Freichat Free PHP Chat Script

FREICHAT is PHP based free chat script that is developed by Codologic.

Selecting reliable web chat application/script for your website can be very important step. Adding chat feature can reduce bounce rate and create engagement with members of your social network, blog, e-commerce website or forum.

Our team discovered Freichat script about a year ago and we've used it for a while for testing purposes. Recently we've integrated Freichat in WebmaisterPro and we clearly see the benefits of this PHP chat script.

Before we continue with this chat script review, I have to say that Freichat is very light self-hosted client with “Facebook chat” alike design, that can be integrated easily with some of the most popular open source CMS and respective components:

• Joomla

  • Community Builder

  • JomSocial - check our JomSocial review (outdated)

  • EasySocial (not official support yet, but it is working) check our EasySocial review

• WordPress

  • BuddyPress - check our BuddyPress review

  • WP Symposium - WP Symposium review

• SkaDate

• PHPFox

• SocialEngine

• vBulletin

• InvisionPowerBoards

• custom integrations

Freichat Installation

Our test involved Joomla 2.5, EasySocial 1.2 RC1 on dedicated server. We didn't met any problems, even EasySocial was not officially supported. Practically you need to use the same database as your main website installation to be able to integrate users properly.

Configuring Freichat

Freichat works out of the box, but there are many options for fine tuning and theme design. Free version offer more than enough and probably is the best free chat client for Joomla that offer more than other paid components.

Features

All necessary features are there, including seamless integration:

• member to member chat

• chatrooms/chatroom creation

• file sending

• chat transcription to email

• emoticons

• custom theme design

• avatar integrations

• etc...

All this comes out of the box for free version, but paid versions of Freichat are even more impressive.

Conclusion

I believe that every website or blog that offer membership function should have chat client feature and without a doubt Freichat is one of the best free options! If you are a member of WebmaisterPro, you can test it, as we are also using Freichat.