AI Chatbot for E-commerce: FAQ

How much does Emporiqa cost?

Free to start. Every new store gets $25 of signup credit and no card is asked for at signup. That covers about 100 conversations at $0.25 each. When the credit runs out you are prompted to add a card to keep the chat running, billed at $0.25 per conversation with a $59/month cap by default that you can raise or lower. AI model costs are inside that rate: no separate AI bill, no API key of your own to manage. Two plans exist, pay-as-you-go and a custom Enterprise contract for high volume, and every feature is on both, including unlimited team members.

See full pricing

When does a conversation count?

A conversation counts only when a shopper writes to the chat. An open widget or an unanswered greeting costs nothing. Multiple messages within the same session count as one conversation, and if the same shopper starts more than one chat within an hour you are charged once, not once per chat. Otherwise a new conversation starts after 24 hours of inactivity.

Is there a free trial?

There is no trial deadline to run out. Sign up with no card. Every new store gets $25 of credit as soon as it is created, about 100 conversations at $0.25 each, and the credit does not expire while your store is active. When it runs out you are prompted to add a card to keep the chat running. If you do not, the widget pauses on the storefront and your data is preserved; add a card any time to resume.

What happens when I hit my monthly cap?

The chat pauses on your storefront for the rest of the billing period and resumes automatically when the new period starts. You set the cap in your billing dashboard (default $59/month, raise or lower it whenever you want). Email alerts fire at 80%, 100% and 150% of the cap, so you have time to raise it if you need more headroom. If you have not added a card yet because your signup credit has not run out, you are prompted to add one before any charge is made.

Can someone abuse the chat or run up my bill with bot traffic?

Every entry point into the chat is rate limited, on the storefront widget and on the webhooks your plugin sends. The limits run across several time windows, so a burst and a slow flood both get caught. Ordinary browsing stays well under them. Your monthly spending cap sits behind that as a second ceiling. Reach it and the chat pauses until the next billing cycle.

Which e-commerce platforms does Emporiqa work with?

Five platforms have a native plugin: WooCommerce, Drupal Commerce, Sylius, Magento 2 / Adobe Commerce, and PrestaShop. Shopware 6 installs today via Composer and GitHub. Any other platform, including a store built in-house, connects by sending product and page data to our API and embedding the widget with one script tag.

Does Emporiqa work with Shopify?

No. Shopify has a closed app ecosystem with a 20% revenue share and a built-in chat tool (Shopify Inbox). Emporiqa focuses on self-hosted platforms where stores have more control: WooCommerce, Drupal Commerce, Magento, PrestaShop, Sylius, and Shopware 6.

Do I need a developer to set this up?

For the five platforms with a native plugin, no. You install the plugin, click Connect to Emporiqa in your admin, and run the first sync. On WooCommerce, Magento and PrestaShop that Connect step links the store for you, with no Store ID or Connection Secret to paste. A developer helps with custom field mapping, or with the API route on a platform we have no plugin for. Setup is included on every plan.

Will it slow down or break my store?

No, on both counts. Every native plugin sends catalog changes in the background, after the admin page has already gone back to you, so product saves and CSV imports never wait on us. The chat itself runs on Emporiqa's infrastructure, so chat traffic never touches your server and your hosting bill does not move with chat volume. If we have an outage the chat bubble does not appear, and your storefront, product pages and checkout carry on as normal.

What if it makes up an answer or quotes the wrong policy?

Answers come from your catalog and your store pages, not the open internet. If the chat is not confident, it says so rather than guessing, and offers to bring in a person. One thing worth being straight about: where your own product description is wrong or out of date, an answer built from it will be wrong too. Working from your catalog decides where mistakes come from, not whether they happen. Every conversation is saved and searchable for 90 days, and chats a shopper rates poorly are flagged on your dashboard.

Read the unedited demo answers and rerun them yourself

Can I see it working before I install anything?

Two ways. demo.emporiqa.com is a working electronics store running Emporiqa, with no signup: open the chat bubble and talk to it the way a shopper would. Ask for a product in plain language, upload a photo and let it find the closest items, then add something to cart from inside the chat. That store sells electronics, so ask it electronics questions; the behaviour is the same on any catalog. If you would rather read than type, the proof page has unedited answers you can rerun yourself.

Read the unedited demo answers and rerun them yourself

Do I have to build and maintain a separate knowledge base?

No. You do not have to, and you can when you want to. Emporiqa uses your store catalog as its knowledge base: the plugin pushes products, variants, prices, stock and store pages over webhooks as you save them, so there is nothing separate to write or keep up to date. Change a price or add a product, and the chat is already using the new version. For anything your shop pages never covered, like what happens when someone orders the wrong size, you can write it yourself on the Pages screen: a title and the text in your own words, in up to 10 languages on the same page. You write each language yourself, and a shopper gets the one they are already chatting in. Any language can carry a link to the same page on your site, and if your shop sells through more than one channel, you choose which of them the page applies to. The chat answers from it like it answers from any page your shop sent, and a sync never overwrites it. Up to 25 pages per store.

If the chat gets something wrong, who is liable?

You are, and we will not dress it up. The chat speaks on your storefront, so its answer is your answer, the same as if a member of your staff had said it. Our terms set this out. What we do to make it less likely: answers are built from your own product data rather than the open internet, and when the chat is not confident it says so and offers to bring in your team instead of guessing. How you find out: every conversation is saved and searchable for 90 days, and chats a shopper rates poorly are flagged on your dashboard. That is you going to look rather than us telling you, so review them the way you read your support inbox. You can turn the chat off from your dashboard at any time.

What happens when the chat cannot answer?

It says so, and offers to bring in someone from your team rather than guessing. The shopper decides whether to take it. That is not the only route in: anyone on your team can open any live conversation from the dashboard and step in at any point, including one that is going perfectly well. Whoever steps in gets the whole conversation, so the shopper does not repeat themselves.

Is this live chat, and does it replace my team?

It is live chat with the order reversed, and it replaces nobody. Classic live chat waits for someone at the keyboard, and if nobody is logged in the shopper gets a form. Here the AI answers from your catalog straight away, and any team member can open a conversation in the dashboard and take it over, whether or not the chat asked for help. They type in the same thread the shopper is reading, and your teammates can put their own name and photo on their replies instead of your store mark. A conversation is billed once, when the shopper writes their first message, so a person stepping in costs nothing more, however many of you join. Every account includes unlimited team members with no per-seat fee. What is not here: a list of visitors who have not written in, and outbound chat to people who are only browsing.

How does a conversation reach my team?

Two ways in, and the second matters more. The chat offers to bring in a person when the shopper asks for one, and when it is not confident it says so and offers. Separately, anyone on your team can open any live conversation from the dashboard and take it over without waiting for either signal. Either way the team member gets an email and a dashboard notification with the full context, and the same alert can go to Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord or Google Chat by pasting an incoming webhook URL. They continue in the shopper's own thread, can drop in a saved reply from your store's library, pass the conversation to a colleague, or close it with an outcome that shows up in analytics.

Can I set the hours my team is reachable?

Yes. You set a weekly schedule and a timezone per store. Outside those hours the chat tells the shopper your team is offline, asks for a name and an email or phone number so someone can follow up, and keeps helping in the meantime. You can write a short note about when you are back, and the chat puts what it says into the shopper's own language rather than showing your wording. No waiting-for-support banner appears outside your hours, so nobody is left watching an indicator. The request still lands in your needs-help queue with the whole conversation, so you can see what came in overnight.

How is this different from a regular chatbot?

Most chatbots deflect: they answer FAQs or capture emails. Emporiqa sells: it reads the shopper's intent, recommends one specific product with reasoning, handles objections like "too expensive" or "is it durable?", suggests the right variation, and walks them to checkout. A shopper asking "warm jacket under 100 euros in size M" gets a recommended product from your inventory with current price and stock, not a search results page. In the same conversation they can compare products side by side and ask what your shipping and returns pages say.

How does the product search work, and does it work in my customers' language?

Two ways at once: by meaning ("warm jacket for hiking" finds insulated outerwear) and by exact term (SKU, brand, model number), ranked by relevance. A shopper can also upload a photo and get the closest items from your catalog. It works in 65+ languages and across them: someone writing in German finds products catalogued in English, and gets the reply in German.

Can shoppers add to cart and check out from the chat?

Yes. The chat shows product cards with an Add to Cart button. Shoppers can add items, change quantities, remove items, view their cart, and go to checkout, all from the chat. The plugin runs the cart through your store's native cart system, so your store rules (promotions, stock limits, minimum quantities) still apply.

Is order tracking automatic?

No. Your store needs to expose an order-lookup endpoint. The native plugins include one; you switch it on in the plugin settings and add the URL to your Emporiqa dashboard. Skip it and everything else still works, order tracking is not offered in the chat.

Can I make it look like my store?

Yes, from the dashboard, with no code. Brand colors, four widget positions, a picture of your own shown in the chat header and next to the chat's answers, a title and greeting per language, and behaviour-based triggers that open the chat before a shopper leaves. You can also choose how the chat words its answers, and write your own note about the wording you want. That changes the wording only, never what the chat is allowed to say.

Can I tell it how to word its answers?

Yes, in your own words. Pick a voice and you see each one answering the same shopper question before you choose: Standard, Friendly, Professional or Concise. Under that, write a short note the way you would brief a new sales assistant: use the shopper's first name, keep answers to two or three sentences, call them trainers rather than footwear. One note covers every reply, and you can add a different one for recommending a product, answering a question about your shop, looking up an order, and small talk. It changes wording only. What the chat says about stock, prices and orders comes from your shop, and nothing you write here can change that or stop it saying so when it does not know.

Can I see whether it is making me money?

Yes. The plugin tells Emporiqa when an order comes from a shopper who used the chat, and Emporiqa links that order back to the conversation that led to it. Your dashboard shows the funnel with a rate at each step, from chat sessions through cart additions and checkouts to completed purchases, with revenue attributed to the chat. Alongside it: widget engagement with 30-day trends, top products by cart activity, handoff response and resolution times, and the thumbs up or down shoppers leave after a chat.

What do you do with my data, and do you get access to my store?

We never connect to your store's admin or database. The plugin sends data outbound over HTTPS, and the only credentials involved are a Store ID and Connection Secret generated in your dashboard. What we hold is a copy of your product and page data for search, plus the chat conversations for analytics and handoff continuity. No customer payment data is ever stored; cart and checkout stay on your store. Conversations are never used to train AI models, and chat history is deleted after 90 days. Emporiqa is an EU company operating under GDPR.

What if I want to stop?

Turn the chat off from your dashboard whenever you like. There is no contract to end, no annual lock-in and no notice period. Disable or remove the plugin and the widget disappears from your storefront and catalog events stop. Your product and page data comes out of our search index; chat history and analytics are kept for 30 days in case you come back, then deleted. Your store keeps all its original data, we only ever held a copy for search.