Live chat channel

Live chat software with a human on the send button

A widget on your site, a handoff that carries the whole story, and every chat landing in the same shared inbox as your email.

The short answer

inrelay is live chat software built around the human handoff: a chat widget for your site, lead capture before the conversation, and full history carried to whichever teammate picks the chat up. Chats live in the same shared inbox as email, on every plan — including the free one — and are never metered.

Looping animation: a visitor writes in the chat widget, an agent is typing, and the reply is sent.

Most live chat software treats chat as its own island — a separate app, a separate queue, a separate person watching it. inrelay treats it as a channel: chats arrive next to your email, get an owner the same way, carry internal notes the same way, and never make a visitor repeat themselves when a different human takes over.

And because chat is where AI overreach worries people most, the rule is the same here as everywhere in inrelay: drafts and quick answers help your team go faster, but a public reply comes from a person who chose to send it.

01 · From the inbox

What you can do from the inbox

All of this ships today, on desktop and in the mobile companion.

The chat widget open on a shop page
  • Answer chats beside email, in one queue. No second screen to watch. A chat is a conversation with a status and an owner, exactly like everything else in the inbox.
  • Claim without colliding. The first reply to an unowned chat claims it for that teammate, so two people never answer the same visitor. Assign, transfer or escalate an owned chat any time.
  • Hand off with the whole story. Whoever takes over sees the full history — every message, note and handoff — while the visitor just sees that a specialist joined. Nobody types “can you repeat that?”
  • Capture the lead before the chat. A compact, configurable name-and-email form — each field optional or required, your call — so a closed tab isn’t a lost customer.
  • Talk privately mid-chat. Internal notes and @mentions sit inside the conversation and are structurally invisible to the visitor — a mention is always a note, never a public message.
  • Answer the common stuff instantly. Quick-answer chips post your configured responses into the chat, and visitors can search your knowledge base from the same widget.
  • Start conversations, carefully. Proactive messages target by page, time on page, business hours and device — and replies land in the human inbox, not a bot script.
  • End well. Visitors can download their transcript or get it by email, and an inline CSAT survey asks how it went — from your phone too, if that’s where you are.
02 · Setup

Setup & permissions

Live chat needs one thing from your site and a few honest decisions from you. Here’s the whole list.

Install the widget

Add a small script snippet to your site — the one technical step, and it’s copy-paste. If someone else runs your site, this is the only favour you need from them.

Make it yours

Brand and logo, help browsing, quick-answer chips, lead-capture fields and which live-chat actions visitors see are all workspace settings — configured once, on desktop.

Decide your hours

Chat implies presence, so set business hours and an honest away message. Outside hours, visitors can still search help articles or leave a ticket — a promise you can keep beats a green dot you can’t.

Go live

Chats start flowing into the shared inbox alongside email. The first teammate to reply owns the conversation from there.

03 · The limits

Limits, stated plainly

Live chat has fewer catches here than the category has trained you to expect, but the ones that exist are worth stating before you buy anything.

Chats are never metered. Plans are flat — no chat caps, no per-conversation fees, no add-on packs for a spiky month. The only number in inrelay is the AI agent’s monthly reply budget, which you set and can see: when it runs out the agent pauses and the inbox keeps working, with no overage fee.

Live chat is on every plan, including Free. The widget, lead capture and knowledge-base search all ship with the free tier — scoped honestly, with a small agent reply budget and inrelay branding. We’d rather say that here than behind a signup wall.

Chat is a real-time promise. Typing indicators and presence are live-only and never stored, and a chat widget only helps if someone actually answers. If your team can’t staff it yet, start with email and add chat when you can — the inbox is the same either way.

Start freeSee pricing
04 · The other channels

With your other channels.

Live chat is one lane of the same inbox. Email ships today; social and SMS are in development — not shipped yet, and we won’t claim otherwise.

ALL CHANNELS

Every channel

The full list of what inrelay connects today, in one omnichannel inbox.

See all channels → EMAIL

Email

Gmail, Outlook or IMAP as one shared support@ — the channel most of your volume still arrives on.

Email channel →
SOCIAL

Instagram DM

DMs as owned conversations, same assignment and approval flow.

In development
COMMERCE

TikTok Shop

Shop messages next to email, with order context where it belongs.

In development
MESSAGING

SMS

Text conversations in the same shared inbox, with the same owners.

In development
MESSAGING

WhatsApp

The channel half your customers already prefer, when it’s ready.

In development
Start today

Catch them on the page.

Free to start with your own inbox — every feature, no card, never per seat.

Start freeSee pricing

Questions, answered.

What counts as a live-chat conversation?
One visitor chat session, start to end — however many messages it holds. But nothing counts it against a cap: plans are flat and chats are never metered, so a busy week never cuts a customer off mid-sentence. The only number is the AI agent’s reply budget, which you set. Full details on the pricing page.
What happens when nobody is online?
The widget tells the truth. Outside your business hours it shows your away message, and visitors can search your help articles or submit a ticket instead — which arrives in the same inbox, answered when you’re back.
Can the AI answer chats by itself?
Quick answers you’ve written and knowledge-base search respond instantly, because you authored them. Freeform replies are different: the AI drafts, a human approves and sends. That gate is the product’s whole position — the approve-before-send page has the precise mechanics.
Do customers get a transcript?
Yes, two ways: visitors can download the transcript straight from the widget, and your team can send it by email. Transcripts contain only the public conversation — internal notes, handoff details and assignees are never included.

Start running your DMs.

Give your customers faster answers and your team their evenings back.

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