Frequently asked questions

Shoperchat is a chat-commerce + social-media platform. One inbox for Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, WhatsApp, Threads, TikTok, Telegram, and Google Business; auto-reply rules and multi-step flows; an AI design studio for posts; and integrations into Shopify, marketplaces, and Stripe billing.

No. Shoperchat runs in the browser. You sign in, connect your channels via the standard OAuth flows, and conversations + comments start flowing into the dashboard.

Yes — you can sign up and use the core inbox, one channel, and a small flow allowance for free, forever. Paid plans unlock more channels, larger flow limits, scheduled-post volume, and team seats. See the pricing page for the current matrix.

Small-to-mid-size e-commerce brands, agencies, and creators who sell or support customers through DMs and post comments. If your customers reach you via Instagram, WhatsApp, or Messenger before they reach your store, you're in the target audience.

Facebook Messenger, Instagram (Business / Creator), WhatsApp Business, Threads, TikTok, Telegram, and Google Business Messages. For posting and commerce: Shopify, Walmart, eBay, Amazon, plus Meta Catalog / FB Shop / Instagram Shop.

Go to /channels, click Connect Facebook, sign in to Facebook, pick the Page(s) you want to manage, and grant permissions. We store the long-lived Page token encrypted at rest and use it only to send and receive messages on your behalf.

Your Instagram account must be a Business or Creatoraccount, and it must be linked to a Facebook Page where you're an admin. Click Connect Instagram on the channels page and follow the OAuth flow — we then sync your IG Business Account ID and start receiving messages and comments.

WhatsApp uses Meta's Embedded Signup. Click Connect WhatsApp, follow the wizard to create or attach a WhatsApp Business Account (WABA), verify your phone number, and grant the app access. You'll need Business Verification completed on business.facebook.com for production messaging.

No — anyone you add as a Tester or Developer on your Meta App can use every permission, including unapproved ones, while the app is in Development Mode. Public users need full app review. We support running entirely in dev mode for beta clients.

They use the same Meta Login flow but request different permissions and connect different surfaces. Messenger talks to your Facebook Page; Instagram talks to the IG Business Account linked to that Page. You can connect them independently or together.

Yes — one Page per channel record. Connect each Page through the same OAuth flow and they all appear in your channels list. Messages, comments, and routing are isolated per Page.

Not generally. WhatsApp's Business API supports small groups (up to 8 participants), which isn't suitable for company-wide announcement channels. WhatsApp Channels (the broadcast surface) is not exposed via Meta's official API today — for company channels, Telegram or Discord are better fits.

Every incoming DM and message — across all your channels — lands in /conversations. Filter by platform, status, agent, or tag. Reply from one place; the message goes back through the right channel automatically.

Yes. Invite teammates from /settings/team, assign roles, and either let them pick up conversations themselves or use rules to auto-route by platform / topic / time of day.

Yes — manage them under /settings/canned-responses. Set shortcuts (e.g. /shipping) and use variables like {{firstName}} inside the reply box.

Yes for platforms that expose them (Messenger, IG, WhatsApp, Telegram). Receipt events flow in via the same webhook and update conversation rows in near-real-time.

Connect an Instagram Business or Facebook Page channel. Create a rule at /comments/rules that matches a keyword on a post and sends a public reply, a private DM, or both. When a matching comment lands, the reply fires in seconds.

Yes — the rule engine is platform-agnostic. Both Instagram (via the comments webhook) and Facebook Pages (via the feed webhook) flow into the same inbox at /comments.

Three modes: Contains (substring, case-insensitive), Exact, or Regex. You can also pick Any to fire on every comment regardless of text.

A rule is the one-shot version: match keyword, send reply text, done. A flow (set up at /flows) is multi-step: comment → DM → wait for response → branch → tag → handoff to an agent. Use rules for "comment PRICE for the link"; use flows for "qualify the lead through 3 questions then notify sales."

Yes. Pick the action "Reply publicly AND send a DM (recommended)"on the rule form. The public reply tells the asker you're on it; the DM opens the proper 7-day messaging window so you can continue the conversation.

Yes — for rules scoped to a specific post. Click the History button on the rule row. We fetch the existing comments, match them against the rule, and fire replies for the ones that match. (For "all posts" rules, backfill is disabled to avoid rate-limit storms.)

For Facebook Pages, edit and remove events sync back — the stored comment's content updates on edit, and status flips to DELETED on remove. Instagram doesn't emit edit/delete webhooks via the public API, so those don't sync today.

Yes. Hidden comments still appear under the Hidden tab in /comments. Hiding only changes what's visible to the public on the post — your team still has the full audit trail.

Choose your provider via the AI_PROVIDER environment variable: OpenAI (default) or Groq for low-latency. Replies and design generations route to whichever you've configured.

No. Customer Content is not used to train public models. We send prompts to model providers (OpenAI, Groq) operating under their standard data-processing terms, and they don't train on API traffic by default.

Yes. Conversations marked as BOT_HANDLING run inbound messages through the AI chat pipeline, which uses your connected product catalog and knowledge-base articles to answer. You set the threshold at which a conversation hands off to a human.

If you connect Shopify or upload a product catalog, the AI grounds its answers in your inventory — product name, description, price, stock, variants. You can also write knowledge-base articles for FAQs and policies; the AI cites them in responses.

Yes — at /ai-config/brand-voice. Set tone keywords, example responses, and disallowed phrases. The AI uses those as constraints in every reply and every design generation.

Type what you want in plain English at /designer — the AI picks a layout, writes a headline, builds a palette, and composes the canvas in roughly 3 seconds. You can then edit any layer by hand on a Canva-style timeline.

Yes. Compose once at /posts/new, select the channels (Facebook Page, Instagram, Threads, TikTok), set a publish time, and the scheduler fans out at the right moment via each platform's API.

Yes — at /settings/brand-kit. Lock your colours, fonts, and logos and the designer + AI will respect them in every new asset. Override per-design when you need to break the rules.

Yes — upload an MP4, set the destination (Instagram Reel, Facebook Page video, Threads, TikTok), and the scheduler handles the platform-specific publish flow. Note that video-encoding by Meta can add a few seconds before the post actually goes live.

A drag-and-drop canvas at /flows for multi-step automated conversations. Nodes for sending messages, asking questions, branching by condition, calling HTTP APIs, tagging contacts, running A/B splits, and handing off to a human.

KEYWORD (a message matches a keyword), WELCOME (first inbound message in a conversation), COMMENT (a comment on a post matches your trigger config), AD_CLICK (visitor arrives from an ad), or MANUAL (you fire it from an action).

Yes — use a Split-Test node to route traffic 50/50 (or any ratio) between two flow variants, then track conversion rate from /flows/ab-tests. The split is sticky per contact so users stay in the same variant across sessions.

Yes — at /flows/templates. Welcome sequences, abandoned-cart recovery, comment-to-DM, lead-qualification, FAQ deflection, CSAT survey. Clone, customize, publish.

Yes. Connect via /settings/integrations. Your products, inventory, and orders sync in; conversations show order history; abandoned-cart events trigger recovery flows; AI chatbots cite live stock levels.

Yes — via Meta's Catalog API. Connect the Commerce configuration and push products into a catalog that powers FB Shop, IG Shop, Marketplace ads, and click-to-WhatsApp ads.

Yes for the conversational-commerce flow: a customer asks about a product on WhatsApp, the AI quotes price and stock, the checkout link goes through Stripe. End-to-end in-thread checkout (cart inside WhatsApp) requires WhatsApp Pay, which is region-restricted today.

Meta's Marketplace Partner Program is invite-only and restricted to four verticals (vehicles, real estate, rentals, jobs). For general e-commerce, the better path is Meta's Catalog + Shop APIs (which we do support) — they power the same surface for buyers.

Free tier forever for a single channel and basic automation. Paid plans scale up channels, flow runs, scheduled posts, AI generations, and team seats. See /pricing for the current numbers.

Yes — every paid plan starts with a free trial. We don't charge until the trial ends. Cancel before then and you won't be billed.

Go to /settings/billing → Cancel subscription. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period; you keep access until then.

Fees are non-refundable except where required by law. If something genuinely broke on our side, email support@shoperchat.comand we'll review case-by-case.

TLS in transit, AES-GCM encryption at rest for OAuth tokens and other sensitive fields, hashed passwords (bcrypt), audit logging on privileged actions, role-based access controls, and rate limiting. See the Privacy Policy for the full breakdown.

Application data lives in a managed PostgreSQL instance; media uploads go to S3 / R2 / Cloudinary depending on your deployment. For customers with regional residency requirements, talk to us about a dedicated deployment.

/settings/account → Delete account. Removes your user record, sessions, OAuth links, every workspace you're the only member of, and all the conversations + comments + channels inside those. See /data-deletion for the full instructions including the Facebook-revoke path.

We treat workspaces as data controllers and ourselves as the processor for the data flowing through them. We honour access, correction, and deletion requests; encrypt data at rest; don't train AI models on your content; and use Standard Contractual Clauses for cross-border transfers. Detail is in the Privacy Policy.

All conversations, comments, contacts, and messages tied to that channel are deleted in the same cascade. If you want to keep them, export first from the conversations view — disconnect is destructive on purpose so we never hold stale data after a customer asks us to stop.