Is all this live chat 'breakthrough' just a *keeping up with the guy next door* type thingy??

Has being a Web Host gone that far where we or a paid employee has to be online 24/7/365 to keep in front of the rest??

Have we considered the cost factor on a global scale - ie HC = $AU1,200/annum.

Do we feel ALL our clients are Chat Room Groupies who feel comfortable in themselves chatting LIVE??

The bulk of us sell plans which include a Chatroom either Java or PhP so flame away and tell me why a simple prompt to 'Click here now for support - phone us or Enter Chat Room now - if we're online then we will remedy your problem immediately' wouldn't work just as efficiently without throwing more hard earned bucks away for nothing more than **glitz**

This is one of the most amazing forums I have ever encountered where members are free to push their sites without being called spammers or trolls - thousands of guys in the same business helping out wherever they can - technology and deals running wild!!!

I might be a dinosaur but can still remember when Commodore 64 was the greatest thing since sliced bread. [but I've still been going to school just so I can relate with my peers]

Cheers! - Flame away!!

Still got my Commodore 64, TRS80 and Apple II ;)

Chats are vital - but always push the forums first. True they are a waste of time - but it keep our customers happy. I have friends from Chili to Australia minding the store, for Fun :)

Yeah - I can see your point:) Sheesh 64K - the mind boggles!!

It's just the price for the service that concerns me - I made a mistake in my post but HC works out to $AUS2,400 per year if you don't take the early offer and I've read in other posts where some elsebefore [there's a word!] free live chat providers are now talking hairy fairy figures of $AUS40 per month while their servers when down are causing slower download times for their clients!! That's why I said is it worth it??

there are cheaper solutions available (poke the search button to to the right there).

We used to have human click on our site till they went mad with the price. Oddly it hardly ever got used. Most people still used e-mail, or the support docs. Got the odd enquiry through it, but in the end it didn't justify the cost.

Greg Moore

http://www.clickchatsold.com

is human to HC but its free

We will probably be using this when we launch.

http://www.phplivesupport.com

well, not a big use, unless you have a lot of clients

In all honesty, it probably depends on what you're selling and the type of customer you're attracting. We used to use HC with 2 people manning the chats for our scripting business. Because an individual sale is quite large, we always found that it always paid for itself several times over per month in secured sales. But after the hike in prices, the dropping off in service quality and realising we should be doing something ourselves... ;)

you could buy a java irc applet (JIRC) for about $50 and setup a irc chat room on a network.

OR

there is another network called irc.webhostingirc.com and there are many hosts on thier (myself included) that have irc support chat rooms and it didnt cost me a dime. I just setup a irc server (got help from tetraboy) and used a free java irc chat client (EIRC) and setup a room.
It seems to work for me and it didnt cost anything.

just a couple of alternativesyou might want to concider.

Thanks for the input guys - you've just about summed it up - not too many folk available up here to discuss matters IT