10+ Live chat tools like Intercom, Drift, Zendesk, Tawk.io, etc. compared with Chatwoot.
Tags: opensource, linux, cloud, productivity
Published: 2021-07-27 10:49:34

In the era of increasing digital products, chat apps have become bloated with features and complexities.

A lot of features are missing, and problems are unsolved in many live chat applications.

### Here are a few existing problems in the current live chat support systems:

1. Losing active Internet connection

2. Attack by other spammers

3. Maintaining conversation history

4. Instant replies are uncommon

5. Breakdown of current ticket flow

6. Very difficult to integrate the API into different internal systems

7. Third-party app failures (Slack, Zendesk, internal server errors)

8. Limited and unextendible features

And many other issues are challenging to handle, and the developers have to put extra effort into fixing the live chat support. It is all about establishing a great connection and impression among the users and the communities, even though your product can be great and effective.

**A simple and all-in-one live chat support system - [Chatwoot](chatwoot.com), an openspurce alternative, can resolve all the problems, and it is **open-source** and **extendible** for all your business needs. The [community version](https://github.com/chatwoot/chatwoot) is absolutely free.
**

Instant messaging and complete open-source codebase access ease even modifying the system according to the business needs and automating the workflow for faster monitoring and management.


![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1626703514856/JsN-W-qCT.png)

Every visitor is busy, they seek an instant real-conversation rather than revisiting the whole website. Chatwoot's auto agent assignment feature is the solution to get out of the bot-ly conversations.

**The chat widget can also be easily customized to product brand colors.**

Considering only these few features earlier, it was complicated to handle all these tasks manually, and the company had to invest extra assets to fix the live chat support and ticketing systems.

Elegant UI helps the whole team to adapt quickly and to track visitors and their queries from multiple products in a single app. Online chats are sometimes unclear, and all bots cannot identify the intents and become very unreal and irrelevant. Later, if the user tries to find the social handles of any company (like Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter, E-mail, etc.), it already frustrates and delays the ticket resolution. Chatwoot has easy integration with any third-party social media and acts as a workplace to manage customers anytime. Let's look at the comparisons below.

## Bot vs. Agent

![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1626703651625/_EBasSa7w.png)
*https://99firms.com/blog/live-chat-statistics/*

- Current broken live chat system

- Bots are increasing

- Complex pricing plans

- Difficult to manage internal customer support teams

- Manual agent assignment

- 100% extension is not supported

- Extra focus is required

- No mobile apps for such systems

- Extra learning is required

- Limited integration with third-party apps

#  Comparing with other products

### 1) Intercom vs. Chatwoot

[Intercom](https://www.intercom.com/) is a popular product in the market. But I'm going to closely give a walkthrough of what can be done better using Chatwoot.

The starter pack of Intercom has no customizations, custom bot support, neither any conversational management tools. *For example, Agent's inactivity cannot be traced.*


![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1626704112592/Xqf98h7Jw7.png)

[Chatwoot](https://www.chatwoot.com/) has unlimited conversations, and Hacker Plan (for developers) costs $0 forever up to 2 agents, and this includes integration with the Twilio SMS channel, which is not provided in Intercom. This plan also enables auto-assignment, note-taking, and other [great features](https://www.chatwoot.com/) to help any team have a productive workday.

All the plans below have the feature to track agents and their activity and availability, unlike Intercom.


![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1626704325575/gYml1r5PD.png)

### 2) Zendesk vs. Chatwoot

[Zendesk](https://www.zendesk.com/) is an award winner but not customizable for smaller budgets; additional enterprise plans touch up to $215/month; on the other hand, Chatwoot provides developer-friendly benefits with the open-source - for good.

Here's the comparison with the actual features. Zendesk has limited pre-built apps and integrations with complexities of choices and business agreements. Chatwoot has a great low-level structure to solve your high-level needs for your businesses, accessible to developers and non-developers in your company.

![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1626704654974/l5bhnOCN-.png)

![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1626704928540/wA1dvL0lu.png)

Chatwoot is breaking down the complexity of every live chat service into more straightforward language and utility, making it easy to adapt and use without any second thought. Support Team plan (in Zendesk) is equivalent to Startups (Chatwoot) in terms of cost but doesn't have business support.

**Pros**

- Affordable plans start at chatwoot

- Business support at $19, whereas Zendesk has complicated business support

- Labeling conversations and easy history handling

- Two agents at $0, while Zendesk has only one agent for $19/month

- Custom widgets as per brand requirements

- Bloated features are simply accessed in Chatwoot

- Training is not required

**Cons**

- No trial, get a $0 plan


# Solution with Chatwoot

"Business" is not a static term; things here change very fast and often. We don't know who will become Elon Musk overnight.

According to a report by Hubspot, the customer satisfaction rate is 92% higher for those who use live chat services.

If you're the decision-maker in your company to choose the best service, you need to be aware of the trends, user behavior, developer accessibility and put some extra effort into learning these products. It will definitely consume time.

The reason why Chatwoot's Founding members came with this idea was to solve the pain points in the entire product team in order to maintain easy workflow and to maximize Customer Ticket Management.

On the other side, customer behavior changes dynamically, but you need to stick to one plan at a time. Especially for startups, when the revenue has just begun, it can be a considerable loss when there is an extra business need.

Instead of switching to different plans and products, Chatwoot is the solution for every hassle.

The product team can understand marketing by involving in the timely updating of their Chatwoot software by considering the changing demands of the users, and there can be a strong connection between Marketers and Developers. And provide solutions to the end-customers Instantly and Independently.


Read the complete blog [here](https://aviyel.com/post/379/10-live-chat-tools-like-intercom-drift-zendesk-tawk-io-and-livechat-compared-with-chatwoot)