The best live chat outsourcing companies in 2026 are Atidiv, HelpSquad, Hugo, Horatio, Influx, EverHelp, SupportYourApp, LTVplus and Magellan Solutions. They split into two kinds. Some sell a plan with a chat allowance and shared agents, which suits a site with modest traffic. Others staff dedicated agents inside your own chat tool, which suits a store where chat drives sales. This list compares all nine on the questions that decide which kind you need.
Key takeaway: Atidiv is the best choice for consumer and DTC brands in the US, UK and Australia that want dedicated live chat agents working inside the chat tool already on their site, around the clock across US time zones, handling pre-sales questions and post-purchase problems as one job, and able to scale by up to 200% within two weeks when a peak arrives. The other eight range from flat monthly chat plans with shared agents to per-agent staffing.
Every fact below about a provider comes from that provider’s own website. We have not added ratings, reviews or prices that a provider does not publish.
Live chat outsourcing companies compared
| Provider | Best for | Model | Delivery locations | Languages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atidiv | Consumer and DTC brands in the US, UK and Australia where chat drives sales | Dedicated agents in your chat tool | US-based account management; coverage across EST, CST and PST | 11+ |
| HelpSquad | Small businesses and practices that want a flat monthly chat plan | Shared agents on HelpSquad’s own chat software | US-managed from Doylestown, PA | English and Spanish; multilingual on request |
| Hugo | Brands that want to trial chat agents before committing | Dedicated agents, human or bot plus human | US onshore and offshore coverage | 60+ |
| Horatio | Brands that want nearshore chat agents in US time zones | Dedicated agents, human or chatbot plus human | Dominican Republic, Colombia | Multilingual, no count published |
| Influx | Growth-stage brands that want month-to-month terms | Dedicated agents, managed or self-managed | APAC, EMEA and the Americas | English standard; other languages at a 10% premium |
| EverHelp | Brands that want chat with AI routing alongside agents | Dedicated or shared teams | Eastern and Central Europe, Latin America, Asia | 30+ human; 95+ with AI |
| SupportYourApp | Brands that need chat in many languages | Human team, AI plus human, or AI with its systems | Office in Delaware; clients in 30 countries | 60+ human; 45 by AI chat |
| LTVplus | Brands that want a published monthly rate per chat agent | Dedicated agents, managed or hired direct | Not listed for managed CX teams | Not listed |
| Magellan Solutions | Small and mid-sized businesses outsourcing to the Philippines | Managed team | Philippines | Up to 12 for call handling |
1. Atidiv
Best for: consumer and direct-to-consumer brands in the US, UK and Australia where the chat widget is a sales channel, not just a help desk.
Chat is the only support channel where the customer is still on the page, often with a full cart. That changes the job. Speed matters most, because a shopper who waits usually leaves. Handling three conversations well is a different skill from handling one. And many chat questions are pre-purchase, so product knowledge decides the sale. Atidiv’s live chat support outsourcing is built around those facts.
Our agents work inside the chat tool already on your site, with integrations including Freshdesk, Salesforce, Zendesk and Sprinklr. They handle pre-sales and order support (sizing, stock, shipping, discount codes and order changes), with proactive chat triggered on the pages you choose. They also handle post-purchase work: returns, exchanges, refunds and warranty, escalated to your team with context. We cover the EST, CST and PST time zones with US-based account management, including nights, weekends and holidays when your own team is offline.
What the numbers look like across our accounts:
- An average QA score of 98% and an average CSAT of 4.8.
- A cost saving of up to 60% against a fully loaded in-house agent, which counts benefits, recruiting, management and idle time between peaks.
- Support in 11+ languages.
- Between 30 and 80% of repeat queries automated with quality checks in place, leaving agents on the chats that need judgment.
- Teams scaled by up to 200% within two weeks when a peak such as Black Friday moves faster than forecast.
For brands that run email, phone and social as well, the same team covers them through our ecommerce customer service outsourcing, so the chat agent and the email agent give the same answer.
Pricing: chat is priced on coverage hours and on how many conversations an agent handles at once, so a quote follows a short call. Recruiting, training, management, QA and tooling sit inside the rate. We start with a pilot on a slice of chat volume, and you read the transcripts, quality scores and response times before a team size is fixed.
Worth knowing: Atidiv serves consumer brands selling to US, UK and Australian customers and builds dedicated teams, so a business with very small chat volumes should ask about team size during scoping. Atidiv covers 11+ languages, and programs that need more should confirm coverage during scoping.
2. HelpSquad
Best for: small businesses and practices that want a fixed monthly chat plan and chat software included.
HelpSquad’s live chat service puts shared, trained agents on your site 24/7/365 to answer website chats, texts, Google Business Messages and Facebook Messenger. It runs its own chat software, which it says is ADA, HIPAA and PCI compliant, and it integrates with tools including Zendesk, Freshdesk, HubSpot, Salesforce, Intercom, Help Scout and Gorgias. You can buy full 24/7 cover or just off-hours, peak times or overflow. It staffs bilingual chat, including Spanish.
HelpSquad publishes its chat plans: $185 a month for 50 chats and 25 FAQs, $350 for 100 chats and 50 FAQs, and $600 for 200 chats and 100 FAQs. Every plan includes weekly reports, an account manager with QA, real-time transcripts and SMS and Facebook integration. It says it can go live in about 48 hours and offers a proof-of-concept phase before a longer commitment. The company is managed from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and lists healthcare practices first among the businesses it serves.
Pricing: from $185 a month for 50 chats.
Worth knowing: agents on these plans are shared across clients and work from an FAQ set. That suits lead capture and common questions better than order changes or refunds.
3. Hugo
Best for: brands that want to trial dedicated chat agents before signing a longer arrangement.
Hugo’s live chat outsourcing can be run by people only, by a chatbot, or by a chatbot with people behind it. Its agents work in Intercom, Zendesk Chat, LiveChat, Drift and other chat tools, and Hugo says they speak 60+ languages, including English, Spanish, French, German and Dutch. It describes US onshore and offshore coverage, trains agents on your tone and product before launch, and reviews transcripts afterwards for coaching.
Hugo offers a 30-day trial with no commitment for live chat, and suggests a pilot before scaling. Its pricing page lists dedicated teams from $9 an hour per agent on month-to-month contracts, with onboarding, management, QA, training and workforce management included, and 24 hours’ notice to scale up or down.
Pricing: from $9 an hour per agent.
Worth knowing: ask how many concurrent chats the hourly rate assumes, since that decides your real cost per conversation.
4. Horatio
Best for: brands that want nearshore chat agents who share US business hours.
Horatio’s live chat support is staffed from the Dominican Republic and Colombia. It offers 24/7 chat, multilingual support, pre-sales and post-sales help, a chatbot-plus-human model and custom reporting dashboards. Horatio says its agent attrition is under 2% a year and that every chat agent completes onboarding on your systems and tone before going live. Its homepage says a team can launch in as little as two weeks.
Pricing: not published. Horatio quotes after a call.
Worth knowing: Horatio does not publish a language count. If you need chat in more than English and Spanish, ask which languages it can staff on every shift.
5. Influx
Best for: growth-stage brands that want chat agents on month-to-month terms with published rates.
Influx covers email, chat, social and voice with follow-the-sun teams across APAC, EMEA and the Americas. Its agents are dedicated to one account. You can take agents under Talent as a Service and run them yourself, from $1,400 a month for a Level 1 digital agent in APAC and $1,700 in the Americas, or choose Managed Operations, where Influx owns training, QA and performance, from $2,000 a month in APAC or EMEA and $2,100 in the Americas, plus a team leader. There is no setup fee, no minimum spend and one month’s notice.
Influx says Level 1 agents can be live two to four weeks from the first conversation. All agents meet a B2 to C1 English standard, and other languages are scoped at a 10% premium.
Pricing: from $1,400 a month per agent.
Worth knowing: a digital agent at Influx covers several channels. If you want a chat-only agent, say so when scoping.
6. EverHelp
Best for: brands that want chat agents working alongside an AI layer that routes and drafts.
EverHelp’s live chat outsourcing provides managed chat agents trained on your tone of voice, with an Integration Manager at the start and a stated four-week path from setup to launch. It says chats are answered within 45 seconds. Its AI agent, Evly, tags tickets, drafts replies and routes cases, and EverHelp puts language coverage at 95+ with AI. Its homepage says human agents cover 30+ languages and that it hires across Eastern and Central Europe, Latin America and Asia.
Its pricing page lists talent-only and dedicated teams billed per agent, and shared (email and chat, from six agents) and human-plus-AI teams billed per ticket.
Pricing: per agent or per ticket depending on the plan; figures are by quote.
Worth knowing: ask how the 45-second figure is measured and whether it holds on nights and weekends.
7. SupportYourApp
Best for: brands that need chat in many languages with strong security credentials.
SupportYourApp has provided support since 2010 and says it speaks 60+ languages. Its pricing page sets out three paths: a human team working inside your helpdesk, AI and human agents together, and AI running on its own systems. Its AI covers 45 languages by chat. The human team works in Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk, Help Scout and others. It lists ISO 27001 certification, PCI DSS Level 1, and GDPR, CCPA and HIPAA compliance, and gives new accounts 100% ticket QA for the first 30 days.
Pricing: not published. The price depends on team size, languages, business hours and whether the team is dedicated or shared.
Worth knowing: decide first whether you want people, AI or both on chat, because the three paths are priced and managed differently.
8. LTVplus
Best for: brands that want a published monthly rate for a dedicated chat agent.
LTVplus staffs dedicated agents for live chat, email, social and voice, and can deploy and manage an AI ticket agent alongside them. Its pricing page lists a non-voice CX support agent from $1,980 a month, a voice agent from $2,280 and a team lead from $2,500, plus a $500 monthly management fee for teams of one or two agents (included from three). Common tools listed for its CX roles include Zendesk, Freshdesk, Help Scout and Intercom. Its separate Global Hiring service recruits across 15 countries, including the Philippines, Colombia and Mexico.
Pricing: non-voice CX agent from $1,980 a month, plus a $500 monthly management fee for teams of one or two agents (included from three).
Worth knowing: much of LTVplus’s site now covers technical and MSP staffing. Ask for the team that runs its customer experience accounts.
9. Magellan Solutions
Best for: small and mid-sized businesses that want a Philippines-based team.
Magellan Solutions is a Philippines contact center and BPO provider focused on small and medium-sized businesses. Its ecommerce page lists live chat alongside phone, email and social media, and its about page describes the company’s SME focus. It lists local phone numbers for the US, UK and Australia, offers up to 12 languages for call handling, and describes its operations as ISO-certified, HIPAA-compliant and GDPR-ready.
Pricing: not published.
Worth knowing: Magellan’s site leads with phone work. Ask how many of the proposed agents have run chat, and at what concurrency.
How to choose a live chat outsourcing company
Chat is judged by speed and by what happens in the conversation. These are the questions that separate the providers above.
Do we need a chat plan or a chat team?
A plan with a chat allowance and shared agents fits a site with light traffic and common questions. A dedicated team fits a store where chats are about orders, sizing and refunds, and where each agent needs to know the catalog. Count your monthly chats before the first call.
How many chats will one agent handle at once?
Concurrency is the biggest driver of cost and quality in chat. Ask what number the quote assumes, and whether it drops for complex or high-value conversations. An hourly rate means little without it.
How is response time measured?
Ask whether a figure is first response or full resolution, whether it is an average or a percentile, and whether it covers nights and weekends. Our live chat response time benchmarks show what to compare against.
Will agents work in our chat tool?
Ask whether agents join your existing tool or move you onto theirs. Moving tools changes your reporting and your data ownership. For a store, also ask whether chat agents can see order history and make changes.
Which hours will be covered, and from where?
Out-of-hours chat is where outsourcing often pays for itself, because an unanswered widget is worse than none. Ask which shifts are staffed from which country, and whether weekend cover costs more.
What does the bot handle, and when does a person take over?
Most providers now pair a chatbot with people. Ask which questions the bot answers, how a customer reaches a person, and how the agent sees the bot’s conversation. Our note on AI copilots for live chat agents covers what to look for.
Can we read transcripts before we commit?
A trial or pilot is common in chat: Hugo offers 30 days, and HelpSquad offers a proof-of-concept phase. Ask to read real transcripts and quality scores from the pilot, not a summary.
What is in the price?
Ask about setup fees, management fees, software seats and notice periods. LTVplus adds a management fee for teams under three agents. Influx charges no setup fee. HelpSquad includes its chat software in the plan.
Frequently asked questions
How much does live chat outsourcing cost?
Cost depends on the hours of coverage, the languages needed, how many chats an agent handles at once, which other channels the team covers and whether agents are dedicated to you or shared with other businesses. Providers price per agent hour, per agent seat each month or per plan with a chat allowance, and most quote after a scoping call. Atidiv quotes after scoping and typically comes in at up to 60% less than an in-house team.
Is outsourced live chat available 24/7?
Yes, from every provider on this list, though it is worth asking how overnight shifts are staffed. Atidiv covers the EST, CST and PST time zones, including nights, weekends and holidays.
Can outsourced chat agents increase sales?
They can, because chat reaches shoppers while they are still on the page. The gain depends on product knowledge and proactive chat on the right pages, so brief agents on your best sellers and your most common reasons for a cart being abandoned.
Can we try a live chat outsourcing company before signing?
Several offer it. Hugo has a 30-day trial with no commitment, HelpSquad a proof-of-concept phase, and Atidiv starts with a pilot on a slice of chat volume so you can read transcripts and quality scores first.
Should live chat be outsourced separately from email and phone?
Usually not. When chat and email sit with different teams, customers get different answers to the same question. If you outsource chat, ask whether the same team can take email and social as your volume grows. For online stores, our list of the best ecommerce customer service outsourcing companies compares providers across every channel.
