Trengo versus Olark

Trengo, a VC backed scale-up from the Netherlands has been growing at an impressive rate. They have been around since 2015.

Trengo describes their product as Smart Conversations Platform. A clever way to include their omnichannel chat products, combined with their automated chatbots, to man customer support channels for their customers.

Their platform is priced per agent, and the price per agent increases when more functionality or features are required.

The lowest price per agent is $15 and the minimum requirement is 2 agents to set up your account.

Notable customers of Trengo include Toyota, Nubikk and Rotterdam University

Founded in 2008, Olark has seen the rise of chat software for over a decade. After getting funding from the famous YCombinator incubator Olark launched their first live chat platform.

Olark is committed to developing accessible software and is actively testing improvements of assistive technologies. It’s awesome to see a provider care about this often overlooked aspect of customer service.

Besides live chat, Olark also markets as customer metrics company. Since putting a widget on your platform gives you a lot of valuable data.

To ensure that every user always gets the right answer, the chatbot can transfer to a human employee at any time. This Human Handover is possible via Live Chat or E-Mail.

Olark offers a free plan that offers little features and is limited to a single seat and 20 chats per month, which will not be sufficient for most use cases.

Their paid plans start at $29 per month per seat. Free trials are available. Unfortunately, credit card information is required for the trial and you will be billed automatically if you don’t cancel the trial in time.

As a customer-focused company, Olark may want to consider offering a no-credit-card-required trial so potential customers are more likely to fully experience all their features.

Additional subscriptions are available for “Powerups” like co-browsing, live chat translation, and visitor insights.