Top fifteen Live Talk Apps for Your Shopify Store

Have you noticed this thing they display on many online shops and websites these days?

You’ve seen this lil’ talk button on so many websites now that it’s almost ubiquitous to you.

It’s the “live talk for website or online store” plugin that this post is all about.

John wants to buy a Game of Thrones t-shirt and you sell just the thing.

He googles and comes to your store. He looks around, finds what he needs and is about to make a purchase.

But he stops. He wants to know if there’s some discount he can use. So he looks for a way to contact you right away.

Your store has a contact form and you’ve listed an email ID. Fine.

But John is not from the 1950s. He’s a millennial. He’s kind of impatient.

So he goes to another store, finds the exact t-shirt (most likely not as good as the ones you sell), and looks to contact the seller to ask for a discount!

And he sees this:

Voila! He starts talking with a live customer rep and within minutes, he’s purchased the t-shirts from the competitor’s site.

So what made the big difference?

A elementary, modest, chatbox.

Customers to any online store feel a lot more better and willing to purchase from it when they are able to talk with someone on the site and know that there’s a real human behind the website.

It’s elementary, human psychology that we carry over from our days of shopping in the offline, where salespeople are still significant when it comes to conversions.

The modest live talk software is this magical thing that can help your shop increase your conversion.

I can go on and on about why live talk apps are one of the best contraptions for your online shop – especially if you’re embarking out and attempting to optimize your store (even if you’re a one-man operation or understaffed to have a dedicated person on talk) but the latest Messenger integration in Shopify and this editorial should explain why a live talk is a must-have for your online shop.

So what we have here is a list of 15 of the best live talk apps for your Shopify store.

(Psst: many of them work on other shops and standalone websites too so feel free to go through the list even if you don’t have a Shopify store)

1. Userlike

Price: Free, paid plans commence at $29

• Most beautifully crafted interface for the talk and for the admin panel (in the backend). Lightly the most-minimal live talk plugin.
• Optimized for mobile screens too
• Massive integration with a lot of apps and platforms.
• Not fairly a lot of configuration but quick switches to customize the talk window and support for teams.

Two. Happyfox Talk

Price: Paid plans embark at $14.99

• Excellent, minimalist interface with some truly cool customization (so you can edit the colors to match those of your website)
• Features a mini dashboard so you get a quick glance of all necessary customer support data
• Happyfox integrates with not just your Shopify store but your Mailchimp account and Google Analytics too
• One of the most lightweight apps/plugins for your store

Shopstorm wrote a wonderful breakdown of how you should level-up your Shopify customer support. They break down customer service to email support, talk and phone options and gathering useful feedback from customers. Check it out here.

Three. Zopim

Price: Starts at $14 (per agent, per month), with free 14-day trial

• Some of the best collection of triggers so all of your communication is contextual
• Acquired by Zendesk (which is a fine customer support company) so there’s some cool development going on with Zopim
• These folks are also working on Facebook Messenger integration
• A quick view of your store’s visitors lets you find out who’s been on the site, for how long and what they are doing
• A sturdy reporting system to keep track of agents’ spectacles

Four. Quick Facebook Live Talk

• Integrates directly with your Facebook Messenger (for Page)
• Facebook-native UI on the chatbox so there’s very little room for customization. Sometimes looks dated.
• No admin panel hassles – messages go straight to your Facebook Messenger inbox and you can keep track of them lightly
• Totally free to use. No thresholds whatsoever

Five. Chatra

Price: Free, paid plan at $11 (per agent, per month)

• Triggered talks let you begin a talk at a specific event – helps you close a sale or increase conversion by engaging with the customer at the right time
• Add numerous agents to the same talk – helpful when one agent doesn’t have enough information and needs some other agent’s help
• Capability to see what a user is typing (even before they’ve sent it to you). Supposedly, helps you be ready with an reaction!

“Live talk” is one of the five growth ideas to grow your business, writes Hemani of SETalks. You should certainly check out his post for some creative ways to hack your growth. (One example: gamify your title tags to convert more visitors into customers.)

6. Tawk.to

• Tawk embarked as a talk app but is developing into a full-fledged help and support system
• Has a saved-replies feature that can be invoked with a “/command” feature (interesting because of the usability)
• Also features a handy “alias” option so one person can have numerous aliases. Useful if your store is a man-show and you treat everything
• Comes with a lot of triggers for contextual talk
• Also introduced a full-fledged ticketing system (totally free)
• Most notably: you can install the system on unlimited websites for free (and unlimited agents)

7. Livechat

Price: Starts at $16 (per agent, per month)

• A feature that lets you take a peek at what the visitor is typing (like Chatra above) so you are ready with an response
• Canned responses to make it quicker to talk with a visitor – a very useful feature if you’re dealing with lots of shipping / discount queries
• Integrates with Facebook
• Surveys to help you analyze agent spectacle
• You can also display social buttons on the talk screen (but it kind of demolishes the look of the chatbox)

“Friction” is what makes users leave your site or not purchase your product. As someone who runs an online shop, your job is to reduce / eliminate friction at every stage of your visitor's journey through your sales funnel. According to Customer Think, live talk is one of the most significant ways to reduce this friction. (more ideas on what causes friction and how to liquidate it on their wonderful blog).

8. Tidio Live Talk

Price: Free, paid plans embark at $12 per user per month

• One of the best mobile-optimized live talk plugins out there
• Also features a Chrome notification plugin
• Has a minimalist design that keeps the chatbox lightweight and not very obtrusive (unlike many others)
• Very contextual talk that makes sure you know who you’re talking to – is it a repeat customer? a repeat visitor? a fresh visitor? etc.
• You can create automatic responses based on your active talks – makes replying to queries indeed quick (Two clicks). This AI-like feature learns as you talk more

9. Unspoiled Talk

Price: Free, starts at $15 / month (Trio users)

• These guys know how to make a live talk app look delightful
• Features a quick bird’s-eye view of visitors on your site so you know who to embark talking with
• iOS and Android native apps to make sure you’re available for talk even when you’re not on your computer
• 500+ integrations thanks to Zapier
• Visitor tracking

Matt's thoughts on why every ecommerce site should have a live talk is well worth a quick read. One of the interesting points he makes is having live talk is actually cost-effective compared to having phone support.

Ten. Olark

Price: Free, paid plan starts at $12.99

• One of the very first things I noticed was that Olark integrates with a ton of IM/XMPP clients (instant messaging apps) besides the web app
• Screenshare (called co-browsing) lets your visitor share their screen with you. Agents can take control too
• Proactive talking with targeted talks (that you can embark using triggers)

Live talk is only the very first step to what's moving the world of ecommerce – “Conversational Ecommerce”. Frosmo's future trends article goes somewhat extensively over how chatbots – the next step after you install live talk plugins and begin using them – will form the world of ecommerce transactions. It's a fascinating read to help you understand that A.I is truly coming into mainstream swifter than we thought. One of the live talk apps listed here has a chatbot feature. Find it out 😉

11. Unbeatable

• Another minimalist talk interface with some indeed cool customization options
• No limit to how many team members you can add
• Keeps a clean track of talk history / previous interactions
• Talk labels to segment the significant talks from the others

One of the reasons why Shopify came up with their Facebook Messenger support is the idea of omni-channel support. When you are looking for a live talk system, attempt to find out if you can fit it into your other channels (marketing, brand building etc.). Social is a good place for this because it has proved to be the beloved support channel for customers. Alexa writes about omni-channel as being one of the ideas to enhance your customer support in her Brainsins guestpost.

12. Re:amaze

Price: $25 per agent per month (14-day free trial)

• Live talk is part of a thicker customer support system, which is fine for enterprise level Shopify store owners
• Sturdy talk system (but with a indeed minimal and beautiful design)
• Has a lot of embeddable widgets that makes it effortless to set up the system and get embarked right away
• There’s a bit of automation involved so that makes it effortless to treat incoming messages

13. Chatpirate

Price: Starts at $7.00

• Can exchange files through the talk box
• Unlimited agents and talks in all plans (including the starter)
• Features a bunch of cool triggers for all those contextual talk initiations
• You can also monitor visitors (where they are, what they’re doing etc.) on the $14 an $99 plans.
• Supports a sizable bunch of language packs including German, French, Dutch, Norwegian, Grind, Russian, and more.

14. Botego (Live talk + talk bot)

• This one’s not just a live talk plugin. It’s a “chatbot” that learns as you reaction queries and treat customer support
• Lots of customization available
• The chatbot employs Natural Language Processing to suggest answers even before the agents
• You can add/eliminate queries that the chatbot will treat (based on keyword triggers)

In the words of Combidesk, “we believe that ‘just' a talk integration on your webshop is not enough. As a webshop holder you want to know who you are talking with, what the customer’s history is and what is he looking for.” This is why, when you are about to get a live talk plugin, you should look for how much data that plugin is able to give you about your visitor. You must know more about your visitor than just knowing that this is a visitor to your site and is interested in one of your products. Combidesk writes more about how you can use a live talk plugin to level up your customer support and sales.

15. Shoutsupport

Price: Starts at $Four.99 (goes up to $Legitimate.99), 30-day free trial

• Most likely the only live talk app we tested that has an SMS-notification feature. When you are away from live talk, you get an SMS notification whenever someone on your site wants to talk.
• A basic level of customization but crafted specifically to work excellent on mobile
• Minimal features to customize or switch the behavior… but works good.

Bonus. REVE Talk

Price: Starts at $15.00 per month

To add to this list of excellent live-chat apps, we found another. REVE Talk is a full-scale customer support app that you can add to your shop/website in a jiffy. It comes with some of the most sought-after features bundled right away (for example, Facebook Messenger integration and Auto-triggers). In the Advanced plan, you also get to interact with your shop/site visitors through live movie and audio.

REVE Talk is a total bundle. It has analytics, department management (that helps you redirect queries to the right department), a mobile SDK, and a bunch of other features.

What's next?

Since every live talk app comes with free trial, why not attempt every app on this list and find out what fits your store best?

Top fifteen Live Talk Apps for Your Shopify Store

Top fifteen Live Talk Apps for Your Shopify Store

Have you noticed this thing they demonstrate on many online shops and websites these days?

You’ve seen this little talk button on so many websites now that it’s almost ubiquitous to you.

It’s the “live talk for website or online store” plugin that this post is all about.

John wants to buy a Game of Thrones t-shirt and you sell just the thing.

He googles and comes to your store. He looks around, finds what he needs and is about to make a purchase.

But he stops. He wants to know if there’s some discount he can use. So he looks for a way to contact you right away.

Your store has a contact form and you’ve listed an email ID. Good.

But John is not from the 1950s. He’s a millennial. He’s kind of impatient.

So he goes to another store, finds the exact t-shirt (most likely not as good as the ones you sell), and looks to contact the seller to ask for a discount!

And he sees this:

Voila! He starts talking with a live customer rep and within minutes, he’s purchased the t-shirts from the competitor’s site.

So what made the big difference?

A plain, discreet, chatbox.

Customers to any online store feel a lot more better and willing to purchase from it when they are able to talk with someone on the site and know that there’s a real human behind the website.

It’s elementary, human psychology that we carry over from our days of shopping in the offline, where salespeople are still significant when it comes to conversions.

The modest live talk software is this magical thing that can help your shop increase your conversion.

I can go on and on about why live talk apps are one of the best devices for your online shop – especially if you’re embarking out and attempting to optimize your store (even if you’re a one-man operation or understaffed to have a dedicated person on talk) but the latest Messenger integration in Shopify and this editorial should explain why a live talk is a must-have for your online shop.

So what we have here is a list of 15 of the best live talk apps for your Shopify store.

(Psst: many of them work on other shops and standalone websites too so feel free to go through the list even if you don’t have a Shopify store)

1. Userlike

Price: Free, paid plans commence at $29

• Most beautifully crafted interface for the talk and for the admin panel (in the backend). Lightly the most-minimal live talk plugin.
• Optimized for mobile screens too
• Massive integration with a lot of apps and platforms.
• Not fairly a lot of configuration but quick switches to customize the talk window and support for teams.

Two. Happyfox Talk

Price: Paid plans begin at $14.99

• Fine, minimalist interface with some indeed cool customization (so you can edit the colors to match those of your website)
• Features a mini dashboard so you get a quick glance of all necessary customer support data
• Happyfox integrates with not just your Shopify store but your Mailchimp account and Google Analytics too
• One of the most lightweight apps/plugins for your store

Shopstorm wrote a wonderful breakdown of how you should level-up your Shopify customer support. They break down customer service to email support, talk and phone options and gathering useful feedback from customers. Check it out here.

Trio. Zopim

Price: Starts at $14 (per agent, per month), with free 14-day trial

• Some of the best collection of triggers so all of your communication is contextual
• Acquired by Zendesk (which is a superb customer support company) so there’s some cool development going on with Zopim
• These folks are also working on Facebook Messenger integration
• A quick view of your store’s visitors lets you find out who’s been on the site, for how long and what they are doing
• A sturdy reporting system to keep track of agents’ spectacles

Four. Quick Facebook Live Talk

• Integrates directly with your Facebook Messenger (for Page)
• Facebook-native UI on the chatbox so there’s very little room for customization. Sometimes looks dated.
• No admin panel hassles – messages go straight to your Facebook Messenger inbox and you can keep track of them lightly
• Totally free to use. No thresholds whatsoever

Five. Chatra

Price: Free, paid plan at $11 (per agent, per month)

• Triggered talks let you begin a talk at a specific event – helps you close a sale or increase conversion by engaging with the customer at the right time
• Add numerous agents to the same talk – helpful when one agent doesn’t have enough information and needs some other agent’s help
• Capability to see what a user is typing (even before they’ve sent it to you). Supposedly, helps you be ready with an response!

“Live talk” is one of the five growth ideas to grow your business, writes Hemani of SETalks. You should certainly check out his post for some creative ways to hack your growth. (One example: gamify your title tags to convert more visitors into customers.)

6. Tawk.to

• Tawk began as a talk app but is developing into a full-fledged help and support system
• Has a saved-replies feature that can be invoked with a “/command” feature (interesting because of the usability)
• Also features a handy “alias” option so one person can have numerous aliases. Useful if your store is a man-show and you treat everything
• Comes with a lot of triggers for contextual talk
• Also introduced a full-fledged ticketing system (totally free)
• Most notably: you can install the system on unlimited websites for free (and unlimited agents)

7. Livechat

Price: Starts at $16 (per agent, per month)

• A feature that lets you take a peek at what the visitor is typing (like Chatra above) so you are ready with an reaction
• Canned responses to make it quicker to talk with a visitor – a very useful feature if you’re dealing with lots of shipping / discount queries
• Integrates with Facebook
• Surveys to help you analyze agent spectacle
• You can also showcase social buttons on the talk screen (but it kind of demolishes the look of the chatbox)

“Friction” is what makes users leave your site or not purchase your product. As someone who runs an online shop, your job is to reduce / eliminate friction at every stage of your visitor's journey through your sales funnel. According to Customer Think, live talk is one of the most significant ways to reduce this friction. (more ideas on what causes friction and how to liquidate it on their wonderful blog).

8. Tidio Live Talk

Price: Free, paid plans embark at $12 per user per month

• One of the best mobile-optimized live talk plugins out there
• Also features a Chrome notification plugin
• Has a minimalist design that keeps the chatbox lightweight and not very obtrusive (unlike many others)
• Very contextual talk that makes sure you know who you’re talking to – is it a repeat customer? a repeat visitor? a fresh visitor? etc.
• You can create automatic responses based on your active talks – makes replying to queries truly quick (Two clicks). This AI-like feature learns as you talk more

9. Unspoiled Talk

Price: Free, starts at $15 / month (Three users)

• These guys know how to make a live talk app look delightful
• Features a quick bird’s-eye view of visitors on your site so you know who to commence talking with
• iOS and Android native apps to make sure you’re available for talk even when you’re not on your computer
• 500+ integrations thanks to Zapier
• Visitor tracking

Matt's thoughts on why every ecommerce site should have a live talk is well worth a quick read. One of the interesting points he makes is having live talk is actually cost-effective compared to having phone support.

Ten. Olark

Price: Free, paid plan starts at $12.99

• One of the very first things I noticed was that Olark integrates with a ton of IM/XMPP clients (instant messaging apps) besides the web app
• Screenshare (called co-browsing) lets your visitor share their screen with you. Agents can take control too
• Proactive talking with targeted talks (that you can commence using triggers)

Live talk is only the very first step to what's moving the world of ecommerce – “Conversational Ecommerce”. Frosmo's future trends article goes somewhat extensively over how chatbots – the next step after you install live talk plugins and begin using them – will form the world of ecommerce transactions. It's a fascinating read to help you understand that A.I is indeed coming into mainstream quicker than we thought. One of the live talk apps listed here has a chatbot feature. Find it out 😉

11. Unbeatable

• Another minimalist talk interface with some indeed cool customization options
• No limit to how many team members you can add
• Keeps a clean track of talk history / previous interactions
• Talk labels to segment the significant talks from the others

One of the reasons why Shopify came up with their Facebook Messenger support is the idea of omni-channel support. When you are looking for a live talk system, attempt to find out if you can fit it into your other channels (marketing, brand building etc.). Social is a excellent place for this because it has proved to be the dearest support channel for customers. Alexa writes about omni-channel as being one of the ideas to enhance your customer support in her Brainsins guestpost.

12. Re:amaze

Price: $25 per agent per month (14-day free trial)

• Live talk is part of a thicker customer support system, which is good for enterprise level Shopify store owners
• Sturdy talk system (but with a indeed minimal and beautiful design)
• Has a lot of embeddable widgets that makes it effortless to set up the system and get commenced right away
• There’s a bit of automation involved so that makes it effortless to treat incoming messages

13. Chatpirate

Price: Starts at $7.00

• Can exchange files through the talk box
• Unlimited agents and talks in all plans (including the starter)
• Features a bunch of cool triggers for all those contextual talk initiations
• You can also monitor visitors (where they are, what they’re doing etc.) on the $14 an $99 plans.
• Supports a sizable bunch of language packs including German, French, Dutch, Norwegian, Grind, Russian, and more.

14. Botego (Live talk + talk bot)

• This one’s not just a live talk plugin. It’s a “chatbot” that learns as you reaction queries and treat customer support
• Lots of customization available
• The chatbot employs Natural Language Processing to suggest answers even before the agents
• You can add/eliminate queries that the chatbot will treat (based on keyword triggers)

In the words of Combidesk, “we believe that ‘just' a talk integration on your webshop is not enough. As a webshop possessor you want to know who you are talking with, what the customer’s history is and what is he looking for.” This is why, when you are about to get a live talk plugin, you should look for how much data that plugin is able to give you about your visitor. You must know more about your visitor than just knowing that this is a visitor to your site and is interested in one of your products. Combidesk writes more about how you can use a live talk plugin to level up your customer support and sales.

15. Shoutsupport

Price: Starts at $Four.99 (goes up to $Legal.99), 30-day free trial

• Very likely the only live talk app we tested that has an SMS-notification feature. When you are away from live talk, you get an SMS notification whenever someone on your site wants to talk.
• A basic level of customization but crafted specifically to work superb on mobile
• Minimal features to customize or switch the behavior… but works good.

Bonus. REVE Talk

Price: Starts at $15.00 per month

To add to this list of excellent live-chat apps, we found another. REVE Talk is a full-scale customer support app that you can add to your shop/website in a jiffy. It comes with some of the most sought-after features bundled right away (for example, Facebook Messenger integration and Auto-triggers). In the Advanced plan, you also get to interact with your shop/site visitors through live movie and audio.

REVE Talk is a total bundle. It has analytics, department management (that helps you redirect queries to the right department), a mobile SDK, and a bunch of other features.

What's next?

Since every live talk app comes with free trial, why not attempt every app on this list and find out what fits your store best?

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