Last updated - September 23, 2019
Websites are the face of any business. It is important to keep your websites live and responsive to all users around the globe. When considering eCommerce platforms, a responsive website is vital. To keep your customers engaged and to keep the response rate higher, it is important to keep a check on the speed of your webpage. Slower the response of your page, users who land on your page might exit more quickly than the page speed. When you are using a WordPress eCommerce website, then it is ideal to use a WordPress live chat plugin to interact with your customers. More plugins usage can also slow down the website to an extent, hence it is important to analyze what is necessary.
If you are looking out for live chat plugins, there are many available in the market, both free live chat plugins and premium live chat plugins ones which have numerous features that make them compelling for every business to use. There are many SaaS-based live chat plugins and non-SaaS based plugins.
What are SaaS-Based plugins?
SaaS is mostly related to plugins that work in a licensing and subscription manner with monthly or annual pricing. It is completely centrally hosted in the cloud. It is accessed via a browser.
This is basically an alternative for an on-premise application. Many businesses are looking out for similar services to reduce the burden of managing the application.
SaaS-based live chat plugins
SaaS-based plugins are completely managed by the plugin’s server. Businesses do not directly manage the plugin, including the data in-store. When using a SaaS-based plugin, the data is managed by a third-party. The businesses need not worry about managing it directly as the server is completely managed by the plugin’s server itself.
Many advantages make SaaS-based plugins popular among businesses:
- Lower initial cost – since it is completely on a subscription basis, the initial cost is less. Hence not many maintenance fees are charged.
- Easy setup and deployment- As the plugin is centrally managed, the deployment and maintenance are easy.
- Quick upgrade – Upgrades are easy to manage as the complete plugin is managed on the central server.
- Easy Accessibility – The plugins are easy to access using a web browser from anywhere on any device.
- Scalability – When the business grows, it offers you many more options to use and work on as it is on a subscription basis.
Drawbacks of SaaS-based plugin
Even though the SaaS-based plugins are very much in demand, some potential disadvantages make them take the back seat when choices are made.
1. Lack of control over data – The major drawback of a SaaS-based live chat plugin is that it owns the data completely. Hence it becomes difficult to manage data security, as all the data resides on a foreign server.
- Slow the performance – SaaS-based plugins slow the performance of the webpage. Whenever a query is posted on the chat window, the server has to make a call to the third-party server to fetch the results. This impacts the performance and hampers the speed of response.
- Connectivity issues – When you consider a SaaS-based plugin, you need to connect to a third-party server to get you plugin up and running. If a third-party server experiences problems or your internet connectivity hampers, then it is difficult to establish a connection and work.
SaaS-based live chat plugins
Customers need quick responses for queries when considering live chats. With SaaS-based live chat plugin, the server is completely managed by a third-party, which makes it rather slow. Compared to an on-premise live chat plugin, the server has to make several calls or requests to get the response on every query, which makes the response speed drastically slow.
Why SaaS-based live chat plugin slows down your website
Live chat is quite an integral lead generating source for businesses. When you use a SaaS-based plugin, there are several restrictions that make a live chat plugin hard to work on :
- Internet and power outages make it difficult to connect to the server. You might lose your potentially resourceful time and customer.
- If your third-party company is acquired or runs out of business, then it will be difficult to handle the data which are completely with the third party.
- All the data is owned by a third party which also makes you skeptical about data security.
- Using multiple calls to the server, a response is provided to any customer. It takes up so much time, which will cause them to lose any potential customers.
- Making multiple calls to your third party server will again slow down the performance of your website.
To Conclude :
For all of the above reasons, it is ideal to choose an on-premise live chat plugin that makes the functioning of your eCommerce store smoother. An on-premise live chat plugin is completely owned and managed by you itself. Hence you own the data, server, and plugin wholly.
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