Live chat, help desk or both
The two names cover different jobs, and many products now do both:
- Live chat is a widget on your website where visitors write and an agent answers right away. It suits shops and services where a quick answer wins the sale. tawk.to, Crisp, Tidio and the Chatwoot Hacker plan start here.
- A help desk turns emails and web forms into tickets with a status, an owner and a history, so nothing gets lost when several people answer. Zoho Desk's free plan is a simple email ticketing system; osTicket, FreeScout and Zammad are open source help desks you install yourself.
- A help center is a public set of articles that answers the common questions before anyone writes. tawk.to includes a free hosted help center, and the self-hosted Chatwoot has a help center portal. For a standalone one, see the free knowledge base software list.
A one-person shop with a contact address usually needs a shared inbox more than a chat widget, because a chat window that nobody answers looks worse than an email reply the next day. If you will be on the site during working hours, live chat makes sense.
Free plans compared
From the official pricing pages and repositories on the date in the list. An empty cell means the page states nothing about it for the free plan.
| Tool | Free agents | Volume limits | Channels on the free plan | Branding |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| tawk.to | Live chat, ticketing, help center | Removal costs $29 a month | ||
| Chatwoot Cloud | Up to 2 | 500 conversations a month, 30 days of data | Live chat | |
| Chatwoot, self-hosted | No cap stated | Your server | Website chat, email, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS | Custom branding in paid self-hosted plans |
| Crisp | 2 seats | 100 customer profiles | Chat widget, contact forms | Watermark removal listed under Plus |
| Tidio | Up to 10 | 50 conversations a month, 50 AI conversations in total | Live chat, email, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp | Branding stays on Free |
| HubSpot | Up to 2 users | Up to 99 active chats | Live chat | Includes HubSpot branding |
| Zoho Desk | 3 users | Email ticketing | ||
| osTicket | Your server | Website, email, phone | ||
| FreeScout | Unlimited | Your server | Email; live chat as a module | |
| Zammad | Your server | Email, chat, telephone, social media |
HubSpot's help desk page says its free tier includes essential ticketing, shared inbox, live chat and basic integrations. Freshdesk is not in the list: its pricing page shows only paid plans and a 14-day trial.
What to check before you sign up
- What counts as a conversation. Tidio's free plan counts 50 billable conversations a month, and its 50 free AI conversations are a lifetime total, not monthly. Chatwoot's Hacker plan allows 500 conversations a month. Count your current support emails for a month before you choose.
- How long history is kept. Chatwoot's Hacker plan keeps data for 30 days. If you need to look up what a customer wrote last spring, a plan with a short retention will not do.
- What happens on upgrade. Zoho Desk's free plan has three users, and the page says those free users are not included once you upgrade, so every user is paid from then on.
- Branding. None of the hosted free plans that mention branding remove it for free. tawk.to charges $29 a month to remove it, and HubSpot's free live chat includes HubSpot branding.
- Self-hosting needs. osTicket asks for PHP 8.2 to 8.4 and MySQL 5.5 or newer; FreeScout runs on PHP 7.4 to 8.x and can be deployed on shared hosting; Zammad ships Docker images, a Helm chart and DEB and RPM packages. You also take on updates and backups.
Privacy and customer data
A help desk holds names, email addresses and whatever customers write, which can include order details and complaints. Before you choose, check where the vendor stores data and whether it offers a data processing agreement, and mention the tool in your privacy policy. A chat widget is a script from the vendor that loads on every page of your site; our guide on first-party vs third-party cookies explains what that means for cookie notices.
The open source help desks keep the data on a server you control: osTicket under the GPL2 license, FreeScout under AGPL-3.0, Zammad under the GNU AGPLv3 and Chatwoot under the MIT License. Chatwoot lists its self-hosted Community Edition as free forever.
What our tools add
Small things around the help desk, free in your browser:
- Email signature generator gives every agent the same signature with the support address and links.
- QR code generator puts your help center or chat page on packaging, receipts and flyers.
- Business days calculator counts working days to a promised reply or refund date, without weekends and US federal holidays.
- Time duration calculator gives the time between a ticket and its first reply.
- Customer loyalty score calculator turns 0 to 10 survey answers into a Net Promoter Score.
Related lists: free CRM software for the customer records behind the tickets, free team chat apps for talking inside the team, and free form builders for a contact form that feeds the help desk by email.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a help desk that is completely free?
tawk.to describes its live chat as free forever and its ticketing and hosted help center as free; only removing its branding costs $29 a month. The open source help desks osTicket, FreeScout and Zammad are free to install on your own server, and Chatwoot lists its self-hosted Community Edition as free forever.
Which free plan allows the most agents?
FreeScout lists unlimited support agents, but you host it yourself. Among the hosted free plans, Tidio allows up to 10 agents, Zoho Desk 3 users, and Chatwoot Cloud, Crisp and HubSpot 2 each. tawk.to does not state an agent limit on its pricing page.
Can I remove the vendor branding for free?
Not on the hosted free plans that mention it. tawk.to charges $29 a month, HubSpot's free live chat includes HubSpot branding, Tidio's Free plan does not include removing its branding, and Crisp lists watermark removal under its Plus plan. With a self-hosted open source help desk, you control the interface.
Does Freshdesk still have a free plan?
The Freshdesk pricing page we opened lists Growth, Pro and Enterprise plans and a 14-day trial of the Enterprise plan, with no free plan. That is why it is not in this list.
Which free help desks handle email support?
Zoho Desk's free plan is a simple email ticketing system for 3 users, and Tidio's Free plan includes ticketing and an email management system. FreeScout is an open source help desk and shared inbox, and the self-hosted Chatwoot and Zammad both take email next to chat. Crisp lists its shared email inbox only from the paid Mini plan.