Live2Support Review – Is it any good?
This live chat provider makes quite an interesting appearance: their website greets you with a jumping penguin! Apart from that, the site is quite overwhelming as they explain all of their features in great detail.
Prices start at $7.92 per month for the Bronze plan and go up to $31.67 for the Gold plan (if you sign up for a full year). That's more or less comparable with other live chat tools. But what about the software itself? Does it look and feel like the clunky website or is it going to surprise us in the end?
Let's take a quick look inside first:
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| Chat console and analytics | Chat bar customization | Live Chat Window |
Click the images to get a larger view
Our Live2Support rating in detail
| Criterion | Rating | Comments |
| Ease of use |  |
It feels complex and not really user-friendly. |
 Setup |
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Fairly easy, but the range of options is more confusing than useful. Once you make changes to your setup, you need to re-insert the code. |
| Appearance customization | |
The dynamic chat button only has one color (purple). To change it you have to create a background image and host it on your own server. The rest of the static buttons are a matter of personal preference. |
| Chat features | ||
| -Chat client (that customers use) |
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Whenever a visitor clicks the chat button, it tries to establish a connection with an operator. Other live chat tools only start it when a message has been sent, which is a lot smarter as many people only click it by mistake. It's also quite slow. |
| -Chat agent console / use of instant messengers (IM) |
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The browser-based console opens a pop-up window for every new chat, which is confusing. Also, we frequently had technical issues where we had to re-load the console. |
| -Proactive chats and Triggers |
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After a pre-defined time you can open a pop up message. Alternatively you can automatically start a chat, which doesn't make any sense. Due to the way Live2Chat works, an operator has to pick it up even before the visitor has shown any intention of joining the chat. |
| -Offline mode |
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You can hide the chat bar and turn it into a contact form. |
| -Shortcuts / canned messages |
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It's easy to set up canned messages. |
| -Create chat protocols | Yes | They can be emailed as well. |
| Tracking & live analytics |
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It gives you the visitor's current URL and time on site, but instead of the country or city it shows the IP address. |
| Internationalization |
Yes | For multiple language profiles, you need the Gold package. (Which we didn't have.) |
| Integrations | Yes | Salesforce, ZoHo CRM, Zendesk, SugarCRM |
| More features | ||
| -Working in a team |
Yes | From the Gold package |
| -Mobile support | Yes | They offer mobile apps (not tested). |
| -SSL encryption | Yes | Included in all packages |
| -Ban users |
Yes | IPs can be blocked |
| -Log creation |
Yes | Chat transcripts will be archived |
| Support | Live chat, email and help section | We didn't have any issues with their live chat support. |
| Overall rating | |
Live2Support looks and feels like software invented in the nineties. There are much better solutions out there. |
© ChatToolTester Matrix
Conclusion:
It is pretty hard to find a good reason to use Live2Support. It does have a lot of features but compared to other providers it feels clunky and outdated. It definitely is not very fun to use; just an example: even accepting a chat request is confusing. You have to click the IP address of the user. Not very intuitive.
But the worst part is that it costs you time: whenever a visitor clicks the chat bar, it will require an agent to answer it. The visitor can't enter any text beforehand. In day-to-day use, it means that most chat requests come from visitors who just clicked the chat bar by mistake or were curious what it is without wanting to chat.
> You can try Live2Support here
Updates
31 May 2013 - Initial tests
Last updated: 31 May 2013 | Robert Brandl
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