What is live chat on a website?
Quick answer
Live chat is a chat box on your website, usually a bubble in the bottom corner, where a visitor types a question and a person on your team, or an AI assistant, answers in real time. The whole conversation is saved, so nobody has to repeat themselves later.
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Updated · By Robert Breen
Why it matters for a small business
People shop for an accountant, a lawyer or an insurance agent in the evening, on their phone, between other things. A contact form feels like a letter: they send it and move on to the next firm. A chat box feels like a conversation that is happening now. For a small office the cost of not having one is quiet but real: a few lost clients a year, each worth months of fees, and nobody ever finds out they were lost.
Live chat also changes the work for the team. Instead of a phone ringing while someone is mid-task, questions arrive in one place, can be answered from a desk or a phone app, and stay on record. With an AI assistant added, the routine questions get answered at any hour and the rest wait for a person with the full history attached.
Three ways a website answers a question at 8 PM
| Setup | What the visitor sees | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| Contact form only | A form and a thank-you note | An email waits until someone opens it in the morning |
| Live chat, nobody online | An offline message form | The message lands in the chat dashboard for the morning |
| Live chat with AI answers | A reply within seconds | Routine questions are done; anything else waits for a person |
In a real lesson: tawk.to: Answer Website Questions After Hours
In Answer Website Questions After Hours with tawk.to, a made-up firm called Harbor Lane Bookkeeping closes at 5, yet its website keeps getting questions about fees, hours, software and how to send documents. The lesson prices the gap with example numbers: about 12 after-hours questions a week, and two people a year who book elsewhere at about $150 a month each, roughly $3,600 a year of work.
You create a property, copy the widget code from the Install Widget screen (or use the Tawk.To Live Chat plugin for WordPress), and style it under Widget Appearance. Then you switch on AI Assist, answer a chat yourself with Join Chat, and use the Widget Scheduler and the Offline form to decide what visitors see when nobody is in. The code itself is a kind of embed code, and many offices also route these chats into a shared inbox.
Try this lesson free or read the step-by-step guide.
Common confusions
Live chat vs chatbot
Live chat is the channel: the box on your site. A chatbot is software that replies in it. A live chat box can be answered only by people, only by AI, or by AI first with a person stepping in.
Live chat vs a shared inbox
A shared inbox is a team email address. Live chat is real-time and happens on the web page, though some tools collect both in one place.
Tips
- Decide who answers during business hours before you install the widget.
- Make the widget look offline when nobody, human or AI, is there to reply.
Related terms
More Business terms
Where you use it: free lessons
- tawk.to: Answer Website Questions After Hours (tawk.to, 14 min)
- Chatbase: Answer Customer FAQs with an AI Agent (Chatbase, 14 min)
AI tools that use it
Frequently asked questions
- Is live chat free?
- Some tools have free plans. tawk.to's pricing page, read 18 October 2026, called its live chat software free with a small badge, with $29 a month to remove the badge. Check current prices.
- Do I need someone watching the chat all day?
- No. Set your online hours, show an offline form outside them, or let an AI assistant answer routine questions and leave the rest for the morning.
- How do I add live chat to my website?
- Copy the widget code from the chat tool and paste it into your site, usually before the closing body tag, or install the tool's plugin if your site runs on WordPress.