By platform
Live chat for Shopify
One script tag, then every message arrives in your Telegram. Including the three ways this specifically goes wrong on Shopify, which is the part the install docs leave out.
Last checked 1 September 2026
Live chat by platform/Shopify
The short answer
How do you add live chat to Shopify?
In theme.liquid, immediately before the closing body tag.
With TGLiveChat that is one tag and about five minutes. The widget is roughly 39KB across 3 requests, replies arrive in Telegram rather than in another dashboard, and your visitors need no Telegram account of their own. One platform limit to know about first: the checkout pages are locked on every plan except Shopify Plus, so no chat widget from anyone appears during checkout unless you are on Plus.
What Shopify is, briefly
Hosted ecommerce, from a first store on Basic to a large catalogue on Plus, with the storefront rendered from Liquid templates.
Check this before you start
The checkout pages are locked on every plan except Shopify Plus, so no chat widget from anyone appears during checkout unless you are on Plus.
The install, step by step
- 1Go to Online Store, then Themes, then the three dot menu on your live theme, then Edit code.
- 2Open Layout, then theme.liquid, and paste the script immediately before the closing body tag.
- 3Save, then view your store in a private window rather than in the theme preview.
- 4Send a test message from a product page, not the homepage. Product pages carry the most third party script on most stores and are where a conflict shows up first.
The full walkthrough with screenshots is in the install guide.
The three ways this goes wrong on Shopify
Every one of these is a real failure that looks like a broken widget and is not. They are the reason this page exists rather than just a link to the docs.
Switching or duplicating a theme leaves the script behind
The edit lives in that theme, not in your store. Duplicate a theme to try a redesign and the copy has it. Install a fresh theme from the store and it does not, and your chat silently disappears on launch day. Put it back as part of your theme launch checklist.
Checkout is out of reach unless you are on Plus
Shopify locks the checkout pages, so no third party chat widget renders there on Basic, Grow or Advanced. This catches people who want to catch abandoning carts at the payment step. It applies to every vendor equally and nobody can work around it.
App embeds can double up your widget
If you previously installed a chat app from the Shopify App Store, it may still be injecting through an app embed even after you remove its script from theme.liquid. Check Online Store, Themes, Customise, App embeds, and turn the old one off there.
What Shopify gives you instead
Shopify Inbox is free, integrates with the admin and with Shopify Chat, and if you live in the Shopify admin all day it is a reasonable answer. It also ties your chat to Shopify, which matters on the day you have a second sales channel or a marketing site that is not a Shopify store.
What a chat widget costs a Shopify page
Store owners tend to have several apps injecting script into every page, and each one feels small on its own. A 749KB chat widget on a product page competing with your product images for bandwidth is not small, and product pages are the ones that have to convert.
| Widget | Transfer size | Versus ours |
|---|---|---|
| Tawk.to | 749KB | 19x heavier |
| Zendesk Chat | 533KB | 14x heavier |
| Drift | 464KB | 12x heavier |
| LiveChat | 385KB | 10x heavier |
| Intercom | 301KB | 8x heavier |
| Crisp | 155KB | 4x heavier |
| LiveAgent | 79KB | 2x heavier |
| TGLiveChat | ~39KB | Baseline |
Competitor figures are DebugBear's measurements, published 14 July 2019 and updated 10 November 2025. Ours is measured by gzipping the files we serve, and the command is on our methodology page.
Why the replies land in Telegram
The reason most small sites end up with a dead chat widget is not the widget. It is that answering means opening a dashboard that nobody keeps open, so messages sit unread for six hours and visitors stop bothering. Telegram is already open on your phone, so a message from your website arrives the same way a message from a friend does.
Your visitors see none of that. They get a normal chat window on your Shopify site, they need no account, and they never learn which app you answered from. The AI agent handles the questions that have obvious answers while you are asleep, and hands anything else to you.
The bottom line
Adding chat to Shopify is one tag in the right place. Getting it to keep working is about the platform specific traps above, and about whether you will actually answer the messages once they arrive.
The free plan covers 100 conversations a month and does not ask for a card, which is a faster way to find out than reading any more of this.
Frequently asked questions
How do I add live chat to a Shopify site?
Is there a free live chat for Shopify?
Will a chat widget slow down my Shopify site?
Do my visitors need Telegram?
Why does the widget not show up on my Shopify site?
What is the native Shopify option?
Can I remove the branding?
How long does the install actually take?
Sources and references
- DebugBear: How Do Different Chat Widgets Impact Site Performance? Published 14 July 2019, updated 10 November 2025. Source of every competitor weight figure above.
- web.dev: Largest Contentful Paint The Core Web Vital that third party scripts move most on a content page.
- How we measure our own widget The command, the numbers, and the four figures we published wrong and corrected.