5 Best and Fastest WordPress Live Chat Plugins (+ Performance Data)

Are you looking for the best WordPress live chat plugin? Smart strategy! Adding a live chat feature to your website can make a difference when engaging with visitors. 

Here’s why:

• A quick answer could be the difference between a closed deal and a missed opportunity.
• Chatting is more engaging than an FAQ or pre-sales form, allowing you to address concerns and build trust in real-time.
• You can guide visitors to the right product when needed, increasing the chances of conversion.
• Live chat is the perfect opportunity to recommend complementary products or upgrades during a conversation, boosting your average order value without being pushy.

According to Intercom, a quick, real-time connection can boost conversions, making visitors 50% more likely to become customers with just one direct message.

So what’s the catch? 

As you may already know, live chat plugins can slow down your site. 

Choosing one that is fast is essential because a site that loads in 1 second has an e-commerce conversion rate 2.5x higher than a site that loads in 5 seconds.

We’ve tested five popular WordPress live chat plugins to help you find the right balance between speed and functionality. We also conducted thorough testing and performance audits for each plugin, analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs). 

As a bonus, you’ll discover a performance plugin to optimize the speed of your chat plugin and maximize conversions.

5 WordPress Live Chat Plugins (+ Bonus)

The easiest way to add live chat to your WordPress site is by using a plugin. You can integrate a live chat feature without coding with just a few clicks. 

Let’s review the technical setup before we get to the comparison and the performance tests. 

⚙️ Testing conditions

• All plugins were tested on the same site, using a fresh WordPress installation every time and a default WordPress theme (2023) without any added content to ensure fair comparisons.
• The server and testing location were both in France.
• The tests were made on mobile.

⚙️ Mobile Key performance indicators (KPIs) and tools

• Loading time (GTmetrix).
• Mobile PageSpeed Insights (PSI) score (PageSpeed Insights).
• Core Web Vitals – Largest Contentful Paint and Cumulative Layout Shift (PageSpeed Insights). 
• Total page size (GTmetrix).

⚙️ Mobile KPIs on my blank installation

• Loading time: 320 ms 
• Mobile PageSpeed Insights (PSI) score: 100/100 
• Largest Contentful Paint: 1.0 s 
• Cumulative Layout Shift: 0 
• Total page size: 42 KB 
• Requests: 7

Below are five popular WordPress live chat plugins to help you set up a fast, user-friendly chat system to engage with visitors. 

1. Hubspot

HubSpot is a popular customer relationship manager (CRM) that includes various tools to connect with your customers, including live chat and chatbots.

With the HubSpot WordPress plugin, you can access all those tools from your WordPress dashboard and easily integrate HubSpot live chat into your site.

⚙️ Features and reasons why this plugin stands out

• It transforms your website into a 24-hour marketing machine, allowing for continuous engagement with visitors (increasing leads). 
• It offers customizable designs to match your website’s branding seamlessly
• It includes various chatbots, such as: Concierge chatbot, lead qualification chatbot, meetings scheduling chatbot, ticketing chatbot, knowledge base & support chatbot, and even an offline chatbot. 
• Offline chatbot
• It enables real-time messaging through HubSpot’s mobile app for on-the-go communication.
• It integrates with Slack to receive and respond to live chat notifications directly from your workspace.

🔎 Valuable insights

• The Hubspot solution is a bit hybrid in its setup. You can manage several tasks directly within WordPress, but you’ll need to switch to an external dashboard for more advanced configurations or features. 
• HubSpot Live Chat is ideal for those already using their CRM and other marketing solutions, allowing you to centralize all your tools in one place. 
• Its full integration with Slack makes it an interesting choice if you use Slack as a communication channel in your company. 

💲 Pricing

The plugin is free to use. 

2. Tidio – Live Chat & AI Chatbots

Tidio Live Chat is a widely-used live chat solution for WordPress, known for its user-friendly interface and seamless integration. With over 100,000 active installations and a 4.8-star rating on WordPress.org, it offers real-time communication, chatbot automation, and multi-channel support, making it a top choice for businesses looking to enhance customer engagement.

⚙️ Features and reasons why this plugin stands out

• It has a lean and modern interface with many advanced settings.
• It offers integration with WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram.
• It provides easy appearance customization, including background settings and logo addition.
• It is free for up to 50 monthly conversations, including social media integration.
• It includes pre-built chatbot templates and customizable chat widgets.
• It allows your support team to handle tickets directly in the chat box.
• It is built to support 183 languages.

🔎 Valuable insights

• All the setup happens outside WordPress in a dedicated dashboard.
• The paid plan for unlimited conversations, multilingual support, and custom branding is a bit pricey (starts at 749€ a month).

💲Pricing

Free plans are available for small businesses with a cap of 50 conversations per month. Then it starts at 29€/month for premium live support and more advanced features such as AI chatbot. You can try the chatbot for free for up to 50 conversations; then, you’ll need a premium plan. 

3. Tawk.To Live Chat

Tawk.To is a highly popular free live chat service that is easily integrated into your website via its dedicated plugin on WordPress.org. What sets Tawk.To apart is its comprehensive feature set, offered entirely for free, making it a standout choice for businesses of all sizes. This generosity has led to its adoption by over 1 million websites worldwide.

⚙️ Features and reasons why this plugin stands out

• It allows you to monitor and engage visitors across multiple websites from a centralized dashboard.
• It personalizes greetings and shares promotions through trigger messages based on visitor location, past visits, page views, and more.
• It provides quick answers with an integrated Knowledge Base, offering self-help solutions and FAQs.

• It offers a free version with extensive capabilities and no cost.
• It manages customer support efficiently with a built-in support desk and ticketing system, enabling easy follow-ups and exceptional customer experiences.
• It comes with three new AI-powered tools that automate many tasks, such as customer support and upselling. 
• It is well-localized, supports 27 languages, and features GEO IP tracking for more targeted interactions.
• It supports fun emojis, adding a more engaging and friendly touch to your conversations.
• It lets you show or hide the widget on specific URLs or paths by enabling URL exclusion and specifying rules.

🔎 Valuable insights

• You can hire a live agent for $1/hour if you need “human” customer support
• It includes positive sentiment analysis, helping you gauge interactions with visitors and clients while offering insights into overall customer satisfaction.

💲Pricing

The free version includes all the features, and only paid add-ons let you remove the branding, hire a live agent, and add AI to the chat. Note: You can use AI in the free version for up to 100 monthly messages. 

4. 3CX Free Live Chat, Calls & WhatsApp 

The 3CX Live Chat plugin is a versatile communication tool for WordPress that offers seamless integration with real time via live chat, voice, and video calls, all from a single platform.

 ⚙️ Features and reasons why this plugin stands out

• It lets you chat and call your website visitors in real time.
• It includes a full communications suite for your business at no cost, allowing you to call, chat, hold conferences, and collaborate with teams and customers.
• It provides a centralized communication hub where you can manage live chats, calls, WhatsApp, Facebook, and SMS messages from the same dashboard.
• It enables live chat and video calls directly on your website, allowing real-time visitor communication.
• It provides 3CX Talk/Meet links, allowing users to initiate calls or meetings quickly.
• It is hosted on the cloud, offering scalability, security, and reliability without needing on-site infrastructure.

🔎 Valuable insights

• With features like video calls, you can create more personal connections, build trust, and increase the likelihood of conversion. 

💲Pricing

A free version is available, starting at 195€ per year if you want to integrate SMS and emails or Microsoft 365. 

5. LiveChat – WP Live Chat Plugin for WordPress

LiveChat is the most WordPress-friendly with its compatibility with the most popular WordPress site builders, including Elementor, Divi Builder, WordPress Page Builder, and Beaver Builder. LiveChat integrates seamlessly with any WordPress theme or template, requiring no modifications to function smoothly.

⚙️ Features and reasons why this plugin stands out

• It includes targeted messaging to boost efficiency, such as automatically popping up on the checkout page when a shopper is inactive.
• It allows for extensive customization, letting you customize colors, messages, and themes, and you can even add team photos for more personalized interactions.
• It makes it easy to set up quick replies for repetitive questions and use chat tags to streamline communication.
• It supports 24/7 customer service, storing messages when your team is offline, ready for you to respond later.
• It integrates well with popular WordPress site builders like Elementor, Divi, and Beaver Builder and works with any WordPress theme without modification. 
• It has partnered with major e-commerce platforms like BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Ecwid to facilitate real-time communication with shoppers. 
• It integrates easily with popular third-party apps and services, including Zendesk, Messenger, HubSpot CRM, WhatsApp, Mailchimp, and Salesforce.

🔎 Valuable insights

• It offers a dedicated add-on for WooCommerce integration.
• LiveChat is built for WordPress and works seamlessly with popular site builders

💲Pricing

It starts at $20/month for the Starter version, but you will have to upgrade to Team and Business if you want access to unlimited chat history, reports, and users. 

Finally, here’s a comparison table ranking the chat plugins based on their loading time, starting with our blank install as the baseline:

After showing how each chat plugin increases loading time and affects specific KPIs, let’s explore how to minimize this impact using WP Rocket.

How WP Rocket Improves Performance for WordPress Sites with Chat Plugins

WP Rocket helps reduce the performance impact often caused by chat plugins. That’s why we’ve included it in our list—not as a chat plugin but as an essential tool for performance optimization.

Since chat plugins typically add JavaScript and third-party code to your site (which you can’t control), using WP Rocket helps maintain fast site performance by managing these resources effectively.

For example, when a visitor lands on your site, instead of loading the chat widget immediately, WP Rocket prioritizes loading your homepage first, delaying the chat widget until needed. It gives visitors the impression of landing on a fast, responsive website, boosting credibility and trust.

⚙️ Key features of WP Rocket to improve your site speed with a live chat plugin

• It optimizes JavaScript execution, reducing delays caused by chat plugins that heavily rely on JavaScript.
• It delays the loading of JavaScript until user interaction, such as scrolling or clicking the chat button, enhancing page load speed.
• It ensures JavaScript files from chat plugins load only after the main content so users can interact with your page without delays.
• It uses caching to store a version of your page, so it loads content much faster for visitors. 
• It optimizes CSS and reduces the size of style files, ensuring that your site remains quick and efficient.

🔎 Valuable insights

• Regardless of your technical level, WP Rocket saves time and effort by addressing performance issues caused by chat plugins.
• It’s beginner-friendly, automatically applying 80% of performance best practices upon activation. After installing it, your website will be automatically faster.
• It optimizes JavaScript and third-party code, commonly introduced by chat plugins, ensuring your site remains fast and responsive.
• Using WP Rocket means a faster loading time and improved Core Web Vitals, leading to better conversion rates and higher rankings on Google.

💲Pricing

It starts at $59 a year for one site. 

📊 Performance results

We conducted a test using PageSpeed Insights to compare the performance of the HubSpot live chat plugin installed with and without WP Rocket. We picked the HubSpot plugin because the PageSpeed mobile performance score was the lowest (78/100).

Here are the results.

	My test site + HubSpot chat plugin	🚀My test site + HubSpot chat plugin + WP Rocket
Loading time	2.3 s	0.3 s
Mobile PageSpeed Insights Score	78/100	100/100
Largest Contentful Paint	2.4 s	1.1 s
Cumulative Layout Shift	0.124	0
Total page size	542 KB	50KB
Requests	20	5

Key performance issues before using WP Rocket

We found some performance issues when we ran the audit on PageSpeed Insights before installing WP Rocket:

1. JavaScript execution time is excessive (3.1s), slowing down loading speed, with main-thread work taking an additional 3.9s.
2. Third-party code blocks the main thread for 2,080ms, causing delays, while layout shifts and render-blocking resources further impact visual stability and loading times.
3. Inefficient caching and duplicate or unused JavaScript contribute to unnecessary data weight, totaling 125 KiB.

As you can see from the diagnostics section below, the main concerns were indeed related to JavaScript and third-party code: 

🚀 WP Rocket’s positive impact on performance

After installing WP Rocket, we re-ran the performance test and we are now sharing the key results with you. The improvements were significant, particularly in loading speed. 

• The loading time has decreased by 2 seconds. 
• The Core Web Vitals are now back in the green.
• The total page size returned almost to the initial figure on my blank installation.
• The number of requests decreased from 20 to 5. 
• WP Rocket implemented caching and optimized all the JavaScript-related issues.
• WP Rocket solved the third-party code issues. 

What’s the Best Live Chat Plugin for Your WordPress Website? 

The best chat plugin for WordPress depends on your specific needs, but some top options include LiveChat, Tawk.to, 3CX, Tidio, and HubSpot, each offering unique features for different use cases. They are all convenient for adding live chat to WordPress, so you can start engaging live with visitors in a couple of minutes. 

We’ve prepared a few highlights with scenarios to help you choose the right plugin for your business.

• Use the HubSpot plugin if you’re handling B2B or B2C leads and need to track their progress. You also get full access to HubSpot’s CRM tools, offering seamless lead management, tracking, and integration with marketing campaigns for a more complete customer journey experience.
  
• Choose Tidio if you are a community manager, a marketer, or a head of support. You also want to interact with your clients through several channels like WhatsApp, Meta (Messenger), or Instagram.
  

• Choose Tawk.to if you are a blogger, marketer, or a WordPress agency on a budget but still looking for a powerful, advanced tool. If you need a free product with robust features and don’t mind the limitation of not having your own branding (which is available in the premium version), Tawk.to is an ideal choice.
  
• Choose LiveChat if you are looking for a solution specifically designed for WordPress. One of its standout features is its compatibility with the most popular WordPress site builders, including Elementor Page Builder, Divi Builder, WordPress Page Builder, and Beaver Builder, among others. This makes it highly adaptable and easy to integrate into any WordPress website setup.
  
• A marketer or sales professional looking to close leads should use 3CX Free Live Chat, Calls & WhatsApp because it offers multiple ways to engage potential customers in real-time. This tool is also ideal for remote teams because it supports collaboration and customer engagement from anywhere, keeping your team connected and responsive no matter where they are.
  

Wrapping Up 

We have highlighted the best features of each live chat plugin, showcasing how they enhance real-time communication and support. Live chat is often superior to asynchronous communication methods like email, as it allows for immediate interactions, leading to quicker resolutions and a more engaging customer experience. 

In conclusion, the best WordPress live chat plugins are evolving towards AI integration, which can provide quick answers and enhance customer interactions. However, it’s essential to remember that AI cannot replace human support entirely, especially when dealing with more specific inquiries that require a personal touch.

Additionally, remember that chat plugins can introduce additional JavaScript and third-party code to your site, potentially affecting performance. To mitigate any issues, consider using WP Rocket, a reliable and easy solution to optimize your website’s speed while saving time and effort. Plus, with a 14-day money-back guarantee, you can try it risk-free!