Gorgias Chat Widget Explained (Live Chat & Campaigns)

What the chat widget actually is

The widget is a single Chat integration you create inside Gorgias and then install on your storefront. One integration maps to one widget, and everything below — appearance, targeting, campaigns, offline capture — is configured on that integration. Per the Gorgias Chat documentation, you create it by giving it a name, a default language, and a location, then connecting the store where the widget should appear. On Shopify you can pick Quick install to drop the widget onto every page automatically, or install manually to place it on specific pages, on headless Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento 2, other websites, or via Google Tag Manager.

One thing worth flagging up front: Chat is not part of every Gorgias plan by default, and the more advanced proactive-messaging features sit behind the separate Convert subscription. We break the tiers down in Gorgias pricing explained, but keep it in mind as you read — some of what follows is add-on territory, and the widget preview will remind you that a live store connection is required before anything renders to real shoppers.

Appearance: making the widget look like your brand

Appearance lives under Settings → Channels → Chat → [your integration] → Appearance, with a live preview panel on the right that updates as you change settings — and helpfully shows both the business-hours and outside-hours states, plus the home and conversation views. According to Gorgias' Customize Chat Appearance guide, the settings you can control are:

• Brand color — applied to both the widget header and the launcher button; pick from the swatch or paste a custom hex code.
• Home page logo — a PNG, JPG, or GIF up to 500 KB.
• Greeting messages — separate lines for business hours and outside hours, each capped at 50 characters.
• Launcher appearance — icon only, or icon with a custom label of up to 20 characters.
• Launcher position — bottom right (the default), bottom left, top right, or top left, with horizontal and vertical pixel offsets for fine-tuning against other on-page elements.
• Chat window size — Expanded or Compact.
• Privacy policy — a rich-text field with formatting, links, and emoji.
• Agent display — whether to show agent names and profile pictures.

The 50-character greeting and 20-character launcher label are the two limits that trip people up most, so write those short. If a floating cart or cookie banner already sits bottom-right, the pixel offset is what saves you from an overlapping mess.

Targeting: deciding where and when the widget appears

There are two layers of "where." The first is install scope — Quick install puts the widget on every page; manual install lets you scope it to specific pages or specific storefronts. The second, more interesting layer is campaign targeting, which decides when a proactive message fires. Both use the same URL logic, so it's worth internalising: with the Current URL filter, an operator of "is" against / means the homepage only, while "contains" against / means every page. Everything after your domain counts toward the match.

If you're already using Gorgias Rules to automate ticket handling, think of campaign targeting as the front-of-funnel cousin: rules act on tickets after they arrive, campaigns act on visitors before a ticket exists.

Chat campaigns: proactive messages that pop up

Campaigns are automated messages that appear inside the widget based on who a visitor is, where they are, and what they're doing — a "Need help sizing?" nudge on a product page, or a "Free shipping over $50" prompt in the cart. You configure them at Convert → your chat integration → Campaigns, per the Chat Campaigns documentation.

Here's where the honest plan gating matters:

A few practical notes from the docs. Installing the Campaign bundle is mandatory — without it, "your visitors won't see any of your active campaigns," and ad blockers can suppress campaign pop-ups unless the bundle is installed. Each campaign's message supports rich text, hyperlinks, inline images, and emoji, and you can attribute it to a specific agent so it feels human. One gotcha: duplicating a campaign strips any links from the copy, so re-add them by hand. And on billing, a campaign only counts as a billable ticket when the customer actually replies — an ignored pop-up costs nothing.

Offline behaviour: what happens after hours

A chat widget is only as good as its offline manners. Gorgias handles this with Offline Capture: when Chat is offline, a shopper fills out a short form and that submission creates an email ticket in your helpdesk, so nothing gets lost overnight. Per Gorgias' automatic online/offline status docs, the widget switches to offline mode automatically in two situations: outside your business hours, or during business hours when no agent is set as Available. The separate outside-hours greeting message you set in Appearance is what shoppers see in that state — which is exactly why Gorgias gives you two greeting fields instead of one.

The clean mental model: online = live agents can pick up in real time; offline = the form quietly turns interest into an email ticket you answer later. Set your business hours accurately and keep at least one agent marked Available during them, or the widget will drop to offline while your team is actually staffed.

The honest limits — and where an AI layer picks up

Give Gorgias its due here: the chat widget is a well-built, cohesive piece of kit. Appearance, targeting, campaigns, and offline capture all live in one integration, the preview is genuinely useful, and Offline Capture means you never silently drop an after-hours shopper. For a lot of stores, that's a complete live-chat setup.

But notice what the widget config does and doesn't do. It controls presentation and routing — how the bubble looks, which pages it shows on, when a canned campaign fires, and how offline messages get captured. It does not, on its own, produce the answer. A campaign can pop "Need help with your order?" but the shopper's actual "where's #4471?" still lands as a ticket a human has to read, look up, and reply to. The richest proactive-messaging features are also add-on-gated — Chat isn't on every plan, Light Campaigns cap at three per integration, and behaviour-driven segmentation requires the paid Convert subscription. So the widget can be excellent at starting conversations while still leaving the answering entirely to your team.

That seam is where an AI agent layer fits — and it's worth understanding what a Gorgias AI agent can and can't do before you reach for one. Macha is one such layer, and it runs on top of the Gorgias you already use via a live native connector — it is not a helpdesk you switch to, and it doesn't replace your widget, your campaigns, or your macros. When a chat conversation opens — whether a shopper clicked the launcher or a campaign nudged them — Macha can read the message, resolve WISMO by looking up order status through a custom tool that wraps your fulfilment API, and draft or send a grounded reply, all inside the same Gorgias ticket the widget created. It handles returns and subscription questions the same way: reason over the real order, then answer.

One deliberate contrast worth naming. Gorgias' own AI resolutions are billed per resolution; Macha's credits are consumed per AI action — a lookup, a draft, a reply — not per outcome, which we lay out plainly on the pricing page. The point isn't that one is universally cheaper; it's that automation and orchestration produce a variable number of actions per conversation, and per-action billing tracks that reality more honestly than a flat per-resolution charge. Keep Gorgias' widget as the front door and the system of record; layer an agent on top for the reasoning the widget config can't do by itself.

FAQ

Where do I configure the Gorgias chat widget's appearance? Go to Settings → Channels → Chat → [your integration] → Appearance. There you can set the brand color (applied to the header and launcher), a home logo up to 500 KB, business-hours and outside-hours greeting messages (50 characters each), launcher position with pixel offsets, and whether to show agent names and avatars — with a live preview on the right.

How many chat campaigns can I run? Light Campaigns are available to any Helpdesk subscriber with at least one Chat integration but are limited to 3 per integration. Unlimited campaigns with granular, Shopify-based segmentation require the separate Convert subscription. You also must install the Campaign bundle, or active campaigns won't show to visitors.

What happens to the chat widget when my team is offline? The widget switches to offline mode automatically — outside your business hours, or during business hours when no agent is marked Available. Shoppers then see your outside-hours greeting and can submit the Offline Capture form, which creates an email ticket in your helpdesk so the request isn't lost.

Is Gorgias Chat included in every plan? No. Chat is not part of every Gorgias plan, and the advanced proactive features sit behind the paid Convert subscription. Check your tier — our Gorgias pricing breakdown covers what's included where.

Can I add AI to the Gorgias chat widget without replacing Gorgias? Yes. Macha connects to Gorgias as a live native connector and runs on top of your existing widget and campaigns — it doesn't replace them. It reads chat conversations, looks up order or account status through custom tools, and drafts or sends grounded replies, while Gorgias stays the system of record. Credits are consumed per AI action, not per resolution.

Ready to turn the conversations your widget starts into answers your shoppers actually get? Start a free trial of Macha and connect it to your Gorgias in minutes.