Looking to move on from LiveAgent? We've done the research for you!
LiveAgent started off as a live chat tool, but over time, it's grown to encompass other channels and services too. I totally get it if you're searching for something that's primarily focused on live chat or perhaps a change of pace.
I've been there too.
If you're in a hurry and don't want to read the whole post, here are our top 3 picks from the best LiveAgent alternatives we tried and tested:
If you'd like to find out how we came to this conclusion, continue reading further.
Why you can trust TestBox’s guides: Unlike other publications, we have no incentive to encourage you to buy a specific tool. Our goal at TestBox is to help software buyers find the absolute best tools for their companies. Our free software lets you test and compare popular tools side by side, and our guides are designed solely to give you the information you need to decide which tools you want to test!
Every support team is different and needs different features and solutions. Our list of LiveAgent alternatives below includes a wide selection of tools that cover many of the different support setups. From small businesses to e-commerce and all the way to enterprise organizations, this list has customer support platforms for every use case.
Intercom describes itself as the “Engagement OS.” It’s a platform that makes it easy for businesses to talk to their customers via multiple methods. Instead of having different tools for every channel, Intercom aims for an omnichannel approach with chat, email, and more.
In addition to support-specific tools, Intercom offers marketing features that allow you to build chatbots as well as automated in-app and email messaging. You’ll also find that Intercom can act as a CRM to give you some functionality for your sales team. Additionally, they offer a help center feature, rounding out their all-in-one approach.
Compared to LiveAgent, Intercom offers more automation features along with an all-in-one approach with sales and marketing tools. This can cut down on complexity by having multiple functions all using the same tool suite. Additionally, if you’re looking for chatbots and AI, Intercom is a great alternative.
However, if you focus on channels like a call center or need deep integrations with e-commerce software, Intercom won’t be your best fit. It can also be overkill if you’re looking solely for a support tool or if you’re not looking to send all your product and customer data to your support platform.
Intercom’s pricing starts at $74/month for very small businesses and increases from there. They don’t currently offer flat rate plans based on users and features. Instead, they calculate their pricing by:
Test drive Intercom for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Related Reading: Best Intercom Alternatives
Zendesk is the leading name in customer support, and it’s no wonder when you look at their feature set. Like LiveAgent, Zendesk provides an omnichannel support platform, including channels like email, live chat, social media, and more. Because they take an everything-for-everyone stance, it can be extremely powerful but often confusing and with the price tag to match.
If you’re looking for automation, AI, bots, and other similar features, Zendesk is a great solution. They offer a similar breadth of features as LiveAgent but add more automation and more advanced reporting. You’ll also find a highly customizable help center within Zendesk with a large marketplace of pre-made themes and the ability to create your own custom design to match your brand.
Zendesk also comes equipped with over 1,000 pre-built integrations, including Hootsuite, Jira, Magento, Microsoft Teams, Shopify, Slack, Trello, and Zoom.
However, if you’re looking to leave LiveAgent for something less expensive or with a simpler solution, Zendesk won’t be your best fit. Zendesk comes with a lot of the same complexities that you find in LiveAgent. It’s also on the more expensive side to get the features that meet or exceed the functionality LiveAgent offers.
Zendesk pricing starts at $19/user per month (annual only) for their foundational Support Team plan. If you’re looking for functionality similar to LiveAgent, though, you’ll want to look at their Support Professional plan ($49/user per month, annual only) or, more likely, their Professional plan ($99/user per month, annual only) to allow for automation and deeper reporting.
Test drive Zendesk for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Related Reading: Best Zendesk Alternatives
Freshdesk is a comprehensive cloud-based customer support platform. It offers teams everything they need in one neat package. You’ll find features such as a multi-channel help desk, knowledge bases, chatbots, and a ticketing system.
For larger teams, it has bulk functionality for assigning, responding to, and closing tickets, plus ticketing features like sub-tasks, comments, prioritization by SLA, notifications, and multi-owner assignments.
Freshdesk also offers integrations with popular tools such as Slack, Google Suite, Microsoft Teams, and Office 365. You’ll find these integrations allow for effortless collaboration and communication within your team and with customers.
Much like LiveAgent, though, because Freshdesk is built to solve as many problems as possible, it can be overly complex and hard to update. If you’re looking for similar functionality to LiveAgent, Freshdesk can be a great option at a great price point. However, if you’re looking for something simple or that focuses on just one channel, it’s probably not the best fit.
Freshdesk plans range between $15/user and $69/user per month (billed annually), depending on the feature set you’re looking for. Freshdesk also offers a “free forever” basic plan if you have a smaller team than LiveAgent ideally supports.
Test drive Freshdesk for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Front is a versatile customer service solution that makes it easy to handle emails, live chat, and social media tickets all in one place. Its user-friendly interface, similar to Gmail, features automated workflows and internal collaboration tools to streamline team performance and foster stronger customer relationships.
Front lets you set up "round-robin" assignments, automatically distributing messages randomly amongst your team. This ensures that each team member has an equal opportunity to handle customer messages and discourages cherry-picking simple or easy-to-resolve cases.
You’ll also find that Front integrates with various platforms including Aircall, Asana, Facebook, HubSpot, HelpDocs, and Jira.
If you’re feeling like LiveAgent is just overkill for your team and you’re looking for a straightforward way to engage with customers, Front is perfect. However, if you feel like you’ve outgrown LiveAgent or you now require more advanced automation or AI capabilities, Front might not fit the bill.
Front’s pricing plans start at $19/user per month (annual only) on their Starter plan, but you’ll most likely find yourself wanting their Growth plan ($49/user per month) or Scale plan ($99/user per month) if you’re trying to match some of the versatility of LiveAgent. They also offer a Premier plan ($229/user per month) with additional features and enterprise-level service, but it’s likely overkill for a team moving away from LiveAgent for something simpler.
Test drive Front for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Related Reading: Best Front App Alternatives
Help Scout understands the importance of personalized customer support, and this is reflected in every aspect of their product. Instead of "tickets," they use the word "Conversations" to set the tone that you’re conversing with a customer and they aren’t just a number.
Help Scout's user-friendly interface and intuitive design make it easy for agents to provide efficient support. You can also take advantage of their Beacon and Messages features to assist your customers directly within your website or app. With message series and triggered messages, you can provide a seamless and proactive customer experience.
If you’re looking for something simple and easy to use compared to LiveAgent, you’ll find Help Scout is a well-featured tool that can handle small to medium-sized teams. However, it doesn’t offer call center functionality or similar larger-scale features that LiveAgent does offer. You also won’t find it full of automations and chatbots, so if that’s your reason for leaving LiveAgent, it’s not the best solution.
Help Scout’s pricing starts at $25/user per month ($20 if paying annually) on their standard plan and goes up to $65/user per month (annual only) on their Pro plan. Triggered messages are based on your number of visitors each month and plans start at 2,000 visitors.
Test drive Help Scout for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Related Reading: Best Help Scout Competitors
If your service is all about live chat, Olark is a great alternative to LiveAgent. While LiveAgent has broadened its channels and feature set over the years, Olark has doubled down on live chat and really focused their efforts in that area. The Olark live chat tool includes general functionality like customization, automation, forms, and reports.
Olark also offers a powerful chatbot option with their CoPilot tool. This allows your team to strongly emphasize that live channel but also to scale it and build in automation to help your customers 24/7.
You can also integrate your Olark software with leading e-commerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce.
If you want something focused on live chat rather than an omnichannel solution, Olark is a much better option than LiveAgent, especially with their CoPilot tool and strong focus on growing their chat feature set. If you’re looking for a tool that does everything, though, Olark will likely be too limited.
Olark's pricing starts with a free plan that provides up to 20 monthly chats. The paid subscriptions start at $29/user per month, but for the higher-tier plans, pricing is only available through their dedicated sales team.
Tidio is a live chat tool for customer support that offers a laser-like focus on the live experience with a strong emphasis on e-commerce. They have powerful chatbots and AI that anyone on your team can configure without spending days or weeks learning how things work.
Tidio also offers integrations with dozens of applications, including most major e-commerce providers like Shopify and WooCommerce as well as help desks like Zendesk.
If the live aspect of LiveAgent is your main need, Tidio is a great alternative, especially if you’re an e-commerce company looking to provide both pre- and post-sale support.
Tidio offers an attractive free plan for small companies with 50 unique chats a month. Paid plans start at $15.83/user per month for their live chat communicator plan with an additional $15.83 to enable their chatbot plan. You’ll most likely find yourself signing up for both to take advantage of their feature set. For unlimited chats and chatbots, monthly pricing starts at $329.
Related Reading: Best Tidio Alternatives
HappyFox is a support platform that offers a shared inbox, a knowledge base builder, and an automations tool. Like LiveAgent, one of the big benefits of their software is the ability to do multi-language support, with 35 languages currently supported (compared to LiveAgent’s 42 languages). With the addition of their HappyFox Chat software, you can also chat live with your customers.
HappyFox also offers a separate chatbot software allowing you to automate your live chat to provide 24/7 support. You’ll also find dozens of integrations with their own tools as well as leading CRMs like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive in addition to other tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams.
If you want an omnichannel solution with extensibility and a strong focus on multi-language support, HappyFox is a great option.
HappyFox pricing is a bit confusing, with multiple tools packaged separately. The à la carte pricing is convenient if you don’t need all of their features, but it can make it tough to calculate the costs if you need access to everything they offer. You’ll find pricing for their main help desk software starts at $39/user per month and reaches up to $99/user per month, with added monthly costs for chat, chatbots, reporting, and automations.
There are dozens of LiveAgent alternatives out there, and we think these eight are some of the strongest options. The right choice, though, comes down to which features and support channels matter most. In the end, we think there are three top contenders from which most support teams would see tremendous value.
Option A: Zendesk
Zendesk is going to be your best option if your favorite part of LiveAgent is the omnichannel approach but you just want a new tool or additional options. You’ll find Zendesk offers lots of powerful features across the spectrum of channels. However, you’ll need to be okay with the price tag and complexity that comes along with it.
Option B: Tidio
If “live” is the operative word for your support team, especially if you’re an e-commerce company, you’ll find Tidio a worthy LiveAgent alternative. They do one thing and they do it extremely well. Especially if you’re looking for automations, AI, and chatbots, Tidio is a great option.
Option C: Help Scout
If you like the omnichannel approach of LiveAgent but you want something simpler and easier to use, you can’t go wrong with Help Scout. You’ll find a slick email and live chat platform with budding automations in their workflows feature and lots of modern, frequently updated touches.
Overall, we think Zendesk is your best alternative option as it offers a similar feature set to LiveAgent but with the power and momentum you get with a leading brand. Being cloud-only, Zendesk can also continually update their software without needing technical resources on your team, which can be a bonus compared to LiveAgent.
Whatever features your team needs, finding the right software fit can be daunting. There are dozens of alternatives to LiveAgent out there, and the process of buying software is rarely enjoyable, including endless demos, gated products, obscure pricing, and non-stop phone calls. Plus, after all that, there’s no guarantee that you’ll feel confident in your decision. It’s not a great use of your time.
Testing and comparing different tools side-by-side will help you evaluate software faster, and in the end, you’ll be more confident with your choice. TestBox allows you to test and compare the top customer support software solutions side-by-side — for free. Start testing software now!
Start testing and comparing how software could help your team in seconds.
Oh and did we mention it’s free? Because it is.
