The real constraint is not software, it is you
A solo founder adding chat usually worries about the tool. The actual constraint is attention: you cannot build, sell, support and watch a chat window at the same time. Chat run badly by one person is worse than no chat, because a visitor who is greeted and then ignored trusts you less than one who was never greeted at all.
Be available narrowly and honestly
Two reliable hours beat twelve unreliable ones. Pick a window you can genuinely cover, publish it, and let everything outside it go to an offline path. Visitors are remarkably tolerant of "we reply within a day" and remarkably intolerant of a chat that sits unanswered while showing you as online.
Make the offline path do real work
When you are not there, the goal is not to look staffed — it is to capture enough that you can follow up well. Ask for the one or two things you actually need: a way to reach them and what they are trying to do. A short offline form that gets completed beats a long one that gets abandoned.
Let the repeat questions answer themselves
Every solo founder has five questions that arrive constantly: pricing, whether it does X, how to cancel, how long setup takes, whether there is a free tier. Those belong in a knowledge base or an AI trained on your own content, not in your inbox for the hundredth time. Automating them is what buys back the attention chat costs you.
Use chat as a research channel, not just support
The advantage of being the only person is that you hear objections firsthand. The words visitors use when they hesitate are the words your pricing page should answer. Treated that way, an hour in chat is market research that happens to also close sales.
Know when to switch it off
During a launch, a deadline, or a bad week, turning chat off is a legitimate decision. A clear offline form is a fine experience; a ghost town is not. The point of controlling availability is that you can be honest about it rather than quietly degrading.
How MyLiveChat fits
The free tier is one agent forever with unlimited chats, which is exactly the solo case. Operating-hours controls and offline messages cover the hours you cannot, a knowledge base and AI trained on your own content absorb the repeat questions, and the mobile apps mean a genuine question can reach you without you sitting at a desk.