LiveChat Review 2024: Features, Pricing Pros & Cons

A great customer experience relies on being able to deliver useful and timely sales information and customer support. Live chat software is one of the best ways to achieve this.

This article takes you through one example of this SaaS. Our LiveChat review is a mix of personal and critical experiences. It will look at subscription plans, feature sets, pros, cons and support options.

So let’s not waste a second longer and get into this review of LiveChat and everything it has to offer. It’s go time!

LiveChat review 2024: Is LiveChat any good?

Most LiveChat review articles are in agreement. This chat system is good, very good, if not great. It really does the job of empowering your sales and customer support teams with the best set of live chat and canned reply tools, as well as team management, analytics, and reporting features.

You can use LiveChat in an office setting. However, it is also incredible if you have a remote customer service team. If you don’t know much about remote monitoring and management platforms, go ahead and check out this article about RMM tools. Even if you don’t see LiveChat on there, just know, it probably deserves a spot somewhere in the top 20 RMM systems.

LiveChat pricing plans

Before we get started, let us present to you, dear reader, a quick table outlining the various subscription and pricing options provided by LiveChat. Here it is:

How much does LiveChat cost for nonprofits?

Well, sorry to say it, but there are no special deals if you are operating a nonprofit. The same thing goes for student discounts. LiveChat does not offer anything like this. Pity.
 

Are there any LiveChat coupon codes or promo discount vouchers?

We have really done a lot of research here looking for LiveChat coupon vouchers or promo discount codes. It seems that they do not exist. You may find something with a third party. However, we strongly recommend you verify their validity with LiveChat directly.

LiveChat free vs paid: what’s the difference?

Unfortunately, there is no free plan for LiveChat. There is, however, a free trial. The free trial is 14 days long, and you do not need to input your credit card information to do it.

LiveChat overview: what is LiveChat used for?

LiveChat is a software that provides chat functions and related features. LiveChat is used mainly by sales and customer support teams. It enables them to greet visitors to the website, be ready with useful answers to any customer queries, and offer assistance in case any customer is having problems speedily.

LiveChat features list 

The main features of LiveChat are:

• LiveChat channels

• Basic chat tools

• LiveChat widget

• Engagement tools

• Chat analytics and reports

• Team management

• E-commerce features

• Integrations

• Platforms and devices
   

1. LiveChat channels

When you think LiveChat, think about the wide variety of messaging channels available. This is crucial because a good customer experience starts with easily getting in touch with a customer service team. That's why multi-channel support is a winning part of the LiveChat set of features.

• Widget - Being able to stick a live chat widget window directly on your website is maybe the best option that service chat allows. This way, your web traffic won't need to go far to ask a question to seek help. More on widgets below.

• SMS and social media - LiveChat offers help to customers across many platforms and websites. You got Facebook Messenger integration, WhatsApp Business, Apple Messages for Business, and Instagram for Business. As for SMS, LiveChat uses Twilio. 

• Screen sharing, video, and voice - With LiveChat, you can share your customer's screen to make it easy to help them out. There is also voice and video communication offered by this customer service platform.

• Availability - If a customer starts a chat in a widget or elsewhere, and then they do not want to wait around for an answer, they are free to leave the chat. LiveChat can then send them an email to resume the chat or respond to the email.

• Chat link - If none of the above are suitable for a customer, you can easily send them a link to a page which is there just for chatting.
   

2. Basic chat tools

Many people have found LiveChat to cover the basics of online chat software quite well. Overall, we've got a nice toolkit to handle chat conversations and communicate with our clients. Here are some descriptions of these tools.

• Canned responses - If your customer support team gets a lot of the same questions, then predefined replies are a great time-saver. These automatic chat messages are easy to set up, save, and use across the board. LiveChat allows hashtags to be a big help here.

• Tags - Chat tags are ideal for organizing and archiving past conversations. Add tags to chat histories to quickly categorize them. This way they'll be easy to retrieve for future reference.

• Sneak-peek -  LiveChat offers a message sneak-peek option. This is a very unique feature to this platform. You get to see some of the message your customer is typing before they send it. This way, your agents can already get started looking for an answer.

• Rich messaging -  There are some nice rich message choices here with enough customization. You can add to your chat window more interactive features like buttons and clickable menus. There are also quick replies to suggest possible answers. You get text cards and text carousels for displaying media. Finally, there are moments where customers can book an appointment or make a payment right in the text.

• Archiving - Chat archives are another feature that LiveChat is used for. Never lose a chat history again. You can speedily search and filter down chat archives by phrases or keywords. Or you can search archives by date and time, or by customer support agent.

• Notifications - People who use LiveChat depend on not missing an important incoming message. Chat notifications can be set to make a sound or display a badge. They can also be sent when you receive new messages or new visitors. 

• Chat transfers - This chat solution helps a lot with team collaboration. Chat transfers make it easy to pass on a chat between agents. This helps if one of your team has more expertise than others with certain issues. Customers can transfer chats seamlessly as well.

• Ratings - LiveChat also offers a total chat ratings module. Getting customer feedback is essential to improving your services. With ratings, customers can instantly express their satisfaction after a chat and the performance of their customer agent. There are also post-chat surveys as well as CSAT reports.

• File sharing - The LiveChat software solution has document and file-sharing tools. Support staff can easily drag and drop files through the live chat. This goes for docs, photos, PDFs, audio, spreadsheets, zip files, and more. File sharing is even available to visitors. 
   

3. LiveChat widget

When you think about live chat software for your website or landing page, you should not forget about widgets. These are great options to offer chat support and help your business leverage amazing customer support. Widgets are one of the features I was looking for, and LiveChat did not disappoint.

• Widget customization - You get tons of customization with your widget with LiveChat's live editor tool. You can change the widget theme or colors with ease. Widgets are also responsive to screen size. This means it looks great on mobile phones and desktop computers.

• Agent profiles - Add a human touch to your customer support widget. LiveChat allows you to create agent profiles. These include name, job title, and profile picture. Customers respond better when they sense the human behind the chat.

• Widget languages - If you deal with customers worldwide, the ability to offer great live chat support in multiple languages is a fabulous business strategy. LiveChat lets you set up your widget and greetings in over 45 languages, including some right-to-left ones like Arabic.

• Knowledgebase boosters - Customers have the option to find some answers quickly thanks to LiveChat syncing of its knowledge base directly to its widget. When a customer is able to answer the question on their own this way, it saves a lot of time and effort on behalf of your customer service agents.
   

4. Engagement tools

LiveChat is well-regarded for offering all the features for real-time chat, predefined canned responses, as well as for increasing customer engagement. This is how you turn great customer service into more sales and longer-lasting customer relationships. Here are some customer engagement features.

• Target messaging - Forget about anonymous messages blasting to the masses. LiveChat helped a lot of users see the value in targeted messages aimed at the right audience. You can set these up as personalized greetings for newcomers to the chat, or to make announcements to your contact list. A great tool to advertise new products or services.

• Eye-catching messages - LiveChat lets you create messages that visually pop. You can incorporate into your chat widget photos from LiveChat's gallery, upload your own images, or use GIFs. 

• Chat routing - When customer service representatives can automatically route chats, this leads to more on-point and faster support. Visitors can be routed to the right team by URL. Routing can also function based on country and language. There are automatic and manual chat routing options too.

• Transcripts - One way to ensure your customers are happy and engaged with your support is through chat transcripts. Once a chat is done, reps and customers can get access to a transcript of the conversation. This feature builds trust between you and your network.
   

5. Chat analytics and reports

Any live chat and helpdesk software solution needs to analyze chat data and offer robust reporting. This is how you inevitably improve your service through the power of data.

• Dashboard summaries - For a quick and insightful overview of the basic chat data, LiveChat has a great professional-looking interface for real-time data among its reporting tools.

• Individual reports - You can easily drill down to get more detailed insights with LiveChat reports. Some of the useful metrics include missed chats, greeting conversion rates, chat engagement and satisfaction levels, surveys, and availability stats.

• Agent performance analytics - Your customer support agents are the foundation of your service department. Easily use LiveChat to measure the performance of individual reps or whole teams. Some factors here are chat duration, response times, staffing predictions, and agent activity monitors.

• Customer reports - LiveChat offers instant overviews of your customers and your service queues. Get reporting on how many customers have given up[ on waiting for an answer with queue abandonment information.

• E-commerce reporting - Perhaps data analytics are never more valuable than with e-commerce operations. For when we wanted to track sales and ROI figures with reliability, LiveChat just worked out perfectly.

• Exports - Need to export your reports for further sharing and presentations? LiveChat lets users export their reports as CSV files. You can even schedule these reports automatically by day, week, or month.
   

6. Team management

LiveChat is essentially a manned chat application. This means that it is focused on letting human agents do their jobs better. For this purpose, you got some solid support team management features.

• Agents - Individual agent accounts are easily set up with LiveChat. These include detailed agent profiles that are customizable, as well as agent performance reports. Agent roles can be defined as the owner of an account, an administrator, or at the lowest level, just agent.

• Groups - Teamwork is a big factor in a manned chat solution. You can group a bunch of agents into a specific team. Within the group, you can set certain agents to be of higher priority against those who are more better suited as backup agents.

• Supervision - Chat supervision and listening is another top LiveChat tool. A manager can be part of a chat yet remain invisible to the customer, adding texts that only the agent can see.

• Limits and scheduling - LiveChat lets service managers set limits for the max amount of chats per agent within a given time. This saves your team from being overwhelmed. You also get more advanced work scheduling tools. It makes for simple shift planning. Automation also comes into play with instant schedule or agent status changes.
   

7. E-commerce features

If you are running a store, especially an online store, there are certain tools you should be looking for in a manned helpdesk and live chat solution. Here are some great LiveChat features for sales and e-commerce.

• Customers - LiveChat helps you know when you have a new customer. As visitors land on your site, you get real-time notifications. Here, you can present them with new products or ask them questions to get to know their tastes and preferences. 

• Products - With LiveChat, you can create beautiful product cards. These are easy to share over chat, and they let the customer add items to their shopping cart with minimal clicking.  

• Sales tracking - Not only does LiveChat keep track of all your sales efforts versus your revenue stats, but you can also use it to get instant notification whenever someone writes a review. This way, you can reply to the reviewer with little time wasted, showing them how much you care. That's top-tier customer service. 
   

8. Platforms and devices

I have often said that LiveChat is a solid application, whether online or on my desktop. Among the many applications I looked at, it also has great mobile apps.

• Web browser version - Most users will probably stick to the web browser LiveChat SaaS. There is a simple setup, awesome reporting, and it lets you be on call 24/7.

• Desktop versions - Sometimes, you just want to download an app. We use desktop and it handled chat issues perfectly. You got app downloads for Windows and Mac.

• Mobile apps - If you need to get instant connection to your service helpdesk chats even if you are away from the office or home computer, LiveChat offers mobile apps for iPhones and Android devices.
   

9. Integrations

Many people truly believe that LiveChat is an all-in-one customer service chat platform. But if you want added functionality with other great business technology, you can integrate this software with other SaaS tools.

• Email marketing - You'll want to add new contacts and leads to your pipeline all the time, and for this purpose, you can connect LiveChat with some email marketing apps. You got Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and Campaign Monitor, to name a few.

• E-commerce integrations - One of the most popular integrations for LiveChat for e-commerce operations is with Shopify. You also have BigCommerce to work with.

• Video conferencing - Need extra video chat capabilities? No worries, as LiveChat has a good Zoom integration.

• Payments - LiveChat does not have its own payment module. But you can connect with Stripe to process payments inside the app when using a LiveChat window.

• CRM integrations - Keep your network of contacts organized and all your engagement histories in one place with the right CRM integration. Native ones include Salesforce, Hubspot, Pipedrive, and LeadSquared, among others.

• CMS integration - It is likely that after unlimited chat activity, you will collect a lot of files, docs, screenshots, and other content. Content management systems, or CMS, will help. Integrations include WordPress, SquareSpace, WHMCS, Webflow and others.

• LiveChat API - Want to create fresh automations and more interoperability between apps, LiveChat offers their public API. You can read the SDK docs, use Webhooks, check out the JS API docs, and even use APIs for more custom reporting.

LiveChat pros and cons

Here are the advantages and disadvantages of LiveChat:
 

LiveChat advantages

The very first benefit to LiveChat is the multi-channel communication options. The fact that users can reach out via text, chat window, and social media is a real advantage for your customer service department.

The next LiveChat pro has to do with some of the basic chat features. The message sneak-peek tool is an excellent way to streamline the communication between support reps and customers. Chat tags are very useful for saving and referencing past chats too.

The LiveChat widget is a well-liked feature. These widgets are easy to build and customize. From there you get fantastic options like greetings and other canned responses.

Another superb advantage to this platform are the many tools for chat analytics and creating insightful reports. Between the real-time dashboard and the individual scheduled reports, your data will really be put to work for you.
 

LiveChat disadvantages

Now, it is time to list some of the LiveChat drawbacks. Firstly, some users are kind of disappointed that there is no free version of this tool. But the starter plan is not too expensive, at least.

Another disadvantage to LiveChat is that this is not an all-in-one customer service help desk system. It is mainly about the chat. You don’t have other options like a knowledgebase builder or other self-service tools. It also lacks a customer portal.

Finally, one last con to using LiveChat regards the feature set when comparing the regular versus the more premium plans. A lot of great tools are more expensive. These include SMS functionality, canned responses, file sharing, the work scheduler, and the famous LiveChat Dashboard.

LiveChat complaints & praise (LiveChat reviews from real customers)

Let us turn to online reviews of LiveChat. The positive LiveChat reviews cover a lot of ground. For example, users who run e-commerce businesses regularly sing the praises of LiveChat, especially for its widget.

Other real customers who use LiveChat are very pleased with the ease of use of this platform. So far, most people claim that the tools are intuitive and that the entire platform has a shallow learning curve. Nobody wants to waste too much time learning how to use software. So this is great news.

However, if we turn to negative LiveChat reviews, things get a bit more complicated. For example, every now and then, a customer leaving an online review claims that some of the functions can be complicated and glitchy. Often, these reviews are not so specific. 

What we can say in response to those reviews is this. LiveChat often listens to its users, so when people complain about wonky tools, LiveChat tries to rectify the situation.

More criticisms of LiveChat among its negative online reviews are regarding its value for larger companies. It seems most startups and small businesses love this SaaS. But there are some negative comments by larger companies and enterprises. They claim that this software is a bit little league for their business needs.  

In summary, LiveChat gets positive reviews from real online users, although this should not discourage anyone from reading up on more live chat software comparison material out there.
 

Review of LiveChat support

LiveChat offers customer support in a variety of ways.

There is a success page that acts like a LiveChat blog. Here you can find many useful articles, guides, and videos to help you master the software. There is also a knowledge base.

Then, there is a more in-depth help center. You can search topics or read guides for agents or for managers. 

For those who want more, LiveChat has a professional services option. You can schedule a call to learn more about this.

LiveChat has webinars. These can teach you how to maximize your software tools, or how to run your marketing, sales and support departments better by using chat software.

Now, when it comes to getting real human support, LiveChat provides 24/7/365 support on all their plans for email, chat and phone. 

Product training, software engineer support, legal assistance and having a key account manager are all reserved only for the enterprise plan.

Is LiveChat worth it? Our final points

Ask us again. Is LiveChat worth it? Trust us. LiveChat is definitely worth it if you are looking to integrate live chat for your sales and customer support departments. No doubt about it. This is versatile, flexible, easy-to-use, and high-value software.

Well, you might ask, what about some of the other LiveChat alternatives, are they worth checking out? Of course, they are. The more research you do, the better. Go ahead.

And yet, why waste the time? If you are ready to sign up and start paying for a live chat system right away, then believe this review. LiveChat is worth it. You are welcome. 
 

Our final LiveChat rating

LiveChat gets a 4.1 out of 5 stars.