Now listed as Sohaychat. Adds quick replies, order lookups for signed-in customers, and a setting for what visitors must share before reaching your team. Upgrading sites keep allowing anonymous chats. Optional reply-by-email to visitors, off by default. Runs a one-time database update.<\/p>","1.3.0":"
Security fix to message authorship. Adds human handoff: a teammate can take over a chat, off by default; enable under Sohay \u2192 Settings. Also adds a Knowledge Base index page. If your permalinks use a prefix like \/blog\/, Knowledge Base URLs move to the site root; add redirects.<\/p>"},"ratings":[],"assets_icons":{"icon-128x128.png":{"filename":"icon-128x128.png","revision":3630463,"resolution":"128x128","location":"assets","locale":"","width":128,"height":128},"icon-256x256.png":{"filename":"icon-256x256.png","revision":3630463,"resolution":"256x256","location":"assets","locale":"","width":256,"height":256},"icon.svg":{"filename":"icon.svg","revision":3630463,"resolution":false,"location":"assets","locale":false}},"assets_banners":{"banner-1544x500.png":{"filename":"banner-1544x500.png","revision":3630463,"resolution":"1544x500","location":"assets","locale":"","width":1544,"height":500},"banner-772x250.png":{"filename":"banner-772x250.png","revision":3630463,"resolution":"772x250","location":"assets","locale":"","width":772,"height":250}},"assets_blueprints":{},"all_blocks":[],"tagged_versions":["1.0.0","1.1.0","1.2.0","1.3.0","1.4.0"],"block_files":[],"assets_screenshots":{"screenshot-1.png":{"filename":"screenshot-1.png","revision":3630463,"resolution":"1","location":"assets","locale":"","width":2400,"height":1640},"screenshot-2.png":{"filename":"screenshot-2.png","revision":3630463,"resolution":"2","location":"assets","locale":"","width":2400,"height":1640},"screenshot-3.png":{"filename":"screenshot-3.png","revision":3630463,"resolution":"3","location":"assets","locale":"","width":2400,"height":1640},"screenshot-4.png":{"filename":"screenshot-4.png","revision":3630463,"resolution":"4","location":"assets","locale":"","width":2400,"height":1640},"screenshot-5.png":{"filename":"screenshot-5.png","revision":3630463,"resolution":"5","location":"assets","locale":"","width":2880,"height":1880},"screenshot-6.png":{"filename":"screenshot-6.png","revision":3630463,"resolution":"6","location":"assets","locale":"","width":2880,"height":1880},"screenshot-7.png":{"filename":"screenshot-7.png","revision":3630463,"resolution":"7","location":"assets","locale":"","width":2880,"height":2150},"screenshot-8.png":{"filename":"screenshot-8.png","revision":3630463,"resolution":"8","location":"assets","locale":"","width":2880,"height":2360}},"screenshots":{"1":"The 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Knowledge Base articles, and quick actions."}},"plugin_section":[],"plugin_tags":[2353,2364,2369,14090,286],"plugin_category":[47],"plugin_contributors":[154526],"plugin_business_model":[],"class_list":["post-317200","plugin","type-plugin","status-publish","hentry","plugin_tags-ai","plugin_tags-chatbot","plugin_tags-customer-support","plugin_tags-knowledge-base","plugin_tags-woocommerce","plugin_category-education-and-support","plugin_contributors-bhoot","plugin_committers-bhoot"],"banners":{"banner":"https:\/\/ps.w.org\/sohaychat\/assets\/banner-772x250.png?rev=3630463","banner_2x":"https:\/\/ps.w.org\/sohaychat\/assets\/banner-1544x500.png?rev=3630463","banner_rtl":false,"banner_2x_rtl":false},"icons":{"svg":"https:\/\/ps.w.org\/sohaychat\/assets\/icon.svg?rev=3630463","icon":"https:\/\/ps.w.org\/sohaychat\/assets\/icon.svg?rev=3630463","icon_2x":false,"generated":false},"screenshots":[{"src":"https:\/\/ps.w.org\/sohaychat\/assets\/screenshot-1.png?rev=3630463","caption":"The chat launcher sitting in the bottom-right of the site, respecting iOS safe-area-inset above the home indicator."},{"src":"https:\/\/ps.w.org\/sohaychat\/assets\/screenshot-2.png?rev=3630463","caption":"The expanded chat panel mid-conversation, streaming an answer grounded in a Knowledge Base article."},{"src":"https:\/\/ps.w.org\/sohaychat\/assets\/screenshot-3.png?rev=3630463","caption":"Shopping in the chat \u2014 a product search returning live catalog results, each card carrying the store's own price, stock, and \"Add to cart\"."},{"src":"https:\/\/ps.w.org\/sohaychat\/assets\/screenshot-4.png?rev=3630463","caption":"Adding to the cart from the chat, with the running cart, totals, an Undo button, and a link straight to checkout."},{"src":"https:\/\/ps.w.org\/sohaychat\/assets\/screenshot-5.png?rev=3630463","caption":"Sohaychat \u2192 Conversations<\/strong> \u2014 the admin SPA listing recent conversations with filter, search, and assignee controls."},{"src":"https:\/\/ps.w.org\/sohaychat\/assets\/screenshot-6.png?rev=3630463","caption":"A single conversation opened in the admin, showing message history and the reply composer."},{"src":"https:\/\/ps.w.org\/sohaychat\/assets\/screenshot-7.png?rev=3630463","caption":"Sohaychat \u2192 AI Settings \u2192 Spend protection<\/strong> \u2014 daily per-visitor and site-wide token caps with the live usage readout."},{"src":"https:\/\/ps.w.org\/sohaychat\/assets\/screenshot-8.png?rev=3630463","caption":"Sohaychat \u2192 Dashboard<\/strong> \u2014 conversation volume and trends, recent activity, recently published Knowledge Base articles, and quick actions."}],"raw_content":"\n Sohaychat adds an AI chat widget to your WordPress site that answers visitor questions from the articles you publish. You write articles in the built-in Knowledge Base, and the chatbot looks up the best matches before it replies \u2014 so it stays on-topic and uses your real content instead of guessing.<\/p>\n\n On a WooCommerce store, the chatbot shops with your visitors.<\/strong> It searches your catalog, pulls up a product with its size and colour options, reads live stock and prices, answers shipping, returns, and refund questions from your store's own pages, and adds, changes, or removes items in the shopper's cart \u2014 without them leaving the conversation. Signed-in customers can also ask where their own order has got to. Every cart change comes with an Undo button, and every price and stock status is read from your store rather than invented. On sites without WooCommerce, none of it appears.<\/p>\n\n Every conversation is saved in a built-in inbox under Sohaychat \u2192 Conversations<\/strong> \u2014 your team can read, search, filter, assign, and reply from one place.<\/p>\n\n Sohaychat sends data to an AI provider to generate chat answers, and to OpenAI to index and search your Knowledge Base. Without an account and API key for at least one provider, the plugin has no upstream model to call and the chat widget cannot answer questions.<\/p>\n\n Which service receives your visitors' messages depends on the provider you select<\/strong> under Sohaychat \u2192 AI Settings<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n Knowledge Base indexing and search always go to OpenAI<\/strong>, whichever provider answers the chat. If you select Google and switch the Knowledge Base on, keep an OpenAI key saved as well; without one the chatbot answers without consulting your articles.<\/p>\n\n What is sent, and when<\/strong><\/p>\n\n What is not<\/em> sent.<\/strong> No postal address, phone number, or payment or transaction detail is ever sent to your AI provider \u2014 not from the cart, not from an order, not from anywhere else. The cart data describes the basket, not the shopper, and carries no name or email address either. The order lookup is deliberately narrow for the same reason: a customer asking where their order is needs its status, date and contents, so billing and shipping addresses, phone numbers, the customer's own email address, payment methods and transaction ids are all left out of what the model is given. Sohaychat never sends WooCommerce customer records or anything from your checkout.<\/p>\n\n Where it goes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n All requests go over HTTPS to How your API keys are handled<\/strong><\/p>\n\n The API key you enter for a provider under AI Settings<\/strong> authenticates that provider's requests. Keys are encrypted at rest (AES-256-GCM) in your WordPress database, masked in the admin UI after the first save, and excluded from the WordPress REST API. A key is only ever sent to the service it belongs to. Saving a key for a provider you have not selected stores it but does not use it \u2014 that is what lets you switch back without re-entering it.<\/p>\n\n Your responsibilities<\/strong><\/p>\n\n Before activating the plugin, please review the terms of the provider you select \u2014 OpenAI's Terms of Use<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>, and if you use Gemini, Google's Gemini API Additional Terms of Service<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>. Note that Google applies different data-handling terms to free-tier and paid API keys; read the terms for the tier you are on. Because Knowledge Base indexing runs on OpenAI either way, a site with the Knowledge Base switched on shares data with OpenAI even when Gemini answers the chat. Site owners are responsible for obtaining the appropriate legal basis (consent, contract, legitimate interest, etc.) to share visitor messages with these services under GDPR, CCPA, and other applicable privacy regimes in the jurisdictions they operate in. On a WooCommerce store that basis needs to cover the shopping tools too \u2014 what a visitor has put in their cart is information about that visitor, even though no name or address is attached to it, and an order a signed-in customer asks about is information about a named account. If you ask visitors for a name and email before they can reach your team, or switch on the reply emails described under Privacy<\/strong>, the basis needs to cover those as well. If you would rather any of it never left your site, the shopping tools can be switched off individually in code; see the FAQ below.<\/p>\n\n Conversations and messages are stored in custom database tables on your own site.<\/p>\n\n For signed-in visitors<\/strong>, the plugin registers WordPress's personal-data exporter and eraser, so the standard Tools \u2192 Export Personal Data<\/strong> and Tools \u2192 Erase Personal Data<\/strong> flows include their Sohaychat conversations, matched on their account email.<\/p>\n\n Details a visitor gives you in the chat.<\/strong> If you ask visitors for a name and email before they can reach your team (Sohaychat \u2192 Settings \u2192 Collect customer details<\/strong>), what they type is stored on that conversation \u2014 along with whether they accepted your marketing opt-in, when they accepted it, and the exact wording they were shown at the time. Those details go into a personal-data export and are removed by an erasure request, for guests as well as registered users. Because the widget never verifies an address typed into it, an export keeps two groups apart: conversations owned by the requester's account, and conversations that merely carry their email address. The second group is labelled as unverified, because it may contain somebody else's chat.<\/p>\n\n Chats from visitors who shared nothing<\/strong> aren't tied to an email address, so those email-based tools can't locate them. To erase a specific guest conversation, open it under Sohaychat \u2192 Conversations<\/strong> and delete it (available to users with the AI-settings capability); it leaves the inbox immediately and is permanently purged after the retention window \u2014 30 days by default, filterable in code. A visitor can also delete their own chat from the widget, and every soft-delete follows the same purge path.<\/p>\n\n Emails to visitors.<\/strong> With Email visitors when you reply<\/strong> switched on (Sohaychat \u2192 Settings<\/strong>, off by default), a reply your team sends to a chat the visitor has already left is emailed to the address on that conversation. It is the only mail Sohaychat sends to somebody who is not staff. The email goes out from your own site through WordPress, not through any third-party service, and carries a one-click link that stops further emails about that conversation.<\/p>\n\n On a WooCommerce store<\/strong>, the chatbot's shopping tools read your catalog, your policy pages, and the visitor's own cart. What they find is sent to your AI provider so the model can answer, and it is also saved with the conversation \u2014 that is what lets the product card or cart summary still be there when the visitor scrolls back. So a stored conversation on a WooCommerce store can contain a snapshot of what that visitor had in their cart at the time. A signed-in customer who asks about their own orders leaves the same kind of trace: the order numbers, statuses, dates, totals and item names the chatbot was given in order to answer. Both are covered by the same export, erase and retention paths as the rest of the conversation \u2014 erasing the chat erases them with it. No postal address, phone number, or payment detail is involved in either \u2014 see External services<\/strong> for the exact list.<\/p>\n\n See the External services<\/strong> section above for what gets sent, and to which service.<\/p>\n\n\n Sohaychat works with OpenAI<\/strong> or Google (Gemini)<\/strong> \u2014 choose one under Sohaychat \u2192 AI Settings<\/strong>. OpenAI is the default. You can switch at any time; each provider's key and model choice are stored separately, so switching back does not mean re-entering anything.<\/p>\n\n One thing to know before choosing: the Knowledge Base indexes and searches your articles through OpenAI whichever provider answers the chat. If you select Gemini and use the Knowledge Base, keep an OpenAI key saved as well. Without one, the chatbot still replies but stops consulting your articles.<\/p><\/dd>\n Yes. Sohaychat is a front-end for someone else's models \u2014 without an API key the plugin has no model to call and the chat cannot answer questions. The provider bills you directly per token; Sohaychat does not resell access. The Spend protection<\/strong> controls under AI Settings<\/strong> let you cap daily token usage to keep costs predictable.<\/p><\/dd>\n Providers charge per token, and the per-token rate depends on the model you pick (the cheaper models cost a fraction of a cent per chat reply). A small support site typically stays in single-digit dollars per month. The Spend protection<\/strong> controls under AI Settings<\/strong> let you cap daily token usage \u2014 once the cap is hit, the plugin stops calling the provider for the rest of the day. The Diagnostics<\/strong> page shows today's usage so you can spot a runaway loop or a hostile bot before it costs you real money.<\/p><\/dd>\n The chatbot is grounded<\/em> in the articles you publish \u2014 if it can't find a matching article, it tells the visitor it doesn't know instead of inventing an answer. To improve answer quality, publish articles covering the questions you actually get asked, and write a fallback \"Contact us\" article so the chatbot can route off-topic questions to your human support team.<\/p><\/dd>\n Sohaychat \u2192 Conversations<\/strong> lists every chat \u2014 search them, filter by status, assign a chat to a teammate, or reply yourself. Turn on human handoff and you also get views for visitors waiting to talk to a person and for conversations your team has handled. The Diagnostics<\/strong> page shows OpenAI errors if you're investigating a technical problem.<\/p><\/dd>\n Yes. Turn on Human handoff<\/strong> under Sohaychat \u2192 Settings<\/strong>, and your team can step into any conversation. While someone is handling a chat the assistant stops replying, and the visitor sees that person's name and picture on the answers rather than the AI marker. Hand it back and the assistant picks up again, with the whole exchange still in front of it.<\/p>\n\n Visitors can ask for a person with a button above the message box, the assistant can fetch one when it gets stuck, and you can simply jump in \u2014 replying to a conversation takes it over.<\/p>\n\n The setting is off until you switch it on, because handing someone to a person who is not there is worse than not offering it. Set the hours your team actually covers; outside them the widget stops offering, and anyone who asks anyway gets a message you write.<\/p><\/dd>\n No \u2014 that's your call, under Sohaychat \u2192 Settings \u2192 Collect customer details<\/strong>. You can require visitors to sign in, ask them for a name and email, or ask for nothing at all. Whichever you pick, the chatbot still answers everyone straight away: the requirement applies only to reaching a person, so nobody meets a form before they have been helped. A visitor who gave their details in an earlier chat is not asked again.<\/p>\n\n Sites upgrading from an earlier version keep allowing anonymous chats, so nothing changes for visitors already talking to you. New installs start on Require customers to sign in<\/strong>, which is the one the settings screen marks as recommended \u2014 it identifies people by their account rather than by an address they typed, which Sohaychat has no way to verify.<\/p>\n\n The one exception is order lookups: the chatbot will only discuss a customer's orders with someone signed in, whatever you choose here.<\/p><\/dd>\n Only if you switch it on. Email visitors when you reply<\/strong>, under Sohaychat \u2192 Settings<\/strong>, emails your reply to a visitor who has already closed the chat \u2014 otherwise your answer sits in a thread nobody is watching. It's off by default, because it is the only mail Sohaychat sends to somebody who isn't staff.<\/p>\n\n It needs an address to write to, so it does nothing unless the visitor is signed in or you're asking for a name and email. It waits a couple of minutes first and skips the mail entirely if the visitor came back and read the reply on screen, sends at most one email per conversation every 15 minutes however fast your team types, and puts a one-click link in every message that stops further emails about that chat.<\/p><\/dd>\n Four ways, so you don't have to sit watching the inbox. A Waiting for a Person<\/strong> view in Sohaychat \u2192 Conversations<\/strong> lists them oldest first. The browser tab shows a count, so a background tab still tells you. An email goes out when a request comes in \u2014 to addresses you choose, or whoever the conversation is assigned to. And the conversation itself carries a banner with a Take over<\/strong> button.<\/p>\n\n If nobody picks it up within the time you set (10 minutes by default), the assistant takes the conversation back and tells the visitor honestly that nobody was available, rather than leaving them waiting.<\/p><\/dd>\n Only while it's switched on, and only for visitors with the chat window actually open \u2014 those windows quietly check for new replies. Nothing checks while the chat is closed, while the browser tab is in the background, or after ten quiet minutes.<\/p>\n\n If your host is tight on resources, that background checking is the thing to weigh. A developer can slow it down without touching the plugin's code. The full arithmetic is in the handoff documentation in the plugin's GitHub repository.<\/p><\/dd>\n By default, every WordPress administrator can read every conversation. The plugin ships with five granular capabilities so you can delegate access \u2014 for example, give a support agent the ability to read and reply to chats without granting them access to AI Settings. See the developer questions below for an overview, and the capability documentation in the plugin's GitHub repository for the full matrix with worked role-configuration examples.<\/p><\/dd>\n A tiny launcher (~8 KB) loads on every page. The full chat code only downloads when a visitor actually clicks to open the chat, so most visitors never download it. No third-party scripts, fonts, or trackers are loaded from external CDNs.<\/p><\/dd>\n The chat renders inside an isolated container so that your theme's styling cannot break the chat, and the chat's styling cannot change your site's fonts, colours, borders, or spacing. That isolation is deliberate \u2014 it is what makes the widget look and behave the same way on every theme.<\/p>\n\n The trade-off is that other plugins and scripts which scan your pages for content do not look inside that container. In practice:<\/p>\n\n Screen readers and keyboard navigation are unaffected \u2014 assistive technology reads the accessibility tree, which the isolation does not hide.<\/p>\n\n The container is open rather than sealed, so a script that explicitly supports this kind of isolation can still reach the chat's content. Most third-party scripts do not.<\/p><\/dd>\n On stores running WooCommerce 7.0 or later, a shopper can:<\/p>\n\n The chatbot cannot take payment or place an order. When the shopper is ready it hands them to your normal WooCommerce checkout.<\/p><\/dd>\n Yes. The chat widget, Knowledge Base, and Conversations inbox work on any WordPress site \u2014 the shopping tools simply never appear. On stores running WooCommerce 7.0 or later they switch on by themselves, with no configuration. The plugin also declares HPOS and Cart-Checkout-Blocks compatibility so stores don't see an \"uncertified plugin\" banner.<\/p><\/dd>\n Uncheck Show widget<\/strong> under Sohaychat \u2192 AI Settings<\/strong> to hide it everywhere. To hide it only on certain pages or post types, see the developer questions below.<\/p><\/dd>\n Yes. Sohaychat \u2192 AI Settings<\/strong> has a Welcome Message field (max 280 characters). Sohaychat \u2192 KB Settings \u2192 Settings<\/strong> has a Custom System Prompt field (max 4000 characters) for the instructions the chatbot follows when it generates answers. The Custom System Prompt field recognises Why site owners pick Sohaychat<\/h4>\n\n
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What's included<\/h4>\n\n
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\/<\/code> in an empty draft. Search them, pick one with the arrow keys, and edit it before sending. Managed under Sohaychat \u2192 Quick replies<\/strong>.<\/li>\nYou'll need<\/h4>\n\n
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External services<\/h4>\n\n
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https:\/\/api.openai.com\/v1\/responses<\/code> for OpenAI, or https:\/\/generativelanguage.googleapis.com\/v1beta\/models\/*:streamGenerateContent<\/code> for Google.<\/li>\nhttps:\/\/api.openai.com\/v1\/files<\/code>, \/v1\/vector_stores<\/code>, \/v1\/vector_stores\/*\/files<\/code>) so the chat can retrieve them. The sync runs in the background, not while you click Save. This happens on OpenAI regardless of which provider answers the chat.<\/li>\nhttps:\/\/api.openai.com\/v1\/vector_stores\/*\/search<\/code> to find matching articles, and the matched article text is then sent on to whichever provider is generating the reply.<\/li>\napi.openai.com<\/code> and, if you select Google, generativelanguage.googleapis.com<\/code>. The plugin does not contact any other external service \u2014 no analytics, no telemetry, no third-party fonts or CDN assets, and no phone-home for updates. Updates come from WordPress.org.<\/p>\n\nPrivacy<\/h4>\n\n
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Which AI provider should I pick, and can I switch later?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Do I need an account with an AI provider?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
How much will it cost me?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Will the chatbot make things up?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Where can I see what visitors are asking?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Can a real person take over a chat from the assistant?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Do I have to collect names and email addresses?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Will visitors know when we reply after they've left?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
How do I know when somebody is waiting to talk to us?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Does human handoff slow my site down?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Will my visitors' chats be visible to other admins?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Does this slow down my site?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Why don't my translation or session-recording plugins see the chat widget?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
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What can shoppers do in the chat on a WooCommerce store?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
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Does the plugin work without WooCommerce?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Can I hide the widget on specific pages?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Can I customize the welcome message and system prompt?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
{site_name}<\/code> and {current_date}<\/code> placeholders \u2014 they are replaced with your site's title and today's date before the prompt is sent to the model.<\/p><\/dd>\n