If nobody answers your visitors fast enough, they buy from someone else. The best live chat plugins for WordPress let you talk to visitors in real time and use AI to respond in seconds, even while you sleep. I tested the most popular options and ranked them on ease of setup, AI capabilities, pricing, and page speed impact.
TL;DR: Boei is the best live chat plugin for WordPress if you want AI chatbot and live chat in one widget, starting at $11/mo. tawk.to is the best free option but lacks AI. LiveChat and Tidio are solid mid-range picks. Zendesk and HubSpot make sense only if you already use their ecosystems.
| Plugin | Starting Price | AI Chatbot Included? | Free Plan? | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boei | $11/mo | Yes (built-in) | 7-day trial | AI + live chat in one widget |
| Tidio | $29/mo | Yes (add-on) | Yes (50 chats) | Small ecommerce |
| LiveChat | $20/mo | No (separate product) | 14-day trial | Mid-size support teams |
| Crisp | $25/mo | Yes (MagicReply) | Yes (2 seats) | Startups on a budget |
| tawk.to | Free | No | Yes (full) | Zero-budget teams |
| Zendesk Chat | $55/mo | Yes (add-on) | No | Enterprise stacks |
| Olark | $29/mo | No | 14-day trial | Simple live chat only |
| HubSpot | Free (CRM) | Yes (limited) | Yes (basic) | HubSpot CRM users |
| Smartsupp | $19.50/mo | Yes (basic) | Yes (1 agent) | Visitor recording |
| JivoChat | $19/mo | No | Yes (basic) | Multilingual teams |
Now let's break down each plugin with what's actually good and bad about it.
Best for: Businesses that want AI chatbot and live chat in one plugin without juggling multiple tools.
Price: From $11/mo (annual Lite plan). 7-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Boei combines AI chatbot and live chat into a single WordPress widget. The AI answers visitor questions 24/7 using your site content, and routes complex conversations to your team with full context.
The AI Agent sets Boei apart. Describe an integration in plain English ("connect to Google Calendar for booking") and it builds it automatically. Your chatbot then takes real actions: booking appointments, looking up orders, calculating quotes.
Key features:
Pricing: Lite at $11/mo, Starter at $19/mo, Growth at $49/mo, Business at $129/mo (all annual). Full breakdown.
Downsides: No forever-free plan (but the 7-day trial gives you full access).
Try it yourself: Add Boei live chat to your WordPress site in 2 minutes
Best for: Small ecommerce stores on Shopify or WooCommerce that want chatbots and live chat.
Price: Free plan available. Paid plans from $29/mo.
Tidio is popular with ecommerce businesses and has a solid WordPress plugin. The free plan gives you 50 live chat conversations per month, which is enough to get started.
Their AI chatbot (Lyro) costs extra on top of the live chat plan. You'll pay $39/mo for 50 AI conversations, which gets expensive fast if you have decent traffic.
Key features:
Downsides: AI is a separate paid add-on. Pricing jumps quickly once you exceed the free tier limits. The widget can feel heavy on page load.
Best for: Mid-size support teams that need robust reporting and ticketing.
Price: From $20/mo per agent. 14-day free trial.
LiveChat is one of the oldest live chat tools around. It's reliable, well-designed, and has great reporting. But it's strictly live chat. Their AI chatbot is a separate product called ChatBot (starts at $52/mo), so you'll pay for two subscriptions.
According to Statista, live chat has a 73% customer satisfaction rate, higher than email (61%) and phone (44%). LiveChat delivers on that promise with fast load times and a clean chat interface.
Key features:
Downsides: Per-agent pricing adds up with larger teams. No built-in AI chatbot. The cheapest plan lacks key features like chat routing.
Best for: Startups that want a free plan with real features.
Price: Free for 2 seats. Paid plans from $25/mo.
Crisp offers a generous free plan with live chat for 2 team members. The paid plans add a shared inbox, chatbot builder, and their AI feature called MagicReply.
The MagicReply feature summarizes conversations and suggests responses, but it's not a full AI chatbot that can handle conversations independently. You still need humans in the loop.
Key features:
Downsides: MagicReply is AI-assisted, not autonomous AI. The free plan lacks chatbot features entirely. Per-workspace pricing means multi-brand businesses pay more.
Best for: Businesses that want live chat at zero cost.
Price: Completely free. Paid add-ons available.
tawk.to is the only truly free live chat plugin with no conversation limits. According to Datanyze, tawk.to holds the largest market share among live chat tools at roughly 21%, mostly because it's free.
The catch? There's no AI chatbot. You get live chat and a basic chatbot with pre-written flows, but nothing that uses AI to answer questions automatically. You'll need agents online to respond.
Branding removal costs $19/month, which is how they make money.
Key features:
Downsides: No AI chatbot at all. The widget shows tawk.to branding unless you pay $19/mo. The interface feels dated compared to modern alternatives. Slow customer support (ironic for a chat company).
Best for: Companies already using the Zendesk support suite.
Price: From $55/mo per agent. No free plan.
Zendesk Chat (now part of Zendesk Suite) is enterprise-grade live chat. It's powerful but expensive and complex. If you're already on Zendesk for ticketing, adding chat makes sense. If not, there are simpler and cheaper options.
Key features:
Downsides: Expensive per-agent pricing. AI features cost extra (Zendesk AI add-on). Overkill for small businesses. WordPress plugin can be finicky with updates.
Best for: Teams that want simple live chat without complexity.
Price: From $29/mo per agent. 14-day free trial.
Olark keeps things simple. It's live chat and nothing else. No AI chatbot, no CRM, no email marketing. If you just want a chat box on your WordPress site and you'll have agents ready to respond, Olark does the job.
Key features:
Downsides: No AI chatbot. Limited integrations compared to competitors. Per-agent pricing. Feels basic compared to modern all-in-one tools.
Best for: Businesses already using HubSpot CRM.
Price: Free with HubSpot CRM. Advanced features in paid plans ($45/mo+).
HubSpot's live chat is free if you use their CRM. Chat conversations automatically create contacts and log to the CRM timeline. The free chatbot builder handles basic flows but won't answer questions with AI intelligence.
Key features:
Downsides: The "free" chat pushes you toward paid HubSpot plans. Advanced chatbot features locked behind Marketing Hub ($800/mo). Heavy script that can slow down WordPress sites. The free version shows HubSpot branding.
Best for: Ecommerce stores that want visitor recordings alongside live chat.
Price: Free plan available. Paid from $19.50/mo.
Smartsupp combines live chat with visitor session recordings. You can watch how visitors navigate your site and then proactively start a chat when they seem stuck. It's a unique combination that works well for ecommerce.
Key features:
Downsides: AI features are limited to basic intent matching. Recording feature can raise privacy concerns (GDPR implications). The free plan is very limited (1 agent, no chatbot).
Best for: Businesses serving customers in multiple languages.
Price: Free basic plan. Paid from $19/mo per agent.
JivoChat supports 25+ languages out of the box and auto-detects visitor language. If your WordPress site serves international customers, JivoChat handles multilingual chat well.
Key features:
Downsides: No real AI chatbot. Per-agent pricing gets expensive. The free plan limits to 1 agent and basic features. Interface feels cluttered.
Not all live chat plugins are equal. Here's what actually matters when choosing one for your WordPress site.
A Portent study found that conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time. Your live chat plugin shouldn't slow down your site. Look for plugins that load asynchronously and don't block page rendering.
Boei loads asynchronously with no cookies, which means zero impact on your Core Web Vitals scores.
In 2026, a live chat plugin without AI is like a phone without a camera. Sure, it works, but you're missing the main feature. According to IBM, chatbots can handle up to 80% of routine customer questions. That frees your team to handle complex issues that actually need a human.
The difference between tools is whether AI comes built-in or costs extra. Boei includes AI in every plan. LiveChat, Tidio, and Zendesk charge separately for AI.
Watch out for per-agent pricing. It looks cheap at $20/agent/month, but a team of 5 agents is already $100/month for basic live chat. Flat-rate pricing (like Boei's) is more predictable, especially as your team grows.
Some plugins have dedicated WordPress plugins in the directory. Others ask you to paste a JavaScript snippet. Dedicated plugins are easier to install and manage, but make sure they stay updated. Check the "last updated" date in the WordPress plugin directory before installing.
Compare features: See how Boei's live chat features stack up
The process is similar for most plugins:
Most plugins take under 5 minutes to set up. Boei's WordPress installation guide walks you through each step with screenshots.
Free plugins like tawk.to and Crisp's free tier work for small sites with low traffic. But they come with trade-offs:
If you get more than 50 chats per month, a paid plan pays for itself. A single converted lead from live chat can be worth more than a year of plugin costs. Think of it less as installing software and more as onboarding a new employee. You train it on your business, give it your playbook, and it handles conversations on its own.
According to Forrester Research, visitors who use live chat are 2.8x more likely to convert than those who don't. At those numbers, even a $11/month plan (Boei Lite) has a clear ROI.
Start your free trial: Try Boei free for 7 days, no credit card needed
Boei is the best overall choice because it combines AI chatbot and live chat in one widget, starts at $11/mo, and has a dedicated WordPress plugin. If you need a free option, tawk.to offers unlimited free live chat but no AI features.
Some do. Plugins that load synchronously or add heavy scripts can hurt your page speed. Look for plugins that load asynchronously. Boei loads without cookies and won't affect your Core Web Vitals scores.
Yes, and you should. The best approach is to let AI handle common questions automatically (business hours, pricing, product info) and route complex issues to a human agent. Boei, Tidio, and Crisp all support this hybrid approach.
Yes, tawk.to is genuinely free for unlimited agents and chats. They make money from paid add-ons like branding removal ($19/mo) and hired chat agents. The downside is no AI chatbot and dated design.
It varies by traffic, but a typical conversion rate from visitor to chat is 2-5%. A site with 10,000 monthly visitors might get 200-500 chat conversations. Plan your plugin choice and staffing around these numbers.
A contact form creates a delay. The visitor fills it out, waits for an email reply, and often forgets about you. Meanwhile, they message your competitor too. Responding within 5 minutes makes you 21x more likely to qualify a lead (InsideSales). Live chat (especially with AI) gives instant answers. That immediacy is why live chat has a 73% satisfaction rate versus 61% for email.
"Bold pop art illustration, a WordPress website with a glowing live chat widget in the corner, speech bubbles flying between a laptop screen and a smiling customer, halftone dot pattern, strong black outlines, limited color palette of blue orange and white, high contrast comic book style --ar 16:9 --v 7.0 --sref https://s.mj.run/Jy3TR3mmpoI"
Article by
Ruben is the founder of Boei, with 12+ years of experience in conversion optimization. Former IT consultant at Ernst & Young and Accenture, where he helped product teams at Shell, ING, Rabobank, Aegon, NN, and AirFrance/KLM optimize their digital experiences. Now building tools to help businesses convert more website visitors into customers.
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