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Best Olark Alternatives: 10 Competitors to Consider in 2024

best olark alternatives

Want to switch from Olark but don’t know what to choose instead? 

If that’s your train of thought, you’ve landed on the right piece. We’re discussing Olark alternatives that can help your business replace it with the right match. 

Our team has collaborated and created a quick guide for you. We will cover the following aspects in this guide

A Quick Overview of Olark Alternatives

Product Features Pricing
  • ProProfs Chat
  • Supports chatbot functionality for 24x7 automation
  • Helps you share files during a chat
  • Integrates with 50+ powerful platforms
  • Engages with chat greetings & announcements
  • Offers in-depth reports and analytics
    • Trial Plan: $0/15 days
    • Essentials Plan: $20/user/mon
    • Premium Plan: $60/user/mon
    • Business Plan: Request a custom quote
    • Zendesk Chat
    • Offers pre-built analytics
    • Helps you set up a knowledge base
    • Reduces response time with canned messages
    • Automates support requests with a chatbot
    • Enables you to manage support queue
      • Suite Team Plan: $49/agent/mon
      • Suite Growth Plan: $79/agent/mon
      • Suite Professional Plan: $99/agent/mon
      • Help Scout
      • Offer instant answers with self-help
      • Showcases other support platforms
      • Helps you route chats automatically
      • Works as call center management platform
      • Creates canned responses for your team to use
        • Standard Plan: $20/user/mon
        • Plus Plan: $35/user/mon
        • Company Plan: Contact and request a quote
        • LiveChat
        • Helps you get a sneak-peak at customer’s message
        • Allows you to exchange files during conversations
        • Engage customers right away with eye-catchers
        • Offers access to real-time reports and analytics
        • Provides access to 200+ powerful integrations
          • Starter Plan: $16/user/mon
          • Team Plan: $33/user/mon
          • Business Plan: $50/user/mon
          • Enterprise Plan: Request a quote
          • Drift
          • Creates canned responses for instant answers
          • Manages support requests with a chatbot

          • Helps you set auto-responders
          • Allows your agents to sync calendars
          • Helps you share files and important information
            • Premium Plan: Request a quote
            • Advanced Plan: Request a quote
            • Enterprise Plan: Request a quote
            • Intercom
            • Helps you capture leads automatically
            • Maintains unlimited customer database
            • Offers a conversational chatbot
            • Allows agents to send auto-responses
            • Offers multiple integration options
              • Starts at $79/user/mon
              • LiveAgent
              • Helps you send proactive chat invites
              • Offers a diverse chat button gallery
              • Provides a detailed chat invitation gallery
              • Distributes the chats equally with routing
              • Allows you to track live chat sessions in GA
                • Free Plan: $0/agent/mon
                • Ticket Plan: $15/agent/mon
                • Ticket+Chat Plan: $29/agent/mon
                • All-inclusive Plan: $39/agent/mon
                • Tawk.to
                • Helps you have a conversation in 45+ languages
                • Allows you to store unlimited chat history
                • Offers data on visitor engagement
                • Provides detailed reports & analytics
                • Enables agents to switch from chat to video call
                  • Free live chat software
                  • Userlike
                  • Helps customers avoid long queues
                  • Offers all-inclusive integration button
                  • Provides smart customer profiles for agents
                  • Integrates with powerful CRM platforms
                  • Capture customer feedback with post-chat form
                    • Free Plan: $0/mon
                    • Team Plan: $90/mon
                    • Corporate Plan: $290/mon
                    • Business Plan: $720/mon
                    • Pure Chat
                    • Offers in-depth chat analytics
                    • Provides access to visitor information
                    • Allows you to customize chat widget
                    • Offers integration with leading platforms
                    • Provide anytime, anywhere support
                      • Growth Plan: $39/mon
                      • Pro Plan: $79/mon

                      What is Olark Live Chat?

                      Olark live chat is a live chat software that allows users to offer instant, proactive support to website visitors. This live chat solution helps its users capture leads, understand customer pain points, personalize support conversations and generate more sales. Olark recently introduced a chatbot feature to its customers. That means they can now automate the support process efficiently.

                      What’s more, Olark’s chatbot (called CoPilot) helps its users start and end a full-fledged conversation. It even qualifies leads for your business and enables you to build a solid contact list. Besides this, CoPilot also automates repetitive tasks and schedules callbacks for customers.

                      Even with such benefits, some businesses would like to replace Olark live chat. We’ve listed why companies decide to shift from Olark to one of their competitors.

                      Why Look for an Olark Chat Alternative?

                      This section aims to discover some of the pressing issues Olark users have or continue to face. These include the following.

                      • The drawback is that end customers using Olark’s chat widget on the website can’t close it once the conversation ends. It can hamper the user experience and may irate the customers browsing the website as well.
                      • Olark also fails to share files during an ongoing conversation, such as images and documents. That means customers who want to share images of the issue they are facing can’t do that with Olark in place. This may extend the resolution time and would end up taking more time from the operators.
                      • It doesn’t allow you to set different settings for different agents in the team. That means they can see all the things that only an admin should. In a nutshell, you can’t set a different dashboard view for your agents that would help them concentrate on their designated activities only.
                      • Olark’s chatbot comes with limited functionalities. Setting it up and customizing its answers as per your needs can be a big challenge for users. This is one of the reasons why managing large pools of requests can get tricky for the chatbot. It may result in increasing frequent operator burnouts as well.
                      • Users can face inconsistencies from Olark’s customer support team. They aren’t proactive and can take more time to resolve the issues faced by their users. This has already put off many of their users and encouraged them to look for an alternative solution.

                      These five issues have cumulatively encouraged many of its users to search for the best Olark chat alternatives in the market. Before you start on this journey, we think you should search for a specific set of features. In case you aren’t aware of them, then read through our next section.

                      5 Must-Have Features to Look for in Olark Live Chat Software Alternatives

                      We aim to explore five must-have features that you should look for in a list of best Olark alternatives. 

                      • Offers Advanced Chatbot Features

                      While looking at Olark competitors, make sure you choose one that offers a chatbot with advanced features. Your chatbot should provide in-depth reports and templates to help you get started in the right direction, unlike Olark. Also, ensure that the live chat tool offers branching logic to help you create the proper conversational structure for the chatbot.

                      • Provides Access to Detailed Admin View

                      Your admins and agents should have different view access. Offering complete view access to all agents will divert their attention to other activities. This can hamper their productivity in the long run. That’s why when searching for the best Olark alternative, make sure the software provider helps you divide both admin and agent view access easily.

                      • Helps You Share Files of Different Formats

                      Olark users would agree that they can’t share all types of files even today during an ongoing conversation with a customer. This forces them to switch to a different platform where sharing multimedia files isn’t the issue. That’s why you need to look for an Olark alternative that allows you to share files of all sizes and formats.

                      • Gives You Access to Detailed Reports

                      Another must-have feature you need to focus on is detailed live chat reports. When your team gets access to in-depth reports, it will be easier to understand the ongoing performance. They’ll be able to identify their service loopholes and strategize to provide a better service experience to customers.

                      • Provides You 24x7x365 Days Support

                      A lot of you also have complaints about Olark’s support service, isn’t it? Well, that’s because you would need prompt services rather than waiting for hours for a resolution. In that case, you should also consider if the Olark live chat alternatives offer spontaneous, proactive support or not.

                      These must-have features will guide you better and help you choose the best alternatives to Olark easily. But besides these features, you will need other criteria to select the best Olark alternatives for your business. We used three standards based on which we could finalize our list of Olark similar software. 

                      Top 3 Selection Standards Used to Choose Olark Alternatives

                      This section aims to explore the three standards we’ve used to curate our list of Olark alternatives. These include the following:

                      • Online Rating

                      One of the first factors considered while building this alternative list was the online rating for each product. We believe that ratings can give an overall picture of how the customer views a product. For this, we had to refer to Google, Playstore, and listing site ratings.

                      • Overall Feedback

                      Understanding the benefits of a tool and its shortcomings is essential, and rating won’t help you see them. You will have to read through customer reviews to understand customers’ problems using a specific tool or how it helped them overcome one. We used case studies and online feedback to finalize our list of alternative tools

                      • Product Pricing

                      Our team also felt that pricing plays a huge role in a customer’s decision to invest in a service. That’s why we took into account the pricing of all the products we’ve listed in our guide. This will allow you to select an option that fits within your support budget.

                      What are the Best Olark Chat Alternatives?

                      After getting a grip on our selection criteria, it will be easier for your team and you to find the best Olark chat alternatives for your business. But just in case you don’t know where to start, feel free to refer to our list below!

                      Top 10 List Of Tools Like Olark Alternatives

                      1. ProProfs Chat

                      We started our list of Olark alternatives with ProProfs Chat. This live chat solution can be set up easily in less than 5 minutes. With ProProfs Chat, you can monitor all your visitors and track all their real-time website activities. This will help your operators to initiate a chat proactively with them.

                      But in case your operators are offline, then its chatbot comes in handy. It will help you answer all frequently asked questions or even create tickets in the absence of your operators. The chatbot functionality will also help you transfer incoming chats to the correct department.

                      ProProfs Chat also supports integration with 50+ powerful platforms. You can even integrate native apps like knowledge base, help desk, survey maker, and CRM. This will help you create a support bundle and ensure that your operators never miss out on support opportunities.

                      Top 5 Key Features:

                      • Supports chatbot functionality for 24×7 automation
                      • Helps you share files during a chat
                      • Integrates with 50+ powerful platforms
                      • Engages with chat greetings & announcements
                      • Offers in-depth reports and analytics

                      Pros:

                      One of the best aspects of ProProfs Chat is its customer support. They do not let their customers leave without a solution. And even if they did miss out on a customer’s query, they ensure to reach out to them later.

                      Cons:

                      They have an excellent chatbot feature in place. But they offer less templates to keep it simple for its users. More templates can reduce the amount of time a business needs to spend to complete its setup.

                      Pricing Details:

                      • Trial Plan: $0/15 days
                      • Essentials Plan: $20/user/mon
                      • Premium Plan: $60/user/mon
                      • Enterprise Plan: Request a quote

                      2. Zendesk Chat

                      Another popular live chat platform you can consider is Zendesk Chat. Using this live chat system, you can help your agents to view all conversations and customer history in seconds. It is quick and helps your agents avoid any performance lags. With this tool, you can also make sure that only complex support queries reach your agents, thanks to their chatbot feature.

                      With Zendesk and its chatbot, you can ensure that no customer leaves without a response or even solutions. On top of that, Zendesk users can also capture support requests from messaging platforms and help your agents answer them all from one platform.

                      Top 5 Key Features:

                      • Offers pre-built analytics
                      • Helps you set up a knowledge base
                      • Reduces response time with canned messages
                      • Automates support requests with a chatbot
                      • Enables you to manage support queue

                      Pros:

                      We like the fact that Zendesk chat can integrate with not just its chatbot but with other chatbot platforms as well. This gives the user the option of whether they would like to use the native app or a third-party application.

                      Cons:

                      Users can find it a bit difficult to upload and export data when using Zendesk Chat. That’s because some of the data gets deleted during the export process. Loss of data can put Zendesk users a little behind on their progress.

                      Pricing Details:

                      • Suite Team Plan: $49/agent/mon
                      • Suite Growth Plan: $79/agent/mon
                      • Suite Professional Plan: $99/agent/mon

                      3. Help Scout

                      Help Scout is one of the customer support champions that is also known for its live chat functionality. It will allow your business to become more proactive and enable agents to offer a solution to customers before they ask for it. 

                      With Help Scout, your business can also capture leads and categorize them. This will help you add them to your contact lists and allow the sales team to identify if the visitor is a prospect or an existing customer.

                      Moreover, this live chat solution also helps your agents connect and collaborate with other team members on returning customers. This can prove fruitful for your business as it will help your agents save time and offer a solution to customers in real time.

                      Top 5 Key Features:

                      • Offer instant answers with self-help
                      • Showcases other support platforms in case agents are busy or offline
                      • Helps you route chats automatically
                      • Works as call center management platform
                      • Creates canned responses for your team to use

                      Pros:

                      They have a clean UI that makes it easier for agents to manage incoming support queries efficiently.

                      Cons:

                      You’ll see live chat mostly bundled with their other products. This can overlap with already existing functionalities and impact the overall experience negatively. 

                      Pricing Details:

                      • Standard Plan: $20/user/mon
                      • Plus Plan: $35/user/mon
                      • Company Plan: Contact and request a quote

                      4. LiveChat

                      LiveChat is another live chat software we’d like to recommend to you as Olark’s alternative. Using this customer support tool, you can reach your customers proactively and identify a solution that fits their needs. 

                      What’s more, you can integrate it with more than 200+ third-party applications. That means you can create your sales and support bundle as per your needs. Their native apps are not a part of the marketplace, but they can get integrated with a user’s live chat account in a few minutes.

                      Besides all this, LiveChat is also known for its engagement features such as targeted messages, different messaging modes, eye-catchers, and others. You can even change the look and feel of their live chat widget as it supports multiple customization settings.

                      Top 5 Key Features:

                      • Helps you get a sneak-peak of customer’s message
                      • Allows you to exchange files during conversations
                      • Engage customers right away with eye-catchers
                      • Offers access to real-time reports and analytics
                      • Provides access to 200+ powerful integrations 

                      Pros:

                      LiveChat offers multiple chatbot templates to all its users. This proves beneficial for many of their customers as they don’t have to spend much time setting up the chatbot on their websites.

                      Cons:

                      Staying connected to customers throughout the conversation can be a problem. Multiple customers have complained about how they couldn’t sustain their conversations due to constant glitches. This has left many of their customers dissatisfied and conveys a wrong picture of the brand as well.

                      Pricing Details:

                      • Starter Plan: $16/user/mon
                      • Team Plan: $33/user/mon
                      • Business Plan: $50/user/mon
                      • Enterprise Plan: Request a quote

                      5. Drift

                      Drift promises to help your business connect with more visitors and assist them in finding a solution faster. It enables you to identify situations where a visitor would have the highest intent and triggers a message around it. It would personally approach such prospects and help them find the right solution hassle-free.

                      Besides that, Drift also helps you shorten the sales cycle. It will help your agents to switch from a chat to a video call. This allows them to interact with customers face-to-face and close deals faster. Indeed this helps many of their current users to boost sales. You can also find detailed chatbot and live chat reports to identify where your support team needs to upgrade its services to maintain a good customer satisfaction level.

                      Top 5 Key Features:

                      • Creates canned responses for instant answers
                      • Manages support requests with a chatbot
                      • Helps you set auto-responders
                      • Allows your agents to sync calendars
                      • Enables you to share files and important information

                      Pros:

                      Even with a chatbot in place, Drift helps your business build personalized communication experiences for customers. This helps Drift stand out from a lot of businesses in the market.

                      Cons:

                      They have a confusing backend that can keep the agents busy figuring out the tool’s features while offering support to the customer. This can delay the resolution time and even increase the response time. Both can result in dissatisfying your customers.

                      Pricing Details:

                      • Premium Plan: Request a quote
                      • Advanced Plan: Request a quote
                      • Enterprise Plan: Request a quote

                      6. Intercom

                      Another Olark live chat alternative that we’d recommend you to give a shot is Intercom. This live chat system claims to help businesses build conversational support experiences for their customers. They offer business messenger bots that help you connect way faster with prospects and website visitors simultaneously. 

                      With Intercom, you can also gather customer data and use it to personalize each communication experience efficiently. What’s more, you get an inbox that helps you store all your communications with the customers in one place. That means, on their return, your business can use those conversations and further personalize the experience. This will result in satisfied and loyal customers.

                      Top 5 Key Features:

                      • Helps you capture leads automatically
                      • Maintains unlimited customer database
                      • Offers a conversational chatbot
                      • Allows agents to send auto-responses
                      • Offers multiple integration options

                      Pros:

                      It helps you run A/B testing on how your chatbots might perform is one of the most significant advantages of using Intercom as an Olark alternative.

                      Cons:

                      One of Intercom’s drawbacks has got to be their customer service. They aren’t responsive, and it gives the wrong impression to all its customers.

                      Pricing Details:

                      Starts at $79/user/mon.

                      Also Read: 11 Best Intercom Alternatives & Competitors [REVIEWED]

                      7. LiveAgent

                      Primarily seen as a ticketing system, LiveAgent is another live chat solution your business can consider. LiveAgent is indeed a ticketing system, but it also offers live chat functionality to help users switch from tickets to a chat session. This helps them answer support questions faster and keep customers satisfied.

                      LiveAgent helps your support operators see what customers are typing during an ongoing chat session to speed up the support process. This gives them grace time to come up with an ideal answer. 

                      Top 5 Key Features:

                      • Helps you send proactive chat invites
                      • Offers a diverse chat button gallery
                      • Provides a detailed chat invitation gallery
                      • Distributes the chats equally with routing
                      • Allows you to track live chat sessions in GA

                      Pros:

                      LiveAgent gives you a good combination of live chat and a ticketing system. This is seen as one of the best advantages of this tool because you get the functionalities of two support systems.

                      Cons:

                      This support tool has a spam filter, but it doesn’t work accurately. Many customers have complained about how they kept receiving spam messages, irrelevant to the business, regularly.

                      Pricing Details:

                      • Free Plan: $0/agent/mon
                      • Ticket Plan: $15/agent/mon
                      • Ticket+Chat Plan: $29/agent/mon
                      • All-inclusive Plan: $39/agent/mon
                      Also Read: 10 Best LiveAgent Alternatives to Upgrade and Improve Customer Support

                      8. Tawk.to

                      Tawk.to is one of the best free alternatives to Olark live chat that you can try. This free live chat solution helps you communicate in 45+ languages. That means you can communicate with visitors from different regions in their native language at ease. It even allows you to add tags to the conversation. This will enable your agents to find critical conversations during an ongoing chat and find the best possible customer solution.

                      On top of this, you get to track visitors based on their geo-location. This would allow you to guide them to your native stores or the next best option hassle-free. You will get message sneak-peek, agent-to-agent messaging, access to visitor information before a chat starts, and much more.

                      Top 5 Key Features:

                      • Helps you have a conversation in 45+ languages
                      • Allows you to store unlimited chat history
                      • Offers data on visitor engagement
                      • Provides detailed reports & analytics
                      • Enables agents to switch from chat to video call

                      Pros:

                      They give their users the option to hire an agent at the charge of $1/hour/agent, which fits companies who do not wish to employ a support team for their business.

                      Cons:

                      The chat notifications seem to get delayed by 2-4 minutes. This has caused a lot of issues for agents as they miss out on support opportunities regularly.

                      Pricing Details:

                      Free live chat software.

                      Also Read: 11 Best Tawk.to Alternatives for Elevating Customer Service

                      9. Userlike

                      Userlike is a customer support tool that brings together messaging platforms, automation, and real-time chat at the same time. This customer messaging platform has helped 100’s of businesses meet their support and sales goals efficiently.

                      Userlike is also known for its sticky chat feature. This internal chat logic system helps returning customers connect with the same agent they had a conversation with the last time. But in case the agent is offline or not available, then their chats are distributed to another agent based on a fair round-robin system.

                      Besides this, you also get access to complete customer profiles, integrations with CRM platforms, chat ratings and feedback, pre and post-chat surveys, and more. You can also answer incoming support requests from different messaging channels and manage them from its dashboard.

                      Top 5 Key Features:

                      • Helps customers avoid long queues
                      • Offers all-inclusive integration button
                      • Provides smart customer profiles for agents
                      • Integrates with powerful CRM platforms
                      • Capture customer feedback with a post-chat form

                      Pros:

                      Transfers chat in a matter of seconds with its round-robin management feature. This has helped customers avoid wait time or long queues easily. What’s more, its combination with the chatbot helps users manage both complex and common queries in real-time.

                      Cons:

                      It doesn’t offer a mobile app yet. It’s a drawback for those who would like to offer support to customers without being confined to their seats 24×7. 

                      Pricing Details:

                      • Free Plan: $0/mon
                      • Team Plan: $90/mon
                      • Corporate Plan: $290/mon
                      • Business Plan: $720/mon

                      10. Pure Chat

                      Pure Chat is the last Olark alternative on our list that we’d like you to consider. If you’re looking for a simple and affordable live chat solution to manage your support queries, then Pure Chat is your calling. You can customize the chat widget as per the look and feel of your website. You can even add your branding to give it an authentic look. 

                      Besides that, you can transfer files during an ongoing chat to help customers get a better solution. Pure Chat also offers its clients a full-fledged mobile app compatible with iOS and Android devices. This gives your agents the ability to answer an incoming support request anytime, anywhere.

                      Top 5 Key Features:

                      • Offers in-depth chat analytics
                      • Provides access to visitor information
                      • Allows you to customize chat widget
                      • Offers integration with leading platforms
                      • Provide anytime, anywhere support

                      Pros:

                      We like how this platform is easy to integrate with your website. Just five simple steps, and it is already integrated. 

                      Cons:

                      Unfortunately, Pure Chat lacks chatbot functionality. That means those of you who are specifically looking for automation in a live chat system might not go for this tool at all.

                      Pricing Details:

                      • Growth Plan: $39/mon
                      • Pro Plan: $79/mon

                      Complete Comparison of All Olark Chat Alternatives

                      Our list of alternatives have been discussed in detail. We hope it helps you narrow down the best Olark alternative for your business. But just in case you need a complete overview comparison of all the tools mentioned before, then we’ve prepared a table for you below. It compares all the Olark alternatives based on some essential features.

                      Features Chatbots Announcement Integrations Automatic Routing Proactive Messages
                      ProProfs Chat Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
                      Zendesk Chat Yes No Yes No Yes
                      Help Scout No No Yes Yes No
                      LiveChat Yes No Yes Yes Yes
                      Drift Yes Yes Yes No Yes
                      Intercom Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
                      LiveAgent No Yes Yes Yes Yes
                      Tawk.to No No Yes No Yes
                      Userlike Yes No Yes Yes Yes
                      Pure Chat No No Yes Yes No

                      Concluding Verdict: Which Olark Alternative to Choose?

                      After careful consideration of  Olark alternative listed above, we’ve chosen ProProfs Chat as our concluding choice.

                      And the reason is apparent. 

                      ProProfs Chat offers a list of features that can help your business offer the best possible service experience to customers. It automates your support queue. You can even route chats automatically. You can boost your engagement with multiple visitors at the same time using announcements and chat greetings

                      Let’s not forget, ProProfs Chat also integrates with various platforms, helps you offer support anytime, anywhere, and even provides multilingual support. What’s more, it starts at $10/user/mon. This live chat software is a win-win tool for all.

                      But if you still wish to explore other tools, we hope our list of Olark live chat alternatives helps you find the best replacement option.

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                      About the author

                      Jared is a customer support expert. He has been published in CrazyEgg, CoSchedule, and CXL. As a customer support executive at ProProfs, he has been instrumental in developing a complete customer support system that more than doubled customer satisfaction. You can connect and engage with Jared on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn