Userlike Review 2024 Live Chat Support from Europe

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Inka Wibowo

Inka Wibowo

Author

Robert Brandl

Robert Brandl

Researcher

Although this live chat software isn't as well-known as some of the other providers, it definitely makes an interesting first impression. Userlike comes from Germany, and, being a European company it naturally supports all the EU privacy laws (GDPR etc.).

But that’s just one of a surprisingly long list of perks. Feature-wise, it more than holds its own against big-name competitors like LiveChat and Olark, offering advanced features such as multichannel messaging, asynchronous chat, voice and video calls, screen sharing, a chatbot API, and more.

Its AI Automation Hub is also unique, offering AI-powered support tools such as a chatbot, Smart FAQ, knowledge base, and contact form suggestions.

All this forms part of Userlike’s Unified Messaging offering - a way to help companies continue conversations with clients across various sessions (and even channels), and forge stronger customer relationships.

With all this in mind, you might be wondering: is Userlike right for my business? Read on to see if it’s worth your time.

Screenshots

Userlike Pricing

$0

Free

Includes 1 widget, 1 agent and unlimited chats
$90

Team

Includes 4 agents, 4 chat widgets, 1 additional channel, video calls, screen sharing, and Whatsapp channel. Allows API access
$290

Corporate

Includes 10 agents, 10 chat widgets, 3 additional channels, and access to chatbot API and AI Automation Hub.
On request

Flex

Enterprise-level package, with 10+ widgets, 10+ agents, 4+ channels, plus white labeling, advanced routing, professional onboarding, and dedicated account manager.

Prices for annual billing.

Pros / Cons of Userlike

  • Pros
  • Cons

Pros

  • Unified Messaging

    Userlike are serious about providing a communication channel that goes beyond your standard website messenger. Asynchronous chats and integrations with WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, SMS and email are all possible

  • Calls and screen sharing

    Voice and video calls are a relatively new addition, as is screen sharing.

  • Multilingual features

    With live translations and customizable texts in 26 languages, Userlike helps you serve a global audience.

  • AI-powered chatbots and support

    This impressive and unique feature includes an AI chatbot, Smart FAQ, and contact form suggestions. The hub is fed from a centralized knowledge base and uses natural language processing to understand and respond to customer queries, while also being able to forward conversations to human agents when needed. It’s available on the Corporate and Flex plans.

  • Whatsapp Channel

    Through the Whatsapp Campaigns feature, you can proactively send personalized messages and offers to engage and nurture customer relationships. There is also the direct message-reply feature, which can enable efficient customer service. (Available on Team plan and higher)

Userlike Rating Details

Ease of use

The interface isn’t the most exciting, nor is it the most intuitive we’ve used. A few settings are a bit more complicated than they need to be, such as setting up the widget routers and chatbots. But it’s not overwhelming, either: it just takes some getting used to.

Setup Info popup

Copy and paste the code into your site or use one of their plugins. It always takes a few moments until chat widget changes become active, which can be a bit frustrating at times.

Themes and Style Options Info popup

The design customization options aren’t extensive, but you can do the basics – change the main color, chat button, and use a custom font. That being said, the options for customizing text are fantastic; you change the wording for pretty much anything, including buttons and tooltips.

Chat Client Info popup

To the customer, the chat window looks modern, integrating nicely within the site. Shows a photo of the agent. Users can send files and voice messages, rate their chat experience after the chat is over, and also request a transcript.

Chat agent console Info popup

Userlike’s Message Center looks a lot more modern than the rest of the backend and is easy to navigate. You can view live conversations, past ones, and contact profiles in a CRM-like view.

Automatic messaging Info popup

You can create “widget routers” to set up rule-based triggers, although there are only 5 conditions available (in comparison, LiveChat offers 7, plus custom variables). You also have to embed a piece of code on your site for every widget router you want to use.

However, you can set up timer-based “proactive chats” fairly easily, as well as goals for specific actions (e.g. user bought something after chatting to an agent). Behavior-based triggers can only be implemented by altering the code.

With the introduction of the AI Automation Hub, you can now also elect to have your AI-powered chatbot initiate conversations, provide responses, and forward to an agent if required.

Offline mode Info popup

Let visitors leave messages, or hide the chat window when your team is offline. Asynchronous chats are also possible – if you send a message to a contact while they’re offline, they’ll get notified via email, and can pick up the conversation again whenever they’re ready.

Shortcuts / canned messages Info popup

Canned messages can be set up easily (chat macros) as well as push macros (specific URLs that you can push your visitors to).

Tracking & live analytics Info popup

Once you are engaged in a chat (not before), it will show detailed user information like the country, city and the visitor’s current page.

Multiple languages Info popup

You can use Userlike in 7 languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch & Portuguese). It’s also possible to customize interface texts and/or to create chat widgets in different languages – Userlike offers default text for 26 languages. The same number of languages is available in Userlike’s excellent Live Translation feature, which lets you translate your messages into the visitor’s language, and to translate their responses back to your preferred language.

Ticketing system Info popup

Userlike don’t offer a solution for this.

Integrations and add-ons Info popup

Zendesk, Salesforce and many more. The list of messaging channels that can be integrated is also impressive – WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, SMS and email, plus more via API.

Team Management

You can assign skills, roles and aliases to your agents. What’s more, you can also define agent groups (e.g. “English”, “Spanish”). Userlike favours existing relationships so if an agent has spoken with the visitor previously, they will get assigned to them if they are available (they call this “Sticky Chat”). Users are also able to select between different groups, or can be assigned to an agent based on their skill-set. You can also transfer chats within your team.

Mobile support / apps Info popup

Works very well for website visitors on mobile devices – it adapts very well to small screen sizes.

Voice/video calls Info popup

Both voice and video calling are available if you have the Team plan. Calls can only be initiated by chat agents. Sending voice messages (by both parties) is also possible.

Cobrowsing Info popup

Screen sharing is available as part of the voice and video calls service.

Ban users Info popup

Type $block to ban a user. The chat client will not appear anymore for this user.

Log creation Info popup

All chat conversations are stored and can be accessed through the Message Center.

Support

  • Live Chat
  • Email
  • Telephone

Their personal support worked really well in our tests. They also have plenty of tutorials available in the Userlike guide.

Overall rating

4.1

The range and quality of features is excellent, and its AI-powered chatbots and knowledge base set it apart from other providers in the small-to-medium business space. The main things we’d like to see Userlike improve are ease of use, and its automated/triggered messages – there are other live chat providers that do these better.

A more detailed look into the live chat software

AI Automation Hub

This is probably Userlike’s most exciting feature. Out of all the live chat tools we’ve tried, this is one of the few that offer this level of AI-powered customer support.

With the AI Automation Hub, you get the option to offer various support channels to your website visitors and customers:

  • Knowledge base: A self-service resource that allows you to centrally store all the questions and answers you want customers to be able to find.
  • Contact form suggestions: A tool that analyzes visitors’ contact form queries in real time, enabling it to provide prompt answers while customers are typing. This reduces the volume of contact form submissions and minimizes repetitive inquiries.
  • Smart FAQ: An interactive help section that predicts queries as users type and can be integrated into multiple pages.
  • AI chatbot: An intelligent chatbot that can answer questions without agent intervention. In cases where questions become too complex, the chatbot can transfer the conversation to an available agent.

Here’s how it works in a nutshell: All the answers come from the knowledge base. As long as you have the necessary information stored there, the AI can respond to visitor’s queries accurately, regardless of the support channel they choose.

For example, when you add a question to the knowledge base, you can also specify question variations, as well as multiple answers. These can vary according to the date, the visitor’s country, for your different brands, or even if it’s a customer asking vs an agent. You can also add categories to organize your answers and specify when certain answers are shown.

userlike knowledgebase

Adding questions and answers to the knowledge base

You can also set up an AI chatbot as part of your team. While it’s designed to answer visitors’ questions intelligently based on the information stored in the knowledge base, you can specify what to display in certain situations, e.g. at the beginning of a chat, or when the chatbot can’t answer the question.

userlike chatbot responses

If you don’t have the time to code your own chatbot, this is a handy alternative. However, the chatbot’s answers will only be as good as the information you have in the knowledge base. If your knowledge base is light on content, the chatbot may not work as effectively. The good news is that over time, the chatbot will learn and improve its ability to provide accurate answers.

It’s important to keep in mind that separate chatbots need to be created for each of your languages, as chatbots only support one language at a time. For those seeking greater control over chatbot behavior, Userlike provides options for integrating custom chatbots through APIs or creating rule-based flows using the Userlike Bot Language.

What could really round out the support feature set, however, is a ticketing system. This is offered in many other live chat tools (for example, JivoChat and Tidio), but is missing from Userlike. Although you might be able to find a workaround using the Conversations feature, it may not be ideal if you’re fielding a lot of support requests and want an easy way to manage them.

Team Management and Chat Routing

Userlike stands out with its exceptional level of control over agent management and chat routing. In addition to setting up individual operators, you have the flexibility to create operator groups. Assigning agents to specific groups based on their expertise (e.g. IT support, billing) or languages (e.g. English, Thai) allows incoming chats to be routed only to relevant group members.

userlike groups

One drawback is that agents can’t be assigned to multiple groups, so make sure that your groups have no overlap. This means you’ll have to choose between grouping by languages OR expertise. To overcome this limitation, Userlike offers the option to set up “Skills.” Skills can be used to route chat conversations to operators with the relevant skill sets, and agents can have multiple skills assigned to them.

userlike skills

A few other unique options include the ability to:

  • Let operators access and switch between multiple organizations using a single login, which is convenient for support centers serving multiple clients
  • Specify the maximum number of chat sessions operators can handle simultaneously and automatically assign chats to operators with the most available slots
  • Allow website visitors to resume chats with the same agent they previously interacted with
  • Assign different roles (manager, admin, staff, analyst, and agent) to manage access rights and permissions

Userlike Review: Conclusion

All in all, Userlike is a solid solution although we felt the user experience, and some of the features, could still be better. There were a few settings in the setup of the chat widget and routers that we didn’t find that intuitive.

On the bright side, you are able to easily call, screen share and request screenshots from your visitors, which can solve a lot of issues very quickly.

A noteworthy feature is its AI Automation Hub, which is designed to streamline workflows and reduce the workload of human customer service agents through its AI-powered chatbots, knowledge base, and FAQs. What’s more, it’s surprisingly easy to set it all up, although you do need to be on at least the Corporate plan to access these features.

They also get a big thumbs up for their efforts towards providing a complete Unified Messaging solution. We love that customers can continue conversations across different sessions, and can even access past chats from any device, simply by entering their email address.

Plus, the ability to integrate with popular messaging channels such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger means that businesses can service an even wider audience.

So, depending on the features you need, Userlike can be a good choice. We see particular strengths in their multilingual availability, survey and chat rating options, as well as their CRM integrations.

Getting live support in a European time zone and the possibility to switch off the collection of private user data can be a distinctive advantage for companies located in Europe.

It’s great that Userlike offers a free plan, which is plenty to get started and might even be enough for a small business to run their live chat out of. They offer four different pricing tiers, and a 14-day free trial.

> Go to Userlike.com and try it for free

 

Userlike Alternatives

LiveChat comes packed with features and is ideal for companies who want to proactively employ live chat as a sales or support channel. Its wide list of integrations, engaging ‘rich messages’, advanced team management features, and excellent multilingual widgets make it our top-rated live chat software.

Tidio is a top choice if you’re looking for advanced chatbots and automation, as these come included for free. The great news is that there’s also a free plan for up to 3 agents.

JivoChat offers an impressive range of features, including CRM, triggered chats, one-click calling, email and social integration, and internal team chats. A free plan is also available.

The authors

Learn more about us

Inka Wibowo

Content Manager

Hi, I'm Inka! I started using website builders and content management systems over 10 years ago, when I managed websites for clients in my first marketing role. Since then, I've worked on hundreds of web and digital projects. Now, at Tooltester, I'm happy to be able to use my experience to help users like you find the right website builder for your needs.

Robert Brandl

Founder and CEO

Hi, my name is Robert Brandl! I used to work in a digital marketing agency where I managed website and email marketing projects. To optimize my client's campaigns, I always had to find the optimal web tools. Tooltester offers this knowledge to you, hopefully saving you endless hours of research.

Learn more about us

We keep our content up to date

27 Jun 2023 - Smaller updates and corrections
19 Jun 2023 - Minor updates, addition of 'Detailed look into live chat software' section
11 Jan 2023 - Addition of AI Automation Hub review
4 Jan 2023 - Small changes to plan inclusions
15 Dec 2022 - Business plan no longer available
16 Mar 2022 - Prices checked, correction of smaller errors.
19 Nov 2021 - General updates, review moved to Tooltester.com
27 Sep 2017 - General updates, new chatbot feature.
15 Jul 2015 - Review of the new interface, screenshots updated.
07 Aug 2014 - New chat widget, improvements for mobile users, co-browsing added.
26 Feb 2014 - More languages, chat protocols, and a few other updates.
08 Mar 2013 - The web console now features user statistics.
15 Nov 2012 - The Free plan was discontinued, pricing changes.
29 Aug 2012 - Initial tests.

THE BEHIND THE SCENES OF THIS REVIEW

This article has been written and researched following a precise methodology.

Tooltester Methodology: How Do We Create our Reviews?

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