does anyone know where to get a free or cheaper alternative to Liveperson? thanks.

Barnes & Noble - Coding For (insert rude name here)

Realistically, it shouldn't be all that difficult to build one on your own if you have a little coding knowledge. Each window refreshes dynamic content written to a DB every second - you type a message, it writes it to the database. Both your window, and your clients window refreshes the dynamic content every second.

Granted you won't get some of the features that you do with LivePerson, or PHPLiveHelper, but hey, it's cheap right? Hell, if you write a good enough one, sell it for $50 a copy and make some money off it.

I've been thinking of building something thats stripped down like this for a while now. Not as feature packed, but something that works, and you don't have to pay a yearly fee for (Free, or next to free). If I get ambitious enough, and enough people are interested, I might go ahead with it. I've just been really taxed lately with other projects that take precedence. I want to get my custom control panel built as soon as possible, adn thats at the top of my list.