I want to put a chatroom on my website. The criteria is that the usernames are integrated with SMF, the chat is mobile-friendly, and that it's free. I may be asking for too much, but I thought I'd ask anyway. I'm using 2.0.10.
There are a few available in the Mods section but you need to make sure you have the resources to handle it - also security risks.
That's a lot of the reasons I go the IRC route - no resources, no security issues, etc. Free of course.
Then I wean the more serious chatters off the web client on to proper clients - that's where you get your mobile-friendly - using a client like Andchat. Plus the administrator isn't limited to a web interface.
Of course where it wouldn't work is a pay site, but as long as the chat is meant to be free to all, you can't go wrong.
The user experience on the free chats is really very poor imho. If you have to integrate Chat then go licensed, but even then from what i here they onvest in Sales but little in Support. Research will reveal supporting a relatively small member base will require quite substantial resources hence it could well be wasted money unless you have dedicated. One of the Paid versions does offer a 10 day trial, so you could try that to see if you see any degradation in performance.