There are many chat plugins available for WordPress but it’s for you to decide which one suits you the most. Also there are some which are free but have fewer features. Some are free up to some extent and rest are paid ones. Now it’s for you to weigh the features and decide which one is giving the best output as per the money they are asking.
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But our experience is most of the paid ones have good features and offer easy customization. Free ones are good for small businesses but less in terms of features.
Plugins which haven’t been updated in the last 2 years didn’t find place in our article as we think it is waste of time for you as well to consider those plugins.
WordPress free chat plugins
Here is the list of all available and viable WordPress chat plugins:
Chat plugins
Casengo Chat
Casengo live chat is the newest entry into live chat and is only 7 months old. However is slowly becoming popular because it offers 1 agent free of cost for unlimited chat windows and allows cloud based chat and hence it doesn’t affect performance of your website. When offline you get email for your chat. Only downfall is you have to use casengo admin panel for chat.
Simple Ajax Chat
This is a free for life chat plugin and refreshes automatically. It is self hosted chat and is fully customize-able. You can change the color and css as well. It supports smileys, sounds for notifications. You can customize the update interval as well. But please remember the less the update interval the more time it will take of your server. We found this the best chat plugin for free till date and doesn’t have any real downfalls.
My Live Chat
My live chat is free for 1 agent for unlimited concurrent messages. It is hosted on mylivechat’s servers and hence doesn’t load up your server for performance issues. Has visitor tracking and basic analytics available for free version.
Flexy Talk
Flexy Talk live chat is also a free chat plugin in WordPress for 1 agent usage and unlimited chat windows. However it supports gtalk chat so this means one can use mobile phone as well to chat with their customers/visitors. Doesn’t offer support or customizations in free version.
Banckle Chat
Banckle chat is free for 1 agent and allows 10 concurrent chats. It has analytics with it so you can check about your visitors. Has online and offline support. In offline mode accepts messages as emails.
WP Mibew
This is a free self hosted chat plugin. However one needs to install first the mibew messenger project from http://mibew.org and then use this plugin to chat from the dashboard. This is also a free for life plugin and one can add as many users and have as many chats they want. The mibew chat plugin allows any kind of customization but one need to be a developer to do so as the customizations aren’t that easy for normal user but once set up this is a very good free chat plugin to use.
Facebook Chat
Name of this plugin is Tawea and it adds a facebook like bar for chat. It is free to install and is free for use. It uses facebook login for a person to login and chat with you onto your website. The server doesn’t store any conversations or messages so this is the downfall. Sometimes it also takes a bit of loading time.
You can check if this is a good plugin for your website and read more about this plugin here:
Quick Chat
This is one of the most downloaded free chat plugin available for your WordPress site. It allows for chatting with multiple users in a single time and allows you to download the conversations as well. You can also ban a user by his ip. It also has a bad filter for bad words. This is quite comprehensive and nice since it is a free chat application for your WordPress site.
You can check this plugin below and let us know if it worked for you:
Go Chat
Go chat allows for video chatting as well as guest chatting from visitors with your website. It allows for filesharing using dropbox api with your visitors. It also allows for you to check messages using your facebook or google talk id. Hence you need not be online from your website always but can check status using gtalk or facebook.
Check it in action here:
Skype Master
This is not a complex plugin and neither is a chat plugin in itself however it shows your status of skype onto your website. It shows add me button and whether you are online or offline. Advanced version contains more features like view my profile, send me a file, call me, chat with me etc and costs $25.
Check here about this plugin:
Barc Chat
Barc chat is a cloud hosted plugin which allows for unlimited users onto your website for chat since it is hosted in cloud elsewhere and has no performance hits on your website. It is a free plugin which allows for chat as a guest for your visitors or via logging into social media. The paid version which starts from $5 per month allows you to ban a user, disable guest chatting, option to wipe chat history and add additional moderators. But this is completely optional.
WP tlk.io
This is also a free for life chat plugin and is very basic. You can create a chatroom on http://tlk.io and integrate it onto your website. People can then join your chatroom by being a guest or by logging in using twitter. The only downfall for this plugin is that you can’t ban anyone, you cannot block anyone and sometimes have to refresh the page since notifications aren’t shown actively sometimes. But it is free of cost.
Twitter chat
Twitter chat is a free live chat widget using twitter. Once someone sends you a message it posts on your twitter profile instantly. So you need not be online always or you can chat using your smartphone if you have notifications on for your twitter profile.
QuakeNet IRC Chat
QuakeNet IRC as the name suggests uses quakenet server and you can create chatrooms on quakenet and then chat with people on those chatrooms using your website. Any visitor who wants to chat with you can check on your website and will be automatically added to that chatroom. It doesn’t offer much customization and should be only used if you want your visitors as well to connect and chat with each other.
ChatLive
Chat live is a free WordPress plugin and allows one to chat with his visitors for free. One can have as many chat windows as they want and can save the conversations and at will admin can remove those conversations. Easy to integrate in different languages. Choice of notification sounds. Can be easily customized to look like your website.
Lively Chat Support
Lively chat support is also a free live chat plugin however has a paid add on like SMS feature which is of course optional. It supports both online and offline mode and one can have unlimited chat windows open using this. Also you can set the name of the person with whom visitors would be chatting with. So it appears a bit professional. You can check about this plugin here:
Paid chat plugins have been continued in other post>>>
Sonnal S Sinha is a passionate writer as well as WordPress and WooCommerce rockstar who loves to share insights on various topics through his engaging blog posts. He runs a successful website design and digital marketing company. With 15+ years of experience in WordPress theme development, he strives to inform and inspire readers with his thought-provoking content. He helps thousands of small and medium businesses and startups create a unique online presence. Follow Sonnal S Sinha for your regular dose of knowledge and inspiration.
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