Freshchat Review: Features, Pricing, & Alternatives

Looking for an in-depth Freshchat review to help streamline your customer interactions? Wondering if it’s the right tool to boost customer satisfaction and engagement?

We’ve got you covered. In this review, we delve into the features, benefits, and potential drawbacks of Freshchat.

So, let’s decode this software one feature at a time.

SMB Guide’s Verdict for Freshchat

We gave Freshchat a rating of 9.5 out of 10. Freshchat ranks high on our list of options because it is affordable, with a free trial of paid plans, a free forever plan, and is easy to use.

It includes all the major features you’d expect to see in a customer service live chat solution, as well.

Factor	Rating (out of 10)
Pricing & Plans	9
Real-Time Messaging & Canned responses	10
Live Chat AI & Natural Language Processing (NLP)	9
Customizable Chat Widgets	9.5
Visitor Tracking and Analytics	10
User Interface and User Experience	9
Integrations and Compatibility	9
Customer Support	9
SMB Guide Rating	9.5

Pricing & Plans

Freshchat offers four plans to choose from, so there is something for everyone, regardless of business size. Prices range from free forever to $95/agent/month.

Free

This is the free forever plan, available for up to 10 agents.

Price

• $0/month/agent
• $0/year/agent

Features

• Chatbots (no free sessions included)
• Chatbot Analytics
• Inbox Views
• Topics
• Groups
• Conversation Labels
• Bulk Actions
• User Properties
• Email
• Mobile SDK
• WordPress
• Shopify
• Conversation Switch
• Contact enhancement
• Threads
• Conversation properties

Who it’s for: For businesses who are just getting started

Growth

This is the bottom tier of paid plan offerings – designed for teams that need more than 10 agents, or smaller teams that need more features.

Price

• $23/agent/month
• $19/agent/month when billed annually

Features

• Everything in the free plan plus:
• Assignment Rules
• Priority Inbox
• Canned Responses
• Private Notes
• User Events & Timeline
• User Segmentation
• Global Business Hours
• Offline experience
• Basic Dashboard
• FAQs
• Conversations Overview Report
• Facebook Messenger
• FIles
• Marketplace (App Store)
• SMS
• WhatsApp Business
• Freshdesk integration
• Instagram DM
• LINE
• Google Business Messages
• Task Management
• Telephony in Freshchat

Who it’s for: Growing businesses that need more features not found in the free plan

Pro

The most popular plan Freshchat offers.

Price

• $59/agent/month
• $49/agent/month when billed annually

Features

• Everything in Growth and:
• Auto-resolve
• IntellAssign
• Business Hours (by Groups)
• Live Translate
• Advanced Dashboard
• Advanced Automation
• Team Performance Report
• Agent Availability Report
• Roles and Permissions
• CSAT Survey and Report
• Conversation APIs

Who it’s for: Larger teams who seek high performance and better analytics

Enterprise

This plan offers all the features the platform has to offer, with “enterprise-grade support”

Price

• $95/agent/month
• $79/agent/month when billed annually

Features

• Everything in Pro plus:
• Allowed Domains
• User Authentication (JWT)
• Skill based routing

Who it’s for: Businesses who want all the features Freshchat has to offer

500 Freshbots sessions are included with paid plans. 500 campaign contacts per account per month included on paid plans.

Additional bot sessions are available for purchase as needed – $100 for 1,000 bot sessions. All interactions between an end user and a chatbot within 24 hours count as one bot session.

Real-Time Messaging & Canned Responses

In the Admin Settings section, you can set up the canned responses that will make things easier for your agents. If you need help, there’s also the option to start a guided tour or talk to a product expert.

It’s as simple as titling the message, typing it out, and creating a shortcode your agents can use to send the message.

I created a Welcome message using the shortcode “/hello” in less that three minutes.

Live Chat AI & NLP

I wasn’t able to test this directly in a live chat situation.

The screenshot above is using Freddy, the beta AI tool that helps you with things like creating an SLA, get analytics data like “Give me average resolution time,” “Show a bar chart of conversation trends of the last 30 days,” or “Show sample customer queries for high frequency scenarios.”

You can build a variety of chatbots to suit your needs. When you set up your account, there are 10 different flows for the most common scenarios:

• Hello
• Track Order
• Order Cancellation
• Order Refund
• Payment Issues
• Other Queries
• Live Chat Assignment
• API Fallback

Now, these flows are likely in place because I told the platform at sign up that I was using it for an ecommerce website. If you choose a different use or industry, the flows may be different.

You also have the option to configure or retrain natural language based on live user queries and bot responses.

Customizable Chat Widgets

With Freshchat’s customizable chat widgets, you can improve the customer experience by tailoring the live chat interfaces to match your brand identity.

You can customize the color and logo to align with your brand’s aesthetics.

You can also customize the welcome message with personalized greetings based on the visitor’s behavior or journey on your site, to make your interactions more engaging and relevant.

Freshchat supports multiple languages, so you can customize the chat widget to communicate in your customer’s language.

This is especially important to improve customer service for businesses with an international audience.

Visitor Tracking and Analytics

In the support dashboard, you start with demo data so you can see how it works. Once you click “Dismiss,” that demo data is replaced with your company’s real data.

I like this because many of the tools we test here don’t have demo data to show you what you can expect to see – and for the time we demo, it’s hard to get meaningful and useful data to see it for ourselves.

The dashboard has widgets for things like:

• Chat conversations status
• Chat assignment status
• Chat performance trends
  • First response time
  • Response time
  • Wait time
  • Resolution time
• Chat incoming conversations
• Chat customer satisfaction
• All available agents

User Interface and User Experience

I found the user interface incredibly simple to use. When you first create your account, you get a walkthrough of the Team Inbox.

I did spend some time going through the settings to learn everything the platform has to offer – and didn’t find the area to customize the chat widget to be intuitive, though.

Integrations and Compatibility

Freshchat boasts many integrations to enhance its functionality and compatibility with other popular applications. This helps to improve your customer service efficiency.

Freshchat integrates with top applications such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Apple Business Chat, and Google Business messaging.

These integrations facilitate communication across various platforms from a single interface. When it comes to CRM and customer support tools, Freshchat offers native integrations with Freshdesk, Freshservice, Zendesk, and Salesforce, among others.

These integrations allow you to connect your customer support and sales teams more effectively, enabling them to provide more informed and personalized service.

Freshchat is also compatible with productivity tools like Slack and WordPress to streamline workflows and collaborate more efficiently.

Freshchat also has mobile apps for both IOS and Android devices, so you can easily manage customer support tickets on the go.

Outside of the mobile apps, you can access the application from any device that has an internet connection.

Customer Support

Freshchat support is available via email at [email protected]. You can also find information via the company knowledge base to help you navigate issues on your own.

The company also offers live chat support, which makes sense given the nature of the product.

Freshchat — Unique Features

While Freshchat contains many of the same features as competing products, I found the most unique feature to be the Freddy AI tool.

This allows you to send prompts or create your own to gain insights into your data and Analytics over time.

What the Experts Say About Freshchat

At the time of this writing in January 2024, Freshchat had the following reviews:

• G2 rating: 4.4/5 (450+ ratings)
• Trustpilot rating: 2.1/5 (5+ ratings)
• Capterra rating: 4.1/5 (100+ ratings)

Overall experience has been fantastic. One of the things we wanted to do before we made the switch was test out the chatbot on our website to make sure that the transition was smooth, and we were assisted every step of the way with implementation.

Jessica W., IT Specialist – Verified Capterra review

Freshchat is used as a Live chat on our website which has bots to collect customer information & smartly transfer chat to agents. Freshchat has helped our business convert more prospects to sales & increased our customer’s support & satisfaction overall too!

Jayanth R., Project Manager – Verified Capterra review

Freshchat Alternatives

Not 100% convinced Freshchat is the right solution for your business? Consider these other options:

LiveChat

LiveChat is an online customer service software with live support, help desk software, and web analytics capabilities. The user interface is highly intuitive and easy to use, which can significantly enhance the efficiency of customer support teams. 

It also offers a wider range of integrations compared to Freshchat, integrating with 100+ tools, including CRM, email marketing, and social media platforms, providing more flexibility and efficiency in managing customer communications.

As for pricing, LiveChat’s plans start at $20/month per seat when billed annually, making it competitively priced compared to Freshchat.

LiveChat might be best for businesses of all sizes, prioritizing efficient and seamless customer communications. Meanwhile, Freshchat could better fit businesses looking for a budget-friendly yet effective live chat solution.

Sign up to LiveChat for free today

Intercom

Intercom is a Conversational Relationship Platform (CRP) that delivers conversational, messenger-based experiences across the customer journey.

Compared to Freshchat, Intercom has a larger customer base in the U.S., U.K., and other countries, indicating a broader global reach.

The CRP allows for more personalized and direct communication with customers throughout their journey, enhancing customer engagement and satisfaction.

Intercom also offers a comprehensive range of features, including chatbots, product tours, and customer segmentation tools designed to provide a more dynamic and interactive customer experience.

On the other hand, Freshchat offers built-in co-browsing, which Intercom does not, making it easier to guide customers through complex processes or issues.

Intercom pricing starts at $39/agent/user, making it more expensive than Freshchat.

Zendesk

Zendesk is a service-first CRM company that builds support, sales, and customer engagement software to foster better customer relationships.

Zendesk Support Suite does a better job of providing omnichannel support, allowing businesses to meet their customers wherever they are on the messaging platforms they prefer to enhance customer experience and improve response times.

It offers more diverse filtering for ticket dashboard views, making it easier for support teams to prioritize and manage customer inquiries.

It also has an extensive customer base, indicating a strong reputation and wide usage across various industries.

Other options: Best Tidio Alternatives

Getting Started with Freshchat

Freshchat is an affordable and effective live chat solution offering various features to enhance customer service.

From intuitive interfaces to robust automation and integration capabilities, it’s a tool that can help businesses streamline their customer support processes.

If you’re looking for a cost-effective way to improve customer engagement and satisfaction, Freshchat could be an excellent choice.

Start your 14-day free trial of Freshchat today!

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