A method, apparatus and computer program product for providing connection recovery for a chat client is presented. A chat session connection is established between a chat client and a server. Heartbeat messages are exchanged between the chat client and the server at predetermined time intervals. When a failure to receive a heartbeat message for longer than one of the predetermined time intervals, then a lost connection message is provided to at least one of the server and client. Messages for client are queued at the server while the connection is lost; and messages for the server are queued at the client while the connection is lost. If the connection can be re-established the queued messages are sent, otherwise the session is terminated.