LiveChat alternative

A free LiveChat alternative you host yourself

LiveChat is a hosted SaaS platform billed per agent, per month. DChat takes the opposite approach: a complete live chat product with widget, dashboard, desktop console, and an AI chatbot with human handoff, installed on your own server, free, with the AI assistant at $19 per agent per month if you want it.

Download Free See Pricing

How the two models compare

The differences below are about the delivery model, hosted subscription versus self-hosted software, which is usually the reason teams go looking for an alternative in the first place.

Decision	DChat	Hosted SaaS (LiveChat and similar)
Cost model	Free live chat, unlimited agents	Monthly subscription per agent seat
Data location	Your server and your SQL Server database	Vendor-controlled cloud storage
Adding agents	Add agents freely within your license tier	Every new agent increases the monthly bill
AI chatbot	Bring your own provider: local Ollama, OpenAI, or Anthropic, with no AI markup	Provider-defined AI features and pricing
If you stop paying	Software keeps running; you keep the database	Access ends with the subscription
Trying it first	Free full product, in production too	Time-limited hosted trial

Everything included

Widget, web dashboard, Windows desktop agent, departments, canned replies, transcripts, analytics, webhooks.

AI with human handoff

Turn the chatbot on and it answers from your knowledge base and hands the visitor to a human agent with the transcript intact.

Security hardened

Rate limits, upload validation, HMAC-signed webhooks, audit log, and GDPR export and erasure tools.

Runs where you run

Windows or Linux, IIS or Nginx, VM or Docker, with SQL Server as the data store.

DChat vs LiveChat, at a glance

How free self-hosted live chat compares with a typical hosted plan.

Compare	DChat	LiveChat
Hosting model	Self-hosted on your own server	Hosted SaaS (LiveChat's cloud)
Pricing	Live chat free; Premium (AI and more) $19/agent/month	Monthly subscription
Where conversations live	Your own SQL Server database	The vendor cloud
AI chatbot	Built in - local Ollama or your OpenAI/Anthropic keys	Varies by plan
Remove vendor branding	Premium, $19/agent/month	Varies by plan

Is switching from a hosted platform hard?

The visitor-facing switch is one script tag: remove the hosted widget snippet and add the DChat widget snippet. On the back end you install the server, run the SQL scripts, and invite your agents. The free localhost evaluation lets you rehearse the whole rollout before touching production.

What does DChat cost compared to a subscription?

DChat's live chat is free to self-host, with unlimited agents and unlimited domains and no expiry. Premium, which includes the AI assistant, is $19 per agent per month on the agents you choose to cover, and if it lapses the paid features stop while live chat keeps running unlimited. There is no per-conversation meter, so the price never grows with your volume.

Do I lose the convenience of a hosted platform?

You take on hosting the way you already host your website: a Windows or Linux server with SQL Server. In exchange you control uptime windows, data retention, backups, branding, and integrations, and your support stack stops being a monthly line item.

Can I keep my chat history if I switch?

Transcripts created in DChat live in your own SQL Server database from day one, with CSV export built in. History from your previous provider can usually be exported from that platform and archived alongside.

Try it on your own server

Evaluate the full product free on localhost.

The download is the real product, not a demo: server, dashboard, widget and SQL scripts, with no licence file because live chat is free. One command sets up the demo database and opens the dashboard.

Download DChat See What's New

Self-hosted customer support software

Deploy live chat on your own terms, not on someone else's pricing model.

DChat gives you the installable server, web dashboard, website widget, and desktop agent tools in one self-hosted product, with live chat free to run, and an AI agent that answers, acts with the approvals you set and hands off to your team when you want one. Run it on infrastructure you trust, on the model you choose.

Download DChat See Product Demo

Deployment

Install on Windows or Linux, behind IIS or Nginx, in a VM, or in Docker if that fits your stack.

Commercial model

Live chat is free with unlimited agents. Premium, with the AI agent, is billed per agent per month, never per conversation.

AI Flexibility

Run the AI agent on a local Ollama model, or connect OpenAI and Anthropic with your own provider accounts.