Live chat software for a small business website

The best live chat software for a small business website depends on who will be answering it. If a few of you will take every chat yourselves, tawk.to costs nothing however many teammates you add, and Freshchat is free for a team of up to 10. If two to four of you share one inbox, Crisp charges $45 a month for the whole workspace, not per seat. Tidio fits a shop that wants Instagram and WhatsApp messages in the same place, and HubSpot fits a team whose sales already live in its CRM. LiveChat, Intercom and Zendesk are made for a full-time team working the chat, and every seat is billed.

If nobody can sit with the chat all day, you want a tool that answers first. That’s what we built Deacon for. It’s an AI customer support agent that replies to your visitors from your own docs within seconds, at any hour, and when a question needs a human, you answer in that same chat from Deacon’s dashboard. It has a free plan, with no card and no end date.

Here are eight live chat tools and Deacon, ranked for a small team, from the cheapest way to start to the ones made for a support desk. Every price below was read on the vendor’s own pages on 25 September 2026, and links to the page we read it on.

The best live chat software for small businesses, side by side

Each row gives the free plan, the lowest price you can pay and what it’s charged by, the AI that answers for you, and who the tool suits.

What to look for in live chat for a small team

Most website live chat software looks alike in a demo, with a bubble in the corner and an inbox behind it. Four things set them apart once it’s on your site.

• What it charges by. LiveChat, Freshchat, HubSpot, Intercom and Zendesk bill for every seat, and LiveChat’s FAQ says that includes every user account, logged in or not. Crisp bills the workspace, Tidio bills the conversations your team replies in, and tawk.to doesn’t bill for live chat at all.
• Whether someone has to be online. Live chat promises a fast first response time, and it keeps that promise only while someone is watching. Ask what a visitor sees at 2am on a Sunday.
• The AI’s meter. No two meters here count the same thing. tawk.to counts the messages its AI sends, Crisp spends dollars of credit, Tidio counts Lyro conversations and Freshchat counts 24-hour sessions. Intercom, Zendesk and HubSpot charge for conversations their AI settles. Find out what happens at the limit, because some stop answering and some keep billing.
• The badge. On tawk.to, the “powered by” line costs $29 a month for each site to remove. Crisp only drops it on Plus, at $295 a month, and LiveChat removes it only for Enterprise customers who ask. HubSpot removes its live chat branding from Starter up.

Deacon, an AI that answers first with you in the same chat

Deacon is an AI customer support agent, built for founders and small teams who handle support without a support desk. Plain live chat only works while someone is there to type. Deacon replies to your visitors on its own within seconds, at night and at weekends too, using your help pages, the files you upload and any text you paste in, and in the language each visitor writes in. You install it with one script tag, and there’s no flow or decision tree to draw first.

If a question falls outside your content, Deacon tells the visitor it doesn’t know rather than making something up, and offers a field for their email address. Your team’s owners get an email when a visitor leaves an address or asks to speak to someone, so nobody has to keep an eye on the chat.

That’s where the live chat comes in, and it’s on every plan, the free one included. Anyone on your team can open a conversation in Deacon’s dashboard and type a reply. Sending it takes the conversation over, and Deacon stops answering there. If the visitor still has the chat open, your message shows up in it signed with your first name and your company, “Maya from Acme”, say. If they’ve gone and left their address in that conversation, it reaches them by email instead. Press the hand-back button when you’re finished, and Deacon picks the conversation up again. Nothing you or the visitor write to each other uses up your plan’s answers.

Live chat makes you type the same answer again tomorrow. Deacon learns it instead. Each question your content didn’t cover sits in the dashboard with an Answer this button beside it. Answer it once, press Save & check, and Deacon asks itself again, shows you its new reply and tells you how many other open questions your answer also covers. It also keeps every conversation, searchable by what visitors asked. Topics gathers similar questions, counts how many people asked each one and tags most of them as a how-to, a bug report, a feature ask and so on, so you see what everyone needs, not only the customers who complain loudest.

The plans change only how many answers, how much knowledge, how many crawled pages and how many seats you get. Every feature comes with all three, and none of them is priced per person.

A conversation uses about two answers, so the free plan covers around 25 of them each month, and it asks for no card and never expires. You’re never billed past your answers, and no plan moves you up by itself. No plan puts a “powered by” line on your site, either.

Deacon has no shared inbox with routing, assignment or a rota. If several of you will staff the chat all day, you want a live chat inbox, and the tools below are built for that.

tawk.to, free live chat for the whole team

tawk.to doesn’t charge for live chat, however many teammates you add. It makes its money from optional add-ons, and it prices them per site rather than per seat. Its add-ons page claims 99% of businesses never pay for any. It suits a team that will answer every chat itself and doesn’t want a seat bill.

The AI is AI Assist, and tawk.to’s billing article lists four plans. Hobby is free, with 1 AI agent, 100 message credits a month and up to 100 pages of your site crawled. Growth, at $29 a month or $290 a year, has 1,000 credits and 3 AI agents, and it’s the first plan to list escalations to human agents. Every message the AI sends uses one credit, so five replies in a chat use five. Whitelabel, the add-on that removes “Powered by tawk.to”, costs a further $29 a month per site. There’s more in tawk.to pricing, and tawk.to alternatives lists what else is free.

Crisp, one price for the whole workspace

Crisp charges each plan per workspace, so up to the plan’s seat count, a new teammate costs nothing extra. Its free plan has 2 seats, the chat widget, a shared inbox and mobile apps, but no AI credits. Mini costs $45 a month with 4 seats. Essentials costs $95 with 10 and brings in WhatsApp, Instagram, SMS, routing and a knowledge base.

Hugo, Crisp’s AI agent, arrives with Mini and $5 of credits, which Crisp reckons covers around 90 automated conversations, and Essentials comes with $25. Its Hugo billing article estimates $0.05 to $0.10 a conversation. When the credits are used up, Hugo goes quiet and new chats land with your operators, unless you’ve turned on Pay-As-You-Go. Removing the “We run on Crisp” watermark takes Plus, which costs $295 a month. It suits two to four people working one inbox together. There’s more in Crisp chat pricing, and Crisp chat alternatives compares the tools people move to.

Tidio, priced by conversation for online shops

Tidio bills by conversation, not by seat. A chat, ticket, email or social thread becomes billable when someone on your team replies to it, and replies from Lyro don’t count. The free plan allows 50 of those a month across 10 seats. Starter raises it to 100 for $29 a month, or $24.17 on yearly billing, and Growth begins at 250 for $59, or $49.17 yearly, with automatic chat assignment added. Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and email all appear in its plan table, which is why it suits a shop.

Lyro, the AI agent, is a separate purchase. Each account gets 50 Lyro conversations free, one time only, and then Lyro starts at $39 a month for 50, or $32.50 on yearly billing. You can take the Tidio branding off with an add-on on Growth, $16.67 a month on yearly billing, and Plus includes it. The 7-day trial of Starter or Growth needs no card, and the account returns to Free afterwards. There’s more in Tidio pricing, and Tidio alternatives prices its rivals with their AI switched on.

Freshchat, free for up to 10 agents

Freshchat, from Freshworks, is the one to try if several of you will answer chats and want to start without paying. Its free plan covers up to 10 agents, with a widget for your website and mobile apps, a team inbox, email, and roles and permissions. There’s no AI on it.

The Growth plan, at $23 an agent a month or $19 on yearly billing, adds Facebook and Instagram messages, SMS and WhatsApp, reporting and Freddy AI Agent. Freddy starts with 500 free sessions, a one-off for the whole account, after which every 100 sessions cost $49. A session is everything a visitor says to the AI within 24 hours. Automatic assignment and a dashboard showing who’s available both need Pro, which costs $59 an agent a month or $49 yearly. Freshchat pricing and Freshchat alternatives go further.

HubSpot, free live chat beside a CRM

HubSpot gives up to 2 users free live chat, with no card, alongside the rest of its free tools. The chat shows HubSpot’s branding, and the free bots have limited features. Starter removes that branding for $10 a seat a month, or $7 on yearly billing, with a list price of $20 struck through beside it.

Customer agent, HubSpot’s AI for answering customers, needs a Professional plan, such as Service Hub Professional. Professional costs $90 a seat a month on yearly billing, or $100 a seat paid monthly on a yearly commitment, and HubSpot adds a one-time onboarding fee of $1,500 that you can’t skip. Customer agent is paid for in HubSpot Credits. Professional comes with 3,000 a month, and HubSpot’s rate sheet takes 50 of them for every conversation the agent resolves. Extra credits cost $0.01 each, which makes a resolution $0.50 by our arithmetic. It’s the natural pick when your sales and marketing already live in HubSpot. HubSpot’s chatbot covers its free bots and the AI agent in more detail.

LiveChat, per person for a full-time team

LiveChat bills per person, and its plans assume a team working the chat all day. It has no free plan, just a 14-day trial that doesn’t ask for a card. Starter costs $25 a month, or $19 yearly, for one user, with 60 days of history and 100 visitors tracked. Team is $59 a person, or $49 yearly, for unlimited users and history. Business, at $89 or $79 yearly, adds a work scheduler and staffing prediction.

The AI in LiveChat’s plans helps your team rather than answering visitors. Each plan comes with Text Intelligence. On Starter, that means Copilot, an assistant for setting up and using LiveChat. Team adds reply suggestions and Insights, which pulls the most common questions out of your chats. An AI agent that answers customers means buying Text, a sister product, from $19 a user a month on yearly billing. The “Powered by LiveChat” line comes off only for Enterprise customers, on request. LiveChat alternatives covers where people go instead, and Tidio vs LiveChat explains how LiveChat and Text fit together.

Intercom, a helpdesk with Fin answering first

Intercom is a full helpdesk. Its Messenger is the live chat on your site, and Fin, its AI agent, answers there on every plan. There’s a 14-day trial with no card, but no free plan.

Intercom is running a price test. In one of our reads the page listed Essential at $29 a seat a month, or $19 on yearly billing, and in another at $29 on yearly billing. Fin is billed at $0.99 an outcome. An outcome counts when a customer confirms their issue is solved, asks for nothing more after Fin’s reply, or when Fin completes a workflow, a handoff included. Each conversation is charged once, however many questions Fin answers in it. It fits a startup whose team already spends its day in a shared inbox. There’s more in Intercom pricing and Intercom alternatives.

Zendesk, live chat inside a full helpdesk

Zendesk is a helpdesk first, with live chat as one channel among several. Its cheapest plan, Support Team, covers email and a ticketing system, so live chat and messaging begin on Suite Team. That’s $55 an agent a month on yearly billing, or $69 month to month, and it adds a knowledge base, routing across channels and phone support. You can trial Suite Professional for 14 days, but there’s no free plan.

Zendesk’s pricing page says every plan includes its AI agents, billed by automated resolution, a request the AI resolved without a person stepping in. Each plan includes some, and the page’s plan comparison prices the rest at $2.00 each pay as you go, or $1.50 if you commit ahead. It suits a support team that answers email, phone and chat in one place. Zendesk AI pricing sets out the allowance, and Zendesk pricing the plans.

Which live chat software fits your team

Start from who will answer the chat, and when. For the rest of the stack, such as a help centre and email, customer support tools for small teams prices each one.

If you handle support yourself and can’t sit with the chat all day, start with Deacon. It replies first, within seconds, and you step into the same chat when a question needs you, without a seat you have to staff.

If a few of you will answer every chat and don’t want to pay, tawk.to is free for any number of people, and Freshchat is free for up to 10. If two to four of you share an inbox, Crisp’s price holds steady as you add them. Tidio fits a shop that wants Instagram and WhatsApp next to the chat, and HubSpot a team that already works in its CRM.

If a full-time team covers the chat in shifts, LiveChat’s Business plan comes with a scheduler for it. Intercom fits a team that wants its AI to answer first inside a full helpdesk, and Zendesk one that handles email and phone as well as chat.

Questions about live chat software

Is there free live chat software?

Yes. Five of the tools here have a free plan for live chat you answer yourself. tawk.to has no limit on teammates, Freshchat allows 10 agents, Tidio 10 seats and 50 conversations a month, and HubSpot and Crisp 2 users each. A little AI comes free on two of them, tawk.to’s 100 message credits a month and Tidio’s one-off 50 Lyro conversations. Deacon’s free plan includes 50 answers a month, every feature and replying in the chat yourself, with no card. LiveChat, Intercom and Zendesk offer trials only. Free AI chatbots for a website compares the free plans where an AI does the answering.

Do I need someone online to use live chat?

For plain live chat, yes. Visitors only get a quick reply while someone is there, and many tools fall back to a message form when nobody is. LiveChat, for one, can ask a visitor for their email once your agents have gone quiet for a set time. tawk.to’s Why is tawk.to free? page even offers trained human agents at $1 an hour to answer chats for you. With an AI that replies first, nobody has to be online. Deacon answers at any hour within seconds and emails your team’s owners when a visitor leaves an address or asks for a person.

Should I use live chat or a chatbot?

Use live chat if someone can watch it during your customers’ working day, and a chatbot if nobody can. For most small teams the answer is both in one window, an AI that answers what your docs cover and hands the rest to a person. Chatbot vs live chat weighs the two, and what each costs in money and hours.

Can Deacon replace live chat software for a support team?

It can for a founder or a small team, within your plan’s seats, which are 1 on Free, 3 on Starter and 10 on Growth. Every teammate sees every conversation and can reply from the dashboard. What Deacon doesn’t have is a shared inbox with routing, assignment or a rota, and it answers only in the chat on your website, never on WhatsApp, Instagram, SMS or email. If several agents staff the chat all day, a live chat inbox such as LiveChat, Freshchat or Crisp is built for them.

What if the visitor has gone before I reply?

A Deacon conversation closes after twenty minutes with no messages. Reply before then, while the visitor still has the chat open, and they read your reply there. Reply later and it goes to the email address they left in that conversation, if they left one. So when your content doesn’t cover a question, Deacon asks the visitor for an address.