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Live Helper Chat: an open-source live chat tool that earns $90K a year
Live Helper Chat sells open-source live support chat software — with bot, voice, video and screen-sharing built in — to companies that want to run it on their own servers, and it was making $90K a year as founder-reported in a December 2021 Starter Story interview.
The short answer to how it got there is that it took more than a decade rather than a launch moment: the product began as a favour for a web agency client, sat idle for years, was rebuilt in spare time, and only slowly turned into paid hosting and support work. What converted that long tail of effort into money was not advertising but the combination of a maintained public repository, a place where users could reach the founder directly, and customers who needed software on their own infrastructure.
How it started
The founder was working in a small web agency in Lithuania when one of their clients asked for a live support script. There were no good open-source alternatives at the time, so he built the first version in two weeks during his holidays. After that first release he moved on to other, more interesting spare-time projects, and the code went unmaintained for a few years — while still attracting visitors.
He came back to it during a later summer holiday, decided to dedicate more time to it, and worked for about six months with no attention from the outside world before donations and forum requests started to arrive. For the next three to five years he developed in his spare time, partly on paid orders and partly on whatever he thought would be useful to front-end visitors. The point at which he left his official job came when he realised he had no spare time left at all: he was finishing one job and starting another immediately after.
What it sells and how it charges
The official site describes the product as open-source live support chat for websites, with bot, voice, video, screen-sharing and REST API integrations, and it presents two paths on the homepage: "Let us host it for you! OR host it yourself." Self-hosting requires PHP and MySQL, with Elasticsearch, Amazon S3 and NodeJS listed as optional additions for enterprise use. The latest version shown was 4.94, last updated 30 September 2026.
Features the site lists as available include unlimited operators, simultaneous chats and departments; co-browsing and screen sharing; speech to text; 2FA and Google login; and integrations with Telegram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp via Twilio, Google Business Messages, Mattermost, n8n, Elasticsearch, Docker and Amazon S3, plus AI options (OpenAI ChatGPT, Rasa, DeepPavlov, Ollama, Gemini). The site says the software is used by banks, the health sector, universities and the games industry where data protection is a priority, and that in production it serves clients handling over 10,000 chats per day with dozens of operators actively working.
On pricing, the material fetched on 2026-09-30 carried no pricing page with figures, so this page quotes no prices. The founder's own description of where the money comes from is more specific than the homepage: the main business is not the automated hosting offered to clients but personal support and integration services.
How it got its first customers, and what kept growth going
The first users arrived through the original agency request — "one of their clients asked for a live support script" — and then through donations and requests in the forum. There was no campaign behind it: the founder says he never had marketing, just an official website at the very beginning, and that there is still no specific strategy or promotional effort involved.
What kept it moving was maintenance and access. GitHub is where he keeps updates visible, on the grounds that nobody installs a product whose owner looks impolite or whose repository looks dead. "Discord was a success as a communication channel," he says, and users can reach him personally through Skype or Discord rather than waiting days for a reply. Detailed documentation matters for the same reason: there are two audiences, front-end users and developers doing integrations for clients, and the founder names weak in-product documentation as a UX mistake he is still dealing with.
He also points at timing and patience. When he started developing the project seriously there was close to zero competition in the open-source field, and he worked roughly six months without meaningful feedback before donations and useful requests began. His early motivation was the advice that money follows eyeballs: rising visitor numbers meant a higher chance that someone would eventually want something.
The numbers
| Figure | Value | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $90K a year | Founder-reported in the December 2021 interview; not current revenue |
| Team | 1 founder, 0 employees | As stated at the time of the interview |
| Start | July 2009 | Founder-reported |
| Base | Šiauliai, Lithuania | Founder-reported |
| Start cost | Only his own free time; no funding | Founder-reported |
| Public traction | Over 1.5K GitHub stars | Founder-reported at interview date |
| Clients | Hundreds over the development years; from small companies to ones with hundreds of operators | Founder-reported |
These are the founder's own statements at one point in time. The $90K figure is what he said in December 2021 and should not be read as the business's revenue today; no later figure was provided.
How it compares
For context, 1M.chat's analysis of 1,997 businesses with founder-reported revenue in Starter Story interviews (2015–2026) — a self-selected sample of founders who chose to be interviewed, not a random sample of all businesses — puts Live Helper Chat in the Software & SaaS category as follows.
| Measure | Software & SaaS category | Live Helper Chat |
|---|---|---|
| Businesses with founder-reported revenue | 354 | 1 |
| Median monthly revenue | $40K | Below the category median |
| Share at $1M a year or more | 35% | Not in that group on the reported figure |
| Median employees | 4.0 | 0 at the 2021 interview |
| Started by one founder | 45% | Yes |
| Top growth channels | Organic social media 55%, SEO & organic search 54%, word of mouth & referrals 31%, paid ads 31% (of the 244 businesses with channel information) | Official website, GitHub, Discord, personal support |
The channel contrast is the sharpest part. Live Helper Chat sits in the 45% of the category founded by one person and runs with no employees, and its growth came from a repository, a chat room and direct contact rather than from the paid and social channels that dominate the category's reported mix. That also explains the revenue position: a solo, spare-time project with services-led income lands below a category median where the typical business has four employees.
What a founder can take from it
- Start from a request someone has already made. The first version existed because a paying client asked for something; you do not have to guess whether demand exists.
- Budget for a long quiet stretch. Six months of steady work produced no meaningful feedback here — if your plan requires visible response in the first month, pick a different plan.
- Make yourself reachable. Direct access through Discord or chat turned support into the thing customers were buying, and it is hard to copy with a ticket queue.
- Decide your open-source policy before a client forces the issue. When someone asks for a custom feature, you either build it only for them, refuse, or convince them to let it ship openly — each choice carries obligations later.
- Keep shipping after the boring years. The product went unmaintained, came back, and the founder still names UX simplification as his main blocker; a project like this is maintained, not finished.
None of this is a promise of income. It is one documented path: a self-hosted tool, built over more than a decade by one person, paid for through hosting, support and integration work rather than through advertising.
Sources
Revenue, team and start-cost figures are what the founder reported at the interview date, not current figures and not a prediction of what you will earn. Product and pricing facts come from the business's own website as checked on 30 September 2026. Method & sources · Disclosure