Guides

Live chat setup guides and how-tos

Everything you need to stand up self-hosted live chat, step by step. Start with adding the widget to your site, self-host on the platform you run, add an AI chatbot, or move over from a hosted tool, each guide is grounded in the real product.

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Add live chat to your website

The four steps from a clean server to a working chat widget on any site.

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Add live chat to WordPress

Drop the widget into a WordPress site with one snippet, no chat plugin required.

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Self-host on Windows with IIS

Deploy the server on Windows Server and IIS with SQL Server, from prerequisites to HTTPS.

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Set up an AI chatbot with Ollama

Run a private AI agent on your own hardware, grounded in your knowledge base, with human handoff.

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Migrate from hosted live chat

Move off a monthly subscription to a tool you own, with your history intact and no downtime.

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Understand the AI chatbot

How the self-hosted AI agent answers from your content and hands off to a person.

Learn more

Rehearse any guide free on localhost

Every guide works against the free evaluation download: install the server, build a widget, and test a chat end to end on your own machine before touching a live site.

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Owned customer support software

Deploy live chat on your own terms, not on someone else's pricing model.

ZChat gives you the installable server, web dashboard, website widget, and desktop agent tools in one self-hosted product you buy once and keep. Run it on infrastructure you trust and connect AI only if and how you want it.

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Deployment

Install on Windows or Linux, behind IIS or Nginx, in a VM, or in Docker if that fits your stack.

Commercial model

One-time purchase, perpetual license, and no monthly per-agent bill attached to growth.

AI Flexibility

Use Ollama locally or connect OpenAI and Anthropic with your own provider accounts.