Best BuddyPress & WordPress live chat plugins 2024

Updated January 9, 2023

BuddyPress Chat Plugins

I've been researching the best BuddyPress live chat plugins for WordPress and BuddyPress. These are in great demand as BuddyPress allows web designers to transform a WordPress website into a full social networking site, but sadly doesn't have built-in live chat or instant messaging features. Now people are used to chatting live on Facebook, they expect to see this feature on the BuddyPress websites they use.

There are various live chat plugins available that claim to work with BuddyPress, as well as WordPress sites more generally. However, there are surprisingly few that work properly and are tested with the latest versions of WordPress and BuddyPress. Here are my findings - I hope they save you a bit of time in finding a live chat plugin for your own WordPress or BuddyPress website.

Best affordable BuddyPress chat plugins

Better User Chat for BuddyPress

  • Low-cost premium BuddyPress chat plugin
  • Rated 4.58/5
  • Sales: 208
  • A well supported BuddyPress live chat plugin with all the features you need.

The Better User Chat for BuddyPress plugin is very comprehensive, with good customization options. You can use it to set up any type of live chat between logged in users of your BuddyPress site, including one-to-one and group chat.

WordPress, BuddyPress Users Chat Plugin

  • Low-cost premium WordPress chat plugin
  • Rated 4.2/5
  • Sales: 943
  • A well established BuddyPress chat plugin with regular updates and support from the developer

WordPress, BuddyPress Users Chat Plugin adds a chat facility to BuddyPress or any WordPress site.

It has all the features you're likely to need including simultaneous multi-user chat, browser notifications and sound alerts, emoticons, search and integration with BuddyPress elements such as Friends to see who's online.

While the styling isn't as good as Facebook's chat, it's more modern than a lot of WordPress chat plugins I have seen.

Best hosted BuddyPress chat platform

CometChat

  • Premium chat service that integrates with WordPress & BuddyPress.
  • Full support.

CometChat is a leading service providing online chat software for various platforms. It fully integrates with BuddyPress and all its features such as user groups, WordPress user login and friendship connections.

The reason I recommend CometChat is that to be honest, a lot of the WordPress-specific chat providers are pretty naff. They're clunky to use and look outdated and unprofessional. Compared to the WordPress chat plugins, CometChat looks fantastic and provides the level of chat functionality your users are used to from other leading sites such as Facebook.

Live chat is complex and you need a dedicated company such as CometChat to do it justice. By using CometChat, you get the benefit of all their advanced features including private chat, chatrooms, games and real-time translation - as well as the overall quality and professionalism.

The only real disadvantage is that as a SAAS, CometChat is a hosted solution. You pay a higher monthly cost than a BuddyPress chat WordPress plugin which you install on your own site, and you have less control. For example, you have limited customization options because it's not open source like a WordPress plugin. If you're prepared to pay for a SAAS and like the styling and features of Comet Chat as it comes then it's a good option. If not, then go for the Better User Chat for BuddyPress or WordPress, BuddyPress Users Chat plugins instead.

  1. Home
  2. Blog
  3. Best BuddyPress & WordPress live chat plugins 2024

In this article

52 Comments

  1. The article itself was good a few years ago. Too bad that many plugins no longer exist. Maybe you should update it to make it more useful.

    • Hi, Marco. We last reviewed and updated this information in September of last year. Thanks for your comment and interest in reviews of live chat plugins so far, for 2020. I'll take note of your request and share it with our marketing team. Many thanks!

      • I tried Buddypress in the past, but never worked with live chat. I think it can definitely add an extra dimension and higher level of interaction with users.

        • Hi, Rowan. Thanks for chiming in. I appreciate your inputs! Glad to hear from someone with BuddyPress user experience.

  2. Very useful list. I'm now using CometChat.

    Btw, Chatwee is also integrated with WordPress + BuddyPress. Worth checking out. :)

  3. I would like to get a Chat Room Plugin that: 1. Users can automatically logged in to when login to my website 2. Availability for multi-sites (sub-domains), therefore one license for one domain and 3. To have it working in an offline environment

    Can anyone help me?

    • Hi John, any chat plugin that integrates with WordPress user accounts will achieve no. 1. I don't know any that will do 2 and 3, as it's usually one or the other - can anyone else reading this article suggest anything like this?

    • Hi, I recommend that you send a support request to Wise Chat and they should be able to help you.

  6. Excellent article. Thank you. Just one note: CometChat is not a recurring monthly fee, but instead just one time, starting with a basic fee of $49 and up to several hundred dollars. Still, could be cost prohibitive for smaller sites.

  9. Hi,

    We have been using Wise Chat for 5 months and it is a very impressive solution! Check it:

    https://kaine.pl/projects/wp-plugins/wise-chat-pro/

    There is no need to pay for a server, it has no limits to the number of chat rooms and users, it filters bad words, support images and files posting, moderation, private messages, WordPress multisite and much more!

    It boosted user engagement on our website!

    Cheers
    Robert

  10. I need chat plugin for my website Bilqees Kenchi like facebook. Presently I’m using wordpress common plugin for chat services. Kindly if you know any best plugin for chat with user name and password option please share here. Thanks

  11. any free chat plugin for online users please tell me

  12. Hi Katie, how are you? Did you know all websites can now support their customers via Facebook Messenger directly on their website? Zotabox has a free, easy to use integration tool here: https://bit.ly/fb10000.

    Messenger has over 800 million active monthly users and is free and convenient. Messenger also accepts payments from customers for website owners. Please tell us what you think. Thank you.

    • Thanks Paul, I hadn't heard about this and it looks really relevant. However I can't tell how it works from your website - when I preview the Facebook Messenger, it allows you to send a message via Facebook but there's no chat option, so what is this supposed to do? How do you embed the chat into your website? It would be a good idea to add a page about how it works to your website - at the moment you're taken straight into the preview tool which doesn't provide the background info that people need.

  13. hey i wanted to know about buddypress plugin.. when i tried to deactivate the plugin than blank page is showing. and i am not able to go back in dashboard.. anybody can help ?

    • Hi, if you have a WordPress developer then it's best for you to ask them to look at the problem, otherwise I recommend that you use the BuddyPress support forums. I hope this helps.

  14. Hi
    i just want to say thank you have shared very useful plugin specially for those people who really looking for these things but they can,t find it i really appreciate your work now i will use some of your recommended plugin to my site that make my website more professional Thanks For Sharing this beautiful Post

  15. I going to use live chat plugin for the very first time and your list is very helpful for me thank you for sharing this article.

  16. It's a nice article got to learn about the chat plugins for Word Press website. Well I must share what I have found for my word press website. I did install the Live2support Live Chat plugin and it's working great with my website. It has lot of Customer Engaging and Real Time Monitoring features with great customer support. I will recommend others too to check at http://www.live2support.com.

  17. Do you have any metrics on the ratio of chat sessions to customer representatives? In other words how many concurrent chats can one CSR handle effectively.

    Thanks!

    • Hi, I'm afraid I haven't seen any metrics on this. I believe most of the plugins featured in this article only allow one at a time and are more suited for small businesses. If you find anything, it would be great if you could add a link to the comments here! Many thanks

  18. Katie, have you compared bowob do cometchat?

  19. I used that plugin on my website - it works fine but is too simple. Mainly no file sharing feature so I switched to Chatwee. It suits me better.

  20. Good article. I am currently looking around to find a Buddypress chat to allow users to 1-2-1 chat. The options are quite limited.

    I installed arrowchat (10 day free demo) and it's quite good, but the documentation and support is non-existent so you're on your own.

    I'm looking for a chat plugin or app where I can customize the code to suit my site, but none of them seem to be very "customizable friendly".

    Anyway, would be great if you could update your article ~_~

    • Hi. I have registered on Arrow Chat but how do I activate it on my WordPress using a plugin?

      • Hi, you would need to check the Arrow Chat documentation and contact their support if it's not obvious how to integrate it with your WordPress site.

    • Thanks for your comment Tim, I'm glad the article was interesting to you. I have updated the section on WPMU Chat because since writing the article, I have used the premium version of this plugin quite extensively on a BuddyPress website. The paid-for version of WPMU Chat is very customisable in terms of colour, font etc. although I must admit that I don't like the overall design - it looks very outdated to me. It's also quite expensive. However their support is good and it is more customisable than the other plugins featured in this article.

  21. tell me the best plugin that is supported in buddypress users

    • Hi Rohit, as stated in this post, when I tested a range of BuddyPress chat plugins, the best I found was BoWoB chat WordPress plugin. However this post was from April 2013 so there may be more options now.

      • Hi Rohit, most of the WordPress live chat plugins featured in this article are free (or have a basic free version).

  22. I'm thinking about trying BoWob based on your experiences :-), it should look pretty familiar to users as well since it looks like the Facebook chat.

  23. Thanks Remi. I have used WPMU Chat since writing this blog post. It does the job and the support is quite good. However I don't like the fact that you have to pay monthly for it, which makes it very expensive. It also looks quite old-fashioned and the styling is TERRIBLE on mobiles, for example the maximise/minimise button is tiny and you can't tap it on small screens. There are tons of options and it's very configurable, but I would expect a premium plugin to be more professional than this.

  25. Hello,

    It sounds pretty best option, but recently I have integrated eAssistance Pro live chat plugin for my WordPres based site.

    • Thanks for the tip Kevin, yes it looks like this is worth trying too.

  26. Tiny Chat for BuddyPress WordPress plugin ( Chat Room for Buddypress Group ) now is version 1.3, and it work fine with me.

    • Thanks for letting me know, it sounds like this is worth trying now. We have recently used WPMU's Chat plugin (a paid-for one) which works pretty well although the styling options are quite limited. You can change the colours etc. but the overall look is a bit old-fashioned!

  28. Hello,

    what about the "Cometchat" or the "Arrow Chat" in comparison to the BoWob chat. There also are two popular chat systems for wordpress. would interest me happy.

    best reguards

    niq

  29. Hello,

    what about the "Cometchat" or the "Arrow Chat" in comparison to the BoWob chat. There also are two popular chat systems for wordpress. would interest me happy.

    best reguards

    niq

Comments on this post are closed