What users are saying about
2 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 6 out of 100
Based on 2 reviews and ratings
33 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 9.2 out of 100
Based on 33 reviews and ratings
Attribute Ratings
- Olark is rated higher in 2 areas: Likelihood to Recommend, Support Rating
Likelihood to Recommend
6.0
ChatBeacon
60%
1 Rating
8.9
Olark
89%
17 Ratings
Likelihood to Renew
ChatBeacon
N/A
0 Ratings
8.6
Olark
86%
5 Ratings
Support Rating
8.0
ChatBeacon
80%
2 Ratings
9.8
Olark
98%
4 Ratings
Product Scalability
ChatBeacon
N/A
0 Ratings
8.0
Olark
80%
1 Rating
Likelihood to Recommend
ChatBeacon
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

Verified User
Professional in Information Technology
Wholesale Company, 51-200 employeesOlark
Olark chat is easy to set up and use. You can have more than one user logged in to monitor the chat on different computers. This makes a fast response time more likely. Although you have to be sure to keep your volume up on the computer so you hear the sound letting you know there's a chat waiting. I like that you can see the customers path through the website and you can put clickable links while you are in a chat to guide the customer to a product or a help page. Plus you can see if they actually went there. This makes it easier to upsell
Owner
Hey Viv IncApparel & Fashion, 1-10 employees
Pros
ChatBeacon
- Easy to install and configure.
- Easy for customers to use.

Verified User
Professional in Information Technology
Wholesale Company, 51-200 employeesOlark
- Olark is user friendly for both sides of the CHAT conversation. If you are initiating the chat, or the one receiving the chat, it is extremely easy to follow and use. There are many different levels of computer use comprehension and Olark is for every level.
- Olark has reporting features to allow you to check the quality of your employees chat abilities as well as their productivity. It provides feedback for the employee themselves to also see how they are doing and take any suggestions the customer may leave for them regarding their chat experience.
- Olark is very affordable and offers you the option, at a low cost, to look bigger and more professional that you even are. We were a smaller company and has the chat option with Olark and now have grown tremendously and STILL have the Olark chat option. Olark allowed us to grow and provide professionalism to our customers .
- The Olark program allows you to set up quick responses to keep your customer from waiting, and to allow your employees to not have to retype the same response over and over. It is a great program that the employees really enjoy as well. It reminds you if you forgot to log out when you left your desk and provides your customer a quick note giving them the option to send the chat as an email inquiry instead, so you don't miss a thing.

Verified User
Representative in Sales
Wholesale Company, 51-200 employeesCons
ChatBeacon
- ChatBeacon is just SightMax with a fresh coat of paint.
- The entire agent UI is remarkably worse than SightMax.

Verified User
Professional in Information Technology
Wholesale Company, 51-200 employeesOlark
- Not really an area of improvement for Olark specifically, but I will offer that it is incredibly important to keep in mind your company's "shopping hours" or peak traffic times (there is a Reports feature on the software that allows you to analyze peak traffic times).
- Transcript history can be a little tricky - if you're searching for a specific past conversation, sometimes you may get multiple search results and have to sift through them until you find exactly what you're looking for.
- I'd also offer that you will occasionally come across folks that are on your site to cyberbully or say nonsensical things. While there isn't an absolute fullproof way to deal with this, Olark does offer a nice "block" feature to disregard any unwanted conversations.

Verified User
Consultant in Customer Service
Staffing and Recruiting Company, 51-200 employeesPricing Details
ChatBeacon
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
—ChatBeacon Editions & Modules
—
Additional Pricing Details
—Olark
General
Free Trial
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
$15 per month
Olark Editions & Modules
Edition
Self Service | $19.001 |
---|
- Per Agent Per Month
Additional Pricing Details
—Likelihood to Renew
ChatBeacon
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Olark
Olark 8.6
Based on 5 answers
To be honest, renewal decisions are not currently within my power. Hypothetically speaking, I'm very comfortable with the platform, have used it daily for nearly a year, and would see no reason to switch to anything else. The small criticisms I had are not significant enough to deter me from using Olark. It's a user friendly, effective tool for our department.
Customer Service Agent
BackstagePublishing, 11-50 employees
Support Rating
ChatBeacon
ChatBeacon 8.0
Based on 2 answers
Support is a strong point for ChatBeacon - their support team is small, but you definitely get white-glove service. Zero complaints about ChatBeacon support!

Verified User
Professional in Information Technology
Wholesale Company, 51-200 employeesOlark
Olark 9.8
Based on 4 answers
Our organization does not have any complaints about Olark's Support. Anytime we reached out to them for assistance, we received a prompt, helpful reply! As mentioned previously, we used Olark fairly basically so we didn't have too much need to work with their support team other than a few general questions here and there. They were always pleasant to work with.

Verified User
Manager in Customer Service
Package/Freight Delivery Company, 51-200 employeesAlternatives Considered
ChatBeacon
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.

Verified User
Professional in Information Technology
Wholesale Company, 51-200 employeesOlark
Olark has an easier implementation process and has better functionality such as the ability to send commands through the platform to either create a ticket in your CRM or push an opportunity to salesforce; you're even able to 'push' the end user to a web page. Implementing their SDK is a snap as well.
Director Of Support
AppetizeInformation Technology and Services, 201-500 employees
Return on Investment
ChatBeacon
- 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.

Verified User
Professional in Information Technology
Wholesale Company, 51-200 employeesOlark
- Olark allows my customer support team to respond to inquiries much faster than before.
- We have seen an uptick in sales as we are able to address more questions from website visitors.
- We have changed the design of our website based on chat feedback and questions obtained through Olark.
Energy Efficiency Consultant
SEMCORenewables & Environment, 51-200 employees