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Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board vs. LiveChat

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board

    Score9.1 out of 10
    Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
    Social Squared is a SharePoint Discussion Board App that can be deployed across SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams. Social Squared improves productivity and efficiency by providing structured discussion forums for employee and student discussions. For Microsoft SharePoint Social Squared is a SharePoint discussion board application where users can post questions within relevant forums and receive answers to their questions from subject matter experts. The…

    $2,200

    per year per installation

    LiveChat

    Score6.8 out of 10
    Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
    LiveChat serves as a customer service platform with live chat support, help desk and web analytics functionalities, with the goal of allowing users to provide 24/7 support to customers. The core feature of the software is its chat tool, where both service and sales team can answer customers' questions in real time. Online businesses can interact with customers on their website, to be more accessible. With LiveChat, users can identify people on the website and engage…

    $25

    per month per user

    Pricing
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardLiveChat
    Editions & Modules
    Social Squared Discussion Board
    From $2200
    per year per installation
    Social Squared Discussion Board Enterprise Edition
    POA
    per year per installation
    Starter
    $25
    per month
    Team
    $59
    per month per person
    Business
    $89
    per month per person
    Enterprise
    Contact Sales
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardLiveChat
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsPrices stated are minimum per installation for "stock" products. $2.20 per user/year on top of base price. Enterprise editions can be amended to suit business needs if deemed necessary, additional costs incurred and TBD. All packages include free technical support. Free upgrades available to latest versions of tool as they are released.Discount available for annual billing.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardLiveChat
    Considered Both Products
    Lightning Tools
    No answer on this topic
    Text
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Would buy again
    12 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    9 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    12 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    8 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    90%
    Implementation went as expected
    9 Answers
    Features
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardLiveChat
    Project Management
    Comparison of Project Management features of Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board and LiveChat
    Feature
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    9.1
    1 Ratings
    16% above category average
    LiveChat
    -
    Ratings
    Mobile Access9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Search9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Communication
    Comparison of Communication features of Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board and LiveChat
    Feature
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    9.1
    1 Ratings
    13% above category average
    LiveChat
    -
    Ratings
    Chat9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Notifications9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Discussions9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internal knowledgebase9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    File Sharing & Management
    Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board and LiveChat
    Feature
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    9.1
    1 Ratings
    12% above category average
    LiveChat
    -
    Ratings
    Versioning9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Video files9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Audio files9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Document collaboration9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Access control9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardLiveChat
    Small Businesses
    Flock
    Score9.5 out of 10
    Olark
    Score10 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Troop Messenger
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Zoho SalesIQ
    Score9.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
    Score9 out of 10
    Genesys DX (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardLiveChat
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (44 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.3
    (3 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardLiveChat
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Lightning Tools
    Their customer service it top notch and always responsive. I struggled in the beginning a little bit because I'm not tech savvy and we had to add it to our SharePoint site but they helped me along the way and even had share screen meetings with me to assist!!
    Read full review
    Text
    We needed a mechanism in place to make contact with visitors to our website easier. What we discovered is that it's an excellent tool for creating reports and dashboards that show how soon issues are handled. Our website can now be updated in real-time, and all of our internal teams are really excited to use this fantastic technology. I really recommend [LiveChat] to many friends and past colleagues.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Lightning Tools
    • Organizing Data
    • Opens up discussion, whether publicly or anonymously
    • Easy to setup
    Read full review
    Text
    • The most important factor of Livechat is their own chat support, I had many requirement from the Sales Head, Support Head to implement features that I was unsure if the product could do. However, as I did the implementation one by one I constantly used the chat support which helped me step by step all the way.
    • The UX of the product is pretty simple and intuitive to use. There are quite a few features that we could easily plug and play. We tried going to the market to find a solution that could help us but they did not have as many out of the box features and simple to use
    • Their integration between LiveChat and Chatbot is pretty seamless and since both of them are from the same company, it's works pretty well.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Lightning Tools
    • I would love to be able to assign various people as administrators of different topics (this may be an option now but a couple years ago it wasn't)
    Read full review
    Text
    • It has a limited amount of agents, so when you have many customer care employees during one shift it is hard to manage the quantity of active agents.
    • When system is overloaded and many customers are waiting in a queue it starts to works slowly (sometimes the program even lags) and you need to refresh the system to write a message.
    • Occasionally when you open a new tab, you might lose your current conversation.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Lightning Tools
    Our employees really like the fact that they can find things easily with the search feature and add questions and comments as they see fit.
    Read full review
    Text
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Text
    The only issues I have had with LiveChat are the technical glitches within the program. These are not common as in everyday occurrences but when the glitches do happen they tend to have very negative repercussions. This is due to chats with customers being dropped, this may be an internal server issue though and may not happen for everyone.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Text
    Overall very similar in design, but LiveChat had a better interface, better reporting and analytic tools, better mobile support, and just an easier overall feel. The two products are very much alike in the vast majority of ways, but I ended up preferring this product overall. Price points were similar as well, as well as the allowed number of users.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Lightning Tools
    • We signed up for a 3 year contract and hope to do another 3yr contract when this one is up. :)
    Read full review
    Text
    • We have a small team so the overall impact is that it is easy for one or two employees to handle a large number of tickets without hiring more people. Plus, you can use this software remotely, save a ton on traveling to and from and office.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board Screenshots

    Screenshot of MODERN, RESPONSIVE SHAREPOINT DISCUSSION BOARD
Discussion Forums can be created for a variety of different reasons. This example is a Forum Group for the Microsoft 365 technologies such as Teams, Planner, and SharePoint. Forums are then created within the Forum Groups for more specific discussions. Under the SharePoint Forum Group, there is a Forum for SharePoint On-Premises and SharePoint Online. Anyone looking to ask a question regarding SharePoint 2019 for example would be able to post their question under SharePoint On-Premises rather than SharePoint Online. This also allows subject matter experts to focus more on the questions that they can respond to and provide value.Screenshot of SHAREPOINT DISCUSS BOARD – TOPICS VIEW
When navigating into a forum, the topics and discussions that are taking place are shown. Any new topics that not yet read will be highlighted. It also displays whether topics have been answered, their average ratings, how many views and posts are within the topic, and also provides the ability to subscribe to the forum to be notified of new posts within it.Screenshot of READING DISCUSSIONS AND PROVIDING FEEDBACK
Social Squared offers a threaded discussion view with the ability to provide feedback to other users.

Posts can be rated, voted upon, or liked by users in order to give feedback to the user creating or responding to a post. Additionally, replies can be marked as answered or marked as featured, which gives readers of forums assurance that the response they are reading is validated to be the correct answer.

Users also receive feedback through the earning of badges. The more users post or mark posts as answered, the more points are rewarded. This makes it easy to spot subject matter experts.Screenshot of SUGGESTED TAGS
Social Squared provides a rich text editor for creating and replying to topics. The Rich Text toolbar provides functionality such as inserting images, YouTube videos, Stream Videos, Formatted Code Inserts, as well as font formatting.

While typing, suggestions on how to tag a post appear. Selecting an existing tag will provide consistency in the tags used making it easier for other users to discover the post.Screenshot of SOCIAL SQUARED TAG CLOUD VIEW
The Social Squared Tag Cloud view makes it easy to navigate to posts within a specific category even if they span multiple forums. The more a tag appears in different posts, the more prominent it will be in the tag cloud. Users can navigate to posts with the tag in one click.Screenshot of DISCUSSION BOARD WITHIN MICROSOFT TEAMS TAB
Social Squared is a Discussion Board App for Microsoft Teams Tab’s and Microsoft Teams Personal Apps. Social Squared provides information workers the ability to post questions within relevant forums, and receive answers from their team. The Discussion Board layout for posts makes it easier to find answers to questions that may have already been asked before. Through features such as “Mark as Answered”, “Forum Moderation”, “Post Rating”, “Post Likes”, “Post Voting”, users will be assured that the answers they are reading are validated.

    LiveChat Screenshots

    Screenshot of Chat Widget and Agent AppScreenshot of Customer detailsScreenshot of Traffic sectionScreenshot of ReportsScreenshot of Team managementScreenshot of Chat Widget customization