6 best live chat software for customer support in 2025

From ordering takeout to searching "What movie were they in?", technology has changed how quickly we expect to receive results and information—the same can be said for customers. Consumers expect support experiences to be as quick as possible, whether they’re chatting with a human agent or an AI chatbot.

To meet customer demands and support positive customer experiences (CX), you need the right tools. With live chat software, businesses can manage customer conversations in real time across various channels, including a website, mobile app, or messaging channels like Messenger, WhatsApp, and Slack.

Dive into live chat and discover the right solution for your business with our guide, where we've gathered six of the top live chat software options for 2025.

More in this guide:

• What is live chat software?
• How does live chat software work?
• Best live chat software at a glance
• Essential features of live chat software
• Live chat software comparison chart
• The 6 best live chat software
• How to choose the right live chat software
• Frequently asked questions
• Invest in powerful live chat software

Follow along to learn more about each of these live chat apps and what you should consider when making your choice.

Live chat software is a communication tool that enables businesses to interact with customers in real time. Live chat software uses a website or app chat window to connect agents to customers, collect and store customer data, and centralize all communication.

Live chat software embeds a chat widget on a website, application, or other site. These widgets allow customers to communicate with agents in real time without requiring additional software or making an account.

To set up functioning live chat support:

1. Embed the chat widget onto your preferred site, typically by copying a snippet of code provided by the software.
2. Create agent profiles and launch the agent dashboard to centralize chats across channels.
3. Set up intelligent automation to route tickets and clear queues.
4. Customize features, including the widget’s layout and aesthetics, to match your brand and enable live chat to help meet business goals.
5. Train agents on live chat best practices.
6. Monitor performance by collecting customer feedback.

Live chat widgets can be embedded into other systems, including customer relationship management (CRM) software

and email platforms, to provide real-time communication options to all users.

From free live chat software to AI-powered solutions, we list the most common application options for live chat in our post. Discover your live chat software options below.

• Zendesk: Best for AI-powered CX
• LiveChat: Best for sales
• LiveAgent: Best for ticketing
• Tawk.to: Best for free live chat solutions
• Re:amaze: Best for SMBs
• Tidio: Best for e-commerce

To ensure consistent customer communication and satisfaction across channels, consider these essential features of live chat software.

• Omnichannel routing: Prioritize widgets that provide support across various channels, including email, social media, instant messaging sites, and more.
• Multilingual customer support: Service a global audience by investing in translation tools or multilingual agents.
• Live chat canned responses: Agents can use live chat canned responses to speed up interactions, keep messaging consistent, and resolve customer issues accurately.
• Feedback channels: Collect opinions and customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores to measure performance, identify areas for improvement, and build customer trust.
• Transcripts and archives: Record and store conversations for future reference, agent training, quality checks, and customer self-service.
• Security: Protect sensitive customer data, protect privacy, and adhere to compliance regulations with security like Advanced Customer Data and Privacy Protection from Zendesk.

With these features, your business can provide helpful, accurate solutions to customers—no matter what channel or language they use.

Our comparison chart breaks down the top live chat software options by starting price, free trial length, and key features.

Learn more about some common live chat apps to make the most out of live chat and see which one is right for your business needs.

1. Zendesk

Zendesk offers AI-powered live chat software to empower businesses to deliver fast, personalized chat conversations at scale. Our unified Agent Workspace allows teams to collaborate in real time and centrally manage live chat conversations with other channels, such as email or the phone. Support teams can also provide live chat support across a variety of chat and messaging channels beyond the web, including mobile, SMS, Facebook Messenger for business, WhatsApp, and more.

With Zendesk, businesses can use automation and AI to take chat experiences to the next level. For example, teams can:

• Personalize chat conversations using context from previous interactions.
• Use automated translation for multilingual support.
• Embed pre-filled values in tickets to save customers time and increase request efficiency.
• Intelligently route tickets to the right agent based on agent capacity, skillset, conversation priority, language, and intent.
• Expand and shift your tone of voice to adapt to customer needs, feelings, and expectations because how you say something is just as important as what you say.
• Surface ticket summaries and archived data for additional insights and faster resolutions.

And unlike your support agents, Zendesk AI never sleeps. Our Zendesk AI agents are always on, pre-trained for CX, and ready to go in just a few clicks. Once you’ve implemented AI agents, Zendesk can use previous conversations to suggest which topics need additional support. Plus, our advanced reporting and analytics capabilities deliver valuable, real-time customer data through pre-built and customizable dashboards.

Zendesk is intuitively designed for agents and works out of the box, allowing you to move at the speed of your customers and offer meaningful support from day one. Additionally, our live chat software is built to last and grow alongside your business, ensuring you have the knowledge and resources—like access to a worldwide community of CX leaders—to deliver stellar customer service.

Features:

• AI and automation
• Intelligent routing
• Unified workspace
• 1,700+ integrations
• Omnichannel support
• Real-time reporting
• Self-service
• Multilingual support
• Customizable models

Pricing: Plans start at $19 per agent/month, billed annually. A 14-day free trial is available.

Explore more Zendesk pricing plans.

2. LiveChat

LiveChat is a business live chat software for e-commerce and business-to-business (B2B) software as a service (SaaS) companies. With LiveChat, businesses can add live chat support for leads and customers to their website or app with a widget. Businesses can adjust the widget’s colors, website placement, and agent profiles.

This live chat software provides in-chat voice, video, and screen-sharing capabilities, allowing agents to guide customers through the buyer’s journey. LiveChat can also integrate with over 200 services, including Shopify, Squarespace, Facebook, WhatsApp, HubSpot, and Instagram. However, it doesn’t include a native chatbot, knowledge base, or help desk features and requires integrations with third-party solutions.

LiveChat’s reporting and analytics functionality allows businesses to create customer service and sales reports to track metrics like total chats, missed chats, chat satisfaction, and response time. Plus, e-commerce businesses can use product cards and other customer engagement features to aid with chat communications about specific products or services.

Features:

• Ticket routing
• Central workspace
• Integrations
• Omnichannel chat
• Reporting and analytics
• Chat ratings
• Work scheduler
• Agent profiles

Pricing: Plans start at $20 per person/month, billed annually. A 14-day free trial is available.

Learn more: Discover how

LiveChat integrates with Zendesk.

3. LiveAgent

LiveAgent is a customer support software with live chat functionality. Businesses using LiveAgent’s live chat support widget can customize chat functions to match their branding, including custom buttons, colors, and chat windows. Support agents can create canned responses to answer frequently asked questions (FAQs) and use the software’s real-time typing view feature to preview customer messages before they hit send.

With LiveAgent, businesses can set up automated ticket routing based on various characteristics, including random assignments or assignments based on agent workloads. This live chat software also supports proactive chat invitations to engage visitors automatically, and it can track customer information like chat history, time on site, geographic location, and IP address.

With its universal inbox, agents using LiveAgent can communicate with customers across channels, including email and social media, while fielding all tickets in a central location. LiveAgent’s built-in CRM also stores data like names, past purchases, and previous support interactions so agents can access customer-specific information to personalize interactions. Plus, the software offers reporting and analytics capabilities and AI features. However, businesses can only use LiveAgent AI by connecting their own OpenAI account.

Features:

• Ticket routing
• Central workspace
• Integrations
• Omnichannel chat
• Reporting and analytics
• Chat button
• Chat window docking

Pricing: Plans start at $15 per agent/month, billed annually. A 14-day free trial with a free email and a 30-day free trial with a company email are available.

Learn more: Discover how Zendesk vs. LiveAgent compare.

4. tawk.to

Tawk.to offers free live chat support to businesses through a customizable chat widget that allows agents to monitor and chat with website and app visitors. Along with Tawk.to’s JavaScript snippet, the software has a mobile app for iOS and Android devices, allowing agents to receive notifications and answer customer questions on the go.

The free live chat support software features:

• Multilingual capabilities in over 45 languages
• Storage for pre-written responses to customer questions
• A knowledge base
• Custom content categories and display specifications

With Tawk.to, businesses can access reporting dashboards covering metrics such as chat volume, average chat duration, first response time, and number of missed chats. Support agents can also monitor customer activity in real time and see a complete conversation history for any customer.

While its core offerings are free, some basic and necessary features require paid add-ons, including features like voice, video, and screen sharing (starting at $29 per month), the ability to remove tawk.to branding (starting at $19 per month), and virtual assistants (starting at $7 per month). This increases the total cost of ownership of the software and may lead businesses looking for these key features to consider a paid option instead.

Features:

• Ticket routing
• Central workspace
• Integrations
• Omnichannel chat
• Reporting and analytics
• Sentiment tracking
• Group messaging
• Customizable widgets

Pricing: Free with paid add-ons available.

5. Re:amaze

Re:amaze is a customer service, live chat, and help desk platform for online businesses. Its live chat offerings include a chat widget with customizable theme colors and icons. With Re:amaze, businesses can add a searchable help center to their live chat widget, control the visibility of certain topics, and create an internal library of assets.

Businesses using Re:amaze allow agents to escalate live chat conversations to video calls, share files with other team members, create and store transcripts, and view chat status indicators. Additionally, Re:amaze offers SMBs access to pre-built, custom chatbots that can gather initial customer information and create and store custom responses.

With Re:amaze’s shared inbox, agents can set up automated responses for specific messaging channels, manage omnichannel customer conversations, and see when another agent is already helping a customer. The platform includes real-time reporting functionality and AI features, though many are still in beta testing. Re:amaze also supports CRM capabilities, allowing SMBs to manage customer relationships through live chat conversations in one location.

Features:

• Ticket routing
• Central workspace
• Integrations
• Omnichannel chat
• Reporting and analytics
• In-chat video calls
• FAQ mode

Pricing: Plans start at $13.05 per team member/month, billed annually. A 14-day free trial is available.

6. Tidio

Tidio is an e-commerce customer service software with live chat features. With a widget or dedicated chat page through Tidio’s browser, desktop, or mobile apps, service agents can provide live chat support to website or app visitors. The chat widget includes live typing features and read receipts, allowing agents to see what customers are typing before they hit send and when they’ve viewed a message.

With Tidio, agents can create a library of pre-written responses for common questions, send out pre-chat surveys to collect customer data, and save chat transcripts to their devices or share them via email. Tidio also features a multichannel help desk and ticketing system that automates routing and integrates with e-commerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce.

This live chat software also allows teams to track, report on, and compare analytics like first response time, customer satisfaction, and cart abandonments. Plus, Tidio offers AI functionality, including chatbots, conversation flows, and Lyro AI, a conversational AI tool that can answer customer questions and generate personalized responses.

Features:

• Ticket routing
• Central workspace
• Integrations
• Omnichannel chat
• Reporting and analytics
• All-device support
• Multilingual support

Pricing: Paid plans start at $24.17 per month, billed annually. A free plan for individuals and a 7-day free trial are available.

When it comes to providing live chat support, there are plenty of live chat apps to choose from. The live chat website software that’s right for you depends on your growth plan, desired features, customer base, and more. For example, if you have a website supported by a WordPress engine, you’ll need to choose live chat software that can support WordPress chatbots.

Here are a few common factors to consider when selecting the best live chat services:

• Integration support: To get the most out of your live chat software, it must integrate with the rest of your business ecosystem. The Zendesk Marketplace boasts more than 1,700 plug-and-play integrations that empower and support service teams.
• Ease of use: Choose a solution like Zendesk that’s intuitively designed with agents in mind. This allows your team to spend more time helping customers and less time learning complex software.
• Scalability: The ideal live chat software can scale with your business so you don’t have to worry about upgrading your plan or switching to a new solution as your support team and customer base grows.
• Total cost of ownership: Live chat software like Zendesk considers the TCO of CX, sets up fast, and works right out of the box with no hidden costs to enable teams to continue providing stellar service without missing a beat.
• AI: The best live chat software includes AI capabilities to help your business streamline processes and do more with less. With our cutting-edge AI technology, Zendesk can intelligently anticipate customer needs, promote self-service support, and provide instant answers using natural human language.

By keeping these five factors in mind, your business can land on a live chat solution that holistically benefits your organization for years to come.