LiveChat vs Messagely
LiveChat is powered by LiveChat Software, a customer service software company that was founded in Poland in 2002. While LiveChat is the company’s main business, it also has several other products, including ChatBot (previously known as BotEngine), HelpDesk, and Knowledge Base.
In 2011, LiveChat Software was listed in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 awards as one of the fastest growing Central European technology companies; in 2013, the company was also recognized as one of the most innovative companies across Europe by innovation magazine Red Herring.
Today, LiveChat serves over 27,000 paid customers from 150 countries, and it’s definitely a reputable name in the customer messaging space. But is LiveChat the best option for companies who want to reach out to their customers, or are there areas in which LiveChat loses out to Messagely? Read on to find out more.
Should you switch from LiveChat? Factors to consider.
Price
Type of chatbots
Scope of tool
In this guide, we walk you through the pros and cons of LiveChat and Messagely across three different factors: price, type of chatbots, and scope of tool. After assessing both tools in these categories, you’ll have all the information you need to make a decision as to whether Messagely is a worthy LiveChat alternative.
Price
Regardless of whether you’re a new startup, or you’re an established company that has no lack of resources, you’ll want to look for tools or platforms that are fairly priced. Here, there are two things to pay attention to: first and foremost, how expensive a certain tool is, and secondly, whether the vendor that produces the tool is upfront and transparent with their pricing.
At first glance, LiveChat’s prices seem to be reasonable. For the Business plan, which LiveChat highlights as the most popular plan, you’d pay $50 per month, and the Enterprise plan costs $149 per month. That said, note that you’re just getting a bare-bones customer messaging tool here.
If you’d like to add on other features such as chatbots, help desks or knowledge bases, you’ll have to fork out extra. The company charges $50+ per month for ChatBot, $19+ per month for HelpDesk, and $39+ per month for KnowledgeBase. As compared to this, Messagely’s Plus plan costs $49, and its Pro plan costs just $79. Both plans come with chatbots, helpdesks and knowledge bases, so there are no hidden costs for customers.
Next, LiveChat’s pricing page is also not as clear or unambiguous as it could be. While LiveChat includes “unlimited agent accounts” as a feature under all its plans, this does not mean that the tool can be accessed by unlimited agent. In fact, LiveChat’s per month pricing is dependent on its number of seats; you pay $50 per month per seat for the Business plan, and $149 per month per seat for the Enterprise plan.
On Messagely, you also get charged based on how many users need access to the tool, but additional users are charged at a more affordable $15 to $25 per user. Say you have a team of 10, for instance, and you’re gunning for the highest-tiered plan with the most features on either platform. If you go with LiveChat, this works out to $1,490 that you’d pay per month, exclusive of chatbots, helpdesks, etc, but Messagely just costs $304 per month, and it comes with chatbots and helpdesks included.
Type of chatbots
Chatbots are a huge asset to sales, marketing, and customer support teams. You know how they say it’s important to work on a business, not in a business? These bots help you do just that. They automate all the tedious, manual tasks that, quite frankly, aren’t worth your effort, and allow you to focus on fine-tuning campaigns and improving strategies.
Now, the fact that LiveChat users have to pay for an additional ChatBot tool to unlock chatbot functionality is a red flag. That aside, another thing to keep in mind is that LiveChat’s ChatBot is designed to answer customer enquiries, and they don’t have bots for other use cases (say, generating or nurturing leads).
Unlike LiveChat’s chatbots, Messagely chatbots aren’t one-trick ponies. Our chatbots don’t just answer customer enquiries, they also generate leads and nurture and engage customers. For instance, you can use Messagely’s chatbots to trigger messages to your website visitors, and encourage them to schedule a demo or meeting with your sales team.
Scope of tool
These days, companies are increasingly moving away from “specialist” tools that do just one thing, and favoring all-in-one tools that they can use to meet several business needs. At the end of the day, it’s much better to have a single platform that takes care of all your customer acquisition, engagement and support needs, rather than using several platforms to do the same thing.
Think about it: by serving your customers on one unified platform, you’re keeping all your data and analytics in one place, and this helps you track your numbers and fine-tune your strategies. On top of that, using a single tool helps you save cost and increase productivity. You won’t need to spend time setting up your integrations, or exporting information back and forth.
We’ve already talked a bit about how LiveChat is just a customer messaging tool, but Messagely comes with other built-in features such as chatbots, help desks, and knowledge bases. On top of that, Messagely also allows you to send your customers targeted in-app messages or emails. With Messagely, it’s easy to hone in on a specific customer segment (new users on their free trial, for instance) and send them relevant messages. In this scenario, you might choose to trigger an onboarding series to this particular segment, which will help boost your trial-to-paid conversion rate.
LiveChat is a reputable firm that’s won plenty of accolades and awards, but it simply doesn’t match up to the value that Messagely offers. If you’re looking for an all-in-one-tool that you can use to take care of multiple business needs and save cost, you’ll be better off using Messagely as opposed to LiveChat.
Our verdict? Messagely is a worthy LiveChat alternative – one that’s worth switching to.
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