Self-Installed Live Chat Plug-in Recommendations Please

My gosh! There are so many live chat plug-ins being advertised in the WP plug-ins section that it is enough to make your head spin. Like many busy folks here, I don’t have the time to examine and test every single chat plug-in that is available here, so let me just express my needs, and perhaps some satisfied WP users can point me in the right direction.

I host my own self-installed WordPress blog on my own server, and not via WordPress.com/.org. As such, I have complete control over it, which I prefer.

Thus, I am not looking for a live chat plug-in where I embed a snippet of HTML code in my blog’s theme files, and then everything is controlled — and limited — and where personal privacy may possibly even be breached, by some chat service out there in Internet-land. I want the live chat to function completely from my own web server, without having to make HTTP calls/requests to a remote chat service.

I also want to have complete control over the chatroom embedded on my WP blog, i.e., look and feel, size of the chat window, its placement on my blog, etc.

Also, I am primarily interested in a live chat plug-in where my WP blog visitors can chat WITH ME, and not with other blog visitors, which may bog down the blog. The idea is to add an interface where I can quickly, conveniently and privately answer any important questions which may arise with regards to information that I post on my blog.

I am NOT looking for a paid monthly subscription service. I prefer, at best — and unless there is a good free one — a one-time reasonable payment for a good self-hosted live chat plug-in.

If any other WP admins out there are using such a WP chat plug-in, and are thoroughly satisfied with its performance — NO CHAT PLUG-IN DEVELOPER FEEDBACK PLEASE, I want to hear from REAL users — I would really appreciate hearing from you.

In the past, I have tried a few Java-based chatrooms on my regular website — outside of WordPress — and they have been rather slow and clunky for the most part, required HTML frames, or something else which was not particularly to my liking.

So again, if you have found something that meets my needs for a WP self-installed blog, which protects my and my users’ privacy by not sending data to a remote chat service, please let me know.

Thanks in advance.