Activate or pause a chatbot
Turn the chatbot on for visitors, or pause it without losing anything. Training is an entirely separate status.
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What it is
Activation is the public on/off switch. A chatbot is in exactly one of three states:
| Status | What it means | What visitors get |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | Newly created, never published | Hosted page not found; widget refuses to load; messaging silent |
| Active | Published | The chat works |
| Inactive | Published once, then paused | Same as draft — everything public is off |
New chatbots always start as draft. Nothing activates them for you: not creating them, not uploading knowledge, not finishing training. That is deliberate, so a half-configured chatbot cannot greet a customer by accident.
Activation and training are separate switches. An active but untrained chatbot still loads its page and gives visitors an honest "not ready yet" reply rather than an error. A trained but draft chatbot is invisible to the world no matter how good its knowledge is. Chatbot readiness is the full explanation of the two lights.
When you would use it
- The day you want a real visitor to reach the chatbot.
- To take a chatbot offline temporarily — a campaign ended, prices are changing, the knowledge is wrong and you need a day to fix it.
- Before rewriting a large amount of knowledge, if you would rather show nothing than show stale answers.
Where to find it
Open Dashboard → Chatbots → your chatbot → Settings → Danger zone (?tab=danger).
Steps
- Open the chatbot.
- Either use the Activate control on the Playground tab's activation note, or go to Settings and choose the Danger zone tab.
- The first card is Status, with the current status badge and a single button — Activate Chatbot or Deactivate Chatbot depending on where you are now.
- Select it. The badge updates and a toast confirms.
- Verify from outside: open the hosted
agentency.com/{handle}-chatbotlink in a private window. You should get a chat window, not a not-found page. - To pause later, return to the same card (or use the chatbot menu next to the tabs) and select Deactivate Chatbot.
What pausing does and does not do
Pausing is a door, not an eraser.
It stops:
- The hosted page and the iframe embed.
- The website widget on your site.
- Replies on any connected messaging channel.
It keeps, untouched:
- All knowledge and its training.
- Every past conversation and every captured customer.
- Instructions, Call actions, appearance, messages, widget settings, allowed domains.
- The handle in the URL, so the same link works again the moment you reactivate.
Reactivating is instant and needs no retraining. Because of that, pausing is almost always the right move when you are unsure — deleting is the one that cannot be undone.
Should I pause during a knowledge update?
Usually no. While knowledge is re-syncing, the chatbot keeps serving its previous answers, and the Playground tab shows a banner saying so. Deactivating would replace working-but-slightly-stale answers with a not-found page, which is worse for the visitor.
Pause only when the current answers are actively wrong — a price that changed, a policy that was withdrawn — and you would rather show nothing at all.
What you will see
The Danger zone tab has two cards: Status at the top (badge plus the activate/deactivate button) and the red delete card below it. The same activate, deactivate, and delete actions also live in the chatbot menu beside the tabs, so you do not have to open Settings for a quick pause.
While a chatbot is not active, the Playground tab and Channels both show a note explaining exactly which surfaces are offline.
Limits and plan notes
You need permission to edit chatbots. Viewers see the status without a button; Editors and Admins can toggle it, as can the account owner. See Roles and permissions.
Activation does not start training and does not spend message credits.
Activation is not plan-gated: you can activate on the Free plan and share the hosted agentency.com/{handle}-chatbot link. The website widget and plugins work on Free too; what Free does not include is messaging channels. See Integrations and plans.
Common problems
I activated it and the hosted page is still not found.
Two usual causes. Either you are using an old address — recopy the current link from Integrations → Messaging → Direct link, because renaming a chatbot regenerates its handle — or you are looking at a different chatbot than the one you activated. See Hosted page 404.
Activate is greyed out or missing.
Your role cannot edit chatbots in this account, or you are acting inside a teammate's account without that permission. See Team member cannot see chatbots.
It is active but the widget still does not appear on my site.
Activation is only the first gate. The widget also needs the correct snippet on the published page and your live host on the allowed-domains list. It works on every plan, so upgrading will not fix it. Work through The widget is not showing.
It is active but visitors are told it is not ready.
That is untrained mode, not an activation problem. Add knowledge and let it finish. See Untrained mode.
Does deactivating stop billing?
No. Message credits are consumed per answer, so a paused chatbot naturally spends nothing — but your plan and its price do not change. To reduce the plan, see Upgrade or downgrade.
Common questions
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Related articles
Chatbot readiness
Two independent lights: active versus draft, and trained versus not. Visitors need the first; good answers need both.
Go-live checklist
Eight checks before your first real visitor: trained knowledge, your own wording, activation, a channel, and outside proof.
Untrained mode
An active chatbot with no finished training still loads and tells visitors it is not ready, rather than erroring.
Delete a chatbot
Permanently remove a chatbot and everything attached to it. There is no recycle bin — pausing is the reversible option.
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