Ethora: The LiveChat Alternative Where the AI Agent Answers First
An AI agent answers website visitors from your own content, and a person from your team joins the same conversation when it matters. Start on a free plan, choose the model, and run it on our cloud or on your own servers.
The honest short answer
Ethora vs LiveChat: the honest short answer
LiveChat (now presented as Text by LiveChat) is live chat and customer service software priced per agent seat, with an AI agent, an AI Copilot for human agents, ticketing and a marketplace of more than 200 integrations. Ethora is an open-source chat and AI platform built the other way round: an AI agent trained on your website and documents answers first, a person joins the same conversation when needed, and you can run the whole thing on your own servers with the model you choose.
Stay with LiveChat if
- A large team of human agents handles most chats and needs seats, routing, ticketing and team reports
- You rely on its marketplace apps, or on WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and SMS in the same inbox
- The AI agent must check Shopify or WooCommerce order status out of the box
Choose Ethora if
- Most questions can be answered by an AI agent from your own content, with a person stepping in only when needed
- You want a free plan to start, then pricing by monthly active users
- You need the chat and the model on your own infrastructure, or developers will build on it with SDKs
Best for: LiveChat for a human support team that wants a mature seat-based tool with a big app marketplace; Ethora for an AI-first website agent you own, with people joining the conversation when it matters.
Side by side
Ethora vs LiveChat: capabilities at a glance
The ten questions buyers ask most when choosing between a live chat tool and an AI chat agent for their website. LiveChat facts come from its public website and pricing page.
Ethora
How to read this table
LiveChat facts are taken from livechat.com and its pricing page, checked 16 October 2026. Prices are per user (seat) and exclude tax; extra AI resolutions are sold in packs. Check its pricing page for current limits. If something here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
Why teams switch
Why teams move from LiveChat to Ethora
LiveChat is built around human agents with AI added on top. Teams look elsewhere when the AI agent becomes the first responder and they want control over how it is built, where it runs and what it costs.
LiveChat
Seat-based live chat with AI add-ons
Ethora
Open-source chat and AI platform
An honest view
When LiveChat is the better choice
Ethora is not a help desk or a multi-channel inbox. If these describe you, LiveChat is likely the better fit.
A large team of human agents
If most chats are handled by people, LiveChat gives you seats, routing, ticketing, chat history and team performance reports built for that work.
Its marketplace and channels
LiveChat lists 200+ integrations and brings Messenger, SMS, WhatsApp and Instagram into one place. Ethora does not offer those messaging channels.
Order status in the chat
If the AI agent must look up Shopify or WooCommerce orders out of the box, LiveChat is built for that. Ethora reads your store’s pages, not its order system.
Build it on Ethora
Everything you need for an AI-first website chat
The pieces most teams use when they move website chat from LiveChat to Ethora.
AI chat widget for your website
One script tag adds a floating AI chat widget to any site. Visitors chat without signing in.
See the AI chat widgetRAG chatbot on your own content
Crawl your website, upload your help articles and policies, and see which sources each answer used.
How the RAG chatbot worksPricing
Free plan with 1,000 monthly active users and no credit card, then Small Business at $149/mo and Enterprise from $599/mo.
Compare plansAlso comparing Olark?
Olark sells a website AI agent built for lead capture. See how Ethora compares on price, models and hosting.
Ethora vs OlarkNeed EU data control?
If GDPR and where your data lives drive the decision, see how Ethora compares with Userlike, now Lime Connect.
Ethora vs UserlikeAlso comparing Tidio?
Tidio pairs live chat and a help desk with its Lyro AI agent. See how Ethora compares.
Ethora vs TidioAI agents on customer websites, built with Ethora
Healthcare: HIPAA-compliant AI assistant (RAG) over a medical video library
Dr. Talks is one of the most prominent organizers of online healthcare conferences and summits.
Ethora enabled them to create a context-aware AI-powered chatbot to help users navigate thousands of pages of medical content, correctly referencing pages, authors, videos and timestamps. 100% secure and HIPAA-compliant.
This assistant enhances user experience by simplifying interaction with the platform and reducing search time.
- 1000+ summits indexed by AI bot
- Instant user engagement
- Vector embeddings enable intelligent domain expert AI responses
Communities: fan chat app with second-screen rooms and digital collectibles
A cross-platform social app uniting the automotive community around racing events.
Fan rooms for teams and drivers, second-screen events, and collectibles handed out and traded through chat bots.
- Cross-platform iOS and Android app
- Fan rooms and second-screen events
- Collectibles distributed in chat
Energy: dedicated chat server, AI-agent rooms and a React Native app for a procurement platform
Preshent is a US platform for energy-project procurement with AI-driven decision support.
Ethora provides the conversation layer: a chat room per project workspace shared by people and the AI agent, a dedicated chat server in Preshent’s own cloud, push notifications and a React Native app.
- 1,130 chat rooms, one per workspace
- AI agent as a participant in every room
- Dedicated chat server, 99.99%+ uptime
Professional services: a private, self-hosted AI assistant for a corporate intelligence firm
A London corporate intelligence and investigations firm whose analysts could not use public AI assistants on confidential client work.
Ethora designed a private AI assistant: a single-tenant server with AI agents, document search and an open-weight model on the firm’s own GPU, managed by Ethora in a London cloud region or installed on a workstation in the office.
- Local open-weight LLM, no public AI services
- Single-tenant server, UK hosting
- Cloud GPU or on-premise workstation
Virtual worlds: a 3D multiplayer world built from a book, with AI characters, in one weekend
An internal R&D showcase by Ethora’s founder: Alice in Wonderland, The Tempest and A Christmas Carol as 3D worlds you walk through in first person.
Each room is an Ethora chat, each character an Ethora AI agent with the book as its knowledge; a generator and the hosted MCP server build a new world from any book in about four minutes.
- Built in a weekend on the public SDK, API and MCP
- Characters answer in character from the text
- Daily AI budget keeps a public world affordable
AI agents on customer websites: support, intake and teaching assistants
Clinics, schools and small businesses build AI agents on Ethora themselves and put them on their own websites, often on the day they sign up.
3 examples, from a US mental health provider and a wellness brand to a university pharmacology course.
- WordPress plugin or one script tag
- Answers from the customer’s own pages and documents
- Self-serve, no developer needed
Migration
Moving your website chat from LiveChat to Ethora
You can run both for a few days and switch when the answers match. A US mental health provider went live on Ethora the same day it signed up; see the AI website agent case studies.
Collect your knowledge
Gather the help articles, canned responses, FAQs and policy pages your agents use most, plus the URLs of your pricing, shipping and product pages.
Create the agent in Ethora
Sign up free, create an app and an AI agent (start from the support agent template), crawl your website and upload the documents.
Set the instructions
Write the agent’s system prompt: tone, what it must not answer, and when to ask for a person. Set its name, avatar, greeting and colours with the live preview.
Swap the embed script
Remove the LiveChat snippet or plugin and add
<script src="https://widget.chat.ethora.com/assistant.js" data-app-id="YOUR_APP_ID"></script>before</body>, or install the Ethora plugin on WordPress.Test 10 real questions
Take ten questions from your LiveChat archive and run them in the Try it chat. It shows which sources each answer used.
Join the conversations that need a person
Read the widget conversations in the admin, add missing knowledge, rebuild, and join the conversations where a person should answer.
LiveChat alternative FAQ
How is Ethora different from LiveChat?
LiveChat is built around human agents in paid seats, with an AI agent and AI Copilot added. Ethora is built around an AI agent that answers first from your own website and documents, with a person joining the same conversation when needed. You choose the model and can run the whole platform on your own servers.
Can a person still answer chats in Ethora?
Yes. A person from your team can join the same conversation as the AI agent, and admins can read every widget conversation with its message history. Ethora is not a full help desk with ticketing and email inboxes, so teams that depend on those usually keep a help desk alongside it.
Does Ethora support WhatsApp, Messenger or SMS like LiveChat?
No. Ethora covers the chat widget on your website and chat inside your own web and mobile apps through its SDKs. If WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram or SMS in one inbox is the main need, LiveChat or another multi-channel tool is the better fit.
Can I self-host Ethora instead of using a hosted live chat?
Yes. Ethora’s core is open source (AGPL) and runs with Docker Compose or Helm, from AWS and Azure Marketplace images, or on a dedicated server Ethora runs in your own cloud account. Each AI agent can also use a model you host, such as one served by Ollama or vLLM.
Is Ethora suitable for healthcare or other regulated businesses?
Ethora is HIPAA and SOC 2 compatible, and a BAA is available on Enterprise and dedicated deployments. Whether a specific project is compliant depends on its configuration and hosting. Chats are encrypted in transit and at rest by default; end-to-end encrypted rooms are an optional per-app setting that is off by default.
Let the AI agent answer first, with your team one step away
Crawl your site, set the instructions, paste one line. Free to start, on our cloud or your own servers, with the model you choose.
