform with routing, queues and supervision. Chat is the product, so email is the add-on. | Teams staffing chat as a real channel with shifts | Per seat, tiered |
AcornReply The chat widget lands in the same inbox as email, with AI drafts. Not a chat-first product: no agent routing, no shift management. | A small team whose main support channel is email | Flat per workspace |
When you need a chat-first product
If chat is going to be a staffed channel, with people rostered to answer within a minute, routing between agents, and somebody watching a live queue, buy a product built around exactly that: LiveChat or Intercom. Tools that treat chat as one more channel arriving in an email inbox, AcornReply included, have no shift management or live queue supervision and will feel thin under that load. AcornReply suits the opposite case, which is also the more common one: email is your channel, and chat is a convenience for the visitor who would rather type a line than write an email, answered on the same terms as everything else in the inbox.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need live chat, or is email enough?
Email is enough for most small teams, and it is the channel customers already know how to use. Add chat when questions arrive before a purchase decision, where a two-minute answer changes the outcome and a two-hour one does not. If you cannot commit to answering quickly during your posted hours, a contact form that sets expectations honestly beats a chat widget that disappoints.
Is there genuinely free live chat software?
Yes. Tawk.to is free to use and funds itself through paid extras such as removing its branding or hiring agents, and Tidio offers a free tier with usage caps. Free is a sensible way to learn whether your visitors chat at all before committing budget, and more importantly staffing, to the channel.
What happens to a chat when nobody is online?
Most tools capture an email address and turn the conversation into a message you answer later, sometimes called async chat. Check how a tool sets expectations at that moment, because a widget that implies a live answer and then goes quiet does more damage than one that says plainly when you will reply. In AcornReply an unanswered chat simply becomes a conversation in the same inbox as your email.
Does live chat have to be staffed all day?
No, but it needs honest hours. Publish when you are available, show or hide the widget accordingly, and answer anything captured outside those hours by email. The teams who conclude that chat does not work are usually the ones who ran it as always-on without the roster to back it up.