How to Use Knocket: The Beginner's Guide (Free Live Chat on Your Website + a Personal Contact Page)
CodexFuse Team · 2026-11-03T06:37:54.936Z · 10 min read min read
What is Knocket, exactly?
Knocket — listed on Product Hunt as Knocket AI — is a free live chat widget for website owners, plus a shareable personal contact page, built so a small business owner can answer visitor messages without learning any new software. When you want to learn how to use Knocket, the whole journey is three moves: paste a one-line script onto your site, share your contact page, and answer from the tools you already carry — your phone's Telegram app. Knocket's makers pitch it as the contact layer for a site's first hundred visitors: no ticketing system, no support desk, just a chat bubble that reaches you.
The product relaunched on Product Hunt in late October 2026 after an October 12 launch that finished #3 on the daily board with 188 votes, per FrontierNow's coverage of that launch day. The makers listed on the relaunch page are Shuoxin Wang, xinyuanwei, ivory xu, and Nieves, and the service runs on Tencent RTC real-time infrastructure. Three surfaces feed one inbox — a web widget, the contact page, and a mobile WebView widget for iOS, Android, React Native and Flutter apps — and visitors can message you without creating any account. If you already run the visitor-contact side of a small business, this pairs naturally with a proper business email setup guide, since email is where the offline conversations in this guide end up.
How do you add Knocket's free live chat widget to your website?
You paste one async script tag before the closing </body> tag of your site. That is the entire installation — there is no build step, no package to npm install, and nothing to self-host.
- Sign up on the Knocket site and copy the widget script: it looks like
https://trtc.io/knocket-sdk/sdk.js?identifier=xxxxwith your own identifier filled in. - Paste the script tag into your site's HTML, just before
</body>(or</head>). On WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, or React sites this goes in the theme footer, a custom HTML block, or the app shell. - Reload the page and click the chat bubble in the corner to send a test message to yourself.
- Open your Knocket inbox and reply to the test message — the reply appears in the visitor's chat window.
- Connect Telegram (the next section) so you never have to keep the dashboard open to catch messages.
The vendor's own tutorial pages describe the same flow with per-platform screenshots for WordPress, Shopify, and React, and the pattern is the same everywhere: one script, one bubble, one inbox. That is the core of the Knocket live chat setup — everything else in this guide is built on top of that single line.
What is the Knocket contact page?
The Knocket contact page is a public page at knocket.ai/yourhandle where anyone can message you — no website required. If you do not have a site yet, or your site is just a landing page without a chat widget, this page is your whole contact channel: you share the link in your bio, on invoices, or in a footer, and visitors land on a simple page with your name, a short note, and a message box.
Think of it as a one-person contact card with a reply button — closer to a link-in-bio page builder that can actually hold a conversation than to a traditional contact form. Two caveats worth knowing up front: Toolradar's Knocket review (updated November 2, 2026) says custom domains are not supported, so the page lives on Knocket's domain, not yours. One vendor tutorial page phrases the page address as "knocket.ai or a custom domain," but the independent review says custom domains are not available — treat custom-domain support as unconfirmed, not promised.
How do you answer visitor chats from Telegram?
You connect your Telegram account in Knocket's settings, and every visitor message arrives as a Telegram notification. You quote-reply inside Telegram from your phone, and your reply lands back in the visitor's chat window on your site.
This is Knocket's most unusual design choice: there is no native mobile app for replying to chats. The inbox is the dashboard on desktop and Telegram on mobile, and that is the whole reply surface. For a solo founder or freelancer this is genuinely convenient — the app you already check is the app that receives customer messages, and there is nothing new to install or learn. If you want the full picture of working from a messaging app on the go, the WhatsApp Web beginner guide covers the same "answer from your phone" pattern on the WhatsApp side.
How does Knocket's AI agent answer your FAQs?
Knocket's AI agent is an optional add-on that answers repeat questions from documents and URLs you upload, with a human handoff when the conversation needs a person. You enable the agent, feed it your FAQ pairs, help-center links, or a few document uploads, and it handles the "what are your hours" and "how much does it cost" messages on its own.
Three facts define how the agent behaves. First, it auto-stops when a human takes over — it never fights you for a conversation. Second, you configure handoff trigger phrases, so messages it cannot answer route to you automatically. Third, and most important for budgeting: the agent runs on your own LLM key through OpenAI-compatible providers including OpenAI, Hunyuan, and DeepSeek, per Knocket's AI-agent tutorial. The widget is free; the language model's usage is billed to you by the provider you choose. Do not set up the agent expecting free AI — the free part is the chat surface, and the intelligence is bring-your-own-key.
The tutorial also notes AI usage analytics: response times and handoff counts, so you can see which questions the agent resolves and which ones keep escalating to you.
What happens to chats when you are offline?
When you are offline, the widget shows a lead form and visitors leave their email plus a message. Nothing is lost — the thread waits in your inbox and continues when you return, with the reply delivered to the visitor's email or back in the widget when they revisit.
This is the moment the offline lead form earns its keep: a missed chat becomes an email thread instead of a bounce. If your site also collects email elsewhere, keep the two in the same habit — check the inbox, answer, and move on.
Knocket vs Crisp: how does the free tier compare?
Knocket's most common comparison is against Crisp — Toolradar notes Knocket visitors "most often compare Knocket with Crisp" — so here is the beginner-relevant comparison as a table. The Crisp details are the standard free-tier shape that comparison pages document; the Knocket column comes from the sources listed at the end.
| Knocket | Crisp (free tier) | |
|---|---|---|
| Price of the free tier | Free forever per Knocket's published claim: no paid tier, no per-seat fee, no ads, no message caps, no credit card | Free tier with limits on seats and history; paid plans above it |
| Install | One async script line; also a shareable contact page with no site needed | JavaScript snippet; no standalone public contact page |
| Replying from your phone | Via Telegram quote-reply; no native reply app | Native mobile apps for iOS and Android |
| AI answers | Optional agent from your docs/URLs; uses your own LLM key | AI add-on on paid tiers |
| Offline capture | Email + message lead form; thread resumes on return | Offline message forms with email capture |
| Custom domain on contact page | Not supported per independent review (vendor wording uncertain) | Not applicable in the same form |
The honest read: Knocket wins on price and on the no-site contact page; Crisp wins if you need native mobile apps and a proven seat-based team setup. For a one-person site, the price column is the whole argument.
Knocket pricing: is it really free forever?
Knocket's published claim is 100% free forever — no paid tier, no per-seat fee, no ads, no message caps, and no credit card required. That claim is live on knocket.ai, repeated on the vendor's own live-chat-pricing page ("flat $0 core contact experience... no card, no message caps"), and confirmed by Toolradar's Knocket review updated November 2, 2026.
Treat it as a published vendor claim, not a guarantee about the future — the product's own Academy FAQ hedges with "ships a free plan... see the pricing page" language, and early-stage tools revise pricing as they grow. Right now there is nothing to buy: sign-up costs nothing and the widget costs nothing to run, with the single exception of the AI agent's LLM usage, which your own provider bills you for. One deal from the first launch — "invite three friends for lifetime free" on the launch-day Product Hunt material — does not appear anywhere on Knocket's current pages, so do not count on it; the current offer is simply free for everyone.
Five beginner mistakes to avoid with Knocket
The fastest way to lose a visitor with a chat widget is to install it and treat it like furniture. These five mistakes cover what beginners most often get wrong.
| Mistake | What to do instead |
|---|---|
| Installing the widget but never connecting Telegram | Connect Telegram on day one — without it you only see messages when the dashboard is open. |
| Leaving the offline form's default text | Rewrite the offline message to name your reply window ("I reply within a few hours"). |
| Turning on the AI agent with no documents uploaded | Upload your FAQ pairs and key URLs first — an agent with nothing to read invents answers. |
| Ignoring the handoff trigger phrases | Configure phrases for money and complaint words ("refund," "cancel," "broken") so a human always takes those. |
| Expecting custom domains on the contact page | Share the knocket.ai link as-is; do not promise clients your own domain until support is confirmed. |
Sources
knocket.ai (homepage — free-forever claim, three surfaces, visitors message without an account); knocket.trtc.io (vendor docs — widget/Contact Page/Mobile Widget, AI-agent tutorial, Knocket Academy video tutorials updated October 16, 2026); trtc.io/blog (vendor blog — one-script install guide, "best free contact widget" piece stating Tencent RTC infrastructure); toolradar.com/tools/knocket (independent review, updated November 2, 2026 — no message caps, no card, no native reply app, no custom domains, offline lead form, AI agent from uploaded docs, Telegram reply flow); producthunt.com/products/knocket-ai (relaunch page — makers Shuoxin Wang, xinyuanwei, ivory xu, Nieves; "Built With: Tencent RTC"; maker comments on the AI agent); producthunt.com/products/knocket (first launch page); frontiernow.dev/en/resources/articles/product-hunt-2026-10-12 (October 12 launch coverage — #3 on the daily board with 188 votes; "Tencent Cloud's lightweight IM reception layer on its RTC infrastructure"); trtc.io comparison pages (Knocket vs Crisp and Knocket vs Tawk.to comparison tables — comparison context only).
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Knocket really free?
Knocket's published claim is 100% free forever, with no paid tier, no per-seat fee, no ads, no message caps, and no credit card required — stated on knocket.ai and confirmed by an independent review from November 2, 2026. The one thing that costs money is the optional AI agent's language-model usage, which is billed by the LLM provider whose key you supply.
Does Knocket work on WordPress and Shopify?
Yes. The install is one async script tag placed before the closing body tag, which works anywhere you can paste custom HTML — WordPress theme footers, Shopify theme code, Squarespace code injection, and React app shells. The vendor's tutorial pages cover the per-platform placement.
Do I need a mobile app to answer Knocket chats?
No native reply app exists. You answer from the Knocket dashboard on desktop and from Telegram on your phone — every visitor message arrives as a Telegram notification and your quote-reply lands back in the visitor's chat window.
Can Knocket's AI answer questions in my language?
The agent works with OpenAI-compatible providers including OpenAI, Hunyuan, and DeepSeek, and answers from the documents, URLs, and FAQ pairs you upload. A maker comment mentioned translation work in progress, but treat that as a roadmap note rather than a shipped feature.
Who built Knocket?
The Product Hunt relaunch page lists Shuoxin Wang, xinyuanwei, ivory xu, and Nieves as the makers, with the service "Built With: Tencent RTC." The product first launched October 12, 2026, finishing #3 on Product Hunt's daily board with 188 votes.
