Finding a live chat solution – and picking cSupport
How I found out
In my company HelpSoft we run various websites either selling products, offering free stuff and we also own a web portal where women can find new friends.
For all of these we wanted a live chat solution. Simplicity, functionality and pricing were three factors in this process. You see Zopim everywhere, so we looked at that. We did try to sign up for a beta, unfortunately they don’t seem to like new customers because the required activation e-mail never arrived.
Sometimes in these cases, the forgotten password button is a help, but that failed too. No e-mail arrived. And ironically, their live chat support were not online. I’m not a man who enjoys waiting a lot, if I want something I want it now, not tomorrow or whenever they feel like responding to a support ticket. So they were trashed and the whole idea of Zopim was out.
I visited one of my favorite web sites, alternativeTo and did a search for Zopim. Some very irrelevant products showed up and so did cSupport.
I had fallen in love with IM integration I read about on Zopim. cSupport did that too, limited to XMPP, but I can live with that since that’s my favorite IM protocol anyway. And a 14-day trial with no credit card required, I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?
Getting started
It was simple, really. I clicked the “Start trial” button and inserted a name, an e-mail address and a username. I picked the “Premium” plan, it seemed to fit our needs fine.