Live Helper Chat
Live Helper Chat ships MCP support, making self-hosted customer chat an AI-queryable endpoint
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Infobip and Chatway — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
A CPaaS rebuilding around AI agents that act, not just channels that deliver
Infobip publishes quarterly roll-ups, and the feed stores each quarter twice — once as a bare label, once as the summary paragraph. Across Q3 2025 to Q1 2026 the through-line is consistent: AgentOS unifying the communication stack, AI agents that take action rather than reply, MCP servers connecting models to real channels, and AI voice work under Vocalize, against continued WhatsApp, RCS and CDP investment.
Chatway's bot learned to read the store; now the store can listen back
Chatway is a live chat widget for small e-commerce sites, weighted toward WooCommerce and Shopify, with an AI support agent attached. The last three weeks added the two things that decide when and where the agent operates: webhooks that push conversation, contact, assignment and resolution events out to external tools from the existing Developer Tools panel, with per-event subscriptions and delivery logs; and AI Availability settings that schedule the agent by weekly time range, timezone and special dates rather than leaving it always on. Underneath, self-service and routing shipped earlier in August.
Infobip publishes quarterly roll-ups, and the feed stores each quarter twice — once as a bare label, once as the summary paragraph. Across Q3 2025 to Q1 2026 the through-line is consistent: AgentOS unifying the communication stack, AI agents that take action rather than reply, MCP servers connecting models to real channels, and AI voice work under Vocalize, against continued WhatsApp, RCS and CDP investment.
The company is repositioning from delivering messages to running autonomous customer interactions on top of them. Channels are becoming the substrate; the product being sold is the agent layer above. MCP servers matter most here — they make Infobip's channel reach callable by models a customer already runs, rather than requiring Infobip's own agent builder.
Expect the next quarterly to lead with AgentOS depth — orchestration, handoff and measurement across agents — since the channel and MCP groundwork it needs has now shipped over three consecutive quarters.
Chatway is a live chat widget for small e-commerce sites, weighted toward WooCommerce and Shopify, with an AI support agent attached. The last three weeks added the two things that decide when and where the agent operates: webhooks that push conversation, contact, assignment and resolution events out to external tools from the existing Developer Tools panel, with per-event subscriptions and delivery logs; and AI Availability settings that schedule the agent by weekly time range, timezone and special dates rather than leaving it always on. Underneath, self-service and routing shipped earlier in August.
The product keeps widening from a widget into a support stack, and the recent work is about control and connection rather than new answering ability. The August spark grounded the AI agent in live store data; since then Chatway has added the Help Center it can point to, routing that decides who takes a conversation, an outbound event stream so other systems can react, and now a schedule that says when the AI is allowed to be the one responding. The consistent thread is that merchants are being given switches over an agent they were first given a reason to trust.
With events flowing out and a schedule governing the agent, the obvious next gap is inbound control — triggering Chatway actions from outside, or handing off to a human on a rule rather than a reply. The entries do not indicate which, and no API beyond webhooks is mentioned.
Other Support products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Infobip or Chatway.
Live Helper Chat ships MCP support, making self-hosted customer chat an AI-queryable endpoint
Formbricks 6.0 RC cycle reveals commercial hardening: lower self-hosted cap, MCP OAuth, and Act as Beta
SolarWinds Service Desk is loading its Labs pipeline with native Entra ID automation, IT asset tracking, and compliance-ready task management.
Freshchat keeps product moves off the public record — changelog offers nothing to track.
Freshdesk's changelog feed contains only marketing copy — no substantive release data available.
TeamViewer's scraped feed contains only community marketing fragments—no actual release data.
See all Infobip alternatives → · See all Chatway alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
Both compete on the same themes — ai-agents — within Support. Chatway is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Chatway is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Support products to evaluate alongside.
Top Infobip alternatives in Support are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Infobip alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/infobip for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top Chatway alternatives in Support are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Chatway alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/chatway for the full list with editorial commentary on each.