Live chat widget

The live chat widget puts a real-time conversation on your website and routes it into the same shared inbox as every other channel — WhatsApp, SMS, email and the rest — so a visitor who starts on your site and later messages you on WhatsApp keeps one continuous history. Web chat is included free and unlimited in the flat $50/month connection and management fee, with no per-conversation or per-seat charge on top.

Why it's unlimited

Most live chat tools charge per agent seat or cap conversation volume on lower tiers. Arino One treats web chat differently: it's bundled into the same flat monthly fee that covers unlimited seats and platform features generally, alongside GDPR tooling and connection management. That means you can put the widget on every page of a high-traffic site and staff it with as many agents as you need without the chat channel itself ever generating a separate bill — only genuinely metered channels like WhatsApp, SMS and RCS traffic do that.

Installing the widget

1. Create the widget. In Settings → Channels → Live chat, create a new widget and configure its appearance — colour, position on the page, greeting text and avatar, so it matches your site rather than looking like a bolted-on third-party tool.
2. Install the snippet. The console generates a script tag. Paste it just before the closing </body> tag on every page you want the widget to appear on, or drop it into a shared site template/layout so it's automatically present sitewide.
3. Set availability. Define business hours per timezone and write an offline message for outside those hours. You can still capture a message or contact detail while offline so the enquiry isn't lost.
4. Route conversations. Assign the widget to a specific team, and set an escalation rule for what happens if no agent picks up a chat within a defined time — for example, routing to a backup team or triggering a notification.

Running multiple widgets

If you have more than one brand, product line, or regional site, you can create a separate widget for each, with its own look, hours and routing — still under the same flat fee. This is useful when different teams should own different sites without conversations bleeding into the wrong queue.

Handover and continuity

Because the widget writes into the same contact record and inbox as other channels, agents see full history immediately — previous WhatsApp messages, email threads, or past chat sessions from the same visitor (once identified, e.g. by email or phone number entered in the chat). Agents can also proactively hand a web chat visitor onto WhatsApp by sharing a link or QR code mid-conversation, useful when a customer wants to continue the conversation after leaving your site or from their phone instead of a browser tab.

Consent and cookies

The widget sets a first-party session identifier to keep track of an open conversation across page loads. Declare this in your cookie policy the same way you would any functional cookie, and if your jurisdiction or policy requires prior consent for non-essential cookies, load the widget script only after that consent is given rather than unconditionally on every page load. This is a compliance detail worth getting right once, since the widget is likely to be live on every page of your site.

When to also consider Ping Me

Live chat handles typed, asynchronous conversation well, but for a physical location — a reception desk, a warehouse dock, a self-service kiosk — a hardware button that opens an instant voice call may be a better fit than a chat window. See pingme-setup for that option; unlike web chat, Ping Me is a paid add-on with its own device and per-use pricing.

Steps at a glance

1. Create the widgetIn Settings → Channels → Live chat, create a widget and set its appearance.
2. Install the snippetPaste the generated script tag before the closing body tag on your site.
3. Set availabilityDefine business hours and the offline message.
4. Route conversationsAssign the widget to a team and set the escalation rule.

Frequently asked