Joinchat – Enhanced "click to chat" vs LobbyChat

Turn conversations into conversions Joinchat is the most installed plugin for WhatsApp: a customizable floating button that turns your visitors into chats, leads and sales. Built for conversion from the very first click: eye-catching CTAs, dynamic start messages, native WooCommerce integration and built-in analytics to measure every conversation. 🌍 Joinchat, the global leader in WhatsApp click to chat 🗺️ Present in more than 176 countries 🏆 #1 chat solution in: 🇦🇷 Argentina 🇨🇴 Colombia 🇧🇷 Brazil 🇪🇸 Spain 🇳🇱 Netherlands 🇲🇽 Mexico 🇨🇱 Chile 🇵🇪 Peru 🇵🇹 Portugal Source: BuiltWith® What you get with Joinchat A complete WhatsApp conversion toolkit for WordPress, designed to capture more leads and close more sales. Floating WhatsApp button that opens the WhatsApp app on mobile, and on desktop launches WhatsApp Desktop or WhatsApp Web and shows a scannable QR code. Eye-catching CTAs to greet visitors, present offers and start the chat with the right message. Dynamic start messages so every conversation arrives with full context (the page, the product, the price, the discount…). WooCommerce integration, with a contact button next to “Add to cart” and shop-specific CTAs. Analytics built in — 🆕 — Clicks counter in your WordPress dashboard. Events for Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager and Facebook Pixel, plus Google Ads conversions. Lightweight and fast — JavaScript with no dependencies and lazy-loaded styles. No render-blocking. Customizable site-wide or at the page, product, category, etc. level. 🛡️ Say goodbye to the fear of WhatsApp bans Many companies lose their WhatsApp Business number for contacting customers first without consent. Joinchat flips the model: the visitor writes first, so every conversation starts aligned with WhatsApp’s official policies. The result: your business number protected and your customers reaching out when they need to, not the other way around. With Joinchat, you can unlock the full potential of WhatsApp’s “click to chat” feature. Take Joinchat further with Premium and AI Joinchat Free is just the start. Premium and AI unlock its full conversion potential. 💬 Add more support channels — extend beyond WhatsApp with Telegram, Facebook Messenger, phone calls and more, all from the same widget. 🕒 Multi-agent with custom schedules — assign chats to the right person at the right time. Each agent works their own hours and only takes chats when available, and you can set an alternative CTA when no agents are online. 🔁 Add a Chat Funnel — guided conversational flows that qualify and capture leads automatically with higher conversion than a form, 24/7, even when no one is at the desk. ✨ Add an AI agent — trained on your FAQs and website content. Answers visitors instantly, anytime, with the tone and knowledge you define. 👉 Get Joinchat Premium | 👉 Get Joinchat AI 📝 Settings at page or archive level You can change main settings on every Post, Page, Product or CPT and for Tag or Category archive pages. Edit your WhatsApp number, CTA, Start Message and Visibility options. 🔴 Show a notification Use a balloon on the button to get the visitor’s attention. In this way, you ensure that you do not miss any important message you want to give them, surprise them in a less intrusive way. 📯 Create call-to-action messages CTAs with Rich Chat: multiple chat bubbles with links, buttons, images or random text. Encourage users to contact you with a welcome message, offering help or promotions and offers. Read more 💬 Customize conversation start messages Defines a pre-loaded initial message for when the user contacts via WhatsApp. Add context with our “Dynamic Variables” and you will know what page the visitor is coming from or what product they are looking at when they start the chat. ✅ Opt-in text Opt-in is a users’ consent to receive messages from a business. Write a text with the conditions under which the visitor contacts you (or other info that you consider important). You can make it mandatory and disable contact until the user accepts it. 🛒 Integration with WooCommerce Set CTAs and Start Messages for shop page, product pages and for products on sale. Add a WhatsApp Contact Button directly on your product page next to the “Add to cart” button or choose the best position, even on products without a price. 🧩 WhatsApp Contact Button Block Add beautiful and customizable WhatsApp contact buttons in the Block Editor. You can define phone and initial message of the button or use the post/general Joinchat settings (ideal for Reusable Blocks). Enable QR Code on desktop to allow your visitors to scan it and start messaging from their phone. 🃏 Dynamic Variables Use variables in your CTAs and Start Messages that change dynamically for each page: {SITE} ➡ Website title {TITLE} ➡ Current page title {HOME} ➡ Website home url {URL} ➡ Current page url {HREF} ➡ Current page url (full with query params) {PRODUCT} ➡ Product name (Woo) {SKU} ➡ Product SKU (Woo) {REGULAR} ➡ Product regular price (Woo) {PRICE} ➡ Product current price (Woo) {DISCOUNT} ➡ Product percent discount when is on sale (Woo) 📈 Analytics Integration Automatically send events to Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and Facebook Pixel when the user opens WhatsApp. — 🆕 — Clicks counter in your WordPress dashboard Google Analytics 4 send the recommended "generate_lead" event Google Tag Manager send "JoinChat" event Facebook Pixel send "JoinChat" event Google Ads conversion, just add your Conversion ID and Conversion Label You can also create your own custom events or add event parameters. View FAQs / Read more 🍾 Chat Triggers Any element in your page can be a chat trigger, eg: it can launch WhatsApp from a link or show the Joinchat CTA when the user scrolls to the footer. On page load (by url): url query param joinchat to show chat window. Can set delay in seconds, default is 0 (e.g. example.com/page/?joinchat=5) url query hash #joinchat to show chat window (e.g. example.com/page/#joinchat) On click: class "joinchat_app" direct launch WhatsApp class "joinchat_open" opens Joinchat CTA link href "#whatsapp" direct launch WhatsApp link href "#joinchat" opens Joinchat CTA Set custom phone and initial message for direct WhatsApp triggers: data-phone="99999999" data-message="Only for this trigger message". On scroll (when element appears on screen): class "joinchat_show" opens Joinchat CTA (first time) class "joinchat_force_show" opens Joinchat CTA (always) 💱 Multi-Language & RTL Support To be able to support all your users, wherever they are. Our plugin is compatible with WPML, Polylang and — 🆕 — TranslatePress and also RTL languages are supported. 🌈 Theme Colors & 🌚 Dark Mode You choose a color and we customize the entire visual theme of the widget. With Dark Mode display the chat window with dark colors and white text. From settings you can activate it or leave it automatic and detects devices’ configuration. ⚡ Fast & Light Only load what need when needed. Joinchat is lightweight and follow best coding practices. Use vanilla JavaScript without dependencies, deferred scripts and lazy load of styles to prevent render-blocking. See Tests Report and Speed Score. 🔕 No distractions Joinchat integrates with all major Visual Editors and Page Builders and will not appear when editing a page. Supported editors: Beaver Builder, Brizy Page Builder, Elementor, Oxygen Builder, Page Builder by SiteOrigin, Thrive Architect, Visual Composer and WP Page Builder. 🍪 Cookies & GDPR Joinchat can be used without any cookies. But to automatically display the CTA, two cookies are necessary. They are first-party cookies and don’t collect personal data. Joinchat integrates with WordPress’s Privacy Policy Guide and suggests the necessary text. 👨‍💻 Developer friendly Fully extensible, with lots of filters and actions to extend its functionality or change behavior. Documentation ⌁ If you like Joinchat 😍 Please leave us a ★★★★★ rating. We’ll thank you. Help us with the translation in your language Visit our blog and find tips and tricks at join.chat. Follow @joinchatnow on X. Join chat now!

LobbyChat is a lightweight live-chat shoutbox you can drop into any WordPress page or sidebar with a single shortcode. Built for communities — fan sites, forums, fandoms, classrooms, internal teams — where you want a casual, always-on group chat without bolting on Slack or Discord. What you get Live chat feed with auto-refresh (configurable polling interval — no WebSocket server required) Guest posting — visitors can chat with just a display name, no signup wall Emoji reactions on every message — 👍 ❤️ 😂 🔥 🎉 Link previews for YouTube and any URL with Open Graph tags @mention highlighting — @username gets visually picked out Pinned messages — moderators can pin one important message above the feed Online presence — live count of members, guests, and search-engine bots in the room Moderator role — add a “LobbyChat Moderator” role to any user for pin/delete powers Reporting + auto-hide — 5 reports on a message and it’s hidden automatically Word blocklist for basic profanity filtering Rate limiting built in — separate cooldowns for guests vs members Fullscreen mode + collapse toggle Sound notification for new messages (toggleable per-visitor) Mobile responsive Optional: AI Chat Companion LobbyChat ships with an optional AI bot you can drop into your chat. The bot uses your own API keys — you bring your own Google Gemini key (the free tier works) or OpenAI key. The plugin does not route requests through any third-party server. Bring-your-own-key — Gemini (free tier) or OpenAI (paid) Configurable persona — name, system prompt, custom personality Smart triggers — replies to @mentions always; questions usually; random messages occasionally (all configurable) Hard rate limits — daily and hourly caps protect against runaway API costs Active-hours window — bot only chats during the hours you specify One-click test in the admin to verify the bot can post Privacy & data LobbyChat does not call any third-party server by default. The only network calls are: Fetching link previews when a user shares a URL (request goes from your server to that URL) Calling Google Gemini or OpenAI only if you explicitly enable the AI bot and provide an API key No telemetry, no analytics, no “phone home.” All data lives in your own wp_lobbychat* tables. Try it live See LobbyChat running in production at bejaunty.com/plugins/lobbychat. Roadmap LobbyChat is the free, standalone version. Premium add-ons with gaming-community features — looking-for-group buttons, platform tags, profile-card integration, and richer moderation tools — are in development. Updates and announcements at bejaunty.com. Support development LobbyChat is free and developed in spare time. If it helps your community, you can support development at wise.com/pay/me/asadk372. Every bit is appreciated. ♥ Usage After activating, drop this shortcode into any page, post, or text widget: [lobbychat] Then visit Settings → LobbyChat to configure rate limits, blocklist, and other options. For the AI bot, see Settings → LobbyChat AI Bot. Developer hooks LobbyChat exposes several filters and actions for theme/plugin developers: lobbychat_after_send — action, fires after a message is saved. do_action('lobbychat_after_send', $user_id, $message_id, $row) — the third arg is the database row object. lobbychat_profile_url — filter, override the URL linked from a username (default: WP author archive) lobbychat_allowed_reactions — filter, override the array of allowed reaction emoji lobbychat_report_threshold — filter, change the auto-hide report threshold (default: 5) lobbychat_emoji_set — filter, customize the array of emoji shown in the picker External services This plugin does not connect to any external service by default. Two optional features may, only when explicitly enabled by the site administrator, contact third-party services: 1. Link previews When the link-sharing feature is enabled (Settings → LobbyChat → “Allow link sharing”, which is on by default), and a logged-in user shares a URL in chat, the plugin’s server fetches that URL once to extract Open Graph / Twitter / metadata for a preview card. What is sent: The HTTP request from your server to the URL the user pasted. The request user-agent identifies as LobbyChatBot/1.0 and includes a link back to your site. When: Only at the moment a user posts a message containing a URL. What is received and stored: Title, description, and image URL extracted from the page’s metadata. Stored in the chat message row in your database. Special handling for YouTube URLs: YouTube URLs are first sent to YouTube’s public oEmbed endpoint (https://www.youtube.com/oembed) to retrieve title and author info. YouTube’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy apply. This feature can be fully disabled by un-checking “Allow link sharing” in plugin settings. 2. Optional AI chat companion When the AI bot is explicitly enabled by the administrator (Settings → LobbyChat AI Bot → “Enable bot”, which is off by default) and the administrator has provided their own API key for one or both of the providers below, chat messages are sent to that provider for the bot to generate replies. Google Gemini API (https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/) * What it is: Google’s generative AI service, used here to produce conversational chat replies. * What is sent: Up to 6 most recent chat messages (sender display name + message text), the bot’s system prompt, and the administrator’s Gemini API key. * When: Only when the administrator has enabled the bot AND a chat message satisfies the bot’s reply-trigger rules (mention, question, or random chance — all configurable). * Terms and privacy: Google APIs Terms of Service, Gemini API Additional Terms, Google Privacy Policy. OpenAI API (https://api.openai.com/) * What it is: OpenAI’s chat completions API, used here as a fallback when Gemini fails or as the primary if only an OpenAI key is configured. * What is sent: Same as Gemini above (recent messages + system prompt + administrator’s OpenAI API key). * When: Same conditions as Gemini above. * Terms and privacy: OpenAI Terms of Use, OpenAI API Data Usage Policies, OpenAI Privacy Policy. The AI bot is disabled by default and will not contact any external service unless the administrator explicitly enables it and provides an API key. 3. Optional Cloudflare Turnstile spam protection When Turnstile is explicitly enabled by the administrator (Settings → LobbyChat → Spam protection, off by default) and a site key and secret key are provided, the plugin uses Cloudflare’s Turnstile service to verify that the person posting is not a bot. Cloudflare Turnstile (https://challenges.cloudflare.com/) * What it is: Cloudflare’s privacy-focused CAPTCHA alternative, used here to block automated spam before a message is posted. * What is sent: When a user submits a message, the Turnstile token generated in their browser plus the user’s IP address are sent from your server to Cloudflare’s siteverify endpoint, along with your secret key, to confirm the token is valid. The browser-side widget also loads Cloudflare’s api.js script from challenges.cloudflare.com. * When: Only when Turnstile is enabled and a user attempts to post a message (optionally limited to guests only). * Terms and privacy: Cloudflare Website Terms of Use, Cloudflare Privacy Policy. Turnstile is disabled by default and will not contact any external service unless the administrator explicitly enables it and provides their own keys.