Im not sure if they still do it or not , but i know Digichat used to give a trial version for a month - it allowed 10 chatters as far as i remember , but im not 100% on that since they moved up to version 5 of chat - im still using version 4.

I may have the installer for 4 somewhere if i have a look around - that might give u a better idea from the trial period.

It would be easy to just hack in a moderation system to a well designed AJAX chatroom

RealChat is a one-time charge whereas DigiChat gets you on upgrades and other fees.

Lets not be shy... what are the prices? Lets compare.
Flash chat if you have alot of users on it will bog down your site.

ok Found it - the demo download for Digichat is here : http://www.digichat.com/downloads.html

Prices are here : http://www.digichat.com/chat-room-so...5-pricing.html
They start at $599 (plus the $399 if u want the moderated chat) for your own hosting
or $39.99 per month (plus $10 for moderated) for them to host it for you (if paid anually)

Digichat is kinda server intense as well if theres a lot of users on it - most hosts wont let you install it because of the root access and how much server resources it uses.

Damn! RealChat is better priced than that and no upgrade or monthly charges. As far as being a server hog, you won't even notice it is running. ;)

Does www.Sigmachat.com have any of the features you need. Check them out.
I use them on two forums (paid) but have never looked into the moderation features you want to use. You can use the free version as well as upgrade to get more features. About $100.00 I believe for the higher end package per year.

Looks like they may have moderation out in version 8 after browsing through the forums. Don't know what that translates to in detail. We could use the features found in Digichat as well but it is quite expensive.

Thanks for the tip. As it happens I took a look at their site and their forums. I read they will bring it out in version 7.5 (they are upto 7.4 ATM). So maybe that will be an option. Thanks.