AI Chatbot for Agencies: Set Up One Workspace per Client in 30 Minutes

Sooner or later a client asks whether their website can have an AI chatbot like the ones on bigger brands' sites. This guide is for the freelancer or small agency that builds and maintains client websites, often on WordPress, and wants an AI support agent on every client site without becoming each client's support desk. The guide covers account structure, a 30-minute setup, who pays, handoffs to the client's own team, reporting and white label.

Every PepoChat rule below was checked in the product code and documentation on 19 October 2026, including two that shape agency work: billing is per workspace, and each account can own only one workspace on the Free plan. Competitors' branding prices were read on their own pricing pages the same day. PepoChat is our product, so the white-label section is explicit about what it does not do.

Nothing here is pricing advice: the only prices are PepoChat's published plans and the vendors' own pages.

What do clients want when they ask for an AI chatbot?

Clients want a chat window that answers their customers' real questions from the business's own content at any hour, and passes everything else to a person without losing the lead. They also care that it does not invent prices, pester visitors or slow the site down.

An AI support agent is a chat widget that searches a private knowledge base built from the business's own pages and documents before every reply, says so when it does not know, and hands the conversation to the team. Scripted chatbot plugins, still common on WordPress sites, show buttons and canned replies instead and cannot answer a question their author did not anticipate.

Page weight is the other worry on client sites. PepoChat's loader script is 7,911 bytes on disk and 3,248 bytes gzipped (measured 19 October 2026), loads asynchronously, and by default fetches the chat window in idle time after the page has loaded.

The agency itself needs a quick install per site, a dashboard per client and no new support requests in its own inbox.

How do you manage several client chatbots from one account?

Create one workspace per client and add your own login to each. A workspace in PepoChat is the container for one business: its knowledge base, conversations, contacts, widget settings, integrations, team and subscription. Each workspace's knowledge base, conversations and credentials are isolated from every other workspace, so one client's documents never feed another client's answers.

The switcher at the top of the dashboard sidebar lists every workspace your login belongs to, and Create organization in the same menu starts a new one. Each workspace has its own Organization ID, the 32-character code the script tag and the WordPress plugin use to tie a client's site to that client's agent. Links in escalation and assignment emails switch you into the right workspace automatically.

Roles as documented in PepoChat's team docs and checked against the product on 19 October 2026.

Three plan rules shape the structure. First, each account can own only one Free workspace: PepoChat refuses to create another while you own one on Free and asks you to upgrade it on Plans & Billing. Every new workspace starts on Free, so an agency that owns its client workspaces upgrades each one before creating the next, including its own website's workspace if that one is on Free.

Second, the Free plan has a single seat, so nobody can be invited into a Free workspace. Third, seats count per workspace: members plus pending invitations must fit within 3 seats on Starter or 10 on Growth, plus extra seats at $15 a month, and each agency employee you add takes one of that client's seats.

PepoChat has no read-only or inbox-only role as of October 2026: a client invited as a member can edit the knowledge base, the widget, the integrations and the billing. The dashboard also cannot rename or delete a workspace, so name each one after the client when you create it, and agree in writing who changes what.

How do you set up a new client in 30 minutes?

Collect the client's facts first, then work through eleven steps in the dashboard: about 30 minutes of hands-on time for a small business site, while the website import runs in the background. PepoChat's help pages put the core setup at about ten minutes; the rest goes on missing facts and testing.

Times are our estimates for a brochure site with no integrations, as of October 2026; menu names were checked against PepoChat's docs on 19 October 2026. Each integration, such as WooCommerce or HubSpot, adds a few minutes.

What to collect from the client first

Ask for these before the clock starts, ideally in a kick-off form:

• The site address and its sitemap, plus any staging address you test on.
• The ten questions customers ask most, taken from the contact form or the phone.
• The facts no page states: price lists, delivery or cancellation rules, opening hours.
• Who answers when the agent hands over, during which hours and in which timezone.
• The email addresses of the staff who will use the inbox, the brand color and a square logo.

Steps 1 to 3: create the workspace and build the knowledge base

1. Open the switcher at the top of the sidebar, click Create organization and name the workspace after the client.
2. Open Knowledge Base → Add New, choose the website option and paste the sitemap address, for example /wp-sitemap.xml on a standard WordPress site. A sitemap import takes up to 200 pages and counts as one knowledge source.
3. Add the facts the site lacks under Add New → Text & Q&A, and upload any PDF price list or policy document.

Steps 4 to 8: brand, brief and test the agent

4. In Widget Customization, set the brand color, upload the client's logo, and write the assistant name, the greeting and up to three suggested questions.
5. In the Agent instructions card, describe the voice under How to sound and behave and the hard limits under Never do this.
6. In the Team availability card, choose the option that matches the client's staffing, then switch on lead capture and the When a new lead arrives alerts.
7. Under Allowed Domains, enter the client's production domain, one per line, up to 20 entries.
8. Click Test the agent and ask the ten questions from the kick-off. Test chats are free and stay out of analytics.

Steps 9 to 11: install, upgrade and hand over

9. Install the widget: on WordPress, add the plugin and paste the Organization ID under Settings → PepoCloud Agent; on any other site, paste the script tag from Widget Setup before the closing </body> tag.
10. Open Plans & Billing and choose Starter or Growth, billed monthly or yearly.
11. On the Team page, click Invite member, enter the client's email address and choose Member or Admin. The invitation expires after 7 days.

Before you leave the client's workspace, open Profile → Notifications and switch off the escalation and new-lead emails for yourself. PepoChat saves those switches per workspace, so your agency workspace keeps its alerts. The launch checklist has 30 more checks for a first go-live.

What is different on WordPress client sites?

On WordPress you install the official plugin instead of pasting code, and only the install scales across sites: the configuration stays per client. The plugin is listed on WordPress.org as PepoCloud AI Support Agent; on 19 October 2026 the listing showed version 1.0.0, WordPress 5.7 or higher and PHP 7.4 or higher. Each site needs its own Organization ID, because each client has its own workspace.

Agencies that run sites from a management dashboard can treat it like any other directory plugin. MainWP's plugin documentation, for example, describes installing a WordPress.org plugin on several child sites at once from Sites → Plugins → Install Plugins and updating it everywhere from Sites → Updates → Plugins. The plugin's one required setting is still per site: paste each client's ID under Settings → PepoCloud Agent and click Save changes.

Two plugin settings matter on client sites: Hide the widget for logged-in users keeps the chat away from the client's editors, and Hide on these pages takes paths such as /checkout. Saving the settings also purges the common page caches, WP Rocket and LiteSpeed among them. The plugin docs list every option, and the WordPress page has a zip for manual installs.

Staging copies need one precaution. A cloned site carries the plugin settings, so the staging copy loads the client's agent too; on a domain missing from the allowed-domains list, the widget refuses to start a conversation and spends no AI reply. Because an entry such as client.com also allows every subdomain, list the exact production host, such as www.client.com, when staging lives on staging.client.com, as the allowed-domains docs explain.

When the client's site changes, the knowledge base mostly follows on its own: website pages are re-fetched weekly and only changed pages are re-indexed. Sync website pages does the same immediately, which is worth a click after a price change, and Import again on the import's card picks up new pages, which a sync does not. For shop clients, the WooCommerce comparison covers live order lookups.

Who pays for the plan, the agency or the client?

Either one can, because PepoChat bills each workspace separately: every workspace has its own subscription, checkout and invoices under Plans & Billing, and any member can manage them. As of October 2026 there is no single invoice for several workspaces, no published volume price and no reseller programme, though the contact page lists a sales address for volume questions. You either pay per workspace and re-bill the client, or the client pays PepoChat directly.

Plan rules as of 19 October 2026, from PepoChat's billing docs and the affiliate terms.

An AI reply is one answer the agent generates in a visitor conversation; team replies, the greeting and system messages do not count.

Last verified 19 October 2026 against PepoChat's pricing page and billing docs. To estimate a client's replies, the sizing formula turns traffic into conversations, and the pricing index compares 30 tools' prices verified on the same date.

PepoChat's affiliate programme pays 30% of every payment a referred customer makes, for the life of the subscription: $14.70 a month on a Starter client and $44.70 on Growth. Referrals are tracked by a 30-day cookie, the last click wins, and commissions clear after 30 days and are paid monthly by PayPal from a $50 balance. The terms let agencies sign clients up through their link but exclude referring your own workspace, so commission fits the client-pays model.

When a client moves on from an agency-paid setup, make the client an owner on the Team page, then cancel your subscription. The workspace keeps its plan until the paid period ends, then returns to Free with its knowledge base, conversations and settings, and the client can subscribe again with their own card.

What should an agency charge for, and what does the client own?

Charge for the work, and leave the client's data with the client. The table separates what agencies typically bill from what belongs to the client whoever pays PepoChat; it suggests no rates, because those depend on your market.

PepoChat prices last verified 19 October 2026.

Ownership matters most at the end of a contract. The conversations, contacts and knowledge base live in the client's workspace, and data retention, a setting that deletes resolved conversations 30 to 365 days after they started when it is switched on, can only be changed by an owner or an admin, so decide at the start who holds the owner role. What an AI chatbot costs helps clients compare the subscription with other options.

How do you keep client support off the agency's desk?

Send every handoff to the client's own people and keep your own login quiet. Three settings do most of the work: team availability, who receives the escalation emails, and where new leads go.

The Team availability card decides what the agent promises. My team answers in the chat suits staff who watch the inbox; My team answers during business hours follows the client's schedule and asks for the visitor's email outside it; No one answers live chat, we follow up by email suits clients with nobody on live chat: the agent never promises a person, asks once for an email address and hands over for an email reply. The AI keeps answering around the clock in every mode, and the offline message examples give away messages to adapt.

Escalation emails go to every member of the workspace. Each one, titled A visitor needs a person, carries the reason, the last three messages and, when the visitor left an address, a Reply by email button, as the human handoff docs describe. With the agency's own alerts muted, only the client's people are paged.

Teach the client one rule on day one: replies typed in the team inbox appear in the chat window but are not emailed to the visitor. A visitor who has left the page sees the reply only after reopening the chat in the same browser within their 24-hour session, so anything that matters goes out through Reply by email or the inbox's Send Email button.

New leads can reach the client by email to every member on Starter and Growth, as a card in their Slack channel, or through a signed webhook to Zapier, Make or n8n. When the client reports a wrong answer, fix the source, not the instructions: correct the page and click Sync website pages, or add a Q&A pair. For booking-led clients such as clinics and salons, the AI receptionist guide covers what the agent can take off the front desk.

How do you report chatbot results to a client each month?

Build a short monthly note from three screens, because PepoChat has no single report page: Analytics for topics and votes, Plans & Billing for usage, and the inbox's CSV export for counts.

The Topics card in Analytics ranks the most asked topics over the last six weeks, labelling each conversation once from the visitor's first message, and the Sentiments card shows the share of thumbs-up and thumbs-down votes over the last 90 days. Both leave out test chats. The billing page adds the AI replies used against the allowance and any overage.

Counts come from Export CSV in the inbox header: up to 5,000 conversations per date range, with status, visitor name and email, message count and the full transcript. Counting rows by status gives escalated and resolved conversations, which Analytics does not chart. The export also includes chats from the Test the agent drawer, and the file holds the client's customers' personal data, so send the client a summary rather than the file.

A report that fits on one screen covers five numbers and one action: conversations, escalations, AI replies used, the top three topics, the vote split, and the content fix made that month. The chatbot metrics guide explains which numbers mislead.

Is PepoChat white label?

No. PepoChat's Growth plan, $149 a month as of October 2026, removes the Powered by PepoChat line from the client's widget, but the product is not white label in the strict sense. A white-label product is made by one company and sold under another company's brand, in the standard definition; for software, that means your name on the dashboard, the emails, the domains and the invoices.

Checked in PepoChat's code and docs on 19 October 2026.

In chat software, white label often means what PepoChat's Growth plan does: the vendor's badge comes off the widget. On 19 October 2026 the vendors' own pricing pages described it like this:

Prices read on each vendor's pricing page on 19 October 2026.

Each of those plans brings more than the missing badge. Crisp Plus includes 20 or more seats, and Botpress Plus adds a public help center on a custom domain, while PepoChat's help articles live inside the widget.

What to do next

• Create your first client workspace from the sign-up page and run the eleven steps above; test chats cost nothing.
• Read the WordPress guide for the plugin details.
• If clients will pay PepoChat directly, join the affiliate programme before you send them a sign-up link.