Hazelchat for Shopify

Add Hazelchat's chat agent to your Shopify store without editing theme code. Hazelchat answers shoppers from the policies, pages, blog posts and written answers you approve, shows the sources under every answer, and can show cards for the products a question names.

What you need

A Shopify store that sells through the Online Store sales channel, with a theme. Hazelchat adds its chat through a theme app embed, which Shopify supports on Online Store 2.0 themes and on older (vintage) themes.
Permission to install apps in your Shopify admin.
A Hazelchat account. You can create one for free while you set up.

A headless storefront (Hydrogen or another custom front end) has no theme, so the app embed cannot add the chat there. You can add Hazelchat to such a storefront with the installation code from your workspace, as on any other website. The Shopify app's own parts, such as reading your policies and products through Shopify, are built for the Online Store and have not been tested with headless storefronts.

Add Hazelchat to your store

Install Hazelchat from the Shopify App Store. Shopify lists what Hazelchat may read and asks you to approve it.
Shopify then sends you to Hazelchat at app.hazelchat.co. Sign in, or create your account there. Hazelchat runs on its own site, not inside your Shopify admin; to come back later, open it from Apps in your Shopify admin.
Hazelchat shows your store's name and its primary domain. Check them and click Connect this store. Hazelchat adds the domain as your website. Shopify confirms that the store is yours, so you do not need a DNS record or a verification file. One store can be connected to one Hazelchat workspace.
Add your content. Enter your store's address and choose Find pages. Hazelchat lists your store's policies, pages and blog posts, read through Shopify. Tick the ones Hazel may answer from. You can add documents and written answers too.
While you do that, Hazelchat reads your products in the background. To show product cards in answers, see Product cards.
Try a few questions, adjust the chat's look, and publish a version of your agent in Hazelchat. Nothing reaches shoppers before you publish.
In Install with Shopify, click Switch on Hazelchat in your theme. Shopify's theme editor opens with Hazelchat under App embeds. Make sure it is switched on and click Save. Back in Hazelchat, click I switched it on.
Click Publish and switch on (or Switch on Hazelchat for an unchanged published agent). Then choose Start website test, ask a question in the chat on your storefront, return to Hazelchat and confirm that you saw the answer.

If your store already shows another chat button in the bottom-right corner, place Hazelchat's chat on the left under Website → Appearance so the two do not overlap.

Hazelchat cannot see your theme settings, so it relies on you to say that the app embed is on. The website test then confirms that the chat really appears on your store.

What the app can read

When you install the app, Shopify asks you to approve three read-only permissions:

Store policies: your refund, shipping, privacy and other policies.
Online Store pages and blog posts: their titles and text.
Products: titles, descriptions, types, vendors, tags, options, prices and whether each variant can be bought. Hazelchat never asks for stock quantities.

Without asking for a permission, Hazelchat also reads your store's name and domains. It writes one thing to your store: your public widget key, kept in the app's own setting so that your theme can load the chat. It does not read orders, customers, discounts or your theme, and it cannot change your products, pages or design.

Your policies, pages and blog posts

For your connected store, Hazelchat does not fetch your storefront. When you add your store's address, it asks Shopify for your policies, published pages and published blog posts and lists them for you. You tick what Hazel may use. Hazelchat then reads the text of only those entries and adds them to your agent's draft. Nothing reaches shoppers until you review it and publish a version.

Each entry counts as one of your workspace's sources, and you can edit or remove it under Sources. When you change a policy or page in Shopify, import it again in Hazelchat and publish, so that the chat answers from the new text.

Product cards

After you connect your store, Hazelchat reads your active products that are available on the Online Store. Changes you make in Shopify usually arrive within minutes, and every product is read again every few hours. Your products are listed under Products in Hazelchat.

Product cards are off until you switch them on. Open Products, switch on Show product cards, save, try a few questions in Test agent, then publish. When a question names one of your products, the answer then carries up to three cards. Each card shows the product's name, linked to its page on your store's domain, its price or price range, and whether it can be bought, with the time Shopify last confirmed them. A question that only your products answer is answered with the cards alone.

Hazel never writes a price, a stock state or a product link itself. Cards are built by Hazelchat from what Shopify reported, not by the AI model.
Prices are shown only while they are fresh. A card shows a price only if Shopify confirmed it within the last day, and whether it can be bought only if Shopify confirmed that within the last hour. Before answering, Hazelchat asks Shopify again about products it has not checked for a few minutes. If Shopify does not answer in time, the card keeps what Shopify last confirmed, and a card older than a day says "See the price on the product page" instead of a price.
Hide prices: switch off Show prices on the cards on the Products page, save and publish. Cards then show the name, the link and whether the product can be bought. Do this if your store shows different prices or currencies in different markets: cards use your store's default currency.
Add to cart: a card for one product variant that Shopify confirmed as available in the last hour (a product without options, or the size or colour the shopper named) has an Add to cart button. On your store it adds one to the shopper's cart and opens your cart page; your checkout stays Shopify's. On your shared chat page it reads Buy now and opens Shopify's checkout with that product. When several variants could be meant, the card offers Choose options, which opens the product page. Switch it off with Show Add to cart on product cards, then publish. Hazelchat counts the clicks and never sees the cart or what was bought.
What cards do not show: images, stock quantities, discounts at checkout or shipping costs.
Which products appear: Hazelchat matches a question to products by the products' own words, such as their name, type, vendor, tags and options. A question has to use those words; the AI model does not pick products.
How many products: the Free plan includes up to 100 products, Starter up to 1,000 and Business up to 5,000. Products beyond your plan's number are left out, and the Products page says how many.

What you publish is whether cards are shown, with or without prices and Add to cart. The products themselves stay current without a new version. An answer with product cards counts as one answer.

Languages

Shoppers can be answered in English, Dutch, German or Spanish. Choose your default language and the other languages under Website → Appearance → Languages. The chat's own buttons and labels, product cards included, follow the shopper's browser or your store's page language. Answers come from your content in the same language: a question in German is answered from German pages, so add content in each language you switch on. The Hazelchat dashboard, this guide and support are in English.

Privacy and consent

Hazelchat follows Shopify's customer privacy settings. Where your store's cookie banner asks shoppers for consent, the chat appears only after the shopper allows preferences cookies, and the chat's anonymous counts (how often it is opened and which links are clicked, for your Analytics page) run only after they allow analytics. If a shopper withdraws consent, the chat closes. Where Shopify reports that no consent is needed in the shopper's region, the chat appears straight away. Before consent, the browser downloads only Hazelchat's small launcher script; the chat itself does not load.

On Shopify stores the chat has no enquiry form. It does not collect shoppers' names or email addresses. When a shopper wants a person, the chat offers the contact page you set under Handoff in Hazelchat, for example your store's contact page. The chat also never shows "Powered by Hazelchat" on your store, on any plan.

Shoppers' questions and Hazel's answers are kept in your workspace so you can review them, for 90 days by default (Settings → Data & privacy).

How your website is verified

Hazelchat serves the chat only on websites whose ownership is proven. For a connected store, the proof is the connection itself: Shopify reports your store's primary domain, and Hazelchat uses it as your website. Your store's own myshopify.com address works too and never counts as an extra website. If you change your primary domain in Shopify, Hazelchat moves your website to the new domain within a few hours. Run the website test again on the new address. If the app is uninstalled, the chat stops at once.

Plans and billing

Hazelchat's Free plan includes 50 answers a month. An answer counts only when it carries sources or product cards; tests in Hazelchat and handoffs to your contact page are free. When a month's answers are used up, the chat offers your contact page until the next month, and nothing extra is charged.

Paid plans are bought in Shopify. In Hazelchat, open Settings → Plan & monthly allowance and choose Change plan in Shopify. Shopify's plan page handles the free trial, the payment, upgrades, downgrades and cancellation, and the charge appears on your Shopify bill. Plans are priced in US dollars; if your Shopify bill is in another currency, Shopify converts the price. The plans and their allowances are on the pricing page; Scale is not available through Shopify. A plan bought in Shopify covers the whole Hazelchat workspace connected to your store. If you disconnect the store or uninstall the app, the workspace returns to the Free plan. Uninstalling the app ends Shopify's charge for it; disconnecting in Hazelchat does not, so choose the Free plan on Shopify's plan page before you disconnect.

If you already pay Hazelchat directly, that subscription continues after you connect your store. To change your plan after that, choose it in Shopify; your direct subscription then ends at once and we refund the unused part of its current term, so you are never billed twice.

Answers are written by an AI model from the content you approved, and the sources are shown under every answer. If the AI service is unavailable, the chat shows the matching passages from your content instead.

Change, disconnect or uninstall

New widget key: if you rotate your widget key in Hazelchat, Hazelchat writes the new key to your store itself. If Shopify cannot be reached at that moment, Hazelchat tries again, and the Shopify connection under Website offers Try again.
Hide the chat for a while: switch Hazelchat off under App embeds in Shopify's theme editor and save, or switch your agent off in Hazelchat.
Disconnect Shopify: in Hazelchat, under Website → Shopify connection → Disconnect. Hazelchat removes your widget key from your store, so the chat stops, deletes its copy of your products and moves the workspace to the Free plan. A plan bought in Shopify keeps being charged by Shopify until you choose Free there or uninstall the app. The website stays in your workspace but is no longer verified. Imported policies, pages and blog posts, and past conversations, stay until you delete them or uninstall the app.
Uninstall the app in Shopify: Shopify removes the app embed from your theme. Hazelchat stops serving your store at once, moves the workspace to the Free plan and deletes its copy of your products. When Shopify asks for your store's data to be deleted, about two days after the uninstall, and in any case within ten days, Hazelchat deletes the sources it read from your store, the conversations started on your store, and your store's verification and website tests. Your Hazelchat account and your own written answers and uploaded documents stay. Hazelchat keeps a short record that it handled Shopify's request, without any of the deleted content, for three years.
Install again: Shopify asks you to approve the app again, and you connect the store to a Hazelchat workspace as the first time.
Close your Hazelchat account: deletes your content with your workspace, and the chat no longer appears on your store. Uninstall the app in Shopify as well if you no longer need it.

Privacy and data

Hazelchat stores Shopify's access tokens encrypted, never shows them in the application, and uses them only for the reads and the one write described above. Details are in the privacy notice. For the chat on your store, the data processing agreement applies.

Help

Email hello@hazelchat.co. We answer within one business day.