Freshchat

What it is

Freshchat is the messaging half of the Freshworks suite: a chat widget on your website and mobile apps, a shared inbox where the conversations land, and email connected into the same queue. Paid tiers add social messengers and text messaging, so a customer can start on Instagram and be answered from the same place as a website chat.

The AI is sold separately rather than bundled. Freddy AI Agent handles conversations at $49 per 100 sessions, and Freddy AI Copilot assists your human agents at $29 per agent per month.

Who it's for (and who it isn't)

It fits small teams that want live chat without a per-agent bill from day one, since the free plan covers up to 10 agents. It fits particularly well if you already use Freshdesk, because the products share a suite and an account.

It is a weaker fit if your support is ticket-shaped rather than conversation-shaped, where a helpdesk is the right tool. And per-agent pricing means it gets expensive as the team grows, where Crisp charges per workspace and Chatwoot offers a self-hosted route.

Pricing

Freshchat is freemium. The free plan is $0 for up to 10 agents and includes the chat widget on web and mobile apps, a shared inbox, connected email and roles and permissions. Growth is $19 per agent per month billed annually and adds social media messengers, text messaging, and reporting and dashboards. Pro is $49 per agent per month and adds multilingual conversations, custom dashboards, intelligent routing and multiple SLA policies. Enterprise is $79 per agent per month with skill-based routing, audit logs, JWT authentication and IP whitelisting.

Price the AI separately, because that is how it is sold. Freddy AI Agent at $49 per 100 resolved sessions is a usage cost that scales with your volume rather than your headcount.

Set it up

Official guide: How to configure the web widget in Freshchat

1. Create a Freshchat account with your work email address. A new account starts with a 14-day free trial of the paid plans, and step 2 moves you to the Free plan. To install the chat box you need a WordPress site, or a place in your website editor where you can paste code. You now have an account on the trial.
2. Go to "Admin Settings", then "Plans and Billing", which opens "My Subscriptions". Click "Manage Plan", then "Change Plan", and select "Buy Plan" under Free. The Free plan is $0 for up to 10 agents (an agent is a person who answers chats). A pop-up lists the features you will lose. Click "Confirm". Your account is now on the Free plan.
3. Go to "Admin Settings", then "Channels", then "Web Chat". Your first widget (the chat box that appears on your website) is already created. Click "Start customizing", open "Appearance", then "Branding", and set your logo, welcome message and colors. Your chat box now carries your branding.
4. Still under "Appearance", open "Position and behavior" and pick the bottom left or bottom right corner for the chat box. Your chat box now has its place on the page.
5. Open "Embed Code" and copy the snippet, a short piece of code that makes the chat box appear on your website. You now have the snippet copied.
6. On WordPress, go to Plugins, then Add New, search for Freshchat, then click Install and Activate. Click Freshchat in the left panel, select Enabled, and enter the code from Freshchat under Admin, then Integrations, then WordPress. Save. On another site, paste the snippet into the HTML section of your website's code editor on every page where the chat box should show. The chat box now shows on your site.
7. Open your website, click the chat box and send yourself a test message. Then open the Inbox in Freshchat. You now see your test conversation there.

When this works, a visitor to your website can start a chat from the chat box, and each message arrives in one shared inbox where you reply.

On Growth ($19/agent/mo billed annually): social media messengers (chats from apps such as Facebook Messenger), text messaging (SMS, plain text messages to phones), reporting and dashboards, multiple widgets (more than one chat box), an FAQ section in the chat box, and hiding Freshchat's branding on it.

Strengths and limitations

The strength is the free tier's agent count. Ten agents at no cost is unusual, and for a small company it removes the per-seat calculation entirely at the start.

The limitations are channel placement and AI pricing. Social messengers and SMS, which is where a lot of customer messaging actually happens, sit on Growth at $19 per agent per month. AI is priced per session and per agent on top of the plan. And being part of a large suite cuts both ways: convenient if you use Freshworks, and more product than you need if you do not.