4 Best Live Chat Software for Ecommerce Stores

Searching for the best live chat software for ecommerce stores?

Live chat software is a cost-effective way to offer better support and improve sales. Moreover, a reliable chat service increases customer comfort levels and brand reputation.

What features should you look for in live chat software for ecommerce? 🔎

Depending on the size and nature of your store, here are some of the things live chat software for ecommerce should be able to do:

• Initiate a conversation proactively at different points in the sales journey
• Create triggers for upselling a product
• Share files to enable sending screenshots, catalogs, or offers between agents and customers
• Include pre-chat forms for stats and lead generation, and post-chat surveys for customer feedback
• Reduce cart abandonment by connecting with customers if they’re having problems
• Use canned responses and sneak peek facility for quicker response
• Transfer chats among agents with internal comments
• Access chat transcripts for personalized attention
• Add tags to chats for context. This helps with analytics by filtering using tags
• Keep track of sales and service team, sales and goal tracking
• Include detailed analytics to give you insight into customer information
• Use chat engaging features like a popup chat window, chat buttons, eye-catchers
• Set up audio and visual notifications of chat or message, so no customer is kept waiting

Once you combine these features with a robust ticketing system and offline messaging, you’re pretty much covered when it comes to customer support. For a smoother workflow, you can integrate these chat software with ecommerce platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce.

The best live chat software for ecommerce stores 🏆

*All the prices reflected above are based on annual billing, with the exception of Olark, which reflects month-to-month billing. Olark, like the others, does offer a discount if you pay up front for a year, but they don’t advertise the discounted price.

1. LiveChat

LiveChat covers a lot of ground when it comes to customer support. Surely it ranks among the top live chat software for ecommerce.

💰 Pricing

Though LiveChat doesn’t offer any free plans, it allows a 14-day free trial (exclusive offer). The Starter plan costs you $20 per agent, per month (billed annually) and the Team plan costs $41 per agent, per month (billed annually). Month-to-month plans are also available, but cost more per month. Additionally, you can also choose from Business and Enterprise plans.

However, to access the dedicated ecommerce features, you’ll want at least the Team plan.

⚙️ What are the best ecommerce features?

• 200+ integrations such as Shopify, Facebook Messenger, and UPS Delivery status
• Chat monitoring and chat transfer
• Two-way file sharing between agents and customers
• Filterable chat tags
• Canned responses
• Sneak peek
• Tracking ecommerce goals/ sales targets
• Pre-chat and post-chat survey forms
• Chat history that’s filterable
• Offline ticket form
• Extensive reporting and analysis
• Dedicated WordPress plugin for WooCommerce stores

🥇 This is the best live chat software for:

LiveChat covers a wide range of features and plans to suit different budgets. The goals and sales tracker, file sharing, analytics, and lead generation make it particularly suitable for ecommerce websites. What makes it more attractive is that on one license, you can add the chat widget to as many websites or apps as you want.

2. Tidio Chat

Tidio Chat comes with a host of features that can be useful to your ecommerce website, including a Shopify chatbot. It’s a fine option, especially if you’re looking for AI smarts to sub in for agents.

💰 Pricing

A free forever plan that lets you or your agents have conversations with up to 50 unique visitors per month. The free plan also sets you up with a chatbot that supports up to 100 unique visitor conversations per month.

To access the premium features, you’ll need to choose either the Communicator Plan, which will set you back $15.83 per agent, per month, or the Chatbot Plan, which will cost you $15.83 per month. Both of those price points reflect annual payment plans. You can also choose to pay month-to-month, but unsurprisingly it will cost you more per month.

Finally, there’s a Tidio Plan which is a huge jump in both features and cost from the other two. It’s more suited for large companies with equally large budgets and more complex needs.

⚙️ What are the best ecommerce features?

• Sneak preview and live visitors monitoring (Premium)
• New incoming visitor notification (Premium)
• Chatbot templates (Premium)
• Easy-to-set automated messages targeting visitors based on activity type
• Unlimited chatting with chatbots with up to 100 unique visitors per month
• Integration with apps like Facebook Messenger, Zapier, and Shopify
• Dedicated WordPress plugin for WooCommerce stores
• Store visitor info such as tags, location, preferences, and more
• Email response for offline queries
• Up to 500 automated and scheduled emails per month

🥇 This is the best live chat software for:

Ecommerce websites that don’t want to spend on live chat services. The forever free plan offers all the basic services to cover small and even some mid-sized businesses. Besides, it offers most of the essential chat services at the best prices. And, you can add it to multiple websites, too.

3. Olark

Olark makes it really easy for you to talk to customers. Their chat tools help you to learn and improve from every online interaction.

💰 Pricing

Olark offers a 14-day free trial for their premium plans. If you decide that you don’t want to continue after the trial period, then you’ll be downgraded to a very limited free plan. It supports one agent and a maximum of 20 chats per month.

The paid plans start at $29 per agent, per month and you can also save money if you choose a longer billing term.

Olark also has optional “PowerUps” that are available for an extra monthly fee. For example, to add a feature that lets customers share their screens with agents, you’d have to pay an extra $99 per month. It’s a bit pricey, but from a customer support perspective, it could be a great investment for a high volume business.

⚙️ What are the best ecommerce features?

• Collects visitor details like location and device, maintains visitor history
• Chat transfers
• Chat transcripts
• File sharing
• Chat tagging for analytic purposes
• Automatically add chat events to Google Analytics
• Organize chat agents into departments and monitor activity
• Pre and post-chat survey
• Chat routing
• Canned responses
• Automate chat greeting, chat initiation on triggers
• Automate chatbox behavior based on visitor behavior
• Chat agent user roles – basic access and administrative access
• Enable desktop notifications of new chats
• Integration with Zendesk, Salesforce, Magento, BigCommerce and more
• Dedicated WordPress plugin for WooCommerce stores
• Add-ons for co-browsing, removing Olark branding, and visitor insights into social and professional profiles

🥇 This is the best live chat software for:

Olark is well-suited for any business looking to grow since it helps to capture leads, increase sales, and provide live chat support. You can use it on any number of domains as well.

4. Freshchat

Freshchat is a cloud-based CRM that keeps its focus on three clear areas:

1. Conversion
2. Onboarding
3. Customer support

You’ll be able to respond to customers over web, mobile, or social media.

💰 Pricing

Three plans are available:

1. Growth – $15 – for small teams.
2. Pro – $39 – for growing teams.
3. Enterprise – $69 – best value for large teams.

Rates are per agent, per month, billed annually. Month-to-month plans are available at a higher rate. You can also try any plan for free for 21 days. To top it all off, there’s a Free forever plan that supports up to 100 agents and lets you use their chatbot on an optional, pay-as-you-go basis, with 1,000 bot sessions per month costing $75.

⚙️ What are the best ecommerce features?

• Triggered messages or email campaigns based on customer-specific behavior
• Bots to help with lead generation
• Rich messaging to share files, videos, and FAQs
• Clearbit integration to know your customer without requesting for details
• Segment users based on geography or behavior for targeted action
• Reengage with users on mobiles with push notifications
• Chat routing based on agent competence and load
• Integration with top marketing and customer support software
• Co-browsing and screen sharing
• Smart plugs to pull information from Team Inbox to engage customers with context
• Chat transcripts
• Create a ticket from chats
• Conversion report, label report, and team performance report

🥇 This is the best live chat software for:

Freshchat has four plans to cover any size of business, so no one should feel left out. The free plan is far from basic, with rich messaging, agent groups, bulk actions, 100 campaign contacts, and more included. Moreover, with APIs for custom integrations and capacity to scale using the Freshworks platform, it can support high volume, huge enterprises.

Which is the best live chat software for ecommerce stores? 🤔

If you’re using WordPress and WooCommerce, you can follow our tutorial on how to add LiveChat to WordPress to get started.

Do you have any questions about choosing the best tool for your needs? Ask away in the comments!

* This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and then purchase the product, we’ll receive a commission. No worries though, you’ll still pay the standard amount so there’s no additional cost on your part.