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A guide to live chat tools for startups

satchel.com

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Re: A guide to live chat tools for startups

#31

Post by warent »

webo wrote: post #9

Our company recently "graduated" from Intercom's early-stage program. Intercom is a mediocre product but their pricing does not make sense whatsoever. I exchanged about 20 emails (while being very slow) with their account rep only to find out even they don't understand their own pricing. Here's some hot mess that's going on: * They A/B test their pricing page with completely different models. I've seen at least 3 dif…

would like to take this opportunity to shout out crisp.im. I've used them for my business for nearly 2 years and they've worked great (Except for one time when my subscription randomly ended and the support rep was either intoxicated or didn't speak English. But it resolved within an hour)

Re: A guide to live chat tools for startups

#32

Post by thompsonparker »

areichert wrote: post #11

We were probably writing the first few lines of code for Papercups around the time this article was written (in July), but we're another Intercom alternative :) Like Chatwoot, we're open source and have a free tier on our hosted version for anyone who'd like to give us a try! Here's the repo [0], website [1], and demo [2]. [0] https://github.com/papercups-io/papercups [1] https://papercups.io/ [2] https://app.papercu…

I love your product but might I just say I would be hesitant to use your product for the simple fact that there is no apparent about page on your site. I think it helps to know who is behind a company and there is a clear way, aside from the chat widget, to get contact information.

Re: A guide to live chat tools for startups

#33

Post by maneesh »

TrueGeek wrote: post #30
maneesh wrote: post #26

Anyone know apps that include an SDK for iOS and Android. We've been stuck with intercom because we need to be able to send iOS and Android messages, and push notifications, for support.

Disclaimer: I work there. But LivePerson has iOS and Android SDKs with push notification support.

Any clue what pricing is, without having to request a demo?

Re: A guide to live chat tools for startups

#34

Post by blizkreeg »

takklz wrote: post #20

Not sure if anyone is interested, but I created an app allowing a company to directly chat with customers via text messaging (rather than a widget embedded on your website). Could be more useful for brick and mortar type businesses rather than web based. https://www.outseed.io/

How is business? I created something similar but as an embedded widget just prior to Covid. Had to pause it when brick and mortar businesses took a major hit in March.

Just curious if you're seeing interest from them again.

Re: A guide to live chat tools for startups

#35

Post by cheeseblubber »

thompsonparker wrote: post #32
areichert wrote: post #11

We were probably writing the first few lines of code for Papercups around the time this article was written (in July), but we're another Intercom alternative :) Like Chatwoot, we're open source and have a free tier on our hosted version for anyone who'd like to give us a try! Here's the repo [0], website [1], and demo [2]. [0] https://github.com/papercups-io/papercups [1] https://papercups.io/ [2] https://app.papercu…

I love your product but might I just say I would be hesitant to use your product for the simple fact that there is no apparent about page on your site. I think it helps to know who is behind a company and there is a clear way, aside from the chat widget, to get contact information.

Great point we'll be sure to add it soon! Quick context about us we're a YC company that went through the S20 batch https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/22051 We did our launch hn about 3 months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24133719

Re: A guide to live chat tools for startups

#37

Post by TrueGeek »

maneesh wrote: post #33
TrueGeek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I work there. But LivePerson has iOS and Android SDKs with push notification support.

Any clue what pricing is, without having to request a demo?

No, sorry, I’ve always been kinda curious myself. I’m just a dev though.

Re: A guide to live chat tools for startups

#38

Post by webo »

warent wrote: post #31
webo wrote: post #9

Our company recently "graduated" from Intercom's early-stage program. Intercom is a mediocre product but their pricing does not make sense whatsoever. I exchanged about 20 emails (while being very slow) with their account rep only to find out even they don't understand their own pricing. Here's some hot mess that's going on: * They A/B test their pricing page with completely different models. I've seen at least 3 dif…

would like to take this opportunity to shout out crisp.im. I've used them for my business for nearly 2 years and they've worked great (Except for one time when my subscription randomly ended and the support rep was either intoxicated or didn't speak English. But it resolved within an hour)

Once you incorporate your systems and teams workflows around a specific system, it’s hard to justify a migration to another system. Most companies (like ours) just eat the cost at that point.

Re: A guide to live chat tools for startups

#40

Post by bcx »

It's not surprising intercom has raised their prices so much given intercom has raised close to 300M, they really need to push their pricing up into ACVs where they can pay for the sales organization they've been building, and grow top line revenue.

I expect drift to adopt a similar pricing approach (raised 100M) to justify their valuation and push their ACVs up.

I appreciate the shoutout for http://www.olark.com (raised 85k total including YC) and noticed a few comments about the visitor UI being a bit dated -- I agree with the sentiment, or did, but we recently updated the visitor UI and it's currently live on Olark.com and will be rolled out to all customers by January. Probably time to update that review ;)

Live chat software was instrumental in helping me compete when launching my first hosting company, and a must have for startups, glad we are still hitting that niche well :) --- also have a bunch of really exciting things in the pipeline, I'll drop them on a Show HN when they are ready.

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