LiveAgent review

LiveAgent  offers one of the best live chat software platforms for small- and medium-sized businesses. LiveAgent combines live chat and email ticketing so you can stay on top of customer support no matter how they connect with your brand. It offers a number of useful features, including automated ticket routing and internal coordination tools. 

LiveAgent's built-in full-stack call center software is designed to foster collaboration between all members of your support team, including the type of functionality like smart call routing, transfers, recording, and even HD video calls - the latter of which is especially important in the age of hybrid work, when video conferencing software is ubiquitous.

So that's a lot of bases covered, but is LiveAgent right for your business? In our LiveAgent review, we’ll cover everything you need to know about this helpdesk solution.

LiveAgent: Plans and pricing

Since our previous review, LiveAgent's Pricing page has had a revamp. Incidentally, if you're using an ad blocker you may want to disable it in this instance, as the list wasn't visible at first when we visited most recently.

The good news is that LiveAgent offers a free plan that’s surprisingly full-featured. You get one live chat button, ticketing for one email address, and call center support for a single phone number. The big catch is that there are few advanced features, and the platform only captures up to seven days of your support history.

Paid 'Business' plans start at just $9 per month per agent if billed annually or $15 per agent if you're paying monthly. The lowest tier 'Small' plan includes ticketing for up to three incoming/outgoing email accounts, two live chat buttons, 10 departments, a single live chat button, an API key, and the bespoke Knowledge Base. Ticket history is stored indefinitely and you can create up to 20 predefined answers.

The 'Medium' plan includes all of the above as well as ticketing for up to 10 incoming/outgoing email accounts. You also get five live chat buttons, 20 departments, custom domain hosting and most crucially Call Center Support. Prices start at $29 per agent per month if paying annually or $35 per month if paying monthly.

LiveAgent claims that their 'Large' Business plan is their most popular. This includes everything in the 'Medium' plan as well as ticketing for up to 150 incoming/outgoing email accounts. (We noticed though that when we signed up for a trial membership our Account page said that the 'Large' plan only offered 40 incoming/outgoing email accounts). You'll also receive 20 live chat buttons and three WhatsApp accounts. Other features include up to 150 departments (the account page says this is 50) and two knowledge bases. Prices start at $49 per agent per month if billed annually or $59 per agent if paid monthly.

The 'Enterprise' plan is LiveAgent's most expensive tier at $69 per agent per month if paying annually or $85 per agent if paying month to month. It includes all the perks of the 'Large' plan, plus ticketing for up to 500 incoming/outgoing email accounts. (Again our account page had a discrepancy with this, showing the number to be just 100). You'll also receive three WhatsApp accounts, 300 departments and 10 knowledge bases.

You can optionally add support for the social networks Viber, Twitter and Facebook/Instagram for $39 each per month. (Facebook and Instagram seemingly count as one social network as far as LiveAgent is concerned). This is disappointing, considering many similar platforms support popular social media networks like Facebook for no extra charge. 

Each plan comes with its own set of limitations, which are explained well in the LiveAgent support pages. For instance, the free plan doesn't include Slack notifications each time you receive a new ticket/ticket response.

If you want to trial any of the paid plans, you can do so for 30 days provided you have a company email address. If you use a regular email your trial lasts just seven days. 

LiveAgent: Features

LiveAgent offers a number of features for connecting with customers and keeping your support team on the same page. The software enables you to place a chat box or email ticketing system on your business’ website or mobile app. Depending on your plan, you can easily create multiple chat boxes or email addresses for different departments.

The ticket system that LiveAgent uses is simple but effective. You can set up auto-routing for tickets so that no support requests are ever missed, as well as limit the number of tickets, chats, and phone calls any one agent is tasked at a time. Tickets can be assigned ownership at the agent or department level and transferred between owners, too. LiveAgent will even auto-route tickets from a returning customer to the same agent that helped them with previous support questions.

LiveAgent: Interface and in use

LiveChat’s interface is relatively easy to use and helps your support agents stay on top of customer communications coming from multiple channels. At the top of the web app, three buttons keep you informed about how many support queries there are in your ticket, chat, and phone queues. 

Tickets and chats are automatically labeled as New, Open, or Answered, and there are simple bulk options for completing or re-assigning multiple tickets at once. Although the admin interface could look a bit more modern, this would only be a superficial change. The UI works well generally, being clean and laid out intuitively. 

LiveAgent: Support

LiveAgent offers 24/7 technical support by phone, live chat, and email. There's also an extremely comprehensive online support portal.

We were particularly pleased to see a link at the very top of the portal to the new 'live status' page, which reported that unless you were relying on LiveAgent's New Jersey data centers, the network has been functioning perfectly for the past 90 days.

The 'Getting Started' section of the Knowledge Base also has some extremely useful articles, including the one mentioned above about the limitations of paid plans. There's a similar one for users of the free plan as well as a helpful video tour, which walks you through the basics like adding live agents.

The Knowledge Base also contains a dedicated video section with tutorials on common tasks such as adding live chat buttons, departments and email templates. It should be straightforward for you to create aesthetically pleasing knowledge repositories or FAQs for your customers. 

You can easily create articles, how-to guides, and other useful information to meet the needs of every customer. Given that many modern customers prefer self-service, the support offered by LiveAgent's Knowledge Base could be exactly the kind of thing being asked for. But self-service doesn't mean offering inferior support. There are still plenty of bespoke options available, from forums to technical product guides. 

The 'Tech Support' section is particularly weighty, containing almost 500 articles on subjects like integrating plugins, general tips and tricks, and how to set up various LiveAgent features.

Take some time to peruse the 'Awards and Certificates' section to see how LiveAgent ranks in the help desk solution industry.

LiveAgent: Security

LiveAgent hasn't been slacking on its end either. The platform claims to use 'renowned' data centers protected by 24-hour surveillance, security cameras and biometric locks.  

All the LiveAgent servers are hosted at Tier IV or III+, PCI DSS, SSAE-16, or ISO 27001-compliant facilities. The data centers are based in US, Asia and Europe but you can choose to store your data in the US or Europe, for instance, if you want to be fully GDPR compliant.

Their pricing page also mentions that all accounts are secured using SSL to keep your data safe. After doing some probing in LiveAgent's comprehensive knowledge base we found that data is encrypted using TLS 1.2 when in transit between clients are load balancers. Database backups are also encrypted when at rest.

Not all information in 'live' databases prioritizes encryption but the KB article claims that sensitive information like passwords and login credentials is secured. 

LiveAgent's Security and Privacy Policy also notes that you can further boost your security by configuring the Agent panel to only allow access from specific IP address ranges such as network addresses at your office site.

On the same page, LiveAgent claims they also work with third-party security researchers to identify vulnerabilities. Customers will have to take them at their word on this and there doesn't seem to be any links to the results of independent audits to prove it. 

LiveAgent: The competition

LiveAgent competes closely with helpdesk services like LiveChat, which focuses primarily on chat but also offers multi-platform messaging support. LiveChat offers prices comparable to LiveAgent’s All-Inclusive plan, from $20 per agent per month if you're paying annually. However, LiveChat doesn’t have a free plan for smaller businesses like LiveAgent does. 

LiveChat’s chat functions are somewhat more robust than what LiveAgent offers. For example, it supports chat-to-SMS, customizable post-support surveys, and more advanced real-time monitoring of visitors on your site. However, LiveChat won’t help with phone support and some important administrative features like audit logs are restricted to its Enterprise plan.

LiveAgent: Final verdict

LiveAgent is high-quality helpdesk software for businesses that want to integrate phone, email, and live chat customer support. The free plan is impressively fitted out and might be enough for small businesses, while the paid plans aren’t outrageously expensive. We’d like to see cheaper support for social media accounts and the addition of chat-to-SMS, but these aren’t critical flaws for most businesses. In addition, LiveAgent does a nice job with auto-routing tickets across teams and helping your support agents stay on the same page when dealing with an influx of customer requests.

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