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As of March 2024 we have renamed Apexchat to Blazeo. We are excited to share the next part of our journey with our customers and partners.
The name ApexChat implies that we are primarily a chat company, which is no longer true. Now we have many offerings, such as call center services, AI, Appointment setting, SMS Enablement, Market Automation, and Sales acceleration (Q2 2024), that go beyond chat. The new name will not only allow us to convey the breadth of our offering but will also better convey our company’s mission and values.
Blazeo, which is derived from the word Blaze, evokes a sense of passion, speed, and energy. A “Blaze” is captivating, illuminates, and represents explosive growth. Blazeo encapsulates our mission to ignite such growth for our customers and partners by delivering innovation with passion, speed, and energy.
Updated October 30, 2024
Real-time customer engagement has become essential for businesses, and selecting the right live chat platform is critical. This guide outlines the key pricing models available in 2024, including updated tools, costs, and must-have features to optimize customer engagement.
Live chat is the overwhelming favorite when it comes to preferred engagement channels: 92 percent of website visitors come away from such conversations satisfied, according to Zendesk. Any chat study will tell you as much. However, live chat pricing can be confusing. If your business hasn’t explored this sort of engagement channel yet, sifting through the various price models can seem overwhelming.
After all, it’s not enough to simply invest in a live chat solution. You have to ensure your business realizes a return on its investment. If you’re paying more for live chat than you’re getting out of it, the service clearly isn’t worth the money. However, the right live chat services can result in significant ROI.
Live chat pricing plans vary substantially. Understanding how these various engagement channels are priced can help you choose the best solution for your business’ needs.
As you can imagine, live chat pricing varies greatly depending on the software or live chat service you select. Outsourced live chat pricing falls into four buckets:
Free options are ideal for startups or small businesses needing basic functionality. Tawk.to and Freshchat are popular choices, offering limited but useful features at no cost. Free plans can support low-traffic sites effectively but may lack advanced features and capacity for higher engagement.
The catch? Businesses that subscribe to this plan are assigned only one agent and can engage in just 20 chats per month. Additionally, they miss out on features such as:
For growing businesses, per-agent pricing models allow companies to pay based on the number of team members actively using the chat. This flexible model is ideal for scalability, and leading platforms like LiveChat and Zendesk offer extensive features that adapt as your team grows. This pricing structure is popular among businesses expanding their customer support capabilities.
Zendesk live chat pricing offers tiered per agent per month packages. Zendesk’s support-based chat is primarily focused on customer service, rather than lead generation. As you move up each tier the service comes with additional features. For example, one of the pricier tiers offers roles and permissions, widget unbranding and 24/7 support, in addition to features provided through the less expensive plans.
LiveChat has similar pricing tiers, in addition to a $149 per agent tier that is billed exclusively on an annual basis. This tier includes branding, chat histories, an account manager and security features. You can expect a lower-tier package to provide benefits such as chat history up to 60 days as well as some basic customization.
But the monthly bill isn't the only expense that will factor into cost per lead if you go with pay-per-agent chat. Typically, the "agent" will be one of your employees. So the number of agents you need will depend on factors such as monthly traffic and when people are chatting. So how many agents will you need?
We can quickly do the math here. Let's say 1,000 unique visitors arrive at your website each month. If 15 percent of those individuals start chats, you're looking at 150 chats per month. A month with 21 workdays means 7 chats per day. Can your employees devote their full attention to 7 chats each day on top of their core responsibilities?
But, that hypothetical isn't realistic. That's because 42% of leads come in the off hours - outside the 9-to-5 workday or on the weekend. This brings us to about 5 chats per day. However, each month around 60 of those chats are going to come in at night or on the weekend. Meaning you need to staff chat 24/7 to reap the full benefits of chat and ensure a lower cost per lead.
You should always have at least two active agents to ensure chats get the full attention of the employee. But you'll probably need more than 2 agents to ensure 24-hour availability. And that's where the costs really start adding up.
High-traffic businesses or eCommerce websites benefit most from volume-based pricing. Platforms such as ChatBot.com base costs on the volume of interactions, which helps in managing periods of increased customer inquiries. These solutions often offer analytics, chatbot integrations, and co-browsing for efficient customer support.
Volume-based live chat pricing models are similar to pay-per-agent plans. However, cost structures based on volume look at your website’s traffic to determine what your flat rate will be. Volume-based pricing can be as high as $600 per month or as low as $40 monthly.
If paying per agent makes the most sense for your business, keep in mind that some providers offer discounts to clients that pay annually rather than monthly. The issue with this model is the way costs add up as your business draws more traffic to the website. Paying per agent can get expensive when you need five or 10 chat operators to take visitors’ chats. And if these agents aren’t effective, you’re paying more for fewer leads.
Conversion-based pricing is best suited for sales-focused businesses. Smith.ai leads in this space, charging per successful lead, which aligns costs directly with outcomes. This model is ideal for businesses that gain measurable value from each lead generated through live chat.
The price per lead can vary depending on which live chat solution you go with, though. Prices can range anywhere from $18 per lead to $35 per lead. Ngage Live Chat charge their clients using the pay-per-lead model. In addition, some live chat providers qualify which leads you're billed for.
For example, if someone provides just an email address, but does not indicate whether he or she is interested in your services, you won't get charged for the prospect information. Performance-based pricing often includes many of the features that are covered in higher-priced monthly plans such as full chat invitation customization, data reporting, chat agents available 24/7 and delivery of all chat transcripts.
Some live chat companies offer add-on features covered by additional charges. For example, SMS integration requires the chat provider to create a new phone number. In order to cover the cost of maintaining that number they monthly charge in the bill. However, there is enormous value in reaching people on their mobile devices via their native SMS application. In addition, setting up chat for Spanish-speaking agents could require an added cost as well. Live chat pricing can depend on the features you choose in addition to the cost structure. It’s also important to consider some live chat providers are flexible with pricing, and many offer special promotions.
Ultimately it’s up to you to identify the live chat service that fits your business best. Will your business require 24/7 agent availability or data reporting from your live chat provider? Or how about chat widget customization? While live chat pricing varies considerably there's one thing to keep in mind: Chances are you'll capture more leads because of it.
When choosing which type of outsourced live chat pricing works best for you, consider your site traffic, your conversion rate, your availability to answer chats and value-added features.
One alternative to outsourcing live chat to a vendor is hiring live chat agents as your full-time or part-time employees. Even though this customer support role typically pays a low wage, it costs a lot to hire an employee, as you already know. You spend money and valuable time each time you recruit, interview and onboard an employee, and then there’s the added tax implications and benefits to consider.
While it could make sense for an enterprise company with high traffic and a strong conversion rate to handle live chats in-house, small-and-medium-sized businesses are usually better off outsourcing live chat. After all, most businesses don’t have the resources to keep a sizable in-house chat team on hand 24/7.
Small business owners can make life easier by having someone handle chat for them.
Generally speaking, offering live support via chatbots or live chat agents offers a slew of benefits. Here are three:
Live chat boosts lead generation so you can get more prospects into the sales funnel. Marketing expert Neil Patel said that “live chat can transform your conversions” and boost your conversion rate by 45 percent—or even more.
A live chat solution allows you to communicate with consumers around the clock, answering their questions in real time. And if you’re not there to answer a question, your competitor will be.
When you add live chat to your site, you show your website visitors that you care about providing them a seamless experience. According to Econsultancy, live chat has higher customer satisfaction levels than all other customer service channels including phone and email.
Some businesses will benefit more from adding a chatting widget to its website than others. This is because, as Alex Birkett of ConversionXL said, “every website is specific and contextual.”
Small businesses are typically great candidates for live chat—and have a good chance of seeing the massive boosts in conversion rates Patel talked about. This is because small businesses tend to have lower starting conversion rates than midsize and enterprise companies who have bigger pockets.
The general rule of thumb is this: the lower the conversion rate, the more return you’ll see from implementing live chat.
Choosing the right pricing model depends on your team’s needs, budget, and customer engagement strategy. Carefully analyze the potential ROI for each option, especially for lead-based models, where the cost per lead can directly correlate with closed deals.
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