AI Chatbot for Course Creators: Kajabi, Teachable and Thinkific Setup

Cart-open week follows a familiar pattern on every course platform: traffic to the sales page spikes, a wave of people buy, and the inbox fills with the same questions. "I paid but never got my login." "Is there a payment plan?" "Which course should I start with?" Most answers already exist somewhere on your site; the bottleneck is that you, or one virtual assistant, answer them one at a time.

This guide is for course creators and membership owners on Kajabi, Teachable or Thinkific, with shorter notes for Podia, Circle and Skool. It covers which questions an AI support agent should answer or hand off, where its code goes and which plan allows it, what to train it on, how far Stripe can safely go, and launch week. For high-ticket programs sold through discovery calls, see the guide for coaches and consultants.

Every menu path, plan rule and price below was read on the platform's own help center or pricing page on 19 October 2026, in US dollars. The steps use PepoChat, our AI support agent, which works on its free plan; any widget that installs with one script tag goes in the same places.

What do students ask a course chatbot, and what should it hand off?

Students and buyers ask about access, refunds, billing, certificates, schedules and technical problems, plus which program fits. An AI support agent, a chat assistant that answers from your own content, runs defined actions and hands the conversation to a person when it should, can answer whatever your published pages answer. Account changes, judgement calls and money belong with you.

The agent explains; you decide. A refund policy is an answer, while approving a refund is a decision. PepoChat has no prebuilt connection to Kajabi, Teachable or Thinkific, so the agent cannot see who is enrolled, reset a password or unlock a lesson.

When the agent cannot help, human handoff moves the conversation to your team inbox and emails your team "A visitor needs a person" with the last three messages. Students are not emailed when you reply in the inbox, so answer with the email's Reply by email button or the address the agent collected. The human handoff docs describe each mode.

Where does the chatbot code go on each course platform?

On Kajabi, Teachable, Thinkific, Podia and Circle, the script goes in a site-wide custom code setting; Skool has none. The plan rules differ more than the menus do.

Last verified 19 October 2026 on each platform's help center and pricing page, with Thinkific's pricing re-checked on 23 October 2026; prices are per month in US dollars.

Kajabi, Teachable, Thinkific and Podia take the same HTML snippet from Widget Setup in the PepoChat dashboard, with your Organization ID, the 32-character code that ties the widget to your workspace, already filled in:

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

Kajabi and Teachable put site-wide code in the page head, not just before </body> as PepoChat's install docs suggest. Head placement still works: the loader, 3,387 bytes gzipped (measured 23 October 2026), waits until the page's HTML has been read before it draws the launcher. The script tag guide explains the loader in detail.

Then add your school's addresses to the allowed-domains list under Widget Customization, the sites where your widget may start a conversation: the address your platform gave you, such as yourschool.teachable.com, and your own domain. Subdomains are included automatically, so never add a platform's bare domain, which would let every school hosted there spend your AI replies.

How do I add a chatbot to Kajabi?

Paste the snippet into Settings → Site details → Page scripts → Header Page Scripts and click Save. According to Kajabi's custom code help article, code in that field goes into the head of every page except offer checkout pages and upsell pages.

1. In PepoChat, open Widget Setup, choose HTML and copy the snippet.
2. In Kajabi, open Settings from the Dashboard.
3. Under Site settings, click Site details.
4. Under Page scripts, paste the snippet into Header Page Scripts.
5. Click Save, then open your site in a private window and click the launcher.

Kajabi's help ties no plan to Header Page Scripts; only the template code editor is Pro-only. Basic, the cheapest plan, costs $143 a month billed yearly or $179 monthly.

For one landing page only, add a Custom Code block to that page instead. Kajabi says the block needs <script> tags, which the snippet already has, while the Custom JavaScript panel on a page's Settings tab must not contain them.

How do I add a chatbot to Teachable?

Paste the snippet into Site → Code Snippets → Head Code Snippets and click Save. Teachable's Code Snippets article, dated 29 January 2026, limits the feature to the Builder plan and above and names chat widgets among its intended uses.

1. In PepoChat, open Widget Setup, choose HTML and copy the snippet.
2. Log in to your Teachable school and select Site.
3. Click Code Snippets.
4. Paste the snippet into Head Code Snippets for everyone, or into Logged Out Snippets or Logged In Snippets for one audience.
5. Click Save, then check the site in a private window and again signed in as a student.

The two audience fields suit a course business: Logged Out Snippets shows the agent only to visitors who are not signed in, such as prospects on sales pages, and Logged In Snippets only to signed-in students. Teachable's head snippets do not run on SSO login or checkout pages at sso.teachable.com.

Teachable's Builder plan costs $89 a month, or $69 billed yearly. Starter ($39, or $29 billed yearly) has no code snippets, so on Starter link a "Chat with us" button to PepoChat's hosted chat page, described in the Skool section below.

How do I add a chatbot to Thinkific?

Paste the snippet into Settings → Code & Analytics → Site Footer Code and click Save. To reach students inside the Learner Hub and the new Course Player too, tick Also run this code on the learner hub and new course player, which is off by default.

1. In PepoChat, open Widget Setup, choose HTML and copy the snippet.
2. In your Thinkific admin dashboard, go to Settings.
3. Select the Code & Analytics tab.
4. Paste the snippet into Site Footer Code, and tick the learner hub checkbox if students should see the chat inside their courses.
5. Click Save, then check the public site and, signed in as a learner, the Learner Hub.

Thinkific's Site Footer Code article, updated 29 June 2026, lists every paid plan, from the older Basic plan to today's Start, Grow, Expand and Plus. Thinkific has no free plan, only a 30-day trial, and its pricing page no longer shows Basic: the cheapest plan, Start, costs $109 a month or $82 billed yearly as of 23 October 2026. The code skips Performance Checkout pages, community pages where students post, and direct messages.

Thinkific's Learner Hub article, updated 16 October 2026, says chat tools that draw their own window usually work there. Thinkific also lists an AI teaching assistant for learners on its sales-priced Plus plan.

Can you add a chatbot to Podia, Circle or Skool?

Podia and Circle take the snippet with some limits; Skool has no custom code setting, so its members reach the agent through a link.

Podia

Go to Admin → Settings → Analytics, click Edit next to Third-party code, paste the snippet into Website tracking code and save. Podia's third-party code article, dated 20 July 2026, adds the code before </body> on public pages and checkout, but never in logged-in areas such as the customer Home Feed, so enrolled students will not see the launcher. Custom code is unavailable during the 14-day trial; Mover, the cheapest paid plan, costs $42 a month billed yearly or $49 monthly.

Circle

Click Website, then Code snippets, and paste the JavaScript version of the snippet into JavaScript code snippets. Circle's code snippets article, updated October 2026, says Circle adds the script tags itself, and its pricing page includes snippets on every plan, from Professional at $89 a month billed yearly.

(function () {
  var script = document.createElement("script");
  script.src = "https://widget.pepochat.com/widget.js";
  script.async = true;
  script.setAttribute("data-organization-id", "YOUR_ORGANIZATION_ID");
  document.head.appendChild(script);
})();

The code is PepoChat's JavaScript snippet with one change: it attaches the loader to the page head instead of the body, so it works wherever Circle runs the field. Circle's own AI agents start on its $419-a-month Scale plan, billed yearly.

Skool

Skool has no custom code setting. Its help center describes plugins for membership questions, AutoDM, Zapier, webhooks, Meta pixel and Google Ads tracking and group-card links, and none of them runs your own script.

Use PepoChat's hosted chat page instead: your agent on its own page at https://widget.pepochat.com/full?organizationId=YOUR_ORGANIZATION_ID, with the same answers, booking and handoff as the widget. Add it as a group-card link (the Links plugin is on Skool's Pro plan and shows links to members only), post it in the community and put it in welcome emails. With an allowed-domains list, first switch on Allow the hosted chat page on the Widget Setup card, or the page shows the not-allowed error. The same link serves Teachable Starter, Podia trials and Podia's logged-in Home Feed.

What should a course chatbot be trained on?

Train it on what you would send a buyer before they ask. The knowledge base is the collection of pages, files and Q&A pairs the agent searches before every reply; it answers from what it finds and offers a person when it finds nothing.

• Sales pages with the price, payment plan, what is included, the guarantee and the start date.
• An FAQ in plain sentences, such as "Live calls are on Tuesdays at 6 p.m. New York time, with replays within 24 hours."
• A public course outline listing modules, bonuses and downloads.
• Policies and login help: the refund window, certificates, how long access lasts, your platform's login address and the password reset steps.
• Which-program Q&A pairs, such as "I'm a complete beginner, where do I start?", each naming the course you recommend and why.

A website crawl takes up to 200 pages, 3 levels deep, and counts as one knowledge source, the unit your plan's source limit counts. The Free plan allows five sources, and Q&A pairs count as none. Pages are re-fetched weekly, and Sync website pages refreshes them on demand the day a price or bonus changes. The guide to training a chatbot on your website and PDFs walks through the imports.

Can the chatbot check a student's Stripe payment?

Only when your subscriptions bill through a Stripe account you can create an API key for. PepoChat's Stripe integration has three prebuilt actions: Find Stripe customer looks up the customer by the email they paid with, Check subscription status reports the plan name, amount, interval, status, renewal date and any scheduled cancellation, and Cancel subscription at period end runs only after an explicit request and a confirmation.

Course platforms often bill students through their own payment systems. Kajabi Payments manages subscriptions in the Kajabi Dashboard instead of a separate login, while Kajabi offers billed through a Stripe account you connected keep their subscriptions there. Teachable Payments pays out through a Stripe Express account and gives students a Stripe Customer Portal, linked from its billing emails; with Teachable's custom payment gateway, your own Stripe account takes the payments but Teachable's system manages the subscriptions. The quick test: search your Stripe Dashboard for one student's email. If the subscription is not there, the Stripe action cannot see it either.

If the subscriptions are there, set the integration up narrowly:

• Use a restricted key with read access to Customers and Subscriptions, plus write access to Subscriptions only if you switch on cancellation.
• Remember that lookups are not gated by email verification. Anyone who types a student's email can hear that plan and renewal date. Asking for a verified visitor, one who proved their email with a six-digit code, in the action's "when to use" text only makes the agent ask: it is not told whether the visitor finished verifying, so trim the returned fields.
• Expect one subscription per answer: when a customer has several, only the most recent is read.
• Test cancellation in test mode, because the cancel action's Test button performs a real cancellation.

Refunds are never actions. PepoChat runs actions at least once, so a rare retry can repeat a write: harmless for a period-end cancel, a double refund for a refund. The agent explains your policy and hands the request to you. The Stripe subscriptions guide and the identity verification guide go deeper.

How do you keep a course chatbot sounding like you?

Write a short persona in How to sound and behave (up to 4,000 characters), put your hard limits in Never do this (up to 2,000), and test both in the Test the agent drawer before students see them. The agent instructions docs list what the two fields can and cannot change.

You are the AI assistant for Bright Lines Academy, where Priya Shah teaches watercolor to beginners.
Warm, encouraging and brief: two or three sentences, then the next step.
Call Priya by her first name and never claim to be her.
When someone asks which course to take, ask about their experience first, then recommend from the course guide.
For login or payment trouble, give the steps from the help page, then offer to pass the conversation to Priya.

Never promise a refund, an extension or a discount. Explain the policy and hand the request to the team.
Never quote a price, bonus or deadline that is not on the sales page.
Never promise results, income or career outcomes.
Never give feedback on a student's work; point to office hours or the community.

Persona text shapes tone and wording; facts still come only from the knowledge base. The base rules win whatever you write: the agent searches your content first, never invents an answer, offers a person when it cannot help and escalates when a visitor asks. Naming the assistant "Priya's AI assistant" rather than "Priya" keeps students' trust, and the guide to writing support chatbot instructions has twelve more examples.

Test chats are free, do not count toward your monthly AI replies and stay out of analytics, so ask every question from the table above before launch. Bookings, integration actions and emails in a test chat still run for real, which matters for the Stripe cancel action.

How do you run a course chatbot through launch week?

Prepare the answers before the cart opens, route leads and escalations to where you already work, and decide who answers when the agent hands a student over.

1. A week before cart open, import the sales page, FAQ and schedule, and add Q&A pairs for price, payment plan, guarantee, start date and access length.
2. Write the greeting and up to three suggested questions, naming the jobs: "I'm Priya's AI assistant. I can explain the courses, the payment plan and the refund policy."
3. Turn on lead capture and a notification channel. Ask for contact details when the agent needs a follow-up or before a handoff; new leads post to Slack or a signed webhook on any plan, or email your team on Starter and Growth, per the lead notification docs.
4. Set Team availability. A solo creator picks "No one answers live chat, we follow up by email", so the agent never promises a person and asks once for an email; a team with a virtual assistant on shift picks "My team answers during business hours".
5. Offer calls for the expensive program. Connect a PepoSmart calendar and switch on a discovery-call meeting type with a "when to offer this" note; paid event types are never offered by the agent.
6. On cart close, update the sales page and click Sync website pages, or add a Q&A pair saying enrollment is closed and where the waitlist is.

Plan the reply budget too. A visitor session starts only when someone opens the chat, so page views cost nothing; what counts is AI replies, one per answer the agent writes. The Free plan includes 200 a month, after which new conversations go to your team inbox; Starter, at $49 a month, includes 2,000 and bills $10 per 1,000 beyond that. The conversation sizing guide turns traffic into a reply estimate, and the lead generation guide covers email capture.

Through cart-open days, check escalated conversations in the team inbox first: those students are waiting on you.

Schools, tutoring centers and admissions offices have their own privacy rules for minors; see AI chatbots for schools and tutoring centers.

What to do next

• Find your platform in the table above, paste the snippet and add your school's addresses to the allowed-domains list; the website builders page covers other site builders.
• Write the login help page and the which-program answers, then work through the AI chatbot launch checklist before cart open.
• Create a free PepoChat workspace: every feature apart from new-lead emails is on the free plan, with 200 AI replies a month and 5 knowledge sources.