Freshchat is the conversational engagement and live chat product from Freshworks Inc. (NASDAQ: FRSH), a public SaaS company founded in 2010 and headquartered in San Mateo, California. Freshworks focuses on customer and employee experience software, including Freshdesk, Freshservice, Freshsales, and Freshchat, and serves tens of thousands of organizations worldwide. en.wikipedia.org
Originally introduced as Freshdesk Messaging and later rebranded, Freshchat was built to modernize legacy live-chat tools with a messaging-first experience similar to consumer apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. It combines real-time chat, asynchronous messaging, and AI-powered chatbots so businesses can handle support, sales, and marketing conversations from a single unified workspace. freshworks.com
The platform supports web chat, in-app messaging, email, SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and Google Business Messages, all routed into a shared inbox with routing rules, IntelliAssign load-based distribution, SLAs, and collaboration features. AI is embedded through Freddy AI Agent and Freddy AI Copilot to automate resolutions, deflect FAQs, summarize threads, and recommend responses, reflecting Freshworks’ broader strategy to position itself as an AI-first customer service vendor. freshworks.com
Freshchat competes with products like Intercom, Zendesk Suite, Drift, and LiveChat, but differentiates itself with a generous free plan, tight integration with the rest of the Freshworks suite, and transparent per-agent pricing plus usage-based AI add-ons. It is widely adopted by digital-first businesses across e-commerce, SaaS, and services, and is marketed as suitable for small businesses through to large enterprises that want scalable, AI-augmented conversational support. freshworks.com