How to add live chat on any website platform
Put a real-time conversation route on every page of your site. The code is the same everywhere; where you paste it is not. This covers 35 platforms, 19 of which gate custom code behind a paid plan.
Why this matters
Live chat converts because it removes the gap between a question and an answer — but only while someone is staffing it. An unstaffed live chat widget is worse than no widget: it promises immediacy and delivers a form. Decide your staffed hours before you install anything, and make the widget say something honest outside them.
What you paste
<script src="https://example.com/chat.js" data-site="your_public_key" defer></script>Nearly every live chat product ships a single script tag like this. The `defer` attribute matters: it stops the widget blocking your page from rendering.
Where it goes, by platform
The code is identical everywhere. The screen you paste it into is not, and neither is whether your plan allows it — 19 of 35 platforms require a paid plan for custom code.
| Platform | Where it goes | Plan needed |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify | Online Store → Themes → Edit code → layout/theme.liquid | All plans can edit theme code. Checkout pages are restricted to Shopify Plus. |
| WooCommerce | The parent theme's footer.php, or a code-snippets plugin | No plan gate — WooCommerce is self-hosted, so you control the code. |
| BigCommerce | Storefront → Script Manager | Script Manager is available on all plans. |
| Adobe Commerce | Content → Design → Configuration → HTML Head / Footer | Available on Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source alike. |
| PrestaShop | The theme's templates/_partials/footer.tpl | Self-hosted, so no plan gate. |
| Ecwid | The host page, not Ecwid itself | Custom code on Instant Site requires a paid plan. |
| Squarespace Commerce | Settings → Developer Tools → Code Injection → Footer | Code Injection requires a Business plan or higher. |
| OpenCart | catalog/view/theme/<theme>/template/common/footer.twig | Self-hosted, so no plan gate. |
| Shift4Shop | Settings → Design → Themes & Styles → Edit Template | Template editing is available on all paid plans. |
| WordPress | The active theme's footer.php, or a code-snippets plugin | Self-hosted WordPress has no gate. WordPress.com requires a Business plan for custom code. |
| Webflow | Project settings → Custom code → Footer code | Custom code requires a paid Site plan; it is not available on the free staging domain alone. |
| Squarespace | Settings → Developer Tools → Code Injection → Footer | Code Injection requires a Business plan or higher. Personal plans cannot add custom code. |
| Wix | Settings → Custom Code → Add Custom Code | Custom code requires a paid Premium plan and a connected domain. |
| Framer | Site settings → General → Custom Code → End of <body> | Custom code requires a paid site plan. |
| Ghost | Settings → Code injection → Site Footer | Available on Ghost(Pro) and self-hosted alike. |
| Weebly | Settings → SEO → Footer Code | Custom code requires a paid plan. |
| Duda | Settings → Head HTML / Body End HTML | Available on all paid Duda plans. |
| Carrd | An Embed element set to Code, placed at the end of the page | Embed elements require Carrd Pro. |
| Bubble | Settings → SEO / metatags → Script in the body | Custom code requires a paid Bubble plan. |
| Softr | Settings → Custom code → Body | Custom code requires a paid plan. |
| Next.js | app/layout.tsx, using next/script | None — you control the code. |
| React | public/index.html, before the closing </body> tag | None. |
| Vue | index.html, before the closing </body> tag | None. |
| Nuxt | nuxt.config.ts, under app.head.script | None. |
| Astro | src/layouts/Layout.astro, before </body> | None. |
| SvelteKit | src/app.html, before %sveltekit.body% closes | None. |
| Gatsby | gatsby-ssr.js, via onRenderBody | None. |
| Hugo | layouts/partials/footer.html | None. |
| Jekyll | _layouts/default.html or _includes/footer.html | None. |
| plain HTML | Every page's closing </body> tag | None. |
| HubSpot CMS | Settings → Website → Pages → Site footer HTML | Available on CMS Hub Starter and above. |
| Drupal | The theme's html.html.twig, or the Asset Injector module | Self-hosted, so no plan gate. |
| Joomla | The template's index.php | Self-hosted, so no plan gate. |
| Notion sites | A hosting layer such as Super or Potion, not Notion itself | Depends on the hosting layer; most require a paid plan for custom code. |
| Shopify Hydrogen | app/root.tsx, inside the document body | None beyond your Shopify plan. |
How to check it worked
Load the site in a private window and confirm the launcher appears without you being logged in.
Open the browser console and check for blocked-resource errors, which usually mean a Content Security Policy needs updating.
Send a test message and confirm it arrives wherever your team actually watches.
What goes wrong
Installing it without deciding who answers. The most common outcome is a widget nobody watches.
Leaving the default welcome message, which is almost always generic enough to reduce trust.
Running two chat widgets at once — they fight for the same screen corner and both look broken.
Questions
- Live chat or an AI representative?
- They solve different halves. AI absorbs the repetitive questions your site already answers; live chat handles judgement calls and anything account-specific. Most sites want both, with a visible route from one to the other.
- Does chat slow the page down?
- It can, if the script loads synchronously. A deferred script that lazy-loads its interface only when opened has almost no effect on page load.
Related
term
What is a website chatbot?
The term covers two very different things. Older chatbots follow scripts and break the moment a visitor phrases something unexpectedly. Modern ones retrieve from a business's own content and generate an answer, which handles arbitrary phrasing.
term
What is AI customer service?
AI customer service means answering customer questions with a language model rather than a person. The useful implementations are grounded in a specific business's own content; the poor ones let a general model improvise, which produces confident answers that are wrong.
platform
How to add an AI chatbot to Shopify
You add an AI chatbot to Shopify by pasting a script tag into your theme's theme.liquid file, just before the closing body tag. It takes about two minutes, needs no app install, and survives theme updates as long as you don't switch themes entirely.
platform
How to add an AI chatbot to WordPress
The safest way to add an AI chatbot to WordPress is a code-snippets plugin or your theme's built-in footer-scripts field — not editing footer.php, which a theme update will overwrite. All three methods take under five minutes.
platform
How to add an AI chatbot to Webflow
In Webflow you add an AI chatbot under Site Settings → Custom Code → Footer Code, then publish. The step people miss is publishing — custom code does not appear on the live site until you do, and it never appears in the Designer preview.
platform
How to add an AI chatbot to Squarespace
Squarespace has a Code Injection panel built for exactly this. Paste your snippet into the Footer field under Settings → Advanced → Code Injection and it appears site-wide. You need a Business plan or higher — Personal plans cannot run custom code.
While you are in that field.
RubyRep installs through the same screen, in the same visit. Enter your site and we will read it and hand you the line to paste.