How to Add an AI Chatbot to a Wix Website (Custom Code, No Velo)

Our Wix guide is for site owners who want a chatbot that answers real questions from their own pages: a shop on Wix Stores, a studio that takes bookings, an agency building client sites in Wix Studio. You will not need Velo, Wix's coding platform, or any code beyond one line pasted into a settings form.

The guide covers Wix's built-in chat in 2026, the plan and domain rules for custom code, the exact settings, training the bot on your pages and products, and testing on a phone. Every Wix menu path, plan rule and price below was read on Wix's own help center, developer docs and blog on 19 October 2026. The install examples use PepoChat, our product, and the comparison table lists what Wix does better too.

Does Wix have its own AI chatbot?

Yes. Wix Smart Chat is Wix's own chat app, and in Wix's words it "combines an AI chat and manual chat in one app": the AI answers visitors from your site content, and your team replies by hand from the Wix Inbox. According to the Smart Chat overview, it replaced Wix AI Site Chat, which new sites could no longer install from March 2026. The older Wix Chat, where a person types every reply, can no longer be installed on new sites and gets no further updates.

Smart Chat's AI learns from your public pages, including store products, blog posts, services and events, and from training rules, which are notes the AI must follow. A knowledge rule adds facts that are not on your site, typed in or uploaded as a PDF or DOCX file, and a restriction rule names topics the AI must decline or pass to you. You can also exclude pages, test answers in the dashboard, show up to five quick topics and schedule when the AI or a person answers.

Manual chat in Smart Chat is free. AI answers draw on AI credits, the allowance Wix includes with its plans and shares across its AI tools. Wix's AI credits page estimates up to 150 Smart Chat actions a month on Light, 200 on Core, 300 on Business and 1,000 on Business Elite; free sites get 30 credits a day, capped at 120 a month, and Premium plans cannot buy top-ups.

Smart Chat has limits too. Wix says its AI cannot index hidden, password-protected, members-only or CMS dynamic pages, and on HIPAA sites Wix recommends manual chat only. Wix also offers an AI Phone Agent for calls, while its Front Desk Agent, which drafted replies inside the Inbox, is no longer supported from October 2026.

What do you need before adding a chatbot script to Wix?

You need a published site, a connected domain and a plan that allows a connected domain. Custom code is Wix's dashboard setting for adding a snippet of HTML or JavaScript to the head or body of your pages, and Wix's custom code help article lists a published site and a connected domain as its prerequisites. Connecting a domain requires a Premium or Studio site plan, so a free Wix site, which lives on a wixsite.com address, cannot use custom code at all.

On the PepoChat side you need a free workspace and its Organization ID, the 32-character code that ties the widget to your workspace, shown with a Copy button on the dashboard's Widget Setup page. No card is required, and the free plan includes 200 AI replies a month and 5 knowledge sources.

Last verified 19 October 2026 on support.wix.com and dev.wix.com.

What does each Wix plan cost, and how much Smart Chat AI comes with it?

Wix's paid plans run from $17 to $159 a month when billed yearly, and monthly billing costs more. Online payments start at Core, so a shop that already takes payments through Wix Stores is on a plan that allows custom code.

Prices in US dollars from Wix's Is Wix really free? post, and AI estimates from Wix's AI credits page, both read on 19 October 2026. Wix notes that prices and currency vary by location and that one credit balance covers all of its AI tools.

Step 1: How do you train the chatbot on your Wix pages and store?

Train the agent before you install it, so the first visitor gets real answers. In PepoChat that means importing your Wix sitemap as a knowledge source, which is one item the agent searches before every reply, such as a website import or a document.

Every Wix site publishes a sitemap index at /sitemap.xml, and Wix updates it automatically. The index points to one sitemap per content type, such as /pages-sitemap.xml for ordinary pages, /store-products-sitemap.xml for Wix Stores products and /blog-posts-sitemap.xml for blog posts. Product pages live at /product-page/ followed by the product's name.

1. Create a free PepoChat workspace with an email or Google account.
2. Open Knowledge Base → Add New, choose the Website tab, then Submit a sitemap.
3. Paste https://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml and start the import.
4. Wait until the import card finishes; each page appears as a row with its address.
5. Click Test the agent and ask three questions your customers really ask.

PepoChat follows the index into its sub-sitemaps and imports the first 200 pages without an AI model, and the whole import counts as one knowledge source against the free plan's five. On the live Wix store we checked, products came first in the index and ordinary pages last, so a site with more than 200 URLs should run two imports: /pages-sitemap.xml first, then /store-products-sitemap.xml. Imports from the same site still count as one source.

What does the crawler get from a Wix product page? When we ran PepoChat's page-to-text code on a live Wix Stores product page on 19 October 2026, the name, full description, price and option labels came through, because Wix renders product pages as HTML; the header, menus and footer were dropped. A CMS dynamic page from the same site came through too. No crawler can see orders or shipping status, and stock levels are only as fresh as the last sync.

Members-only and password-protected pages are invisible to any crawler, so upload that content as a PDF or DOCX file, or add a Q&A pair, which does not count as a knowledge source. PepoChat re-fetches website pages every week, and Sync website pages refreshes them on demand after a sale or a price change. The website import docs and the training guide cover the rest.

Step 2: Where do you paste the chatbot script in Wix?

Paste it in the site dashboard's Custom Code settings, not in the editor. The steps follow Wix's help article as published on 19 October 2026.

1. In PepoChat, open Widget Setup, click HTML and copy the snippet with your Organization ID filled in.
2. In your Wix site's dashboard, click Settings.
3. Under Development & integrations, click Custom Code.
4. Click + Add Custom Code at the top right.
5. Paste the snippet and name it, for example PepoChat widget.
6. Under Add Code to Pages, choose All pages, then Load code once.
7. Under Place Code in, choose Body - end.
8. Optionally, set a cookie category on the Code Type tab (see the cookie banner section).
9. Click Apply and open your live domain in a new tab.

The snippet is one line:

<script src="https://widget.pepochat.com/widget.js" data-organization-id="YOUR_ORGANIZATION_ID"></script>

To put the launcher in the left corner, for example when another button already sits bottom right, add one attribute:

<script src="https://widget.pepochat.com/widget.js" data-organization-id="YOUR_ORGANIZATION_ID" data-position="bottom-left"></script>

Why Body - end and Load code once? Wix advises putting functional scripts in the body, and the PepoChat loader adds its launcher to the page body. Wix sites switch pages without a full reload, so loading the script once per visit is enough. With the per-page option, the loader notices it is already running and ignores the repeat, so you never get two launchers.

How heavy is it? The PepoChat loader is 7,911 bytes on disk, or 3,248 bytes gzipped, measured on 19 October 2026, and loads asynchronously. After your page has finished loading, it fetches the chat frame in browser idle time so the first click opens instantly; a visitor session starts only when someone opens the window. For the leanest page load, add data-preload="false" and the frame loads on the first click instead. The install docs list every attribute.

Wix Studio and Wix Harmony. The steps are identical in the Wix Editor, Wix Studio and Wix Harmony, Wix's newer editor that mixes AI prompts with drag and drop. Wix's developer notes on custom code name live chat widgets as a typical use and say Harmony sites, which cannot run site code, rely on custom code for additions like this.

Not in an Embed HTML element. Wix's HTML elements are iframes, so a launcher pasted there is trapped inside that box instead of floating in the corner of the screen.

The December 2025 security rules. Wix now blocks snippets that, for example, replace fetch, read Wix cookies or write an iframe's srcdoc. The PepoChat loader does none of these: it runs the chat in an iframe on its own domain that talks to your page through postMessage, the pattern Wix's security notes recommend.

How does the chatbot work with the Wix cookie banner?

By default the chatbot loads before consent, because Wix treats every custom code snippet as Essential, which visitors cannot decline. Wix's guide to categorizing custom code shows how to file a snippet as Functional, Analytics or Marketing instead, and with Wix's Usercentrics cookie banner active, a Functional snippet loads only after the visitor allows functional cookies.

The facts to weigh for PepoChat are short. The widget sets no cookies on your domain, keeps its session ID in its own storage inside the chat frame, and creates a visitor session only when someone opens the chat. If you choose Functional, visitors who decline never see the launcher, so keep another way to reach you on your contact page. The GDPR guide covers what a support bot stores.

Wix's cookie banner never appears in the editor or Preview, so check the combination on the live site in a private window, where you arrive as a first-time visitor.

Step 3: How do you lock the chatbot to your domain and set the greeting?

Add your Wix domain to the allowed-domains list, then write the greeting. Both live on PepoChat's Widget Customization page, and saved settings reach your Wix site without republishing, because the widget reads them from your workspace.

Allowed domains. Custom code sits in your page source, where anyone can copy it. An allowed-domains list is the set of sites your widget may start conversations on; once it is set, a copied snippet on someone else's site shows a "not allowed" message and spends none of your AI replies. Add yourdomain.com once, since subdomains such as www are included automatically, and click Save Settings. The allowed domains docs explain the matching rules.

Greeting and suggestions. The greeting opens every conversation, and up to three suggested questions appear as tappable replies before the visitor types. On a store, make them questions your pages answer well: delivery times, returns, sizing. The welcome message examples give you 30 to adapt, and the customization docs list every field.

Team availability. Choose My team answers in the chat, My team answers during business hours, or No one answers live chat, we follow up by email. The agent answers around the clock in every mode; the setting changes what it promises about people and whether it asks for an email address before a human handoff, the moment a conversation moves from the agent to your team inbox. A one-person shop should usually pick the email option, and the offline message examples help with the away message.

Step 4: How do you test the chatbot on a phone?

Test on the published site with a real phone, because custom code never runs inside the Wix editor or Preview. Open your domain in a private window and check five things:

1. The launcher appears on the home page, a product page and the cart.
2. A product question gets an answer with the right price.
3. A question your site cannot answer ends with an offer of a person, not a guess.
4. Asking for a human puts the conversation in Conversations in the PepoChat dashboard.
5. On a first visit, the cookie banner and the launcher do not cover each other's buttons.

PepoChat's launcher is a 60-pixel button 20 pixels from the bottom corner, and the 400 by 600 pixel chat window shrinks to fit small screens. Wix's custom code has no device setting, so the snippet runs for phone and desktop visitors alike, and the mobile editor's hide controls do not apply to it.

Wix Editor sites can pin a Quick Action Bar along the bottom of the mobile screen and a Back to Top button in the left or right corner, and Wix adds the Quick Action Bar automatically when Wix Chat is installed. Wix's own chat widgets float in a bottom corner too, and Wix advises against running two chat widgets on one site. Remove the Wix chat if PepoChat replaces it, and use data-position="bottom-left" when the right corner is taken.

Can you hide the chatbot on Wix checkout pages?

Yes, with page-specific code, but test the result. Select Choose specific pages instead of All pages and tick every page except the Cart Page and Checkout Page, which Wix Stores adds as pages of your site. Pages you add later need ticking too, and because Wix changes pages without a full reload, a launcher drawn on a product page can stay on screen after a shopper clicks through to checkout. Open the checkout both directly and through the cart. For most stores, keeping the widget everywhere and moving it to the left corner is simpler.

Wix Smart Chat vs an AI support agent: which should you use?

Use Wix Smart Chat when your answers all live on your Wix site and you want the simplest setup; use a separate AI support agent when answers live elsewhere, when you need tools outside Wix, or when you want a fixed reply allowance. An AI support agent is a chat widget that answers from a private knowledge base built from your own content, takes actions in connected tools and escalates to a human inbox when it cannot help. PepoChat is the example here, and the table is as fair to Wix as we can make it.

Last verified 19 October 2026 on Wix's help center and PepoChat's own billing docs.

The live chat vs chatbot comparison covers when a person should answer instead of a bot, and the human handoff docs show what your team receives when the agent steps aside.

Sites on other small-business builders keep the setting elsewhere: the guide to adding an AI chatbot to GoDaddy, Hostinger, Duda, Weebly or Jimdo covers each one.

Why isn't the chatbot showing on my Wix site?

Nearly every missing launcher on Wix comes from the plan, the domain or the place the code was pasted. Work down the table from the top.

If the launcher appears but answers are thin, the fix is content, not code: add the missing page or a Q&A pair, then ask again in Test the agent. The launch checklist has 30 checks to run before you go live.

What to do next

• Keep the website builders reference handy if you also run Squarespace, Webflow or Framer sites; the snippet is the same everywhere, only the settings page moves.
• Read how to add a chat widget with one script tag for the JavaScript API and opening the chat from your own button.
• Compare allowances on the pricing page, then import your Wix sitemap into a free workspace and paste the snippet into Custom Code.