A friend recommended I check out Live Help Messenger developed by the Aussies at StarDevelop.com. This privately owned Independent Software Vendor (ISV) (officially known as Stardevelop Pty Ltd from the Gold Coast, Queensland (Australia)) has developed quite an eye-pleasing live help application (jump to common live help software questions & comments at bottom of this review).

Like many live help providers, StarDevelop offers the 'host at your place or ours' plans. Live Help Messenger installed on your own servers requires PHP and MySQL and can be installed within Windows or Unix web servers. If you don't want to tangle with managing your web server installation, select their 'hosted' option instead and then all that is required is a quick copy/paste of extra HTML for your website (and the download of the operator console software).

The operator console was nicely designed with cute icons/images. StarDevelop also has a Web-Based Live Help Administration Application. The operator console was written in the commonly used .NET and requires a PC (Microsoft Windows Vista/XP SP2). I suppose you could use a Mac with the web-based interface but I suspect the features are not as nice as the installed console software.

I was certainly not surprised to see Live Help Messenger has an extensive list of all the features you'd expect in a live help service - secure (SSL) live chat, real-time website visitor monitoring, operator-to-operator private chat, transfer of chats between operators, proactive invites, Skype support and more. I think my only concern was that the "origin" details (geolocation) for website visitors only displayed "Country" of origin and not finer details like city & state.

StarDevelop does not provide telephone technical support (phone calls for sales inquiries only); support is done via email, facsimile or their Live Help chat. I was interested in talking with support through their Live Chat but strangely enough it didn't matter if it was day or night in the US -- their live chat said they were always offline for the couple of days I spent on their website. And as I've described with other live help providers, spelling and grammatical errors occurred a little more often than I like to see on a commercial site.

Digging into pricing: one-time charge (for the installation on your own server - single domain) of $119.95 was the price shown in US Dollars; $249.95 USD for multiple domains all owned by the same company. I was happy to see their professional installation is only $34.95 USD but if you want StarDevelop's copyright notice and all hyperlinks (pointing to stardevelop.com) removed from the live chat window you need to pay another $249.95 USD. "Hosted at StarDevelop" option pricing: $20/month (1 operator) $35/month (2 operators) $75/month (5 operators) $100/month (10 operators) (plans respectively Basic, Standard, Professional, Enterprise). The features available are not the same across the plans (with Basic allowing the fewest features) so ensure you check out the comparison chart to see what you're getting.

The "host on your own server" product currently isn't available as a trial, and the "hosted at StarDevelop" says it's a 7-day free trial but you still have to submit your payment information (PayPal) to get access to their services (you would need to cancel the PayPal payment to not get billed). See what they offer today!

-Dave Swanson

> visit www.stardevelop.com

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Submit A Question Or Comment

Question submitted: I'm having an installation problem?
Webmaster response: Are you having an installation problem with the 'console' or 'server software' portion of Live Help Messenger? With either product you need to ensure you're meeting the minimum requirements for your computer/server. If the minimum system requirements are met, post another comment with the exact error you're receiving so I can help you.