These notes come from comparing options for website live chat, chatbots, and a shared support inbox. The products below are not interchangeable: some are full communications stacks, others are marketing automation, and one is an open-source helpdesk. Pricing, channels, and features change often—treat this as orientation, then confirm on each vendor’s site.
3CX
3CX is primarily UCaaS / PBX (phones, meetings, extensions). Its web live chat and related widgets sit in that same ecosystem, which helps if you already route voice and chat through 3CX and want one vendor for queues and agents.
For Live Chat and Talk (including CMS plugins such as WordPress), follow the current steps in the official docs rather than a static checklist—wizard text and integration names move between releases. Start from the 3CX documentation.
I also kept separate notes in French for configuring the Live Chat and Talk plugin; those mirror whatever the official guide said at the time and should be validated against the docs above.
Related: analytics and bots (not 3CX-specific)
This is only tangential to website live chat, but useful if you are exploring Microsoft-side bot patterns with analytics:
ManyChat
ManyChat is built for conversational marketing and automation, with a strong tilt toward Meta (Instagram/Facebook) and growth workflows: broadcasts, sequences, and lead capture.
Good fit when the goal is campaigns and funnel automation on social, less so when you need a neutral, multi-channel helpdesk with deep ticketing and SLAs across email, chat, and phone in one open-core product.
Kommunicate
Kommunicate targets human + bot collaboration: bot handles the first turn, then hands off to agents on the website and common messaging channels. It is a managed SaaS—you integrate and configure rather than operating the stack yourself.
Useful when you want dialogflow-style bot wiring and a polished agent desk without self-hosting; compare total cost and data residency to self-hosted options if that matters for your org.
Chatwoot
Chatwoot is an open-source customer engagement suite (license: AGPL). You can use Chatwoot Cloud or self-host (Docker and other paths are documented for operators).
Conceptually, it is closer to “shared inbox + omnichannel conversations” than to a PBX or a pure marketing bot:
- Unified inbox for web widget, email, and other channels (exact channel set evolves—see their docs).
- Teams, labels, automation, and conversation history aimed at support and sales follow-up.
- APIs and webhooks for integrations and custom workflows.
Trade-offs: self-hosting gives control and can reduce per-seat SaaS cost, but you own backups, upgrades, and security. Feature depth versus large proprietary suites varies by channel; verify what you need (e.g. voice, specific CRMs) against their roadmap and docs.
Links:
- Chatwoot on GitHub
- Chatwoot (product overview)
- Chatwoot developer documentation (API, setup, and self-hosting guides)
Quick comparison
| Primary focus | Typical deployment | Open source | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3CX | Telephony + UC + web chat in one stack | Cloud or on-prem PBX + agents | No |
| ManyChat | Marketing automation, often Meta-first | SaaS | No |
| Kommunicate | Bot + human handoff, managed CX | SaaS | No |
| Chatwoot | Omnichannel inbox, support-oriented | SaaS (cloud) or self-hosted | Yes (AGPL) |