9 best wordpress chat plugins

WordPress is the best Content Management System (CMS) today.

It is believed that around 20% of the top websites in the internet use WordPress as their CMS.

It can be used by both beginners and advanced users. Because of its user-friendliness and its active community, WordPress has risen to supremacy over other CMS such as Drupal and Joomla.

One of the best features of WordPress is its high level of customization. There are a lot of things that you can add through their plugins.

Though there are a lot of plugins I would like to talk about, I want to direct your attention to WordPress Chat Plugins.
These will let you add a functional chat user interface on your blog or website. Through this, you can chat with your readers in real time.

Now, there are different types of chat plugins available in WordPress.org. Without proper guide, you might miss the ideal chat plugin for your website.

So I have listed some of the top chat plugins available today in this blog post. This will make your search easier and to make it even convenient for you to find the chat plugin that fits your need, and preference.

The links provided below opens in a new window.

Top Chat Plugins for WordPress

1. Chat

Quick Info

• WordPress Version: 3.0.0 or higher
• Current # of downloads: over 60,000
• Current Ratings: 4.6/5
• Developer: Wpmudev

With “Chat” plugin, you can instantly talk to your readers and engage them in a meaningful way. You can use Chat to answer questions and address their concerns.

Additional features include full control of the color and size of the chat box.

People who already use popular social networking sites can readily join the chat box. People from Facebook, Twitter, and Googgle+ are very much welcome.

Other features include BuddyPress Group Chat, private chats, friend integration, selection of moderator, changeable chat colors, disable avatars, emoticons, and being able to archive every chat.

2. Quick Chat

Quick Info

• WordPress version: For 3.0.0 or higher
• Current # of downloads: over 170,000
• Current Ratings: 4.5/5
• Developer: Marko-M

Quick Chat can support much functionality such as private chat, avatars, chat rooms, user list, smilies, word filtering, caching plugins and more.

The main feature of Quick Chat is that it’s a self-hosted chat plugin. This simply means that the files and data created by Quick Chat will be stored in your local database; thus, giving you a hundred percent control.

3. FlexyTalk

Quick Info

• WordPress Version: 2.7 or higher
• Current # of downloads: over 40,000
• Current Ratings: 4.7/5
• Developer: Sebastian Odena

FlexyTalk is more focused on the Facebook audience and lets you integrate Facebook users to automatically use chat in your webpage. Just a few clicks and push of a button and you can easily bring Facebook users to your chat box.

Other features may include sound alerts, viewable chat history, blocking of undesirable users, 3D agents on toolbar, and gravatar integration.

4. Barc Chat

Quick Info

• WordPress Version: 3.1 or higher
• Current # of downloads: over 10,000
• Current Ratings: 5/5
• Creator: Barc Inc

This user-friendly plugin combines social networking, customer support, and instant messaging. As to this date, Barc Chat has a five star review.

Its features include file sharing such as pictures, music, and video, video-chatting, interactive polls, social media integration, and private chat rooms.

5. Zopim Live Chat

Quick Info

• WordPress Version: 2.1 or higher
• Current # of downloads: over 120,000
• Current Ratings: 4.2/5
• Developer: Bencxr

Zopim Live Chat is a multi-awarded chat solution. It’s part of the Red Herring Asia Top 100 and Asia’s Top 10 Apps. This application is perfect for business-oriented websites. With Zopim Live Chat, you can easily chat with your real and potential customers and answer questions in real time.

Zopim Live Chat is compatible with many major browsers, has an almost 100 percent uptime, and it can be integrated with Zendesk, Batchbook, Highrise, Salesforce, Uservoice, and others. So you see, this app is more of a business solution.

6. Feedweb

Quick Info

• WordPress Version: 3.0 or higher
• Current # of downloads: over 60,000
• Current Ratings: 4.7/5
• Author: Feedweb Research

Feedweb plugin is more on being a customized rating widget, though it allows certain degree of communication between you and your readers.

You can easily create a question and let your readers make a comment or feedback. Since it is built with HTML5 program, you can be sure that it has high level of privacy and security.

7. Live Chat Software

Quick Info

• WordPress Version: 2.0.2 or higher
• Current # of downloads: over 10,000
• Current Ratings: 5/5
• Author: Neran

You can certainly improve your sales and profit with the help of Live Chat Software.

According to studies, live chat can dramatically increase your chance of sale conversion and this is exactly what Live Chat Software is all about. With just a simple copy-paste action, you can easily install this software within 5 minutes.

8. Live Chat – Casengo

Quick Info

• WordPress Version: 3.3 or higher
• Current # of downloads: over 30,000
• Current Ratings: 4.6/5
• Author: Casengo

This live chat plugin can help your website come alive with live chat. The software is very easy to install and super user-friendly.

The fast response that you can create through the live chat will surely be much appreciated by your customers or readers.

As of September 12, 2013, Live Chat Casengo has reached over 25,000 downloads since it was released 6 months ago with a lot of positive and good feedback.

9. WP ChatBlazer

Quick Info

• WordPress Version: 2.8 or higher
• Current # of downloads: over 5,000
• Current Ratings: 4.7/5
• Author: Phylliserck

If you want to embed a chatroom for your blog or website, then WP ChatBlazer can be the right answer. The interface is very fun and easy to use. You can perform video chat, instant messaging, sharing of files (pictures, videos, and music), and even let you do whiteboard drawings.

Final words

Now you should have a general idea on these plugins. I hope that this blog post has been helpful and you will be able to choose the right chat plugin for your WordPress website.

If you already have tried one of these chat plugins, please come back here and share with us your experience. Feel free to drop some comments as well to benefit other readers.