Description
UPCODEA Store Chat is an AI chatbot and live chat widget for your WooCommerce storefront. Customers can ask about products in plain language — “do you have this in blue?”, “what’s on sale under $30?”, “is this in stock?” — and get answers generated from your live product catalog, not a stale export.
Developed by UPCODEA.
Key features
- Floating chat widget with product/category page awareness.
- Answers grounded in real-time WooCommerce data (price, stock, SKU, description, permalink).
- Powered by Google Gemini — a generous free tier means most small stores can run it at no AI cost.
- Nonce-protected, rate-limited REST API endpoint; no API keys ever reach the browser.
- Configurable widget appearance (title, button label, colors).
- Optional site-wide daily reply cap to protect against unexpected API costs.
- Guardrails keep the bot on-topic and resistant to prompt-injection attempts from users.
Requirements
- WooCommerce 8.0+
- A free Google Gemini API key from aistudio.google.com/apikey
Third-party service
UPCODEA Store Chat relies on the Google Gemini API to generate chat replies. To do so, the plugin sends the visitor’s chat message and a small, relevant slice of your product catalog (name, price, stock, SKU, short description, permalink) to Google’s servers for each chat turn. No chat content is stored on your own server; conversation history lives only in the visitor’s browser for the duration of the session.
By using this plugin you are sending customer-submitted data to a third party. Please review and link to in your own store’s privacy policy:
- Google Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy
- Google Gemini API Terms: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms
UPCODEA Store Chat adds suggested language to your site’s Privacy Policy draft automatically (Settings Privacy “Suggest Text”) — review and publish it before going live.
Screenshots
Installation
- Upload the
upcodea-store-chatfolder to/wp-content/plugins/, or install the zip via Plugins Add New Upload Plugin. - Activate the plugin. WooCommerce must already be installed and active.
- Go to UPCODEA Store Chat in the wp-admin menu.
- Paste a free Gemini API key from aistudio.google.com/apikey.
- Customize the widget title, button label and colors as needed.
- Review Settings Privacy and publish the suggested disclosure text.
FAQ
-
Does this cost money to run?
-
The plugin itself doesn’t add a subscription fee. Google Gemini has a free tier (
gemini-2.5-flash,gemini-2.5-flash-lite) generous enough for most small-to-medium stores. You can also set a daily reply cap in the plugin’s settings to hard-limit usage. -
Where does the customer’s data go?
-
Chat messages and a relevant slice of your product catalog are sent to Google’s Gemini API to generate a reply. See the “Third-party service” section above.
-
Can I use my own OpenAI/Claude key instead of Gemini?
-
Not in the current version — Gemini-only for now.
-
Does the bot see private/draft products?
-
No. The catalog query only fetches published, publicly visible products via WooCommerce’s own product query APIs.
-
What happens if I uninstall the plugin?
-
All plugin options and transients are removed automatically on deletion (not on simple deactivation).
Contributors & Developers
“UPCODEA Store Chat” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
Translate “UPCODEA Store Chat” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
0.2.1
- Fixed: the floating button, header, user message bubble, and send button colors could be silently overridden by theme CSS that sets
background-coloron generic button selectors. Colors are now set explicitly (including thebackground-colorlonghand, not just thebackgroundshorthand) with the priority needed to respect the color pickers in the plugin settings.
0.2.0
- Changed: plugin name to “UPCODEA Store Chat” and text domain to
upcodea-store-chat. The original working name (“WoobotAI”) was flagged during WordPress.org review as confusingly similar to an existing WooCommerce chatbot plugin and to a registered chatbot trademark, so it was replaced before the first public release. - Added: site-wide daily reply cap to protect against unexpected API costs.
- Added:
uninstall.phpto fully clean up plugin data on removal. - Added: Privacy Policy suggested-text integration and in-widget data disclaimer.
- Added: minimum PHP version check with a graceful admin notice.
- Improved: friendlier handling of Gemini safety-blocked responses.
- Improved: error logging via the WooCommerce logger for easier troubleshooting.
- Fixed: chat now falls back to catalog search if an invalid
product_idis supplied. - Reduced: outbound AI request timeout to avoid PHP execution-time fatals on shared hosting.
0.1.0
- Initial MVP: chat widget, REST endpoint, WooCommerce catalog context, Gemini integration, admin settings.