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December 11, 2023

8 Best WordPress Chat Plugins (Expert Pick)

Are you looking for the best chat plugins for WordPress?

Chat plugins allow you to talk with your users in real time to provide support. You can also create chatbots to help customers when your team isn’t available to improve the user experience.

In this article, we will share the best WordPress chat plugins that will help you communicate with your users.

Why Use Chat Plugins in WordPress?

With chat plugins, you can easily add live chat functionality to your WordPress website. This allows you to open a channel of real-time communication to interact with your visitors.

Most users do not like using emails, SMS, or help desk plugins to reach out to a website because those methods can be a bit time-consuming.

However, with chat plugins, customers can contact you directly if they need to debug an issue, provide feedback, or get help with your products and services.

With WordPress chat plugins, you can further improve the quality of the customer service on your site by helping users address their concerns over live chat and providing support.

You can also create chatbots for when your team isn’t available to assist customers, open support tickets, and solve their problems,

Plus, if you have an online store, then you can even use chat plugins to increase sales by letting your team or chatbots answer questions from potential customers.

Chat plugins can also make your website more user-friendly, help build a community around your brand, and increase customer loyalty.

That being said, here is a list of the best chat plugins for WordPress that can help you communicate with your users.

1. LiveChat

LiveChat is a super popular live chat software that can easily be integrated with your WordPress website using its plugin.

It allows you to communicate with your users in real time by adding a chat widget to your website.

Plus, the tool is super easy to use. It comes with many customization options like chat widget themes and the ability to add your company logo, change the chat window message, add social media buttons, and create custom live chat agent profiles.

It can also integrate with over 130 tools like Facebook, Dropbox, ZenDesk, and WooCommerce, making LiveChat the ultimate choice for online stores.

Pros

The chat functionality loads super quickly, which is great for user experience.
The tool saves all the chat history and transcripts and even lets customers provide feedback for your product or service using its rating system.
LiveChat can integrate with ChatBot to add chatbots to your site.
It offers file uploads, canned responses, and analytics.
LiveChat comes with a multiple chat window feature for customer support teams.

Cons

LiveChat does not offer a free plan.
Sometimes, a client may not receive a chat notification.
It can be a bit difficult to use for beginners.

Why we recommend using LiveChat: It is the leading live chat software in the industry that lets you add and customize a chat widget.

If you have an online store, then we recommend using LiveChat due to its comprehensive features, ability to open multiple chat windows for different customers, integration with over 130 tools, and much more.

2. HubSpot Chat

HubSpot is a powerful customer relationship management (CRM) platform that comes with a suite of tools for marketing, sales, and customer service, including HubSpot Chat.

It is the best WordPress chat plugin on the market that allows you to easily add chatbots and live chat functionality to your website with its free plugin.

The plugin lets you chat with your customers in real time and even saves their contact information in HubSpot’s customer relationship management app.

This can help you build an email list or communicate with your customers using SMS, email, or Slack.

If you have a small business, then you can also use HubSpot to create chatbots that provide support to your customers when your team members aren’t available for live chat.

Pros

HubSpot has a free plugin that can be used to add live chat and chatbots.
The CRM also offers other features like email marketing, forms and popups, landing pages, and detailed analytics.
It comes with a marketing automation that sends an email when a customer reaches out.
You can respond to chats directly from the inbox and even take notes, create support tickets, and schedule calls.

Cons

There are limited customization options for the chat widget.
To unlock advanced features, you will have to upgrade to the paid plan.

Why we recommend using HubSpot: We recommend using HubSpot because it is the best WordPress chat plugin that allows you to create live chat widgets and chatbots without using any code. It also saves your customer information, creates support tickets, and offers a suite of other tools that can help you grow your business.

3. ChatBot

ChatBot is a drag-and-drop chatbot builder that allows you to make smart chatbots for your website without writing any code. This makes it the best AI chatbot software for WordPress.

You can then easily add these chatbots to your WordPress site using the free ChatBot.com plugin. For detailed instructions, just see our tutorial on how to add a chatbot in WordPress.

ChatBot comes with pre-made templates, a chatbot testing tool, a customizable chat widget, and integrations with platforms like Slack, Facebook, WhatsApp, and more.

Plus, it also lets you create a multilingual chatbot using different filters, making it a great choice if you have a multilingual website.

Pros

ChatBot can integrate with LiveChat to provide live chat and chatbot support.
It provides detailed analytics about your chatbot’s performance.
ChatBot can organize your users in a contact list and even import new customers directly to your CRM.
It automatically collects user data during conversations and archives all the conversations between customers and the chatbot.

Cons

Its free plan offers limited features.
Creating a workflow in ChatBot can be a bit difficult for beginners due to the numerous customization options.

Why we recommend using ChatBot: We recommend using ChatBot if you want to design a detailed chatbot for your website. If you have a multilingual website, then ChatBot is a great choice as it lets you create chatbots in multiple languages.

4. Brevo Chat

Brevo is a popular SMS and email marketing service that offers a chatbox feature. It allows you to chat with your visitors in real time and respond to questions, resolve issues, and qualify leads. It even lets you create chatbots to answer user questions when your support team isn’t available.

To create a chatbox with Brevo, all you have to do is sign up for an account on the website and then connect to your WordPress blog using a free plugin.

Pros

It allows visitors to rate conversations with chat agents, which can help you gain feedback from users.
Brevo Chat allows you to see what visitors are typing before they send the message, which can help prepare you for the answer.
It allows your visitors to chat with you using their mobile devices.
Brevo Chat offers a CRM, landing pages, user data segmentation, SMS and email marketing features, and more.

Cons

The Brevo chatbox can be a bit slow at times.
It offers limited customization.

Why we recommend using Brevo Chat: If you are looking for an all-in-one solution that lets you manage your users through SMS, email, live chat, and chatbots, then Brevo is the perfect choice. It is powerful and allows you to communicate with all your customers in one place.

5. Tidio

Tidio is a WordPress live chat and chatbot plugin that uses conversational AI to solve up to 70% of your customer’s problems.

It comes with pre-built chatbot templates and customizable chat widgets. Tidio also shows a live typing preview and saves the chat history with customers.

Tidio even integrates with WooCommerce and allows your support team to see a customer’s cart, check their order history, and recommend other products in the chatbox.

Pros

Tidio is super beginner-friendly and has a free version.
It comes with a customizable chatbox design.
It allows your support team to open tickets in the chatbox.
Tidio integrates with platforms like HubSpot, Brevo, Constant Contact, and more.
Tidio lets you manage email, Facebook Messenger, and live chat conversations in one place.

Cons

Its paid plan is a little expensive.
Tidio is not available in many languages.
It can be slow and unresponsive at times.

Why we recommend using Tidio: Overall, Tidio is an amazing chat plugin. If you are on a budget or just have a simple WordPress blog, then you can use the free version of Tidio to easily connect with your visitors.

6. JivoChat

JivoChat is an all-in-one business messenger tool that lets you communicate with website visitors using email, live chat, chatbots, phone calls, and more.

Other than adding chat widgets to your website, the tool lets you contact your customers on their preferred social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp.

Some of JivoChat’s other features include chat history, voice messages, file and screen sharing, video calls, multiple chat agents, and chat routing.

Pros

The plugin has a free version with most of the features of the paid plan.
It comes with built-in CRM tools.
JivoChat monitors visitor behavior on your site and offers smart triggers.
It provides detailed analytics and reports on chat performance.

Cons

Its paid plan can be expensive, especially for small businesses.
JivoChat offers limited chat widget customization options.
It sometimes does not tell the visitor when the chat agent leaves the chat.

Why we recommend using JivoChat: We recommend using JivoChat if you are used to chatting with visitors over multiple platforms, as the plugin allows you to create a central place for all your messages.

7. Olark

Olark is another great chat plugin that allows you to integrate chatbots and live chat widgets on your WordPress site.

It enables you to customize your chatbox according to your WordPress theme and even allows you to add a contact form to the widget. This can help your support team collect customer data so that they can contact users at a later date or build an email list.

Pros

With Olark, you can easily distribute chats and monitor team performance.
You can integrate the tool with Mailchimp, Salesforce, HelpScout, and Zendesk.
Olark lets you create automated messages for when your team isn’t available.
It comes with analytics and reporting features.

Cons

It does not offer a free version.
Olark does not allow you to create a custom chatbot.
To create complex automated workflows, you have to integrate Olark with other platforms.

Why we recommend using Olark: We recommend using Olark if you have a large customer support team, as the tool lets you monitor your agents’ performance. It even comes with chatbots and automated message features to make work easier for your team.

8. Chaty

Chaty is a well-known WordPress plugin that offers a multi-channel communication platform. With this plugin, you can easily chat with your website visitors through Facebook, Messenger, Slack, Telegram, and more.

It adds a floating chat widget to your website and lets you choose a trigger for when the chatbox should be displayed.

Pros

You can add various buttons in the chatbox, like email, Google Maps, and phone number.
It has a free version.
You can add a contact form to the chat widget.
Chaty can connect with live chat solutions like Tidio, Formilla, and Zoho.
Chaty’s built-in ticketing system allows you to track and manage customer issues and requests.

Cons

Some of Chaty’s features, like multi-channel support and a ticketing system, are only available in the premium plan.
Chaty does not offer a mobile app for chat agents.
The plugin chatbox can be slow at times.

Why we recommend using Chaty: Overall, Chaty is a great solution if you are on a budget because it has a free version. You can also use this tool to chat with users over social media platforms.

Which Is the Best Chat Plugin for WordPress?

In our expert opinion, LiveChat is the best WordPress chat plugin, especially for online stores, because of its comprehensive features and integration with WooCommerce.

If you are looking for an affordable and user-friendly alternative, then HubSpot is easy to use, allows you to add a chatbot and a chat widget to your website, and even has a free version.

Similarly, you can also use Brevo Chat if you want to manage all your SMS, email, and chat messages in one place.

However, if you have a multilingual site, then ChatBot is the best choice because it lets you create a chatbot in any language you want and even integrates with LiveChat.

Frequently Asked Questions About WordPress Chat Plugins

Let’s wrap up with some of the questions that our readers often ask us about using chat plugins for WordPress.

Do I need a WordPress chat plugin?

By using a chat plugin on your website, you can communicate with your users in real-time to provide customer service quickly and efficiently.

You can also use WordPress chat plugins to increase sales by answering questions about your products or services and convincing visitors to buy your products.

You can even reduce the number of support tickets on your site by immediately solving problems through chat widgets.

What is the best live chat plugin for WordPress?

If you want to add live chat functionality to your website, then we recommend using LiveChat, which is the best live chat solution for WordPress.

It offers beautifully designed live chat support apps, allows you to add pre-chat survey forms, integrates with CRMs, and is also easily customizable.

For details, you can see our showcase of the best live chat software for small businesses.

Best WordPress Guides for Customer Communication

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 8 Best WordPress Chat Plugins (Expert Pick) first appeared on WPBeginner.

September 11, 2020

14 Best AI Chatbots Software for Your Website (Compared)

Are you looking for the best chatbot software for your site?

Chatbots allow you to free up time by automatically answering common customer questions. They can also be used to generate leads, improve user experience, and make more sales.

In this article, we have handpicked the best AI chatbots software for your WordPress site to improve customer experience and boost conversions.

1. ChatBot.com

ChatBot allows you to easily make chatbots using their drag and drop chatbot builder. You don’t need to do any coding or have any special technical skills.

It even comes with pre-built templates that you can use as a starting point to quickly get your AI ChatBot up and running. These templates include different scenarios like selling products, customer service, recruitment, bookings, and more.

ChatBot integrates with your WordPress website and can be used along with top live chat software well as other popular apps that you may be using to grow your business.

ChatBot is also a great chatbot for Facebook messenger powered by the same AI-driven software. This gives you a powerful tool to retarget customers on Facebook, collect data, and spend money wisely on Facebook ads.

They offer a free 14-day trial (no credit card required) which helps you try it out before choosing a paid plan.

Integrating ChatBot within our own businesses is a big priority for us currently. ChatBot is a great tool for us because it lets us seamlessly forward users to our live support teams where needed.

Pricing: ChatBot costs from $50 per month, which includes 1 active chatbot and 1000 chats per month.

2. ManyChat

ManyChat is a Facebook messenger chatbot builder. With more than 1.3 Billion people using Facebook Messenger, it allows you to have a wider reach and more powerful retargeting options on the Facebook platform.

In simpler words, it helps you make sales, decrease cart abandonment, capture leads, and more by using Facebook Messenger.

It comes with a simple drag and drop interface which makes it super easy to set up a chatbot for your Facebook page. You can automatically welcome new users, point them to products, schedule messages, respond to specific keywords, and much more.

Pricing: ManyChat has a free plan that you can use to get started. This includes basic quick-start templates, 2 drip sequences, and up to 10 tags for audience segmentation. The premium plan has unlimited drip sequences and tags, plus split testing, buy buttons, and more.

3. Freshchat

Freshchat allows you to build chatbots for WhatsApp, Messenger, Apple Business Chat, mobile, and web.

It is powered by Freddy, their artificial intelligence algorithm. It is designed to detect intent and engage with the customer, rather than simply being intended to free up the time of your live chat agents.

Using their machine learning technology, Freshchat can even provide you with a list of customer and prospect questions that need precise or better answers.

Pricing: You will need Freshchat’s ‘Forest’ plan for enterprises to use their chatbot. This isn’t cheap, at $69 per user per month when billed monthly.

4. Drift

Drift lets you combine live chat and an automated chatbot, like many of the tools on this list. It also integrates with the most popular CRMs and email marketing services.

Drift allows you to proactively start conversations with customers that are already engaged with the products or services on your website. It is designed to use conversations for conversions and allows you to create scenarios that help you get more sales.

It offers integrations with many third-party tools such as Zendesk, Help Scout, and more.

Drift is more suitable for fairly large businesses, and the pricing reflects that. If you’re just starting to make money online, we recommend that you try one of the other tools on our list.

Pricing: Drift costs from $400/month billed annually. This includes 5 users. (There is a free plan available too, but that doesn’t have the chatbot features.)

5. Chatfuel

Chatfuel is a powerful chatbot platform for Messenger, Facebook, and Instagram. You don’t need any coding knowledge or previous experience to use it.

Lots of different companies use Chatfuel, including large brands like Adidas, T-Mobile, LEGO, TechCrunch, and more.

You can use your bot to increase sales, to qualify leads, or to provide answers to frequently asked questions. This lets you save a lot of time for your customer service team.

There is plenty of documentation on the Chatfuel website to help you build a bot easily. This includes advice on how to make sure you follow Facebook’s rules for using a Messenger bot.

Pricing: Chatfuel costs from $15/month, with no user limit. There’s also a free plan that offers a fully-featured bot and up to 50 users.

6. MobileMonkey

MobileMonkey lets you create bots using their OmniChat™ technology. These bots work in web chat, in Messenger, and even through SMS text messages.

This saves you time and money creating different bots using different tools. You can create a single bot and use it across multiple platforms.

Your customer service team can easily respond to messages. MobileMonkey has desktop and mobile apps that give you a single inbox to easily monitor and respond to messages from different channels.

It also offers integrations with third-party software that you may already be using such as CRM software, email marketing service, webinar provider, and more.

Pricing: MobileMonkey costs from $14.25/month, billed annually, for an unlimited number of leads. There’s also a free version with unlimited leads but fewer features.

7. Tars

Tars is a tool that lets you create conversational landing pages. Essentially, this means replacing a traditional landing page with a chatbot.

It lets you easily qualify leads. Tars is particularly well optimized for mobile users, providing a natural and easy chatbot conversation.

Making a chatbot is quite straight forward using Tars. You can either create a conversation workflow from scratch, or you can use a pre-built template.

Pricing: Tars costs from $83.25/month, billed annually. There’s no free plan, but you can take a free 14-day trial (no credit card required).

8. Tidio

Tidio is a live chat platform powered by chatbots. It allows you to communicate your clients by using web and mobile friendly chatbot, Facebook Messenger chatbot, and more.

It comes with an easy dashboard and a mobile app to answer all user inquires at any time from anywhere. You can also use automation as much as you like to answer customer questions and design funnels that lead to conversions.

You can use a chatbot template or create your own chatbot scenarios based on keywords and customer behavior on your site. It is easy to use and integrate with your eCommerce platform, email marketing, and help desk software.

Pricing: Starting from $18 per month. They have a free plan too but it does not include chatbots.

9. Zendesk Chat

Zendesk Chat is part of Zendesk, a popular customer support platform for businesses. It has features that let you handle support tickets, chat live with your customers, and more.

You can use automated messages within Zendesk Chat, such as triggering messages based on what your customers are doing. You can also optimize your messages by testing which ones have a high engagement rate.

You can even integrate it with other chatbot tools if you want more advanced chatbot features.

Pricing: Zendesk Chat costs from $14 per agent per month, when billed annually. You can take a 14 day free trial (no credit card details needed). There’s also a free Lite version, which only lets you have 1 agent and 1 chat at a time.

10. Quriobot

Quriobot is a simple chatbot that has a free plan, making it a good option for small companies on a tight budget.

Like other chatbot software, it has a simple drag and drop interface. You can either build conversations from scratch or use one of the available templates. You can also create several bots at once.

You can adjust Quriobot’s styling to fit your website’s color scheme and you can even add custom CSS if you want to.

Quriobot integrates with help desk software such as LiveAgent, if you want a complete solution that gives you a support desk, live chat, and more.

Pricing: Quriobot has a generous free plan that allows you up to 500 chats per month, with unlimited bots and organization members. If you want more chats per month, or if you want to remove the Quriobot branding, you need to pay from €9/month. (Quriobot’s pricing is in Euros.)

11. Intercom

Intercom is a flexible tool that can be used as a chatbot or for live chat with an agent. You can use it to automate your marketing and to engage users.

Intercom’s whole approach is designed to be conversational, to help you build relationships. It’s easy to scale as your business grows, too.

With Intercom, you can personalize your chatbot’s interactions with customers. You can filter and target customers based on what they do (or don’t do) and you can group them into segments based on their attributes and behavior.

Intercom integrates with email marketing services, Slack, Google Analytics, CRM software, and more.

Pricing: Intercom’s Start package costs from $39/month. However, to use the chatbot features, you need at least the Growth plan from $99/month. You can take a free 14 day trial of either of these plans (credit card details are required).

12. SnapEngage

SnapEngage is designed to help you with both sales and support. You can use it on your WordPress site. It also integrates with Facebook Messenger, and other popular software.

It comes with ready-to-use bots, such as the Info-Capture and the Answer Bot. You can also create custom bots using the custom bot API.

If you run a healthcare site, then SnapEngage offers ‘Health Engage’ to provide secure, HIPAA-compliant chatbots, live chat, and SMS messaging.

Pricing: SnapEngage costs from $16 per user per month (with a minimum of 3 users), billed annually. Their HealthEngage option costs from $26 per user per month, again with a minimum of 3 users.

13. LivePerson

LivePerson offers live chat software, as you might expect from their name. You can also use it to create automated conversation flows using a chatbot.

Your chatbots can connect potential buyers to a live agent, send offers based on the customer’s interests, and even schedule appointments or meetings. Customers can also check on their order status, find out their account balance, and get answers to billing or payment questions.

As well as integrating with your WordPress site, LivePerson can be used on Facebook, Twitter, and more.

Pricing: LivePerson doesn’t provide a standard scale of prices. Instead, you need to contact them for a quote.

14. Ada

Ada is a chatbot that can tailor its responses and recommendations based on the customer’s information, intent, and interests. It’s designed to be simple to use, so that your support team can set everything up. There’s no coding involved.

You can also integrate Ada with your live chat so that customers can move seamlessly from the chatbot to a live agent. It also integrates with your team calendar to schedule appointments and bookings.

Pricing: Ada doesn’t provide prices upfront. Instead, you need to chat with the sales team or request a demo to find out how much it will cost you.

Our Pick: Best Chatbot Software

For most businesses, we recommend ChatBot.com as the best AI chatbot software because it’s easy to use and comes with pre-made workflows.

They also offer many built-in integrations with third-party marketing services, and the pricing is fairly affordable compared to other solutions.

If you’re looking for alternatives, then please take a look at FreshChat or Drift.

We hope this article helped you learn about the best AI chatbots software for your WordPress site. You might also want to take a look at our guides to the best live chat software and best business phone services for small businesses.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 14 Best AI Chatbots Software for Your Website (Compared) appeared first on WPBeginner.