How to add an AI chatbot to WordPress

Before you start

Decide what the chatbot is for. Answering common questions, collecting leads and pointing people to the right page are good first jobs. Then gather what it should learn from: your service pages, FAQ, prices, hours and policies. A chatbot only knows what you give it, so out-of-date pages turn into out-of-date answers.

You also need admin access to your WordPress site and an account with a chatbot builder. This guide uses Chatbase (affiliate link), which trains a chatbot on your own content and has an official WordPress plugin. Its prices are further down.

Step 1: Build and train the chatbot

1. In your Chatbase dashboard, click New AI Agent.
2. Add what it should learn from. It can crawl your website, read files you upload, use text you paste in, take your own questions and answers, or connect to Notion pages.
3. Click Create Agent. Chatbase says training usually takes 2 to 5 minutes.
4. Under Build, then Instructions, tell it how to behave: its tone, its job, and topics it should stay away from.
5. Test it in the Playground with the questions your customers really ask.

Step 2, option A: Add it with the Chatbase plugin

1. In WordPress, go to Plugins, then Add New Plugin.
2. Search for Chatbase, click Install Now, then Activate.
3. Go to Settings, then Chatbase, and find the Agent ID box.
4. In Chatbase, open your agent, click Settings, and on the General tab copy the Agent ID from the Agent details card.
5. Paste it into WordPress and click Save Changes.

One caution: when I checked on October 13, 2026, the plugin’s WordPress.org page showed version 1.0.4, last updated two years earlier, with a warning that it hasn’t been tested with the latest three major WordPress releases. It may work fine, but try it on a staging copy of your site first, or use option B.

Step 2, option B: Paste the embed script

You can skip the plugin and add Chatbase’s embed script yourself, the way you’d add any site-wide script.

1. In Chatbase, go to Channels, click Manage on the Chat bubble card, open Deploy and copy the embed script.
2. In WordPress, paste the script into your site’s footer, just before the closing </body> tag. A small header and footer code plugin does this safely, and several free ones are in the plugin directory.
3. Save, then open your site in a private window and check that the chat bubble shows up.

Chatbase suggests the end of the page so your content loads first and the chat bubble after it. Don’t paste the script straight into your theme’s files unless you use a child theme, because a theme update can wipe it out.

Step 3: Turn it on and match your brand

Make sure the agent is enabled in Chatbase. A disabled agent only works for members of your Chatbase workspace, so visitors won’t see it. To change the look, go to Channels, click Manage on the Chat bubble card and open the Display tab. It covers the welcome content, colors, the floating bubble and languages.

Check these before visitors use it

• Ask it hard questions. Try prices, refunds, things you don’t offer, and questions your site doesn’t answer. It should say it doesn’t know rather than make something up.
• Give people a way to reach a person. Chatbase can hand a chat to someone on your team through its own helpdesk and live chat, or open a ticket in a helpdesk you already use.
• Collect leads on purpose. If you want names and emails, turn on its lead collection action instead of hoping visitors type them in.
• Update your privacy policy. Visitors’ messages go to Chatbase, so say so.
• Check your page speed. A chat widget is one more script on every page.
• Clear your cache. If you use a caching plugin and the bubble doesn’t appear, clear the cache before anything else.

What Chatbase costs

Chatbase’s pricing page doesn’t list a free plan. Hobby, Standard and Pro each start with a 7-day trial (prices checked October 13, 2026):

• Hobby: $40 a month, or $384 a year billed yearly, with 700 message credits a month and 2 members.
• Standard: $150 a month, or $1,440 a year, with 4,000 message credits, 3 members, a helpdesk, voice and API access.
• Pro: $500 a month, or $4,800 a year, with 15,000 message credits and 5 members.
• Enterprise: custom pricing.

Each plan includes one AI agent, and extra agents are $25 a month each. Credits reset on the first of every calendar month. How many credits a reply uses depends on the AI model, and a reply that runs an action, like checking a calendar for open slots, uses more. The chat window shows “Powered by Chatbase” unless you pay $99 a month to remove it. Chatbase says it doesn’t use customer data to train AI models.