Written by MyLiveChat

MyLiveChat alternatives, compared honestly

If you are reading this you are deciding whether to pick us or to leave us. We wrote the page, which is a good reason to be sceptical of it, so it opens with the cases where a different tool is genuinely the better answer and links you to those tools rather than around them.

Every limit below is one we can point at in our own product. None of it is a soft weakness invented to look even-handed.

Four reasons to choose something else

These are the requirements we lose on. They are worth checking before you spend an afternoon on a trial.

You want a native store app

MyLiveChat does not publish a Shopify app. Installing on Shopify means pasting a script into your theme. That works and takes a few minutes, but if installing from a store directory is a hard requirement, pick a tool that offers one.

You want AI included, not added on

Our AI is a paid add-on rather than part of the base plans. If you want an AI chatbot inside the price you already pay, several tools below bundle it, and that is a fair reason to prefer them.

You need chat inside a bigger suite

If chat is one surface of a CRM, help desk or marketing platform you already run, a native module usually beats a good standalone tool. That is an integration argument rather than a feature-list argument, and it is often the right one.

You need enterprise procurement

Large buyers ask for a security review, a named contact and a compliance pack. Vendors built around that process will clear it faster than we will.

Where MyLiveChat is the right answer

The mirror of the list above. If none of these matter to you, one of the alternatives probably suits you better.

A free tier you can actually run a business on

One agent, free forever, with unlimited chats. Not a trial that expires, and not a seat you lose when a counter runs out.

Removing our branding costs 15 dollars, not 29

White-labelling is included with any paid plan, starting at the 15 dollar Starter tier. On tawk.to the equivalent is a 29 dollar monthly add-on.

Your visitors do not all speak English

The widget ships in 40 languages, each a real translation rather than a stub, so a visitor in Jakarta or Sao Paulo reads the chat in their own language without you configuring anything.

You want to set it up without talking to sales

Sign up, paste one script tag, start chatting. There is no demo call between you and a working widget, and no credit card on the free tier.

One more thing worth saying plainly: paid plans start at 15 dollars a month and the price rises as you add agents, so check the pricing page against your real team size rather than the headline figure. That is true of nearly every tool on this page, ours included.

Twelve alternatives, and what each is actually best at

Each row links to our full head-to-head. Those pages argue our case, but they also name the things the other product does better, and this table is the short version of those admissions.

Alternative	Best for	Where it beats us	Detail
tawk.to	Staying free forever	Larger free feature set, a bigger install base and more third-party guides.	Compare
Tidio	Small e-commerce stores	Native store apps and packaged AI flows aimed squarely at online shops.	Compare
Crisp	One inbox for many channels	Broader shared-inbox and channel handling out of the box.	Compare
Intercom	Product-led SaaS teams	Deep product tours, lifecycle messaging and a large app ecosystem.	Compare
LiveChat	Established support teams	A mature marketplace and a long list of native integrations.	Compare
Zendesk	Enterprise procurement	A full ticketing suite and the compliance paperwork large buyers ask for.	Compare
HubSpot	Chat tied to a CRM	Chat is one surface of a CRM you may already be paying for.	Compare
Olark	Simple, focused chat	A deliberately small feature set with strong accessibility work.	Compare
Freshchat	Teams already on Freshworks	Fits an existing Freshworks stack with shared billing and identity.	Compare
Drift	B2B pipeline generation	Conversational marketing and routing built around sales pipeline.	Compare
Chatra	Very small teams	A gentle learning curve and a tidy agent experience.	Compare
JivoChat	Multi-channel on a budget	Bundles channels and calling at a low price point.	Compare

Prices and feature sets on every one of these products change often. Treat the comparison pages as a starting point and confirm the current terms with the vendor before you decide.

Four things worth testing in any trial

Feature tables rarely decide this. These four checks separate chat tools faster than any comparison page can, including this one - run them against us and against whoever else is on your shortlist.

Send a chat from a phone on mobile data

Not from the desktop preview. Mobile is where most chats now start, and it is where widgets differ most: keyboard behaviour, the launcher covering a checkout button, whether the panel survives a rotation. Two minutes here tells you more than an hour of feature comparison.

Close the tab mid-conversation, then come back

A visitor who navigates away and returns should find the thread, not a fresh greeting. Tools handle this very differently, and it is invisible until it happens to a real customer halfway through giving you their order number.

Go offline and leave yourself a message

Then check who was emailed, how fast, and what the message looks like. Missed-chat routing is the single most common thing teams discover is wrong weeks after switching.

Look at what the widget does to your page speed

Load your own site with the widget installed and watch the network panel. A chat widget is third-party JavaScript on every page you own, and the weight varies by an order of magnitude between vendors.

How to switch without losing anything

Advice that applies whichever direction you are moving, including away from us.

Export your transcripts first

Do this before you cancel anything. Check the format too: a transcript you cannot re-import is one you have only technically kept.

Run both widgets for a week

Put the new tool on a few pages rather than the whole site. You will find the routing and notification gaps in days, and you will still have the old one running when you do.

Rebuild your canned replies deliberately

Most teams discover half their saved replies are stale. A migration is the cheapest moment to delete them instead of carrying them across.

Check who gets notified at 2am

Notification routing is the thing people forget until a chat is missed. Test it with a real out-of-hours message before you switch the old tool off.

Questions people ask before switching

Is this page biased? You make MyLiveChat.

Yes, we make it, and you should read this page with that in mind. What we can do is be specific about where another tool wins, name those tools, and link straight to them. Every limitation listed here is one we can point at in our own product, not a soft one invented to look balanced.

What is the closest free alternative to MyLiveChat?

tawk.to. Both are genuinely free for a single agent with unlimited chats. The first real fork is branding: removing it costs 15 dollars a month here and is a 29 dollar add-on there. If branding does not matter to you, the free tiers are close enough that either will do.

Can I export my chat history if I leave?

Yes. Transcripts can be exported from the dashboard, and the same is true of most tools listed here. Check the export format before you commit to any vendor, including us, because a transcript you cannot re-import is a transcript you have only technically kept.

Does MyLiveChat have a Shopify app?

No, we do not publish one. MyLiveChat installs on Shopify by pasting a script into your theme, which works but is a manual step. If installing from a store directory is a requirement, that is a real reason to choose a tool that offers one.

Is AI included in the free plan?

No. AI is an optional paid add-on rather than part of the base plans. If you want an AI chatbot bundled into the price you already pay, several tools here package it that way and it is a fair reason to prefer them.

If you decide MyLiveChat is the right fit, the free plan needs no credit card: start free with one agent. If you decide it is not, the table above links to the alternatives directly, which is the useful thing this page can do for you.

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