16 WordPress Live Chat Plugins to Connect With Customers in 2022

A WordPress live chat plugin can help you provide provide immediate, personalized, and efficient support for customers and prospects on your site.

This type of customer service is essential today. No one wants to be put on hold for 30+ minutes while being told they’re the next caller in line or send an email and receive an automated response 48 hours later. Customers want to speak to you on their terms and in their own time — or they'll go to another website where they can. 

So, if you're part of the 43% of internet users with a WordPress website and you need live chat functionality, this guide is here to help. We'll cover over 15 WordPress live chat plugins that will help you engage visitors and offer effective and speedy support, among other advantages. Then, we'll decide which is the best live chat plugin. 

Best WordPress Live Chat Plugins

1. HubSpot WordPress Plugin
2. Tawk.To Live Chat
3. Pure Chat
4. Better Messages
5. Tidio Live Chat
6. LiveChat
7. ActiveCampaign
8. Zotabox
9. Live Chat by Formilla
10. WP-Live Chat
11. JivoChat
12. LiveAgent
13. Crisp
14. ProProfs Chat
15. Live Chat by onWebChat
16. Live Chat by Customerly

1. HubSpot WordPress Plugin

Best for: Automating customer support and lead capture

With HubSpot's WordPress plugin, you get more than just live chat — you also get forms and pop-ups, CRM and contact management, email marketing, marketing automation, and reports and analytics. Plus HubSpot integrates with over 500 other tools.

In addition to the capabilities just mentioned, the plugin also allows you to add chatbots that function 24/7 to your site. This way, you can automate some of your support (e.g. use chatbots, rather than reps, to answer FAQs) and offer assistance to visitors when your team is offline (a.k.a. when reps are asleep). HubSpot's WordPress plugin is simple to install and applies to all plans and products.

2. Tawk.To Live Chat

Best for: Connecting with customers from any device

Tawk.To allows you to monitor live chat and engage users on your site in real-time for free. Interact with visitors from anywhere, whether on desktop or mobile. You can also use any of the free iOS, Android, Windows and Mac OSX apps to connect with customers.

The plugin has a single, multi-purpose dashboard through which reps can access multiple websites and work in tandem with other reps while answering live chat requests. All you need to do to get started with Tawk.To is create a free account.

To learn how to set up live chat and a knowledge base on your WordPress site, check out this video by IdeaSpot:

3. Pure Chat

Best for: Customizing your live chat widget

With Pure Chat, your live chat widget is fully customizable. Receive full transcriptions from rep-to-customer conversations and create automatic triggers for actions visitors take to boost the efficiency of the support you provide.

Decide whether or not you want your widget to display an offline indicator when reps aren't available — this signals to customers that they should email support instead or check back later. Lastly, there are analytics and visitor tracking on your site to help you better understand customer behaviors and needs.

4. Better Messages

Best for: Adding live chat to BuddyPress or other community sites

Better Messages — formerly known as BP Better Messages —makes adding live chat to your website simple. Originally designed for BuddyPress, this plugin is ideal for community building as well as providing customer support.

With Better Messages, you can create chatrooms or have private conversations with your visitors. You can also set up audio or video calls with groups or individuals. In these chats, users can send emojis, links, videos, and more.

5. Tidio Live Chat

Best for: Creating chatbots with a drag-and-drop editor

By adding the Tidio plugin to your WordPress site, you'll get more than just live chat — you'll also get access to other communication channels including chatbots, email marketing, and Messenger.

Email your visitors when they leave your website and/or live chat and send them campaign content with the plugin's Email Automation feature. Also, customize the look of your widget so it's complementary to your branding.

6. LiveChat

Best for: Managing live chat, chatbots, Messenger, email, WhatsApp, and SMS messages in one place

LiveChat has proactive chat invitations so your team can have personalized messages automatically sent to visitors. Work as efficiently as possible by managing multiple chat sessions at the same time and using canned responses for FAQs. Reps can also send links to visitors via live chat — this way, they're able to share knowledge base articles, directions, product information, and more.

LiveChat seamlessly integrates with services and apps — such as your HubSpot CRM — and you can select which pages of your site include live chat widgets. In fact, you can add a live chat widget to all pages of your website, including the checkout page, if you choose.

To learn why LiveChat is one of the best live chat plugins for WordPress, check out this video:

7. ActiveCampaign

Best for: Connecting with customers via live chat and following up over email

With the ActiveCampaign, plugin you can connect with customers across channels in a timely manner via live chat, automated chatbot workflows, and a unified inbox.

You can support all customers from one place, whether their question came from your website's live chat, email, or Facebook Messenger. You can also create a series of automated messages to support customers when reps are offline. Best yet: when a customer engages with a live chat agent, a lead is automatically created in the ActiveCampaign CRM.

While the plugin is free, you will need an ActiveCampaign account to use Conversations. Plans start at $9 per month.

8. Zotabox

Best for: Supporting customers via Facebook live chat

Zotobox is a premium plugin that adds Facebook live chat to your WordPress website.

The chat widget is customizable. You can customize the color, language, and message of the widget so it's complementary to your branding and audience. You can set it to appear as an icon, tab, or button at the corner of visitors's screens. 

You can also control who it is displayed to, how often, and on what devices. For example, you may set the chat widget to display to new visitors only, or only on desktop, or only on product pages. 

9. Live Chat by Formilla

Best for: Providing proactive live chat

In addition to using this plugin for live chat, you can add AI -powered chatbots to your site to manage FAQs that don't need human-to-human interaction. You can also create and share canned responses with site visitors to save reps time to focus on more complex customer challenges. Sign into your Live Chat account via app on an iPhone, iPad, or Android device to chat with visitors from anywhere.

There's a language support feature so you can customize the text of your widget to accommodate a wide audience. The live chat widget is also responsive, meaning it'll adjust in size based on whatever device your site visitors are viewing it from (desktop, mobile device, etc.).

10. WP-Live Chat by 3CX

Best for: Adding animations, surveys, and polls to live chat

With WP-Live Chat, customize your site's live chat by adding animations, surveys, and polls to make the experience of getting support more engaging for visitors. Create a custom message that appears when reps are offline and store all messages that are received while reps are offline for your records.

Make the chat anonymous to allow for greater visitor privacy if necessary. Additionally, WP-Live chat is compatible with multiple translation plugins so you can effectively help customers who are from or located in different parts of the world.

11. JivoChat

Best for: Providing live chat and phone support

JivoChat doesn't just offer live chat for your WordPress site — it also has communication capabilities for phone, email, and social media support so you can manage all conversations from a single tool.

If your business doesn't offer 24/7 support, visitor inquiries that happen while reps are offline stay on-hold in an inbox. Those inquiries are paired with visitor contact information so your team can get in touch with them during work hours. Reps can also transfer chats to other team members — for instance, a rep can send a customer's query to another rep who has greater expertise in that customer's specific problem area than they do.

12. LiveAgent

Best for: Providing all-in-one help desk software

LiveAgent is an all-in-one software solution with a keen focus on personalization, customization, and productivity. Instead of waiting for the customers to reach out, you can implement proactive chat invitations and offer your services when visitors land on your site. By using the online visitors' feature, you can monitor which pages customers are browsing, for how long, their location or URL, and strategically place invitations to increase the chance of a conversion.

LiveAgent chat plugin comes equipped with real-time typing view chats overview, chat distribution, internal chat, and video chat. If necessary, chat agents can even switch to a mobile device and provide customer support on the go. LiveAgent also offers a unique, free-to-use typing speed test directly on their website, through which agents can try to perfect their typing skills.

13. Crisp

Best for: Providing live chat from your support, sales, and marketing teams

With the Crisp plugin, you get inboxes for marketing, sales, and support. Use marketing live chat to get visitor contact information and tag specific conversations to create a qualified contact list for your team. Use sales live chat to answer questions that come in from prospects about your product or service. And use support live chat to help customers work through challenges and roadblocks that arise.

You can also share a live chat availability schedule on your site so visitors know the hours reps are online and ready to assist them.

14. ProProfs Chat

Best for: Resolving customer support inquiries and issues faster

From website support to scheduling callbacks, ProProfs Chat gives you the tools you need to offer quick and effective support to your customers. This live chat solution combines chatbot functionality with human support to enable your business to engage visitors round the clock. Your support team can also offer support anytime, anywhere with ProProf’s mobile app.

Integrate ProProfs Chat with other sales, support, and marketing tools like Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Salesforce, MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, Facebook, and more. Additionally, you can reduce your response time by displaying FAQ articles in the chat widget, routing visitors to the correct department, and sending canned responses when managing multiple chats.

15. Live Chat by onWebChat

Best for: Setting up live chat triggers

Live Chat by onWebChat is a simple live chat plugin for WordPress that can be set up in minutes. With this plugin, you can automatically initiate a chat with your visitors based on triggers. For example, if you run a WooCommerce site, you may trigger live chat if a user has spent a certain period of time on a checkout page to ensure they don't abandon their cart.

All you need to do to get started with onWebChat is create a free account.

16. Live Chat by Customerly

Best for: Providing help articles automatically when live chat agents are away

Live Chat by Customerly lets you add AI-integrated live chat to your WordPress site. With this plugin, you can build and integrate a help center. Using that information, your AI-powered live chat will automatically respond with help articles while your agents are away.   

You can also customize your live chat widget, save user properties, and provide video live chat with this free plugin. You just need to create a free account. 

What is the best live chat plugin for WordPress?

The “best” live chat plugin will depend on your unique needs and budget. While there’s no ultimate best, there are a number of plugins that will be ideal for certain purposes. Below we’ll review which plugins are best for specific use cases.

Installing a Live Chat Plugin

Live chat plugins have a wide variety of capabilities and helpful features to assist your team and make reps work more efficiently. This way, reps save valuable time that they can then put towards supporting customers with more complex issues. Get started by installing a plugin on your WordPress site to streamline the process of providing support to your visitors and customers.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in April 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.