Freshchat Review 2026: Features, Pricing, Pros and Cons

Joren Wouters-avatar

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Freshchat is a chatbot and live chat platform. It helps you engage with visitors on multiple channels, like your website, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. But should you use Freshchat as your customer support tool?

In this Freshchat Review, we will cover all its features, the pros and cons, and the Freshchat pricing plans.

Let’s dive in!

Our Verdict

Our Verdict

Freshchat is perfect for businesses of all sizes looking for a customer support tool with AI chatbots and live chat.

It offers AI Agents that you can train on your own knowledge base. Then, they automatically answers questions about that data. You can also improve those answers.

Freshchat is easy to use, has many features and allows you to connect with 400+ applications. With the built-in live chat and auto-assignment rules, you can hand over a conversation to an agent whenever you need.

Freshchat has a free plan and multiple paid plans (starting at $19/month). This makes the platform suitable for small businesses who just started, up to large enterprises with a big customer support team.

Pros

  • Easy-to-use interface
  • Publish chatbot on website, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, SMS, Google, Line
  • Built-in AI Agents: Knowledge Base & Actions
  • Livechat with Auto-Assignment and Automations
  • Send WhatsApp & SMS Campaigns
  • Integrations with Make, Shopify and WooCommerce
  • Advanced Analytics: Many Reports and Add Custom Reports

Cons

  • Some features are hidden in the interface
  • Proactively sending messages on website cannot be connected to specific chatbot flows
  • No marketing possiblities on Facebook and Instagram
freshchat-logo
Go to Freshchat
4.5
Plans cost
$19 to $499
Introductory Offer
Forever free plan with basic features (up to 10 agents)
Standout features
Ease of use, Omnichannel, Built-in AI, Livechat, Integrations

What is Freshchat?

Freshchat is a chatbot and live chat platform. It lets you engage with your visitors on various channels. This includes Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and your website.

You can use Freshchat to:

  • Automatically answer customer questions using AI
  • Guide users through workflows like order status or refunds
  • Hand conversations over to human agents when needed

Freshchat Home Page

Freshchat includes a wide range of features for both automation and human-led support. These include:

  • AI Agents trained on your knowledge base (documents, URLs, FAQs, and Q&A)
  • AI workflows (actions) to fetch data, trigger processes, or hand off to agents
  • Live chat with routing, assignment rules, and SLA policies
  • Multichannel support, including website chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, SMS, and more
  • Mobile apps for iOS and Android, so agents can reply on the go
  • Analytics and reporting for conversations, bots, and agent performance
  • 400+ integrations via Freshworks and the App Marketplace

Freshchat can work well for small teams that need basic live chat. But it’s even better for growing and large customer support teams.

It’s especially good if they want to combine AI-driven automation with advanced agent workflows.

Using Freshchat

When you log in at Freshchat, you see a dashboard with the most important analytics of your customer support team:

Freshchat Dashboard

On the left side, you have multiple tabs you can manage Freshchat with:

  1. Support Dashboard – Overall dashboard that gives you insights on how well your support team does
  2. Conversations Inbox – This is the live chat inbox of Freshchat
  3. Contacts and Accounts – Overview of everyone that talked with your chatbot
  4. FAQs – Frequently Asked Question articles you can add to your chatbot and widget
  5. AI Agent Studio – A place where you create your AI Agents
  6. Campaigns – Here you can set up website, SMS and WhatsApp campaigns
  7. Support Analytics – Deep-dive analytics of your support team and chatbots
  8. Settings

Freshchat gives you two ways to automate conversations: AI Agents and a rule-based chatbot builder.

I recommend using AI Agents for most use cases. They allow you to train an AI on your own data and connect it to workflows that can take real actions.

The rule-based chatbot builder is still available for scripted or highly controlled flows where you want full manual logic.

Below, we’ll start with the AI Agent setup.

Using the Freshchat AI Agent (Recommended)

Freshchat AI Agents let you create an AI-powered support assistant. It can answer questions and perform actions based on your data. You can train an AI Agent by adding knowledge sources.

Freshchat Knowledge Sources

Once added, the AI Agent uses this information to automatically answer customer questions.

Beyond answering questions, Freshchat AI Agents can perform actions using workflows. 

For example, these can include getting someone’s order status, processing a refund, or handing off a conversation to a support agent.

Freshchat AI Workflows

You can also preview the AI agent, so that you can know how it performs before you put it live.

Freshchat AI Agent Preview

Freshchat also gives you an overviews on Unanswered queries. This allows you to over time improve the answers of your AI Agents.

Freshchat Improving AI Agent Answers

Using Freshchat Chatbot Builder

With the bot builder, you can add two types of elements to your flow: New message or New action.

With the new message element, you can either send a message or ask for user input.

When performing an action, you can choose from dozens of options. These include storing property data, assigning the conversation to an agent, and making an API call.

Additionally, you can see all the flows of your chatbot in a Holistic View so you easily see what flows are connected with each other:

Holistic view of all chatbot flows in Freshchat

Also, when you’ve created your chatbot flows you can preview them before actually publishing your chatbot:

Preview your bot before publishing it in Freshchat

Moreover, you can also keep track of different versions of your chatbot and easily go back and forth between them:

Version control of your chatbot in Freshchat

It can take some time before you fully understand the interface. Freshchat has many features and some simple features seem to be hidden in the interface or not as straightforward as expected.

For example, it took me a while to learn how to add conditions to my chatbot flows. Also, I had to learn how to add custom properties to Freshchat and store data in them.

There is also one other drawback: you need to create a separate chatbot per channel.

Using Freshchat AI Agent vs Chatbot Builder

Freshchat offers both AI Agents and a rule-based chatbot builder, but for most businesses, the AI Agent is the better choice.

AI Agents are faster to set up, easier to maintain, and require far less manual logic. Instead of designing every conversation step-by-step, you train the AI on your knowledge. It can then handle questions naturally, while workflows take care of actions and handoffs.

The rule-based chatbot builder is still useful for highly controlled or scripted flows. But it takes more time to build and maintain. For most customer support use cases, the AI Agent delivers results faster and easier.

Flow Builder
Create chatbot dialogs with a visual flow builder.
Ease of use
How easy is it to use the platform? On a scale of 1 to 5.
4.5
Ease of setup
How easy is it to set up your chatbot? On a scale of 1 to 5.
4
Test chatbot
Is it possible to test the chatbot before putting your new flows or changes live?

Freshchat Chatbot elements

You can add two elements to your Freshchat chatbot flows: New message and New action.

With the Message Element, you can just send messages (including images, files and video) and ask for user input (text, buttons, phone numbers, etc).

If you add an action to your chatbot flow, you can choose from many actions, including:

  • Storing data in properties
  • Assign a conversation for handover
  • Trigger eCommerce actions

Additionally, you can also add conditions to your chatbot flow to create personalized experiences:

Conditions in the bot builder of Freshchat

By using these elements, you can create a good chatbot.

In my Freshchat review, I found one main flaw with the chatbot elements. You cannot start another chatbot flow without clicking a button. This limits the scalability of your chatbot and you possibly need to copy/paste content across chatbot flows.

Image
Can you send images via your chatbot?
Video
Can you send video via your chatbot?
Audio
Can you send audio via your chatbot?
Attachment
Can you send attachments via your chatbot?
Gallery (Horizontal List)
Show a gallery of cards inside your chatbot. A card consists of an image, title, subtitle and button.
Quick reply
Can you add quick replies to your chatbot where users can click on?
Button
Can you add buttons to your chatbot where users can click on?
Collect User Input
Can you collect input from users and store it in fields?
Condition
Make checks in your chatbot flow based on if-then logic. For example, if the user has not given their email, ask for their email.
Delay
Use delays between messages in your chatbot
Start automation
Can you refer from one automation to another and thereby reuse your automations?
Split traffic
Can you split your trafic inside a chatbot flow? Often used for A/B testing.

Contacts

In Freshchat, you have an overview of all the contacts that talked with your chatbot:

Contacts overview in Freshchat

When you click on a contact, you can see the status of the contact, contact details and all conversations they had:

Contact Details in Freshchat

You can easily add custom fields (Properties in Freshchat) and tags (Conversation labels in Freshchat) to your contacts.

In Freshchat, you have properties on three levels:

  • Conversation-level, these properties are stored for each conversation (such as someone’s order number)
  • Contact-level, these properties are stored for each person (such as someone’s email)
  • Bot-level, these properties are specific for each chatbot

Moreover, you can also create your own user segments, by defining conditions:

Create user segments with conditions in Freshchat

Contacts overview
Can you see all the contacts that talked to your chatbot in one overview?
Custom field
Store information from your chatbot users inside fields. For example, you can ask for someone's email and store it inside the "email" custom field.
Tags
Add tags to users in your chatbot flows to organize and categorize contacts.
User Segments
Can you create user segments based on custom fields and tags?

AI Freshchat Features

The most important Freshchat AI features are AI Agents, Intents & Entities, and Freddy AI.

Let’s go over them one by one.

AI Agent

The AI Agent is the core AI feature in Freshchat.

It allows you to automate customer support by training an AI on your own knowledge base. You can then connect it to workflows that perform actions during conversations.

You can train a Freshchat AI Agent using different knowledge sources, including:

  • Website URLs
  • Files
  • Solution articles
  • Custom Q&A pairs

Freshchat Knowledge Sources

Once added, the AI Agent uses this knowledge to automatically answer customer questions.

A drawback here is that you need to add website URLs one at a time. It would be easier if you could provide your website URL once and let Freshchat automatically fetch all relevant pages.

Freshchat AI Agents can be connected to workflows, which function as AI actions.

These workflows allow the AI Agent to do more than just answer questions. They can perform tasks, such as:

  • Checking order status
  • Collecting customer information
  • Sending messages
  • Transferring conversations to a live agent
  • Connecting with external systems via APIs

Freshchat provides over 50 prebuilt AI workflows. So it’s easy to get started without building everything from scratch.

For example, let’s say a customer asks about their order status. The AI Agent can trigger a workflow that looks up the order and responds automatically.

Freshchat AI Workflow Order Status

Freshchat also gives you control over how the AI Agent behaves during conversations.

You can configure settings such as:

  • Sending an intro message at the start of a conversation
  • Handing off to a live agent when requested
  • Transferring the conversation when the AI doesn’t know an answer
  • Collecting customer feedback after the conversation ends

Freshchat AI Agent Settings

Also, Freshchat makes it easy to improve AI Agent answers. You get a clear overview of unanswered or poorly answered questions, and you can quickly add or improve responses. This allows the AI Agent to continuously learn and deliver better answers.

Freshchat Improving AI Agent Answers

Using Intents & Detecting Customer Information

Intents and entities are mainly useful when working with the rule-based bot builder. For AI Agents, Freshchat relies more on knowledge sources and workflows.

Still, you can add training phrases to Freshchat so it can learn from them and automatically detect the intent of the user:

Intents in Freshchat

Then, you can connect these intents to one of your chatbot flows in the Bot Builder.

Furthermore, Freshchat can also automatically detect customer information from the conversation:

Entity recognition for customer information in Freshchat

However, it is not possible to add your own entities and detect them as well, it’s only limited to Email, Name & Phone.

Freddy AI

Freshchat includes Freddy AI, which consists of two components:

  1. Freddy Self Service
  2. Freddy Copilot

Freddy Self Service includes features that support automation and agents. These include conversation summaries that help agents quickly understand context when a chat is handed over.

Freddy Self Service in Freshchat

Some parts of Freddy Self Service are useless, especially when using AI Agents. But summarizing conversations can still be useful for support teams.

Freddy Copilot helps agents and improves their productivity by:

  • Rephrasing responses
  • Summarizing conversations
  • Assisting with faster and more consistent replies

This is especially helpful for larger customer support teams that handle high chat volumes.

Keyword recognition
Trigger chatbot flow based on certain words or phrases a user says to the chatbot.
Intents
Trigger a chatbot flow by understanding the intent of the user.
Entities
Capture specific information from sentences. For example, if a user says "veggie pizza", the chatbot can understand it's not a regular pizza, but a veggie pizza.
AI Knowledge Base
Can you train your chatbot on a knowledge base (like your website or articles) and then your chatbot automatically answer questions about it?
NLP integrations
Does it have a direct integration with NLP platforms, such as Dialogflow?
LLM integrations
Does it have a direct integration with LLM platforms, such as ChatGPT and Claude?

Live Chat

Freshchat has a built-in live chat, allowing you to hand over a conversation to a human agent:

Live chat in Freshchat

It also offers an iOS and Android app, allowing your agents to respond to customers via their phones.

This live chat is really advanced.  You can auto-translate messages from live chat agents, plus you can set up:

  • Assignment rules
  • Conversation routing rules
  • SLA policies
Built-in live chat
Does it have a built-in live chat, so you can hand over a conversation to a support agent?
Live chat integration
Does it have a direct integration with a third-party livechat application?
Auto-Assignment Rules
Can you set up rules so that conversations get automatically assigned to agents in livechat?

Channels

With Freshchat, you can put a chatbot on 7 channels:

  • Your website
  • WhatsApp
  • Instagram
  • SMS (via Twilio or Gupshup)
  • Facebook Messenger
  • Line
  • Google Business Messages

Also, you can connect Freshchat with Voice to handle incoming calls (using Freshcaller or another phone service). But, you can’t add a voice chatbot to that.

Furthermore, you can also send email campaigns to the contacts that talked with your chatbot.

Website
Can you publish your chatbot on your website?
Facebook
Can you publish your chatbot on Facebook?
Instagram
Can you publish your chatbot on Instagram?
Whatsapp
Can you publish your chatbot on WhatsApp?
Telegram
Can you publish your chatbot on Telegram?
SMS
Can you publish your chatbot on SMS?
Slack
Can you publish your chatbot on Slack?
Email
Can you publish your chatbot on email?
Merge contacts across channels
Can you merge contacts across channels, when the same person contacts you over multiple channels?

Marketing

With Freshchat, you can add a widget to your website that you can fully customize to your own preferences:

Website widget in your own branding with Freshchat

Likewise, you can also add Topics and FAQ knowledge base articles to your widget:

Add Topics & FAQ Articles to your website widget in Freshchat

Additionally, you can create full Customer Journeys in Freshchat. For example, you can send proactive messages if people are for a specific time on one of your website’s pages:

Send proactive message campaigns on your website with Freshchat

A slight drawback here is that you cannot connect this proactive message with a specific chatbot flow, but only with your chatbot in general.

Or you can invite contacts to a webinar via SMS with a customer journey:

Create Customer Journeys with Freshchat

Likewise, you can do the same thing via WhatsApp by sending WhatsApp Message Templates.

You can also send SMS and WhatsApp broadcasts to your contacts:

Send WhatsApp Campaigns with Freshchat

Broadcasts
Send a message to all or a part of your chatbot users at a specific date and time
Sequences
Send messages on a pre-defined schedule with a certain time interval between those messages
Rules
Trigger events based on if-then logic. For example, if email is given by the user, send it to your CRM.
Website widget
Embed your chatbot as a widget on your website (with your own branding & colors).
Send proactive messages on website
Can you send pro-active messages on your website with your chatbot?
Facebook Ref URL
Can you create a URL that goes to a specific flow inside your Facebook chatbot?
Auto-Reply to Facebook Comments
Automatically reply with your chatbot to users who comment on your Facebook Posts
One-Time Notification
Send one-time notifications via Facebook Messenger for a topic that a chatbot user has opted-in for
Recurring Notifications
Send recurring notifications via Facebook Messenger for a topic that a chatbot user has opted-in for
Facebook Ads
Start a conversation with your chatbot when someone clicks on a Facebook Ad
Auto-Reply to Instagram Comments
Automatically reply with your chatbot to users who comment on your Instagram Posts
Instagram Story Mention Reply
Send auto replies to Instagram users who mention your Instagram handle in their Instagram Stories
WhatsApp Message Templates
Can you initiate conversations with Message Templates on WhatsApp?

Integrations

Freshchat has direct integrations with other Freshworks products, such as Freshdesk and Freshsales. And they have integrations with:

  • Slack (so you can reply to user questions from your Slack channel)
  • Zendesk
  • Clearbit (to get company information from anonymous visitors)
  • Shopify
  • Salesforce
  • And many others

Also, they have an App Marketplace with 400+ integrations to other apps, both free and paid. These include Hubspot, Teamviewer, and Calendly:

App Marketplace for integrations in Freshchat

This allows you to connect Freshchat with many other applications.

If this is not enough, you can also connect Freshchat to your own application by using webhooks or calling the Freshchat API.

Direct integrations
How many direct integrations does it have with other applications?
250+
Zapier
Direct integration with Zapier, one of the largest integration platforms in the world.
Make
Direct integration with Make (formerly Integromat), one of the largest integration platforms in the world.
Make API Calls
Can you call an API inside your chatbot flow to send or get data from other applications?
Webhooks
Can the platform send automatic notifications of all the messages and events going on in your chatbot?

Freshchat Pricing

Freshchat pricing includes a free plan and paid plans, starting at $19 per agent, per month.

Freshchat’s free plan is free forever for up to 10 agents. This plan comes with all the features required to have a live chat feature on your website. This plan doesn’t include any Freddy AI Agent sessions, so you cannot use Freshchat’s chatbots in this plan.

If you want to get more features and want to use the chatbot of Freshchat, you need to go with the Growth plan. This plan costs $19 per agent/month. It includes 500 Freddy AI Agent sessions, all of Freshchat’s channels, the App Marketplace, and Assignment Rules.

If this is not enough, you can for the Pro plan, starting at $49 per agent/month. This plan also comes with 500 Freddy AI Agent sessions, and includes more advanced features, such as:

  • Advanced Live Chat automations
  • Auto-Resolve
  • Advanced Dashboards
  • CSAT Surveys

Freshchat pricing plans

If you want to add more Freddy AI Agent sessions or want to use Freddy Copilot, you can buy these as add-ons:

  • $49 for 100 Freddy AI Agent sessions
  • $29/agent/month for Freddy Copilot

Each of the plans comes with a 14-day free trial. So, you can test the platform before paying for it.

Free trial
Does the chatbot platform provide a free trial?
Free plan
Does the chatbot platform provide a free plan?
Price per month
What is the lowest price per month to create a chatbot with this platform? In US Dollars.
$19
Monthly pricing available?
Is it possible to pay monthly?
Money back guarantee
Is there a money-back guarantee in case you are not satisfied with the platform?

Analytics

Freshchat provides an analytics dashboard with many pre-built reports, including:

  • Chat Conversations Reports
  • Chatbot Oteview Reports
  • SLA compliance report

All reports in the Analytics section of Freshchat

When you click on one of the reports, you can the most important analytics of your chatbot and live chat agents:

Chat Conversations Report in Freshchat

Additionally, you can also create your own custom reports by dragging widgets into a canvas and saving them:

Create a custom analytics report with Freshchat

Also, you can improve the answers of your chatbot easily, because you can see an overview of all the questions your chatbot did not understand:

freshchat-train-bot-analytics

Plus, Freshchat provides agent analytics and supports custom event tracking. This offers more convenient analytics.

Dashboard
Dashboard that provides general analytics of your chatbot.
Flow analytics
Can you analyze how users are going through your chatbot flows?
User input
Get the input from users that your chatbot didn't understand.
Sent messages
The number of messages that were sent by your chatbot.
Open rate
The percentage of chatbot users that opened a message inside your chatbot.
Click rate
The percentage of chatbot users that click on a button inside your chatbot.
Conversion rate
The percentage of users that converted through your chatbot. For example, the percentage of users that gave their email address
Fall back rate
The percentage of interactions where the chatbot did not know an answer to a question.
Agent analytics
Can you analyze the performance of live chat agents?
Custom event tracking
Can you create custom events and analyze how many times these happened?
Custom dashboards/reports
Can you create your own dashboard or reports?

Freshchat Templates

Freshchat provides 68 templates you can use to get started with creating your chatbot.

Unfortunately, it’s not possible to create these chatbot templates yourself and share them with others.

Number of templates
How many pre-built templates does the chatbot platform provide?
68
Make template
Can you make templates yourself?
Share template
Can you share self-created templates with others?

Support

Freshchat has a lot of documentation and tutorials on how you can use their platform.

Moreover, they provide support via live chat and email.

Tutorials
Does the chatbot platform provide tutorials on how to use its platform?
Documentation
Does the chatbot platform provide documentation on how to use its platform?
Customer support
Does the chatbot platform provide customer support?

Is Freshchat Worth It?

And that’s the complete Freshchat review. So, should you use it to create your chatbots?

Yes, you should.

I was actually quite impressed with the features Freshchat has. The platform has grown a lot over the years.

It’s perfect for businesses of all sizes looking for a customer support tool with AI chatbots and live chat.

Freshchat offers AI Agents that you can train on your own knowledge base. These AI Agents can automatically answer questions and perform actions using workflows. You can also transfer conversations to human agents when needed, because Freshchat has live chat and auto assignment rules.

Plus, you can connect it to many channels and over 400 integrations.

Go to Freshchat

If you are considering buying Freshchat as your customer support tool, there are also some cons to keep into account:

  • Some features are hidden in the interface
  • Proactively sending messages on websites cannot be connected to specific chatbot flows
  • No marketing possiblities on Facebook and Instagram

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Freshchat chatbot free to use?

Yes, there is a free version of Freshchat that you can use. The free plan contains basic features and facilitates up to 10 agents. Prices for the paid versions can go up to $79 and are charged per agent and per month.

What is Freshchat.com used for?

Freshchat is a messaging platform that can be used to automatically talk with customers. It can help customer support teams automate communication with customers.

What type of businesses use the Freshchat chatbot?

Businesses in different industries use the Freshchat chatbot. Some of these industries include technology, retail, and internet and telecom.

Is Freshchat legit?

Yes, Freshchat is legit platform you can use to streamline communications with your customers. Freshchat is perfect for businesses of all sizes looking for a customer support tool with AI chatbots and live chat.

What does Freshchat do?

Freshchat is a customer support tool you can use to streamline communications with your customers. It has AI chatbots and live chat. You can automate messages and hand off chats to agents when needed.

What is Freshchat pricing?

Freshchat has pricing plans starting with a free version for up to 10 agents. The paid plans begin at $19 per agent/month with the Growth plan, which includes 500 Freddy AI Agent sessions and all available channels.

There are also the Pro Plan and Enterprise Plans, which cost $49/agent/month and $79/agent/month respectively. Add-ons like Freddy Copilot and extra Freddy AI Agent sessions are available at an additional cost.

What is Freshworks?

Freshworks is a company behind Freshchat chatbot. They also offer other products, such as Freshsales for CRM and Freshdesk for ticketing.

Freshchat bot – is it good?

Yes, the Freshchat bot is quite good. It’s especially great for businesses looking to automate customer service interactions. It has an easy-to-use bot builder and supports many messaging channels.

Also, Freshchat offers AI Agents that you can train on your own knowledge base. These AI Agents can automatically answer questions, perform actions, and hand conversations over to live agents.

However, creating separate bots for each channel and finding some hidden features in the interface may take extra effort.

What are Freshchat plans?

There are 4 main Freshchat plans:

  1. Free Plan: Supports up to 10 agents but lacks chatbot functionality.
  2. Growth Plan ($19/agent/month): Includes 500 Freddy AI Agent sessions, multiple channels, and access to the app marketplace.
  3. Pro Plan ($49/agent/month): Offers more advanced features, such as Auto-Resolve, advanced live chat automations, and analytics dashboards.
  4. Enterprise Plan ($79/agent/month): Everything in Pro, plus allowed domains, user authentication and skill based routing. Additional features, like more Freddy AI Agent sessions and Freddy Copilot, are available as add-ons.
Joren Wouters

I’m Joren Wouters, founder of Chatimize. With 6+ years of experience with chatbots, I have been featured by the world’s biggest chatbot platforms, including Manychat, Chatfuel, Botpress and Chatbot.com (to name a few).

I am also one of the 30 people on the planet, that can call himself a “Manychat Educator”. This has led me to work with almost any type of business, from small to large.

I’m here to help you create powerful chat funnels that generate leads, boost your revenue, and cut down on costs.

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