Managing your chat widget settings lets you control whether site visitors — people who don’t have an account — can start conversations with you through your site.

In this article, you'll learn how to manage your chat settings.

Chat

Chat settings let you control how you and your members use Chat across your account.

You can decide whether members can message one another, only message you, or access Chat at all. The following options are available:

Everyone can chat

You and your members can start conversations with one another.
Members can find you and other members through Chat unless someone has chosen to hide their profile.
- Hidden profiles cannot be found by you or other members even if chat is enabled.

Only you can chat

You can start conversations with any member.
Members can access the Chat page and start conversations with you and any assistants, but they can’t start new conversations with other members.
Existing member-to-member conversations will be hidden so members won't be able to continue their interactions or reply to existing messages.

No one can chat

Chat is disabled for you and your members.
The Chat page is hidden from members, so they can’t access existing conversations or reply to messages.
The Chat page will also be hidden from you if visitor chat is turned off.

Managing chat settings

Here's how to manage chat settings for logged-in members and control who can chat with each other:

From your home feed, click on your site name and select Admin from the dropdown menu.
From your Admin dashboard, click Settings in the sidebar menu.
Click Edit next to the Chat option.
Pick one of the available chat options:
- Everyone can chat: You and your members can chat with each other.
- Only you can chat: Members are only able to chat with you. You can chat with all your members.
- No one can chat: No one will be able to start chats.

Visitor chat

If visitor chat is enabled, people can start a conversation with you by clicking the chat bubble in the bottom-right corner of your site pages.

Visitor chat only controls whether site visitors (people without a Podia account) can contact you through the chat widget. It does not affect logged-in members.

This can be a great way to connect with potential customers, answer questions about your offers, and help visitors make purchasing decisions.

The chat widget appears across your site pages, making it easy for both visitors and logged-out users to reach out whenever they need assistance.

When visitors click the chat bubble, they can open the chat widget and start messaging you right away. They’ll also be able to reply to your messages directly within the conversation.

Inside the chat widget, visitors can see your profile name, profile picture, and online status, helping create a more personal and engaging experience.

Managing visitor chat settings

Here's how to manage your chat widget visibility settings:

From your home feed, click on your site name and select Admin from the dropdown menu.
From your Admin dashboard, click Settings in the sidebar menu.
Click Edit next to the Chat option.
Check or uncheck the "Enable chat widget to website visitors" option depending on whether you want site visitors to be able to start conversations with you through the chat widget.

FAQs

Do logged-in members see the visitor chat?

No. Visitor chat is only visible to site visitors — people who don’t have an account with you.

Logged-in members access chat via the Chat tab on their home feed instead.

Can I view information about the site visitors who start a chat with me?

You can view more details about the contact you’re chatting with by hovering your mouse over their name in the chat title.

We'll show different information depending on whether they are a visitor or a customer:

Visitor: The country they're messaging from
Customer: Their Joined and Last Seen date

How do I change the colors of the visitor chat widget?

The different colors in your visitor chat widget are affected by the values assigned to Accent 1 and Shade 3.

Accent 1: The background color of your Podia messaging icon is determined by this value.
Shade 3: This determines the color of both text inside the Messaging window and the color of the messaging icon inside the Messaging bubble.

Changing this color setting will also affect other areas of your site, including link and button colors in your emails and buttons in your product viewer pages.

If you’ve already built your site, you may need to adjust other colors to keep everything looking consistent.

Managing Chat settings