Freshchat versus OpenWidget

Freshchat by Freshworks is a best-in-class live chat software built to delight customers across support, sales, and marketing with smarter conversational engagement.

Freshworks makes it fast and easy for businesses to delight their customers and employees. They do this by taking a fresh approach to building and delivering software-as-a-service that’s affordable, quick to implement, and designed for the end user.

Unlike legacy software, Freshworks builds tech that works for everyone, making it easy for IT, customer service, sales, marketers, and HR to do their job and delight their customers.

More than 60,000 companies use Freshworks’ SaaS to enable a better customer experience (CX, CRM) and employee experience (ITSM, HRSM).

Freshchat fuels businesses to have:

Intelligent conversations, anywhere

1. Unify messaging channels and personalize self-service on your website, in-app, and across digital messaging channels (WhatsApp, SMS, and more!)
2. Simplify customer experience with no-code, easy-to-build chatbots
3. Bring insights to action with native AI to power next-generation messaging

Simplified and contextual agent experiences

1. Give agents real-time context to perform faster and with ease
2. Respond to conversations from a single screen, wherever your customers message you
3. Give your agents complete customer context to boost CSAT with every conversation

Modern, cost-effective support

1. Fuel growth, while reducing your costs to serve 
2. Enable high rates of zero contact resolution and scale effortlessly
3. Drive value faster with pre-built templates for chatbots and journeys

OpenWidget is a free eCommerce widget launched in November 2022 by LiveChat.inc. It is not a real-time live chat but has 4 important features.

• Contact form (email)
• Product cards to promote deals
• FAQ section
• Widget customization

It is easy to set up but offers limited customization options, as can be expected for such a free tool. There is no option to upload images, they have to be linked to a URL. All changes are applied to the widget on your website in real time without the need to replace the script.

It has plugins for popular eCommerce platforms like:

• BigCommerce
• Google Tag Manager
• OpenCart
• Shopify
• Squarespace
• Woocommerce
• WordPress