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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    ChatBeacon

    Score9 out of 10
    N/AChatBeacon (formerly SightMax) is a live chat tool from SmartMax Software headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma.N/A

    Front

    Score9.2 out of 10
    N/AFront is a communication hub that helps businesses keep the human touch in every interaction.

    $29

    per month per user

    Pricing
    ChatBeaconFront
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Starter
    $29
    per month per user
    Growth
    $79
    per month per user
    Scale
    $99
    per month (billed annually) per user
    Premier
    $229
    per month (billed annually) per seat (50 seat minimum)
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    ChatBeaconFront
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsDiscount for annual pricing on Starter and Growth plans. Scale and Premier plans are annual price only.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    ChatBeaconFront
    Considered Both Products
    SmartMax Software
    No answer on this topic
    Front
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    93%
    Would buy again
    27 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    23 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    93%
    Happy with the feature set
    27 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    82%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    14 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    15 Answers
    Features
    ChatBeaconFront
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of ChatBeacon and Front
    Feature
    ChatBeacon
    -
    Ratings
    Front
    7.6
    6 Ratings
    8% below category average
    Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings8.36 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings6.84 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings7.84 Ratings
    Ticket response00 Ratings7.84 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of ChatBeacon and Front
    Feature
    ChatBeacon
    -
    Ratings
    Front
    7.0
    6 Ratings
    13% below category average
    External knowledge base00 Ratings7.06 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of ChatBeacon and Front
    Feature
    ChatBeacon
    -
    Ratings
    Front
    8.8
    4 Ratings
    9% above category average
    Customer portal00 Ratings8.33 Ratings
    Social integration00 Ratings9.43 Ratings
    Email support00 Ratings9.24 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings8.42 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    ChatBeaconFront
    Small Businesses
    ZoomInfo Chat
    Score7.9 out of 10
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    SAP Conversational AI (discontinued)
    Score6.8 out of 10
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Enterprises
    AWS Chatbot
    Score8.4 out of 10
    Kustomer
    Score8.7 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    ChatBeaconFront
    Likelihood to Recommend
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (35 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.4
    (9 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.8
    (5 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    ChatBeaconFront
    Likelihood to Recommend
    SmartMax Software
    ChatBeacon is a decent choice for on-premises chat support, but the clunky agent UI sparks no joy. If your organization can use a cloud-based solution, there are plenty of other fish in the sea
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Front
    I think Front is very useful for every company with multiple teams working together on different emails from clients. Not so useful if a lot of different teams need to work on a request at the same time, because when an email is sitting in multiple shared inboxes things can get messy. Also would not recommend for teams that work is individualized, as team work is the main point of Front.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    SmartMax Software
    • Easy to install and configure.
    • Easy for customers to use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Front
    • Even if you are just trying to compose a single email, Front gives a smart system that has options such [as] organized templates, tags, alerts, [and] changing your outbound dpt email.
    • Tasks- with Front you will not miss any interaction. When you are required to get assistance from a coworker, you only need to mention him/her and that notification will appear automatically in their inboxes.
    • Smart Notifications- sometimes we are just overwhelmed about the several notifications on our devices that we tend to miss some of them, but Front offers a new way to notify every email, discussion, mentioning, or tag that you really would not want to miss.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    SmartMax Software
    • ChatBeacon is just SightMax with a fresh coat of paint.
    • The entire agent UI is remarkably worse than SightMax.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Front
    • Their integration to Salesforce is lacking. As the owner of our productivity tools and how they are used, I have very little control over what things to enforce, or even change what objects are available. For example, we don't use Cases in Salesforce but with the Salesforce integration the Cases object shows up. There's no need to have that there. I've heard there is a roadmap improvement forthcoming.
    • One of our uses is for our sales development reps to prospect with visitors. Because of the high volume of inquiries it's difficult for our reps to efficiently manage all their follow ups. It would be nice if we could run a "scheduled campaign" where a predesigned cadence of email follow ups can be sent automatically. To be clear, they do have a scheduling capability, but it just can't be used as a prebuilt option.
    • Integrations to other systems require you have a user account to those systems. We have SSO and therefore we don't always have a user account. For example, out integration to Jira uses SSO so we don't each have individual Jira logins. This is an outage for us.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    SmartMax Software
    No answers on this topic
    Front
    We are very happy with Front and don't anticipate changing
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    SmartMax Software
    No answers on this topic
    Front
    It's very easy to understand and use by new customer support agents as well. Be it a technology, product, or marketing person, we have trained most of the company folks to read and respond to customer conversations in their free time with the help of the Front app. It is also easy to set up for an admin and manage his/her team with communication rules.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    SmartMax Software
    Support is a strong point for ChatBeacon - their support team is small, but you definitely get white-glove service. Zero complaints about ChatBeacon support!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Front
    The support is good, and it's definitely prompt, but still lags when it comes to technical requirements, as I guess they are slow in developing newer features fast. So no complaints in terms of responsiveness, but yeah, at times it's not very helpful when you need certain features or are blocked on things which can't be unblocked.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    SmartMax Software
    Before using SightMax (now ChatBeacon), we used AliveChat, which was an OK SaaS product, but the team operating the service would frequently restart the servers after maintenance and forget to start our instance back up. ChatBeacon(SightMax) as on-prem software eliminated this concern. We've been evaluating ChatBeacon vs. other products lately, and we really like how DeskPro stacks up vs. ChatBeacon - ChatBeacon is purely a chat product, and DeskPro does web chat/phone/email ticketing.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Front
    This is something I am not familiar but it seems like it is [available] in Gmail. Thus I cannot give any feedback about it. What I am sure about is Front works for our team and I see Zoom using the service in the Customer Success Organization in a long run.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    SmartMax Software
    • Using website chat (often with an agent:customer ratio of up to 1:3 or more ) vs. phone support (with an agent ratio of 1:1) has greatly reduced support costs in every business unit.
    • Providing realtime feedback and links (vs. phone calls) has greatly improved the turnaround on the sales and customer inquiry processes.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Front
    • Saved our executive team considerable amount of time chasing support questions through different channels.
    • Gave our team clear accountability for who was lead on a support issue and how to escalate.
    • Customer regularly say our support is the best in the industry.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Front Screenshots

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