RRaychat

How to Add Free Live Chat to Your Website in 5 Min

July 25, 2026 · 6 min read

Adding live chat to a website sounds like it should involve a developer, a deployment, and a wait. In practice, it's one line of code and a few minutes — the same install pattern nearly every live chat tool uses, including Raychat. This walks through the whole thing end to end, plus the platform-specific detail for wherever your site actually lives.

What you'll need

  • A website you can edit the HTML of (or a platform like WordPress where you can paste a snippet into the theme/header).
  • An email address to sign up with.
  • About five minutes.

No developer required for a standard site — if your platform lets you paste a script tag into your header (WordPress, Webflow, Squarespace, Shopify, a custom HTML site), you're covered.

Step 1: Create an account

Sign up with just an email and password — no credit card, no trial clock. Sign up free.

Step 2: Add your website

Once you're in, add your site by name and domain (e.g. yoursite.com). This creates a "property" — the thing the chat widget, analytics, and conversation history all attach to. There's no limit on how many websites you can add on the free plan, so if you run more than one site, add them all.

Step 3: Copy your embed snippet

Every property gets its own unique embed snippet — a single <script> tag, something like:

<script async src="https://raychat.rohanyeole.com/api/w/your-property-id.js"></script>

This is the only code you need to add to your site. It's async (won't block or slow down your page load) and self-contained — it draws the chat bubble, handles opening/closing the widget, and connects to your dashboard on its own. No additional CSS, no additional JS files, no build step.

Step 4: Paste it into your site

Where this goes depends on your platform:

WordPress

The simplest route is a plugin like "Insert Headers and Footers" (or your theme's built-in custom code section, if it has one) — paste the snippet into the footer section so it loads on every page. If you're comfortable editing theme files directly, it also works fine pasted into footer.php right before the closing </body> tag. Avoid page-builder "embed" blocks that only add the script to a single page — you generally want the widget site-wide.

Shopify

Go to Online Store → Themes → Edit code, open theme.liquid, and paste the snippet right before the closing </body> tag. This makes it load across your whole storefront, not just one page.

Webflow

Under Project Settings → Custom Code, paste the snippet into the "Footer Code" box (not the Header box — footer placement is preferred for scripts like this). Publish your site afterward for the change to go live.

Squarespace

Go to Settings → Advanced → Code Injection, and paste the snippet into the Footer field. This applies site-wide automatically.

Static HTML site

Paste it directly into your HTML, right before </body>, on every page (or in a shared footer/include file if your site setup has one).

Custom-built app (Next.js, React, Vue, etc.)

Drop it into your root layout or a shared footer/head component, the same way you'd add any third-party script (analytics, a support widget, etc.). For a Next.js App Router site specifically, the root layout.tsx is the natural place so it loads on every route.

Step 5: Verify your website

This step exists for a good reason: it proves you actually own the site before live chat activates on it, which stops anyone from spinning up a chat widget pointed at a domain that isn't theirs — a basic but important trust boundary for any tool that's free and open to sign up for.

Once the snippet is live on your site, go back to your dashboard and click Verify. This makes a server-side check against your live site's homepage, confirming the snippet (and the unique property id inside it) is genuinely present, before flipping your property to verified. It's not just a client-side checkbox — it's a real fetch of your actual page.

If verification doesn't pass right away:

  • Check the snippet is actually live, not just saved in a draft/unpublished state — many builders (Webflow, Squarespace) require an explicit "Publish" step separate from saving.
  • View your page's source (right-click → View Page Source, or Ctrl+U/Cmd+Option+U) and search (Ctrl+F/Cmd+F) for your property id to confirm it's really there.
  • Check for a caching layer — if your site is behind a CDN or a page cache plugin, the live version search engines and our verification check see might be a few minutes behind what you just published. Purging the cache usually fixes this immediately.
  • Double-check you copied the whole snippet — a partially-copied script tag (missing the closing </script>) won't verify.

Step 6: You're live

That's it — the chat bubble appears on your site for real visitors immediately after verification. Messages show up in your dashboard in real time, and you can reply from desktop or mobile.

A few things worth setting up next

  • Greeting message — a fixed welcome message, or a quick-reply menu of common questions, shown the moment someone opens the widget.
  • Analytics — once verified, you'll start seeing page views, visitor geography, and referrers, so you know who's actually on your site before they ever click chat.
  • Notifications — enable desktop notifications so a new message doesn't sit unnoticed in a background tab.

Frequently asked questions

Will this slow down my site? No — the script loads asynchronously and only builds the chat bubble; the full chat interface only loads if a visitor actually opens it, so there's no upfront cost to page load speed.

Can I add it to more than one site? Yes, on the free plan, with no limit on the number of websites.

Do I need a developer? No, for any platform that lets you paste custom HTML/scripts into your page — which covers the vast majority of website builders and CMSs (WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Squarespace) as well as any custom-built site.

Why does it need to verify my domain before going live? So the widget only ever activates for sites you actually control — without this check, anyone could point a chat widget at your domain without your permission, which would be a real security gap, not just an inconvenience.

What if I want AI to answer common questions later? That's an optional upgrade you can add without reinstalling anything or losing your existing conversation history — the same widget, same install, just with AI-assisted answers turned on when you're ready for it.

Can I remove the branding? Yes, included on the free plan — no separate fee to have the widget look like it's genuinely part of your site.

Ready to try it on your own site? Get started free — no credit card required.