Best Live Chat Software for Small Business in 2026

Quick answer

For most small businesses, Tidio is the best place to start: it has a free plan with 10 seats, a $29/month Starter plan (less on annual billing), and an AI agent (Lyro) you can add when chat volume grows. If you need $0 forever and unlimited agents, pick tawk.to. If you want a flat monthly price that covers chat, a knowledge base and a chatbot for up to 10 people, pick Crisp. Zoho SalesIQ is the cheapest per operator and the natural choice if you already run Zoho. LiveChat, Olark and Intercom cost more and suit specific jobs: chat-driven selling, B2B lead qualification and in-app support for software companies.

All prices below were checked on each vendor's own pricing page in October 2026. They are in US dollars and exclude tax.

What small businesses actually need from live chat

A five-person business does not buy live chat the way a 200-agent support center does. The questions that matter most are simpler:

• What does it cost when two or three people answer chats part time? Per-seat pricing punishes teams where everyone helps out a little. Per-conversation or flat workspace pricing often works out cheaper.
• Is there a usable free plan? A free tier lets you find out whether visitors actually use chat before you pay anything.
• How quickly can you install it? Look for a copy-and-paste snippet or a plugin for Shopify, WordPress, Wix or WooCommerce.
• Can it answer when nobody is online? An AI agent or a simple bot that collects an email address after hours often matters more than advanced routing.
• Does it work on your phone? Owners and small teams answer chats from mobile apps far more than from a desk.
• What happens at renewal or when you grow? Conversation caps and AI add-ons are where small-business bills creep up.

We compared the seven tools below on those points: entry price, free plan limits, what the AI features cost, channels supported, and which plan you realistically need.

1. Tidio: best overall for small businesses

Tidio is built for small and mid-sized businesses, especially online stores, and its pricing reflects that. Instead of charging per agent, Tidio charges by billable conversations (live chats and tickets your team handles), and every self-serve plan includes 10 seats.

Pricing in plain terms

• Free: 50 billable conversations a month, 10 seats, 100 Flows visitors, and 50 Lyro AI conversations as a one-off allowance.
• Starter: $29/month, or $24.17/month billed annually. 100 conversations a month, 10 seats, live chat and ticketing, a live visitors list, operating hours and basic analytics.
• Growth: from $59/month ($49.17/month annually) for 250 conversations, rising with volume (for example $89/month for 400 and $179/month for 1,000 on monthly billing). Adds advanced analytics, user permissions, automatic chat assignment, auto replies, live typing preview, viewed pages history and macros.
• Plus: from $300/month plus usage, with premium support, departments, custom branding and discounted usage rates.
• Premium: custom pricing, with at least 3,000 Lyro AI conversations and managed AI deployment.
• Lyro AI Agent add-on: from $39/month ($32.50 annually) for 50 AI conversations a month, scaling up in steps.

Paid plans have a 7-day free trial, and annual billing gives two months free.

Strengths. The free plan is genuinely useful because it includes 10 seats, so the whole team can log in. Lyro answers questions from your help content and passes the chat to a person when it can't help. Flows add no-code automations such as quote requests, lead capture and messages for missed chats.

Limits. The conversation caps are low. A store that gets a few chats a day will pass 100 a month quickly and move into Growth pricing. AI conversations and Flows reach are separate meters, so a full setup has three numbers to watch.

Who it's for: online stores and service businesses that want to start free, add AI later and keep several part-time responders on one account.

2. tawk.to: best free live chat

tawk.to takes the opposite approach to everyone else in this list: the core product is free, with unlimited team members, and the company makes money from optional add-ons.

Pricing in plain terms

• Free: live chat, ticketing, knowledge base, chat pages and a CRM, for unlimited agents.
• Whitelabel (removes "Powered by tawk.to"): $29/month per property.
• AI Assist: from $29/month, with a forever-free tier for sites with limited chat volume.
• Voice Agents: from $49/month plus usage.
• Data Enrichment: from $59/month.
• Hire chat agents: tawk.to can staff your chat for $1/hour.

Strengths. For a business with no budget, nothing else here comes close. You get native apps for iOS, Android, macOS and Windows, smart triggers based on URL, behaviour or referrer, canned shortcuts, file sharing and chat translation without a card or a trial clock.

Limits. The free widget carries tawk.to branding. Reporting and workflow controls are more basic than in paid tools, and the AI assistant's free tier is meant for low volume.

Who it's for: very small businesses, nonprofits, local services and side projects that need capable chat at $0.

3. Crisp: best flat-price option for small teams

Crisp charges a flat monthly price per workspace, with a set number of seats included. That makes the bill predictable, and for teams of 4 to 10 it is often cheaper than per-seat tools.

Pricing in plain terms

• Free: 2 seats, website chat widget, shared inbox, mobile apps, contact forms, 100 customer profiles, no AI credits.
• Mini: $45/month for 4 seats, adding a shared email inbox, chat triggers, private notes, a custom email domain, 5,000 customer profiles and about $5 of AI credits.
• Essentials: $95/month for 10 seats, adding an omnichannel inbox, workflow automation builder, AI chatbot, knowledge base, analytics, routing rules, 50,000 profiles and about $25 of AI credits.
• Plus: $295/month for 20 seats, adding a ticketing system, unlimited task automations, 100+ integrations, white labeling and about $75 of AI credits.
• Enterprise: custom.

There is a 14-day free trial with no card, and yearly billing can be enabled in the app after you subscribe.

Strengths. Essentials bundles chat, a knowledge base, a chatbot and workflows for one price, where other tools sell those separately. Ten seats for $95/month works out to $9.50 per person.

Limits. The free plan's 100-profile cap fills up quickly on a site with traffic. The useful middle features (knowledge base, workflows) start at Essentials, so Mini is mostly chat plus email.

Who it's for: small teams that want one tool for chat, email and self-service help at a fixed monthly cost.

4. Zoho SalesIQ: cheapest per operator, best for Zoho users

Zoho SalesIQ is Zoho's live chat and visitor tracking product. It is priced per operator and is the cheapest paid per-seat option here.

Pricing in plain terms (per operator per month)

The free plan tracks 10K visitors a month and has no chatbot. Basic adds 1 chatbot with 25K bot chat sessions a month and 50K tracked visitors; Professional allows 5 chatbots and 100K tracked visitors; Enterprise allows 10 chatbots and 200K tracked visitors. There is a 15-day free trial, no card required.

Strengths. Visitor tracking with lead and company scoring is built in, which suits B2B businesses that want to know who is on the pricing page. From Basic up you also get messaging channels (WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram, Line, WeChat), audio and video calls, and screen sharing from the chat window. It connects naturally with Zoho CRM and Zoho Desk.

Limits. The free plan's 100 operator sessions a month and the Basic plan's 1,000 a month are hard caps to watch. There are a lot of settings, so expect more setup time than with Tidio or tawk.to.

Who it's for: small businesses already on Zoho, and B2B companies that want visitor intelligence with chat at a low per-seat price.

5. LiveChat: best for selling through chat

LiveChat is one of the longest-running chat products, and its site now markets it as Text by LiveChat. It is priced per user and leans hard into chat as a sales channel, especially for Shopify stores.

Pricing in plain terms

• Essential: $19/user/month billed annually, or $25 monthly. Chat and omnichannel inbox with ticketing, Shopify selling tools, 50 live visitors tracked, 3 proactive campaigns, workflow automation, 1 AI Agent with 10 AI resolutions a month and 5 reply suggestions.
• Growth: $79/user/month billed annually, or $99 monthly. Adds chat supervision and takeover, shared canned responses, unlimited chat history, 400 live visitors tracked, 30 proactive campaigns, team performance reports, 10 AI Agents, 200 AI resolutions and chat summaries.
• Enterprise: custom, with SSO, audit logs, a white-label widget and a dedicated account team.
• Extra AI resolutions: $49.50 per 50, on any plan.

There is a 14-day free trial with no card required.

Strengths. A polished agent app, AI included on every plan, proactive campaigns (for example abandoned-cart messages) and 200+ integrations including Shopify, WordPress, WooCommerce, Webflow and Klaviyo.

Limits. No free plan, and per-user pricing grows fast. Essential's 10 AI resolutions and 50 tracked visitors are tight, and the next step is four times the price per user.

Who it's for: e-commerce and sales-led small businesses that see chat as a revenue channel and have one or two dedicated chat agents.

6. Olark: best for B2B lead qualification

Olark has offered live chat since 2009 and now sells two things: human-only chat and an AI website agent.

Pricing in plain terms

• Human-only live chat: $29 per agent per month, with a 14-day free trial and no card.
• Standard AI Website Agent: $400/month billed annually ($4,800/year), including 1 human seat and unlimited AI conversations, with no token or per-conversation charges. Extra human seats are $29/agent/month.
• Custom enterprise plans: regional routing, advanced integrations, custom workflows and SSO.

Strengths. Searchable transcripts, HubSpot and Salesforce integrations, proactive triggers based on pages viewed, time on site, scroll depth and UTM source, and a chatbox certified to WCAG 2.1 AA for accessibility. The AI agent's flat price avoids surprise usage bills.

Limits. There is no free plan, and the AI tier costs far more than Tidio's or Crisp's AI options for a small site. It also covers fewer messaging channels than Tidio or Zoho SalesIQ.

Who it's for: B2B and professional service firms that use chat to qualify leads for a sales team, and organizations that need an accessible chat widget.

7. Intercom: best for software startups

Intercom is a full customer service platform rather than a chat widget, and it is priced like one. It belongs on this list because its messenger is among the strongest for in-app chat and because of its startup program.

Pricing in plain terms

• Essential: $29/seat/month billed annually, including Fin AI Agent, the messenger, a shared inbox and ticketing, pre-built reports and a public help center.
• Advanced: $85/seat/month billed annually, with more automation and 20 free Lite seats.
• Expert: $132/seat/month billed annually, with security and multibrand features and 50 free Lite seats.
• Fin AI Agent: $0.99 per outcome on every plan.
• Copilot: $29/agent/month billed annually.
• SMS, WhatsApp, email campaigns and phone are charged by usage.

There is a 14-day free trial with no card. Eligible early-stage startups can get up to 93% off and a year of Fin free.

Strengths. Live chat, in-app chat, banners and tooltips, a help center and an AI agent in one product.

Limits. Seats plus per-outcome AI charges make the monthly bill hard to forecast. For a shop or local service that just wants a chat bubble on the website, it is more product than needed.

Who it's for: SaaS and app startups that need in-app support, particularly if they qualify for the Early Stage discount.

Pricing comparison at a glance

What a three-person team would pay

To make the pricing concrete, here is the list price for a team of three people answering chats, using the cheapest plan that fits and annual billing where offered. These figures are arithmetic from the published prices, before any AI usage.

• tawk.to: $0, or $29/month to remove branding.
• Crisp Mini: $45/month (4 seats included).
• Zoho SalesIQ Basic: 3 x $7 = $21/month.
• Tidio Starter: $24.17/month, as long as you stay under 100 conversations a month.
• LiveChat Essential: 3 x $19 = $57/month.
• Intercom Essential: 3 x $29 = $87/month, plus $0.99 for each Fin outcome.
• Olark human-only: 3 x $29 = $87/month.

The order changes as volume grows. Tidio gets more expensive with conversations, not people, so a team of eight with modest traffic may pay less on Tidio than on any per-seat tool. A team with heavy traffic but only two people answering may be better off with a per-seat tool.

How to choose by scenario

You want to test live chat without spending anything. Start with tawk.to (unlimited agents) or Tidio's free plan (10 seats, but 50 conversations a month). Crisp's free plan works for two people.

You run a Shopify or WooCommerce store. Tidio and LiveChat are built around e-commerce. Tidio is cheaper to start; LiveChat has more proactive selling tools at a higher per-user price.

You want help when nobody is online. Tidio's Lyro, Crisp's AI chatbot (Essentials and up), LiveChat's included AI Agent and Intercom's Fin all answer from your content. Compare how each is metered: Tidio sells AI conversations in monthly bundles, LiveChat includes a small number of AI resolutions, Crisp includes AI credits, and Intercom charges per outcome.

You sell to other businesses. Zoho SalesIQ (visitor tracking and lead scoring) and Olark (CRM integrations and lead qualification) are the better fits.

You run a software product. Intercom is the specialist for in-app chat. Crisp and Tidio are cheaper alternatives if website chat matters more than in-app messaging.

You already use a help desk. Check whether your help desk includes chat before buying a separate tool: Zoho Desk pairs with Zoho SalesIQ, and many help desks include a chat widget.

Setup tips for small teams

• Install the plugin, not the raw snippet, when you can. Most of these tools have Shopify, WordPress or Wix integrations that pass order or customer data into the chat.
• Set office hours and an offline form on day one. A chat bubble that nobody answers is worse than none. Every tool here can switch to a message form or bot outside your hours.
• Write your top 10 answers before you turn on AI. AI agents answer from your help content, so shipping times, returns, pricing and hours need to be written down first.
• Watch the meters for the first month. Conversation caps (Tidio, Zoho SalesIQ's lower plans), AI resolutions (LiveChat) and AI credits (Crisp) are where costs change. Check usage after 30 days before committing to an annual plan.
• Put the mobile app on every responder's phone. Small teams rarely sit at a desk all day.

Bottom line

Tidio is the most balanced choice for a typical small business: a free plan with real seats, a low first paid tier, and AI and automation you can add when you need them. tawk.to is the answer if the budget is zero. Crisp is the best value for a team of 4 to 10 that wants chat, a knowledge base and a chatbot at one fixed price. Zoho SalesIQ wins on per-seat price and suits Zoho users and B2B sellers. LiveChat, Olark and Intercom cost more but do specific jobs well: chat-driven sales, B2B lead qualification and in-app support for software startups.

Prices change often, so check each vendor's pricing page before you buy.