A chat application allows users to interact or communicate with each other by texting, messaging, video and audio conferencing. Adding a chat application can be useful for e-commerce websites which provide live support for their customers. Such chat applications help your business by getting real time feedback from your customer regarding products, service or content.
In this article I have gathered 10 Free Chat Applications for Your Websites which will help you communicate with your visitors and help you to enhance your business and sales. Following chat applications would easily integrate to your website and give your website an e-commerce website look and feel.
1. Scrollback
Scrollback is an open source web application for adding a modern chat for websites. It is built with Nodejs and can be either used with the free hosted version or by downloading and self-hosting it. The app creates a single room chat interface where the community can communicate with each other. An “infinite scroll” eases following the previous messages, all messages are presented with a timeline and it is possible to view user details.
2. Firechat
Firechat is an open source chat application that doesn’t use any server-side code as it is built on Firebase (premium service with a satisfactory free account). The application has support for multiple rooms (users can create rooms), multiple users and private messages. Users can be authenticated via social accounts or other types of authentication can be implemented with less effort.
3. Converse.js
Converse.js is an open source chat application that can connect to any XMPP/Jabber server (like Google Talk,Skype, etc.). It sits in the footer of web pages just like Facebook-chat and has support for one-to-one or multi-user conversations. Contact requests can be accepted/declined, statuses can be set (online, away..) and there are “typing” notifications to inform the “listening” users.
4. Php Free Chat
phpFreeChat is a free and open source PHP chat application that doesn’t require any database to run but rather uses the filesystem for it. It can be used at the same time by any number of users, has a responsive layout that works in mobile too and has a modular authentication system which can be integrated into any app.
5. JabbR
JabbR is one of those treasures, it is an open source ASP.NET app for real-time chats. The app uses SignalR library for the communication and allows users to register/sign-in with their e-mails or via social auth (Facebook, Google, etc.) Users can define an avatar for themselves and communicate in a chat room (multiple chat room support with a tabbed interface) or privately. It can display inline content from multiple sources like YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, imgur, Google Docs and much more.
6. Candy
Candy is an open source chat application that is built with JavaScript and makes use of Jabber (XMPP) for real-time communication. It has support for multiple rooms, users can be active in any number of rooms, chat publicly or privately and perform all of these in a good-looking, tabbed interface. The application notifies users when new messages arrive, users can be blocked and the admin has the right to kick/ban. Candy is themable and highly customizable (a powerful JavaScript API exists for that) with the provided event hooks + plugin support.
7. Kandan
Kandan is a free and open source chat application that is built with Ruby on Rails and works with various databases. The application allows conversations on multiple rooms/channels with a tabbed and slick interface. It is possible to view the active users, invite people via e-mail and have private chats. There is a per-channel media library where users can choose what to listen or a channel-wide music can be streamed.
8. Balloons.IO
Balloons.IO is a very impressive and open source chat application that is built with node.js, Express, Socket.IO and Redis. It has support for multiple rooms where users can join any of them, chat with other users and send files to each other. Also, there is an option for users to create their own rooms and set their statuses (available, away, busy). The application is simple-yet-solid and requires users to login with their Twitter accounts (which is good to keep the quality “up” but can be limiting). It also automatically fetches the avatar and uses with every message of each user.
9. Cryptocat
Cryptocat is an open source and web-based chat application that focuses on making sure that the communication is encrypted and private. It is built with PHP and works with a single file besides the static files (CSS, JS and images) used. For a private group communication inside a chat room with other users, a passkey (used by all of the group) comes to the rescue. The interface is simple-yet-nice and messages are encrypted with AES-256 using crypto.js library.
10. Hubot
Hubot is a chat bot, modeled after GitHub’s Campfire bot, hubot. He’s pretty cool. He’s extendable with community scripts and your own custom scripts, and can work on many different chat services. GitHub, Inc., wrote the first version of Hubot to automate our company chat room. Hubot knew how to deploy the site, automate a lot of tasks, and be a source of fun in the company. Eventually he grew to become a formidable force in GitHub.
