Cloud phone, live chat and chatbot tools for sales and support teams.
Verified:
Tidio combines live chat, chatbots and an AI support agent (Lyro) that can resolve tickets on its own, with a genuinely useful free tier and deep Shopify integration. It's a strong fit for ecommerce and SMB support teams. The weak spot is a big pricing gap between mid-tier and enterprise, and AI conversations are metered separately.
CloudTalk is a polished cloud phone and call-centre platform with strong CRM integrations, an outbound dialer and AI call analytics. It's a solid fit for sales and support teams that live on the phone and want calls logged automatically. Pricing is per user and rises with the features most teams eventually need.
CometChat is a developer-focused SDK/API for building text, voice and video chat directly into an app or marketplace — not a support widget you paste on a site. It's powerful and full-featured with a free tier for prototyping, but the jump from free to roughly $239/mo makes it a fit for real products at scale, not hobby projects.
Livestorm runs webinars entirely in the browser — no downloads for you or attendees — with a genuinely usable free tier and attendee-based pricing so you don't pay for no-shows. It's a solid fit for marketing and customer-education teams. The main friction is credit-based pricing that's harder to predict than a flat per-seat plan.
Landbot lets you build conversational chatbots with a visual, no-code flow builder across your website, WhatsApp and messengers. It's great for marketing and support teams that want lead-gen or FAQ bots without developers. Pricing is in euros and AI chats are metered, so watch the caps as you scale.
Wati is a WhatsApp Business API platform with broadcasts, chatbots, an AI copilot and a shared team inbox — strong for e-commerce and SMB teams that sell and support on WhatsApp. The honest catch is cost transparency: the subscription is only part of the bill, since Meta's per-message fees and platform markup stack on top.
CallHippo is a budget-friendly cloud phone system with a rare free tier and a low $18/user entry, plus a broad omnichannel inbox even on cheaper plans. It's a solid entry point for small sales and support teams. The trade-off versus CloudTalk is narrower country coverage and 'unlimited' plans that carry fair-use caveats.
Calilio is a budget cloud phone system with the lowest entry price in this set ($12/user) and a simple two-tier structure. It's a fit for solopreneurs and small teams wanting a cheap virtual number with AI features. The caveat: it's a smaller, newer brand, so independent coverage of reliability and country availability is thin.
Phone and voice still close deals and resolve the hard support tickets that chat can't. But the old PBX in a server cupboard is long gone — modern business communications run in the cloud, so a distributed team can share numbers, route calls intelligently and log every conversation straight into the CRM.
The category spans a few needs. Cloud phone systems (VoIP) replace desk phones with software you use on a laptop or mobile, adding voicemail, call forwarding and business-hours routing. Contact-centre and sales-calling tools like CloudTalk layer on power features: outbound dialers, call queues, analytics, call recording and tight CRM sync so reps aren't copy-pasting notes. Unified communications bundle voice with messaging and video for teams that want one platform.
When we evaluate these tools, integrations do a lot of the heavy lifting. A calling tool that writes back to your CRM automatically saves reps real time and gives managers clean data; one that doesn't becomes another silo. We also look at international coverage — local numbers, per-minute rates and the countries a vendor actually supports — because that varies widely and can be a deal-breaker for teams calling abroad.
Pricing is almost always per user per month, often with tiers that gate the analytics, dialer or integrations you may specifically need. Watch for add-on costs: extra numbers, international minutes and premium support can change the real total. Number availability and compliance also differ by region, so we note geo restrictions on each review.
Voice isn't the only channel, though. Live chat and chatbots now handle a huge share of customer conversations, especially online. Live-chat tools like Tidio put a shared inbox on your site and add AI agents that resolve common tickets automatically, which is a natural fit for ecommerce and SMB support. No-code chatbot builders like Landbot take a different angle: you design conversational flows visually and deploy them to your website, WhatsApp or messengers for lead generation and FAQs. When we review these, we weigh how much work the AI genuinely deflects, how metered AI conversations are priced, and how deep the integrations run — a support bot that can see order context is far more useful than one that can't.
Our reviews score value, ease of use, features and support, and state plainly whether a tool suits a two-person startup or a 50-seat contact centre. If you're weighing two options, our comparisons break them down feature by feature; the best-of list gives a ranked shortlist. Each review also flags the teams that would be better served by a different tool.
It's a business phone service that runs over the internet instead of physical phone lines. Your team makes and receives calls from an app on a computer or phone, with features like routing, voicemail and CRM logging built in.
Almost always per user per month, with higher tiers unlocking dialers, analytics and integrations. Extra phone numbers and international minutes are common add-on costs, so check those before comparing headline prices.
Most do. CRM integration is one of the biggest reasons to use a dedicated calling tool — it logs calls and notes automatically. We list supported integrations in each review.
