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Getting started

Go from sign-up to live chat on your website in about five minutes: create a free account, set up a workspace, paste one snippet and invite your team. Everything here is free forever — no trial, no credit card and no per-seat pricing.

Before you start: you need a way to edit your website's HTML, or access to your site builder's custom-code settings. Nothing is installed on your server — the messenger is a single script tag.

1. Create your free account

  1. Sign up. Go to https://talkingdot.com/register and enter your name, email address and a password.
  2. Confirm your email. Click the confirmation link we send to the address you signed up with.

2. Create a workspace

A workspace is one website or brand. It has its own messenger, inbox, contacts, help center and team. Right after sign-up you're asked to create your first one:

  1. Name it. Use your company or website name — visitors see it in the messenger.
  2. Add your website. Enter the address where the messenger will live, such as https://example.com. You can add more domains later.
  3. Pick a color, then continue. The color becomes the messenger's brand color. You can change it at any time.

Need chat on another site or brand later? You can create more workspaces from the dashboard, and each one has its own settings.

3. Customize the messenger

Open Settings → Messenger to make the messenger look like part of your site:

  • Brand color and theme: your color plus a light, dark or automatic theme.
  • Launcher: put it on the left or right and optionally add launcher text such as "Chat with us".
  • Greeting: the welcome message visitors see when they open the messenger.
  • Team avatars and logo: show the faces of the people who reply, and your logo.

The messenger is available in 15 languages, including right-to-left Arabic. Because it renders inside a Shadow DOM, your site's CSS can't break its layout and its styles can't leak into your page.

4. Install the snippet

Open Settings → Install and copy your snippet. It already contains your workspace key and looks like this:

HTML
<script src="https://talkingdot.com/widget.js" data-key="YOUR_WORKSPACE_KEY" async></script>

Paste it just before the closing </body> tag on every page, usually once in your site's shared footer or layout. Because the script is async, it also works in <head> and never slows down page rendering. Follow the guide for your platform:

No website yet? Every workspace also has a hosted chat page at https://talkingdot.com/chat/YOUR_WORKSPACE_KEY. Share that link in email signatures, social bios and link-in-bio pages, or turn it into a QR code. Nothing needs to be installed.

5. Invite your teammates

  1. Open Settings → Team. Invite people by email. There's no limit on teammates and no extra cost.
  2. Choose a role for each person. Owners and admins manage settings. Agents work in the inbox.
  3. Optional: group people into teams. Use Settings → Teams for groups such as Sales or Support, and Settings → Assignment to share new conversations out by round-robin or by workload.

6. Set your office hours

Open Settings → Office hours and enter the days and times your team is online, in your time zone. Outside those hours the messenger switches to away mode. Visitors still write in, and they see when you'll be back and how quickly you usually reply. See Office hours & away mode for the details.

7. Send a test message

  1. Open your website in a private (incognito) window. The launcher bubble appears in the bottom-right corner, or on whichever side you chose.
  2. Send a message as a visitor. It shows up in your Inbox right away.
  3. Reply from the Inbox. Your reply appears in the visitor's window, with typing indicators and a "Seen" receipt.

Settings → Install also shows when the messenger was last seen on your site. If the launcher doesn't appear, the troubleshooting section of Install on any website covers the usual causes.

Optional: go further

  • Chatbot: in Automation → Chatbots, greet visitors with buttons, collect an email address or a few answers, and hand off to your team. See Chatbots.
  • Help center: write articles under Help center. They get a public help site, and visitors can search them inside the messenger. See Help center.
  • Saved replies: add answers to common questions in Settings → Saved replies, then type / in the reply box to insert one.
  • Notifications: in your account settings, turn on desktop and browser push notifications (the dashboard can be installed as an app) and choose which emails you get.
  • Proactive messages: start conversations based on page, time on page or country with Automation → Auto messages. See Proactive messages.
  • Slack, Discord or Telegram: get new-conversation alerts where your team already works. See Slack, Discord & Telegram.

What's next

Last updated October 3, 2026 Something unclear? Tell us