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32 Comments

What website messenger do you use?

Curious to hear what kind of website messenger / chat widget no-coders are putting on their websites.

What website messenger do you use?
  1. Intercom
  2. Crisp
  3. Drift
  4. Tawk.to
  5. Other (comment below)
  6. I don't use one (comment why below)
Vote
  1. 2

    i used tawk.to for almost 2yrs now its free and do it’s job perfectly

    1. 1

      Pretty interesting. I expect it's probably because tawk.to is completely free, so a lot of people might just put it on any random website they have.

      Anecdotally, I don't see tawk.to very often on websites that sell stuff, e.g. B2B, e-commerce, etc. I expect the breakdown is probably different there and a lot of people tend to gravitate to paid options that are more "professional", e.g. Intercom.

      If you try filtering by websites that receive the most traffic (e.g. top 100K or top 10K), you can see that tawk.to kind of falls away and other options start leading the pack.

      Thanks for sharing!

  2. 1

    Currently trialling Intercom for sheet2api.com. For what I'm using it for it doesn't seem worth 39 USD/month so will likely switch to a cheaper alternative shortly.

    (I've noticed no uptick in customer engagement while using it vs other similar products).

    1. 1

      Yeah, I'd definitely say Intercom can be overkill if you're just using it for live chat.

    1. 2

      Interesting, never heard of them before. Their widget looks similar to Intercom.

  3. 1

    We are using the messenger that is coming with SendInBlue

  4. 1

    I'm not using one, since they normally leave cookies behind, and right now, I am 100% cookie free and GDPR compliant (using Plausible for tracking).

    That way, my users won't need to get spammed with those annoying cookie banners, and can confidently know that tracking cookies won't be placed in their browser.

    However, if there's one that doesn't do this, I'd love to use it.

    1. 1

      I'm actually making one that doesn't track users or use cookies at all :) If you're interested, you can take a look at https://letterbase.io

      1. 1

        That looks really nice, but from the poll, I decided to try Crisp just now - which appear to also be cookie-less!

        1. 1

          Hey, Crisp is actually not cookie-less - they use third-party cookies. You can tell from going to a website that uses Crisp and checking out their cookies. Here's an example from Divjoy (I block 3rd party cookies by default in my browser so that's why they show up as blocked):

          Crisp cookies

          Since it seems like you care about user privacy, I'd recommend for you to read this blog post to learn more about the privacy stances of various messengers. Feel free to CTRL-F to search for Crisp.

          1. 1

            Those are only functional cookies, not marketing cookies, so cookie banner and consent are not needed.

            You can read more here: https://help.crisp.chat/en/article/crisp-chatbox-cookie-and-ip-policy-1147xor/

            1. 1

              Hey Mathias, I don't think that's accurate.

              Take a look at https://gdpr.eu/cookies. They say you need to "receive users’ consent before you use any cookies except strictly necessary cookies." Crisp is using functional cookies.

              Crisp's cookies are even tied to your IP address (by their own admission on the webpage you linked), which is stored indefinitely in the case that you start a conversation.

              Moreover, Crisp's cookies are both third-party and persistent, meaning Crisp can technically create user profiles across different domains. They claim they don't do this, but it's not verifiable. You should never trust a company to not mishandle your data -- it's much better if it's impossible for them to do so.

              Anyway, you're free to use Crisp if you'd like, and you'd probably be able to get away with not using a cookie banner too (they don't use one either). But just want to help you be better informed :)

              1. 1

                Functional cookies are per definition "strictly necessary" I suppose?

                They said in the article that I linked that I don't have to ask for consent, so I'm assuming they've done their research.

                Thank you for keeping me informed though.

                1. 1

                  Yeah, in my opinion it's kind of weird that they say you don't need a cookie banner.

                  According to GDPR.eu, functional cookies are different from strictly necessary cookies. And it makes sense: you don't really need a messenger to remember your chats from previous sessions, so it's reasonable for that to be classified underneath functional/preference cookies.

                  I'd imagine that is even more true in this case since Crisp is a third party service that not every user of your website would use - meaning that their cookies are not really "strictly necessary".

                  1. 1

                    Hmmm I see! And I must agree with you. I'll contact their support department to see what they have to say.

                    Do you have a free plan available, and do you have an app?

                    1. 1

                      Let me know when they respond to you - I'd be curious to hear what they have to say!

                      Letterbase doesn't have a free plan, but you can try it out for free for 14 days. I'd be happy to extend that for you if you feel like you need to try it out for a longer period of time.

                      If you're asking about a mobile app: user messages get forwarded to your email address, so you can simply use your email app to respond.

  5. 1

    I'm using Intercom, specifically their Early Stage plan. It's a really great value for the price and pretty easy to qualify for.

    1. 2

      I used intercom, using the early stage plan, I only used the basic features on a project that was hardly used, I asked Intercom for another early stage plan for another new projects and they wouldn't take my money, so cancelled and went to for Tawk.to instead, which is free.

    2. 2

      Intercom's early stage plan is definitely great value!

  6. 1

    We use Hubspot; it's free & customizable + it syncs with their CRM

    1. 1

      Nice! It's probably very convenient to have them sync together

  7. 1

    I’m using crisp.im. Has a decent free plan and plugins for a ton of other functionality.

    1. 2

      Cool! This is on Divjoy, right? Which plugins do you use?

      1. 2

        Yup! I actually don’t use any yet because I’ve been too cheap to upgrade to paid :)

        Planning on doing that soon though to take advantage of their screen sharing plugin so users can easily show me issues/bugs.

  8. 3

    This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

    1. 1

      What are the advantages of using tawk.to? Is it better than Crisp?

      1. 1

        It's 100% Free.. unlimited users, and unlimited everything. They make $ if you want to remove their brand, but it really isn't anything gaudy.. plus all the others that we paid for in the past, still had their brand on the widget anyhow.

        What I like most is that it is really the only multi tenant app in the space.. for companies like us that want to be able to login to one app and have all of our sites connected, but all the data and reporting siloed.. it really is the only choice.

        the big drawback for tawk.to is the design of the widget is a bit dated, and not chatbots yet.. but they say its coming.

        1. 1

          thanks for sharing!

        2. 1

          Currently trying Intercom for glop.com . For what I use it for, it doesn't seem to cost $39/month. I'll probably switch to a cheaper alternative soon. A friend of mine long ago advised me to try https://www.autoforwardtext.com . He doesn't have any problems + lots of features are totally free. BTW I don't see tawk.to very often on websites that sell different things, I expect the breakdown there is probably different, and many people tend to gravitate towards the paid options.

        3. 1

          Thanks for answering my question. I will check this out.

    2. 1

      Yeah, they seem to offer a lot of features for free. I was not a fan of being unable to respond to users if they were not online though (or at the very least I was not able to figure out how to do it based on their UI 🙃)

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