Online Chat Software review – Velaro & BoldChat
May 11, 2010I was thinking it was time do a review of 2 main online chat software providers (Velaro & BoldChat) I’ve heard about. Not only do news organizations like CNN do live chat but Live Chat, as we know, is the most proven communication method to increase sales and conversions on an e-commerce site too. Live Chat software empowers your web site with all the benefits of a traditional brick and mortar store. Greet customers when they visit, answer questions, offer advice, ultimately growing sales and customer satisfaction. So here is the quick list of how these guys stack up to each other.
Live chat software reviews of BoldChat & Velaro
- Velaro – COST – 1 Operator $49/monthly – 5 operators $259/monthly – 10 Day Free Trial –
- * List of Features
- » Agent E-Mail Transcripts – Agents can E-mail transcripts during and after a chat.
» Agent to Agent Chat – View other agents who are online, and chat with them at any time.
» Alert Notifications – Completely configure ring tones, sounds and visual alerts for new visitors and chats.
» Auto-Away/Return – Never miss a live customer support session. Automatically set your status to unavailable after you computer has been idle. Return to available when you move your mouse or press a key.
» Availability Status – Set your status to available or unavailable to accept or block new live customer support requests.
» Chat Transfer – Transfer a chat to a different agent.
» Control Your Live Help Option – Display text or image as your customer support link. Place your text or chat images several times on the page.
» E-Mail / E-Bay Compatible – Put your live help offer in e-mail messages and on your e-Bay pages.
» Join Chat – Proactively join any live customer support session in progress.
» No Applets to Download – The chat window used by your visitors is pure HTML and JavaScript. No Java applets or custom applications are necessary.
» Online And Offline Buttons – Display live help on your pages at all times, or only when someone is available to chat. Display different text or a different image when support representatives are unavailable. Upload your custom buttons and use any image you desire.
» Push Page – Push web pages to a visitor. If the visitor has a pop-up blocker, the push page is also sent as a clickable link.
» Script Generation Wizard – Simply run our wizard and paste the resulting code into your website. With Velaro you don’t have to learn anything about HTML or JavaScript.
» Shadow Chat – Silently monitor other agents’ chats. Add hidden text to a chat. This feature is useful to create notes in the chat log or to communicate with other agents supporting the same chat.
» Spell Checker – Check your spelling real-time as you support your visitor.
» Typing Notification – See when a visitor is typing in the chat window.
» Typing Notification – See when an agent is typing in the chat window.
» Unmatched Browser Compatibility – Velaro actively supports Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape, Firefox, Opera and Safari. We constantly work to ensure that our service works with over 99.99% of the active browsers on PC and Mac platforms.
» Visitor E-Mail Transcripts – Visitors can have their chat transcripts e-mailed to them.
- » Agent E-Mail Transcripts – Agents can E-mail transcripts during and after a chat.
- BoldChat – COST – 2 Operators $29/monthly – 5 operators $220/monthly – Free Trial –
List of features
* Answer & Greet
* Advanced HTML Support
* Auto-Switch Chat Buttons
* Answer Chat Timeout
* Assign Chats
* Auto-Browser
* Block Visitor from Chats
* Block Auto-Browser URL’s
* Customize Row Formatting Rules
* Customizable Logo
* Colors, and Fonts
* Customizable Alerts
* Canned Messages
* Canned Message Folders
* Customizable Chat Buttons
* Email Chats to Visitors
* Email Chats to Operators
* Filtering
* Flag Chats
* Grouping
* Join Chat
* Multiple Language Support
* Online Chat History
* Pre-Chat Survey
* Push Link
* Print Chats
* Setup Chat Rules
* Sign-In as Away
* Spell Checker
* Typing Indicator
* User Defined Folders
* Unavailable Email Form
* Variables for Canned Messages
Test – As you can see, the more you pay for, the more you get. I’ve also heard that customer service for technical support problems happens quicker with the premium company over other smaller more inexpensive type vendors. Of course that’s probably why LG, University of Florida, & Century 21 use a trusted company like Velaro. You can feel free to check out other live chat websites like – liveperson, zazachat, whoson, ngenera, sightmax, live2support, clickandchat, helponclick and many others…
Feel free to leave feedback on what you think of any of these systems – good and bad!!
Online Voice Conferences & Meetings 
Interesting, yet biased info. You said, “As you can see, the more you pay for, the more you get.”…implying that you get more with Velaro (it’s the most expensive of the two), yet you list only 19 features (one of which was repeated immediately after the other) for Velaro versus 33 for BoldChat. Curious, observation.
You also said, “I’ve also heard that customer service for technical support problems happens quicker with the premium company over other smaller more inexpensive type vendors.” I notice that you didn’t call out BoldChat (BC) here, which was wise. My sources (both first and second hand), who are customers of BoldChat’s, say that BC’s support is as good as it gets.
I also noticed that for search engine ranking purposes, this article links to Velaro’s website for the word “live chat software”. That pretty much nails down the reason this blog was written…to help Velaro’s sales and their search engine rankings. I suspect this article was paid for by Velaro, though I don’t know that for sure. This kind of thing happens all the time and isn’t surprising. Yet, I’d encourage all readers of these types of blogs to ask the following questions as they read these blogs:
– What is the underlying message here?
– Who stands to gain from this post?
– Do the intentions of the writer seem to indicate a bias?
Overall, I’d say the takeaway from this blog post is:
1) both BoldChat and Velaro have lots of features
2) Velaro’s features are explained, BC’s are not (hmm, I wonder why?)
3) More homework is needed than just reading this article to determine which product is best for your needs.
Happy researching.
Comm100 Live Chat is also an excellent chat software for ecommerce. It is completely free and hosted. No software need to be installed. Check it out at http://www.comm100.com/livechat/.
I’m having a terrible time with setting up Velaro. It’s not that easy to figure out with a lot of un-standard UI and byzantine menus in the control panel that make it hard to find where feature customization element are. Support team is quick and responsive, but never does have the answer. “That is indeed odd” seemed to be a regular response and all of my questions were forwarded to other technicians, who then forwarded me a pdf instruction sheet. If you need to customize buttons or panels and windows at all, I’d look for another provider… even out of the box, this one is anything but intuitive.
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Nice comparison. I am using Live2support and all features seem comparable to these.