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Tawk.to is a live chat platform that lets businesses connect with customers and website visitors in real-time. This free tool is the most popular live chat app worldwide, holding over 20% of the market share and serving more than 265,000 companies. The platform includes a customizable chat widget that works well with popular website platforms like WordPress, Joomla, and Magento.
Tawk.to also helps businesses track customer activity in real-time. It allows handling multiple conversations at once, with many other features include visitor monitoring, canned replies, offline forms, file sharing, screen sharing, conversation history, and IP tracking. These tools help companies engage website visitors, create smooth channels for conversations, and boost lead generation. The platform also has a knowledge base, ticketing system, and detailed analytics for tracking performance metrics.
Tawk.to’s affordability is its biggest draw — it’s completely free to use, with no limits on agents, chat volumes, or the number of sites you can use it on. But if you’d like, you can remove the Tawk.to branding or add AI tools to your plan by paying $29/month each.
Tawk.to: Plans and pricing
Tawk.to stands out in the live chat market mainly thanks to its unique pricing model. Its core platform is completely free. There are no limits on agents, chat volumes, or websites. The free version includes features like customizable chat widgets, visitor monitoring, ticketing systems, canned responses, and real-time analytics. The company earns money mainly through optional add-ons, making it a cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes.
For those wanting more features, Tawk.to has several paid add-ons. The AI Assist feature comes in different tiers: a free Hobby plan with 100 AI messages per month, a Growth plan at $29 per month or $290 annually (saving two months) with 1,000 messages, a Business plan at $99 per month or $990 annually for 5,000 messages, and an Enterprise plan at $399 per month or $3,990 annually for 20,000 messages. Businesses can also remove the “Powered by Tawk.to” branding for $29 per month, although many find the branding unintrusive. Other add-ons include Video, Voice, and Screen Share capabilities for $29-$49 per month.
Tawk.to also offers distinctive human support services. The Hired Agent service provides trained, native-speaking chat agents for just $1 per hour. Scheduling options include: 24×7-365 coverage (168 hours/week) at $728/month, Evenings & Weekends (128 hours/week) at $610/month, Double Shift (80 hours/week) at $520/month, and Full-Time (40 hours/week) at $380/month. For more support, the Virtual Assistant service offers dedicated assistants starting at $7 per hour, with packages for 20 hours/week ($800/month), 30 hours/week ($1,050/month), or 40 hours/week ($1,300/month).
More than 90% user reviews across different platforms note that Tawk.to provides great value for money. People like that the free version has features that are often comparable to premium tiers in other platforms. Still, it’s important to know that Tawk.to doesn’t refund Virtual Assistant services canceled before the end of a subscription. However, they do give account credits for unused days when assistants are replaced. All subscriptions are paid in advance and usually non-refundable.
Tawk.to: Features
Tawk.to offers a great range of features, especially since it’s completely free. There are no limits on agents, chat volumes, or websites. The platform includes over 20 core tools — including real-time monitoring, customizable widgets, automated triggers, canned shortcuts, and a built-in ticketing system.
The platform balances accessibility and capability, making it fit for businesses of all sizes. While it might not have every feature available, it meets most business needs well. The user-friendly interface allows for deep customization of the chat widget. This lets businesses match the tool with their brand while offering various channels for customer support and engagement.
Visitor tracking
Tawk.to lets you monitor visitor activity on your websites in real time. The platform offers detailed visitor data, including geolocation, device types, and browsing habits. It even shows when visitors are typing. This helps sales and support teams grasp customer behavior and engage with visitors at key moments.
Using these insights, you can spot potential issues in the customer experience. You can also improve your website for better engagement and make informed decisions to boost conversion rates. You can segment their audience better, which is great for targeted marketing and personalized interactions.
Customizable chat widget
The chat widget in Tawk.to is very customizable. You can change its size, colors, position, and content to fit their website design. Users can also adjust the widget’s language to suit their audience, creating a consistent brand experience. This makes the chat interface feel like a natural part of the website, not just a third-party tool.
When a chat widget matches a company’s branding, it eliminates friction in the website’s UX. This leads to more conversations, stronger customer relationships, and higher conversion rates.
Automated triggers
Tawk.to’s automated trigger system helps businesses send proactive messages. These messages depend on specific conditions like time spent on the site, pages visited, or actions taken by visitors. You can greet new visitors, welcome returning customers, offer help on important pages, or engage users who seem ready to leave.
This massively boosts customer engagement. You can start conversations at key moments during the customer journey. When your teams reach out proactively, they can lower bounce rates, boost engagement, and capture leads that might have been lost. Personalizing triggers based on visitor behavior leads to more relevant interactions.
Ticketing system
The built-in ticketing system in Tawk.to helps businesses turn chat conversations into support tickets. This makes it easy to follow up and track resolutions. The integration of live chat and ticketing ensures that no customer inquiry is missed, even if it can’t be solved right away. Tickets can be assigned to agents, prioritized, and tracked until they’re resolved.
This leads to better customer service and agent accountability. It helps teams handle complex issues more easily and keeps customer conversations consistent across interactions. All of this ultimately means better follow-through on inquiries.
Canned shortcuts
Tawk.to’s shortcut feature lets agents create pre-written messages for common questions. These canned responses can be quickly added to chats. This saves time and keeps messaging consistent across the support team.
Thanks to this, support teams can handle more inquiries without losing quality or personalization. Agents can focus on enhancing conversations instead of typing the same replies. For businesses, this means lower support costs, faster resolutions, and high service standards even during busy times.
Multi-agent management
Tawk.to allows businesses to add unlimited agents and organize them into departments. Each agent can have a unique profile with customizable aliases, photos, and job titles. The platform also supports agent-to-agent messaging, enabling internal collaboration through a “whisper” function that customers can’t see.
This structure improves business outcomes. It ensures inquiries go to the right team members. Specialized handling of different customer interactions enhances internal communication and resource allocation. For larger organizations, this setup provides expert assistance without unnecessary transfers or delays.
Tawk.to: Integrations
Tawk.to has a large number of integrations on offer, including with your existing CMS software and other popular platforms, including WordPress, WFH apps, such as Zapier, and content delivery network providers like Cloudflare.
The live chat software also has an entire webpage dedicated to its integration with Shopify. This allows businesses to provide their Shopify customers with live chat customer service, as provided by Tawk.to, making it easier to check orders, shipping information and more directly from your Tawk.to messages. Essentially, the integration means that Tawk.to users no longer need to keep two tabs open in order to chat with their Shopify customers. Almost anything businesses can do within their Shopify admin page, can now be found in the sidebar of a Tawk.to chat or ticket.
Another of the integrated tools that Tawk.to dedicates an entire webpage to is Make, a piece of IT automation software that promises to streamline your communication flow by connecting Tawk.to with over 700 apps, including Google Sheets, Slack, and more. Adding a Tawk.to widget to a number of other solutions is also straightforward and there are clear instructions, broken down by app, posted online.
Tawk.to: Analytics
Tawk.to’s reporting dashboard gives clear insights into visitor engagement, agent performance, and chat effectiveness. You can access these analytics by logging into your Tawk.to account and clicking on the Reporting menu. The analytics features focus on key areas like Live Chat, Tickets, Knowledge Base, and AI Assist Message Usage.
For live chat, businesses can track metrics such as chat volume, missed chats, offline messages, average chat duration, user satisfaction, and first response time. The ticketing system offers insights on new ticket volume, solved tickets, ticket sources, resolution time, reopened tickets, and first response time. Knowledge Base analytics show which articles are most viewed, what customers are searching for, and the most helpful content based on reader feedback.
Tawk.to’s visitor tracking is equally robust, allowing businesses to monitor real-time activity on their sites. The dashboard displays a graph of live visitors and provides historical analytics for visitors, chats, and page views over customizable time frames. The platform counts visitor sessions from the moment someone lands on a property until they leave, end the chat, or stay inactive for at least twenty minutes.
A dashboard offers quick comparisons of current performance to previous periods, with percentage indicators and seven-day high/low markers for key metrics. While Tawk.to’s visitor counting method differs slightly from Google Analytics (20-minute inactivity timeout versus Google’s 30 minutes), the platform also integrates with the latter for added insights.
Tawk.to: Ease of use
Tawk.to’s interface gets a lot of praise for being easy to use. And changing the look of the Tawk.to chat widget is exceedingly simple.
You might want to change the widget’s appearance for aesthetic reasons. For example, you may want the color scheme to match your branding. However, practical reasons matter too. Customizing the widget can help users easily identify and use it.
Many users highlight Tawk.to’s customizability as a key strength. The design is unobtrusive, so it won’t distract customers from other site features. If you want to change the design, just click “Administration” at the top of Tawk.to’s dashboard. Then, select the “Advanced” menu under “Widget appearance.”
Tawk.to: Support
Tawk.to’s primary support channel is the Help Center. You’ll find self-service articles on topics like “getting started,” “chat widget customization,” “shopping cart integrations,” “billing,” and “advanced features.” If you want to learn about creating triggers or managing webhooks, this is the right spot.
You can also submit a support ticket to get a reply via email. If you’re a developer, there’s a special community support page just for you. The community forum allows developers to give feedback and suggest new or improved features to Tawk.to.
The Help Center also has a useful “Status” section. This gives a quick view of how the live chat tool is performing and if there’s any downtime or bugs to know about. It even breaks down performance by website, dashboard, mobile app, email, integrations, and AI assist. If something isn’t working right in Tawk.to, you can usually find the issue here.
Tawk.to: Security
Tawk.to takes user data security quite seriously. It has an open bug bounty program that rewards ethical hackers for finding flaws and vulnerabilities within its system. Just a few years ago, a security researcher identifying as “kaonskillz” found a cross-site scripting vulnerability before it could cause a data breach.
Beyond that, Tawk.to follows industry protocol in terms of data encryption. Everything is encrypted via Google Cloud — both in transit and at rest, with only authorized staff being granted access.
Tawk.to: The Competition
Tawk.to is far from the only live chat service in town. Other leading players include LiveChat, HubSpot, and Tidio. The main area where Tawk.to stands out from its competitors, however, is that not many offer quite so generous a free-forever plan.
There are reasons to go with other platforms, of course, especially in terms of Tawk.to’s mobile compatibility and AI functionality. Many other solutions perform better here, but this one offers excellent value.
Tawk.to: Final Verdict
Cost isn’t everything, but it’s hard to ignore that this is the only live chat tool that’s free forever. Yes, there are some caveats, but they are mostly minor and solvable through cost-effective upgrades.
And cost aside, Tawk.to offers great functionality that will suit most small businesses, along with integrations with many of the tools that make up a modern digital business environment.
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