Comments on: Blah, blah, blah: Help me find a website chat combined with internal chat software.

Question: Blah, blah, blah: Help me find a website chat combined with internal chat software.

chrisfromthelc — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:50:03 -0800

I'm looking for a web chat for visitors to my company's website...

...and there are plenty out there. Here's the thing. I also would like it to be integrated with a internal chat system like Openfire Enterprise, but without the high price tag.

I potentially have 15-20 internal users (I'm including future hires in the next 2 months on that number), and it would be nice to be able to have a separate "tech support" chat and "sales information" chat that visitors could use.

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:56:10 -0800

It can be cheap or it can work. That's the way it goes with enterprise software.

Why not just buy market-leader LivePerson?

By: cosmicbandito

cosmicbandito — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:58:45 -0800

I played with Velaro for a school project recently and was quite impressed. U of Wisconsin Madison libraries are using this as their virtual reference software, if you want to give it a try. You can also test drive it on Velaro's website....their sales reps with chat with you via it and are pretty good about answering questions. Pricing was reasonable when I asked. I think basic service was like $60 per "channel" per month, but that was school/library pricing.

By: chrisfromthelc

chrisfromthelc — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 09:01:36 -0800

See, neither of those have the one feature that I must have, which is an private chat system between all of the agents. At least, it's not clear that they do if it is part of those solutions.

By: DJWeezy

DJWeezy — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 09:23:15 -0800

This make take a bit of work but it would seem like an internal IRC server would work for this and for a web chat you could easily install cgi-irc

By: togdon

togdon — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 09:36:03 -0800

We've used Openfire Enterprise for a few years now and like it quite a bit. At $15/user/year you're only looking at $300/year total for your 20 users, which for enterprise software is actually pretty cheap. They have 30 day trials last I checked so that you can evaluate it.

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 11:41:48 -0800

Why does web site chat need to be integrated with the internal chat? You could implement Office Communicator internally and whatever else externally.

By: chrisfromthelc

chrisfromthelc — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:23:49 -0800

@togdon: We currently use Spark and Openfire (free version), and I love it. However, they now have a 250 user minimum on Enterprise subscriptions. That makes it $3700+ a year. Not worth it to me.

@Guyzero: We're currently doing that, and it's a pain. Plus, what we're using on the web side of things is very bareboned.

By: togdon

togdon — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:04:56 -0800

Ah, I wasn't aware of the limit since we're using Clearspace as well. There the limit is 25, so you'd be in it for $1725 (still a lot more than the $300/year it'd be if you could just license Openfire) and have a worthy replacement for Sharepoint that integrates well with the chat stuff.

I'd email them and see if they'd do a lower limit. I almost want to believe that the 250 is a typo, given that the limits on the other products are 25. They also have non-profit and non-commercial licensing if that applies.