Alternatives

A Olark alternative, written by the people who built the alternative

Which is exactly why you should read the section about staying on Olark first. It is the part we had no commercial reason to write.

Last checked 1 September 2026

Alternatives/Olark

The short answer

Is TGLiveChat a good Olark alternative?

For a small team that wants live chat on a website and does not need a helpdesk, yes. TGLiveChat is $19 a month flat with no per seat charge, the widget is about 39KB, and every message arrives in your Telegram, so nobody has to keep a dashboard open all day.

For a company running tickets, macros and a knowledge base, no. Olark does things this product does not attempt, and the honest version of that is further down the page.

What Olark actually is

Simple, long running live chat with a focus on accessibility.

When leaving makes sense

$149 a month for white label is the line that sent you looking. That is the largest branding removal charge in this category by a wide margin.

When you should stay on Olark

Accessibility is a hard requirement you get audited on. Olark takes it more seriously than most of this market, and that is not a claim we make about ourselves.

This section is on every one of these pages on purpose. A comparison page that cannot name a single reason to stay with the other product is an advert, and most people spot that within two paragraphs. If the paragraph above describes your situation, close the tab. It will cost you a lot less than a migration you regret in March.

Side by side

Olark and TGLiveChat on the things people actually compare

	Olark	TGLiveChat
Entry price	$29/mo per seat	$19/mo flat
Three people replying	$87/mo	$19/mo
Free plan	No	Yes, 100 conversations a month
Remove the branding	$149/mo extra	Included from $19/mo
Widget weight	Not measured by DebugBear	About 39KB
Where you reply	Their dashboard, plus a mobile app	Telegram, on a device you already carry
AI billing	Varies by plan	Included, no per resolution charge
Ticketing and helpdesk	Yes	No

Prices read from Olark's own pricing page on 2026-09-01. Weight figures are DebugBear's measurements, not ours.

The widget weight question

DebugBear did not include Olark in their widget performance test, so there is no measured figure we are willing to quote for them. Ours is about 39KB across three requests, and you can verify that yourself: open the network tab on any page of this site and filter for the widget.

What moving actually involves

Nobody writes this part honestly, so here it is. There is no import. Chat history does not move between vendors in this category, from anyone to anyone, and any page implying otherwise is selling you something.

A migration that does not go wrong

Step	What you do	Time
1	Export your Olark transcripts while the account is still open. Do this first, because it becomes impossible the moment you cancel.	15 min
2	Create the TGLiveChat widget, connect Telegram, pick a theme, and build the AI knowledge base out of your existing canned responses.	30 min
3	Install the script on staging or one low traffic page and send yourself three test messages, including one from a phone on mobile data.	15 min
4	Run both widgets on the live site for a week. Yes, both. You want real traffic hitting the new one before Olark goes away.	1 week
5	Remove the Olark script, then cancel the subscription. In that order, so a billing hiccup can never take your chat offline.	5 min

The step people skip is four, and it is the one that catches the problem nobody thought of.

What you give up

No ticket queue. No macro library beyond the AI knowledge base. No help centre. No CRM, no lead scoring, no reporting suite, no shift routing, no call centre. If two people reply to the same Telegram message at the same moment, they will both have replied, because Telegram is a group chat and not an assignment system.

That list is a product decision rather than an oversight. The bet is that most websites running live chat get a handful of messages a day and need none of it. If your site is not one of those, Olark is the better tool, and this page just saved you a migration.

The bottom line

Leave Olark if you are paying for a support platform and using a chat bubble. Stay if you are using the helpdesk, because we do not have one and no amount of price difference fixes that.

The free plan takes about five minutes and does not ask for a card, which answers this question faster than any comparison table, including ours.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best Olark alternative?

It depends what you were using Olark for, and that is not a dodge. If you were using the helpdesk, the honest answer is another helpdesk: Crisp, LiveAgent or Zoho SalesIQ. If you were using it as a chat bubble on a marketing site and answering the handful of messages that come in, TGLiveChat is $19 a month flat, routes every message into Telegram, and the widget is about 39KB.

Is TGLiveChat cheaper than Olark?

Yes. Olark starts at $29 a month, per seat, so three people is $87 a month. TGLiveChat Pro is $19 a month for the whole team, or $156 a year, which works out at $13 a month. There is also a one time Founder licence at $299. Cheaper is easy to claim, so the number worth checking is what you pay in month twelve with the team you will have by then.

Can I move my Olark chat history across?

No, and nobody in this category offers a real import. Chat transcripts sit in vendor specific formats and every migration in this market is a cutover rather than a move. What people do in practice is leave Olark running for a fortnight while the new widget takes live traffic, export the old transcripts to a file, then cancel. Budget an afternoon, not a project.

Do my visitors need Telegram to chat with me?

No, and this is the most misunderstood thing about the product. Your visitors type into a normal chat window on your website. They never see Telegram, never install anything and never need an account. Telegram is where you read and reply from. The confusion comes from widgets that are really deep link buttons to t.me, which is a different product entirely.

How heavy is the TGLiveChat widget compared with Olark?

DebugBear did not measure Olark in their widget performance test, so we will not put a figure on it. Ours is about 39KB across three requests, which you can check yourself in the network tab on any page of this site.

What does TGLiveChat not do that Olark does?

No ticketing, no macros, no knowledge base articles, no CRM, no reporting suite, no call centre, no shift routing. This is a chat widget that puts messages in Telegram and answers with an AI agent while you are asleep. If your reason for paying Olark was anything in that list, moving would be a downgrade dressed up as a saving.

Does the AI agent cost extra?

No. The AI agent is included in Pro and Agency with no per resolution charge, and the Founder licence includes it capped at 1,000 replies a month. That is the structural difference from the platforms that bill AI separately from the seat: there, the AI line grows with your traffic while the seat line grows with your team, and both grow at once in a good month.

How long does it take to set up?

A few minutes. Connect Telegram, pick one of 33 themes, paste one script tag before the closing body tag. There are guided installs for WordPress, Shopify and Webflow. If it takes longer than a coffee, something is wrong and we would rather hear about it than have you give up quietly.

Sources and references

Olark pricing page Read on 2026-09-01. Prices in this category change often, so check before you buy.
DebugBear: How Do Different Chat Widgets Impact Site Performance? Published 14 July 2019, updated 10 November 2025. The source of every competitor weight figure on this page.
How we measure and what we refuse to estimate Our own method, in full, including the numbers we corrected after getting them wrong.

We run no affiliate programme with any vendor named here, and none of these links pay us anything.