Chatwoot versus Olark

Chatwoot is a Free Open Source Software and SaaS live chat platform. You can choose to have your live chat hosted by them or opt for self-hosting. The installation process of a self-hosted live chat has been simplified with their one-click install guides for cloud providers like AWS, DigitalOcean, and Heroku or with deployment options like Docker, Linux VM (Ubuntu 20.04 LTS), or the Chatwoot CTL.

Open Source

Chatwoot’s Community Edition is published under the MIT license. You can find SDK implementations, review the code or contribute to the projects in the Chatwoot repository. The Enterprise Edition is available under a proprietary license. You can still audit the source code. However, modification is not allowed.

Founded in 2008, Olark has seen the rise of chat software for over a decade. After getting funding from the famous YCombinator incubator Olark launched their first live chat platform.

Olark is committed to developing accessible software and is actively testing improvements in assistive technologies. It’s awesome to see a provider care about this often-overlooked aspect of customer service.

Besides live chat, Olark also markets as a customer metrics company. Since putting a widget on your platform gives you a lot of valuable data.

To ensure that every user always gets the right answer, the chatbot can transfer to a human employee at any time. This Human Handover is possible via Live Chat or E-Mail.