Butterchat is an AI-first customer support platform. It brings every conversation channel — WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, web chat and email — into a single inbox, where an AI agent named Butter takes the first shift and your team steps in with full context.

This documentation walks through everything from connecting your first channel to training the AI, wiring up your store, and managing your team. If you are brand new, start with the quick start.

Four steps take you from an empty account to a live agent answering real customers.

1. 1

   Create your workspace

   Sign up, choose a plan to activate your workspace, and you are in. The person who signs up becomes the Owner and can invite the rest of the team later — see creating your account.
2. 2

   Connect a channel

   Open Settings → Connect Accounts and connect your first channel — a Facebook Page, WhatsApp number, Instagram account, or the web chat widget. See connecting channels.
3. 3

   Train the AI

   Give Butter something to answer from: add your website or upload documents. Each page is reviewed before it is embedded. See the knowledge base.
4. 4

   Go live

   New messages are answered instantly, and anything the AI cannot handle is handed to your team with a summary of what happened.

The dashboard is organized around the inbox, with everything else a click away in the sidebar.

• Inbox — every conversation across every channel, split into queues you can filter by channel.
• Settings — connect accounts, conversation settings, commerce, payments, courier, email and the team. Most areas are Owner-only — see roles & permissions.
• AI Agent — the agent's persona, its knowledge base and its tools (Owner-only).
• Support — reach the Studio Butterfly team and raise a support ticket.

Everything in Butterchat lives inside a company workspace. The person who signs up creates the workspace and becomes its Owner; everyone else joins later by invitation.

1. 1

   Sign up

   Provide your company name, a workspace address (your subdomain — lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens, at least 3 characters, e.g. yourbrand.studiobutterfly.io; we suggest one from your company name), your email, and a password of at least 8 characters. Your email and workspace address each need to be unique.
2. 2

   Your workspace is provisioned

   Signing up sets everything up in one step — your workspace, an Administration department, your Owner account, a starter AI agent, and sensible default conversation settings. You are signed in right away.
3. 3

   Choose a plan to activate

   A brand-new workspace starts in a pending state and is activated with a subscription. Pick a package and continue to secure checkout, handled by SSLCommerz.
4. 4

   You're active

   Once payment is confirmed, your workspace flips to active and you continue to the setup wizard. Payment is verified on our servers and is safe to retry — a refresh will never double-charge you.

Sign in at app.studiobutterfly.io with your email and password. You land back in your dashboard and stay signed in as you work.

Who can sign in

• Your account must be active. A member who has been suspended, removed, or retired cannot sign in.
• Your workspace must be active. If the subscription is pending or has lapsed you can still sign in, but you land on the plan / renewal screen until it is sorted. Suspended or removed workspaces are blocked entirely.

Manage your own profile from your account settings — this is your personal identity across the workspace.

• Set your name, profile photo and a short bio so teammates and AI summaries know who is who.
• Change your password by entering your current one and a new one.

Once your workspace is active, a short setup wizard helps you get ready. Every step is optional and can be skipped — but each one makes Butter smarter and your workspace more complete.

1. 1

   Your profile

   Add your name and a profile photo so teammates and summaries know who is who.
2. 2

   Company info

   Upload your logo, choose a business category, and add your website. Adding your site here also queues it for AI training, so Butter can start learning from your public pages.
3. 3

   Connect resources

   Link your first channels and, if you sell online, your store. You can always do this later in Settings.
4. 4

   AI agent profile

   Give Butter its name and persona so it sounds like your brand.

Owners manage the company's identity under Settings → General — the details customers and your team see across Butterchat.

• Your company name and business category.
• Your logo and website, first set during onboarding and editable anytime (your website can be re-synced into the knowledge base).

Butterchat has three roles that determine what a person sees and can do. You choose a role when you invite someone, and you can change it later.

At a glance

Grow your team by inviting people into your workspace. Invitations are role-based and expire quickly for security.

1. 1

   Send an invite

   In Teams, choose Invite new employee. Enter the person's email, pick a department, and assign a role — Administrator or one of your custom roles. You can also assign shifts.
2. 2

   They accept

   The invitee gets a “You're invited!” email with an Accept invitation button. They set a username, a password (at least 8 characters), and an optional bio and photo — and their account is created, ready to sign in.
3. 3

   Manage invitations

   Pending invites can be resent with a fresh link or cancelled from the Teams area.

Managing members

• Update a member's details or switch their role (for example Employee → Administrator) from the Teams area — no need to re-invite.
• Retire someone who leaves to revoke their access. The Owner can never be retired, and an Admin cannot change the Owner.

Organize your team in the Teams area with departments and shifts, so work routes to the right people at the right time.

Butterchat meets your customers where they already are. Connect your social accounts under Settings → Connect Accounts, and add the web chat widget from the AI Agent page. Every channel lands in the same inbox.

Messaging platforms limit when a business may send a free-form message. Butterchat tracks the window on Messenger for you and shows exactly where a conversation stands, so you never send a message that will bounce. The countdown resets every time the customer writes back.

1. 1

   0–24 hours: open

   Reply freely with any message — no tag needed.
2. 2

   24 hours – 7 days: human agent

   The composer stays open, and every reply is automatically sent as a genuine human-agent reply. Keep it real support — no promotions.
3. 3

   After 7 days: closed

   Free-form replies are locked. You can still reach the customer with a purpose-built saved template (below).

Message tags (saved templates)

To message a customer about something specific outside the open window, Butterchat uses Meta's approved message tags, surfaced as saved-reply types:

• Order Update — order confirmation, dispatch, tracking or delivery news.
• Event Update — a reminder or change for a booking or appointment the customer confirmed.
• Account Update — a non-recurring change to the customer's account.

Connect a support mailbox and inbound email becomes a conversation in your inbox — the AI answers when it is confident, or acknowledges the customer and routes the email to your team. A guided five-step wizard walks you through setup and verifies your servers as you go.

Setting up a mailbox

1. 1

   Identity

   Go to Settings → Email Tickets → Add mailbox and enter the support address plus the From name shown on your replies.
2. 2

   Incoming mail (IMAP)

   Enter your IMAP host, port, username and password. Butterchat verifies the connection instantly — a green check lets you continue, and if something is off you get a precise, plain-English reason (wrong host, authentication failed, and so on). For Gmail, Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, use an app password rather than your normal login.
3. 3

   Outgoing mail (SMTP)

   Enter your SMTP details; they are verified the same way before you move on.
4. 4

   Auto-reply

   Choose how the mailbox replies (see below), with a live simulation of the flow.
5. 5

   Reply styling

   Brand your outgoing replies (see below) with a live email preview, then save — Butterchat starts watching the mailbox.

Auto-reply & acknowledgements

• Turn Auto-reply with answers on to let the AI email confident answers straight back — threaded onto the original message. A sales enquiry it can nurture is answered too.
• Leave Let AI decide on and the AI handles acknowledgements for you: when it doesn't have enough info or context to answer, it won't guess — it acknowledges the email and tells the customer a team member will reply soon, using a sensible default message.
• Switch Let AI decide off to write your own acknowledgement subject and message — the fields come pre-filled with generic wording you can tweak.
• An angry or urgent email, or one asking for a person, is escalated to the human queue automatically.

Reply styling — your own branding

• Send replies as an HTML template or as plain text.
• For HTML, add your logo and design a header and footer in HTML. A live preview shows exactly how the email will look — From, Subject and all your styling.
• This branding is entirely your own; it is never mixed with Butterchat's, and each connected mailbox can have its own look.

Conversations look after themselves so nothing sits waiting and your open count reflects reality. Configure the behavior under Settings → Conversation.

Inactivity & auto-close

• AI inactivity timeout — minutes of silence before an AI-handled chat auto-closes. Default 5 minutes.
• Human inactivity timeout — minutes of silence before a human-handled chat auto-closes; a countdown shows in the inbox for the final minute. Default 5 minutes.
• Agent response SLA — if a human-assigned chat has an unanswered customer message older than this, it is handed back to the AI. Default off.

Reopening a conversation

• An agent can reopen a closed conversation from the closed banner — it returns to the inbox with all its history.
• Each customer has one live thread at a time. If a customer already has an active conversation, close it before reopening an old one.
• When a customer messages again after a thread is closed, a fresh conversation is started for them — nothing is lost.

Create posts for your connected Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts and plan them on a calendar — all from Contents → Posts.

1. 1

   Compose a post

   Choose Create post, pick a channel — a Facebook Page (or several Pages at once) or an Instagram account — write your caption, and add your media. Facebook takes up to two images or a single video; Instagram supports a single image, a carousel, a reel or a story.
2. 2

   Publish, schedule or save

   Publish now, or set a date and time to schedule it — Butterchat holds and publishes it for you. You can also save a draft, and attach a pinned first comment.
3. 3

   Plan ahead

   The Planner (Contents → Planner) shows your published and scheduled posts — Facebook and Instagram — on a calendar.

Comments on your Facebook and Instagram posts land in one place — Contents → Comments — so you can keep up without hopping between apps.

• The Comments tab is a unified inbox of new comments across Facebook and Instagram with an unread count. Reply from the inbox and mark comments as read — each reply is sent back through the right channel automatically.
• The Posts tab lists a channel's posts; open one to see and moderate just that post's comment thread — reply, hide or delete.
• Switch channels from the account picker, or choose the All view (shown when more than one channel is connected) to see every connected Page and account together.

Butterchat can reply to comments on your posts for you, on both Facebook and Instagram. You configure it per post — when you compose or edit one, expand the Comment automation section.

How it decides what to reply

1. 1

   Keyword rules first

   If a comment contains any of the keywords in one of your rules, Butterchat sends that rule's reply. Each rule takes a list of comma-separated keywords and the response to post.
2. 2

   Then an AI reply

   If no rule matches, the AI writes a reply guided by the instructions you gave the post.
3. 3

   Then your default reply

   If the AI has nothing suitable, Butterchat falls back to the default reply you set.
4. 4

   Otherwise, leave it for a human

   If none of the above apply, the comment is left in the comment inbox for your team.

Setting it up

1. 1

   Add keyword rules

   On a post, add one or more keyword rules for the replies you want to be exact.
2. 2

   Add AI instructions and a default reply

   Write AI instructions for how the assistant should respond to everything else, and a default reply as a safety net.
3. 3

   Turn it on

   Flip the Enable automation toggle in the post's Comment automation section. Save the post and Butterchat starts replying.

Connect your store and Butterchat becomes commerce-aware — the AI can answer product and order questions with live data. Manage stores under Settings → Ecommerce. Store and AI-order settings are Owner-only.

To connect a hosted store, open the Connect an existing store wizard, paste your store URL, and follow the prompts. Butterchat verifies the connection, then syncs your catalog so the AI can start answering. Wix connects with an API key and Site ID.

Beyond answering, Butter can act on orders when you allow it — turning routine “where's my order?” and “cancel my order” requests into instant self-service. Configure this under Settings → Ecommerce → AI order handling (Owner-only).

• Order lookup works out of the box — the AI fetches status and tracking and answers in the chat.
• Turn on cancel and modify per store — both are off by default and each asks the customer to confirm before acting.
• Set an order-status threshold so the AI may only cancel or modify while an order is early enough in its lifecycle (for example, before it ships).

What each platform supports

Butterchat includes a native reservations engine. The AI can check availability, quote a price, and take a booking with a deposit — all inside the chat. It supports two modes: Stay (hotels and guesthouses — rooms by date) and Appointment (timed slots for salons, clinics and the like).

1. 1

   Enable booking

   Go to Settings → Booking, pick Stay or Appointment, name your property, set your currency, and choose whether a deposit is required (and the percentage). The AI's booking tools are switched on for you automatically.
2. 2

   Add your rooms (or services)

   Under Booking → Rooms, add each room type with photos, a nightly rate, how many rooms of that type you have, and the maximum guests. (Appointment mode adds an availability editor for weekly hours and slot length.)
3. 3

   Choose deposit methods

   On the Booking settings page, pick which of your configured payment gateways guests may use for deposits.

How a guest books in chat

The AI never books on the first message — it collects what it needs step by step: the dates, then the room if there is a choice, then a confirmation of the price and any deposit, then the guest's name and contact. Only then does it hold the room. With no deposit, the booking is confirmed outright; with a deposit, the AI sends a secure payment link and the booking confirms the moment payment is verified.

Managing reservations

Staff view every booking under Booking → Reservations — searchable, with guest, room, dates, total and status, and how it was booked. Owners and Admins can confirm a held reservation or cancel one.

Payment gateways let your customers pay you for orders and booking deposits. Configure them once under Settings → Payments (Owner-only), then choose which features may use each one.

Connect a courier to dispatch parcels for your native-store orders and track them to delivery. Manage this under Settings → Courier.

To connect, open Settings → Courier, choose a provider, and enter your credentials — Butterchat verifies them before saving. Once connected you can create a shipment for an order, and its status flows back onto the order (dispatched → shipped, delivered → fulfilled).

Butter is your AI agent. It reads each incoming message, understands intent, and answers using your knowledge base and any connected tools — grounded in your content, not guesswork. Configure it under AI Agent → Configure (Owner-only).

When it hands off to a human

• The customer asks for a person, or the message matches one of your escalation rules (refunds, complaints, order issues, and so on).
• The customer sounds angry or urgent — Butter reads sentiment and escalates a genuine complaint.
• The knowledge base does not have the answer — it is honest about the gap and connects a human rather than inventing a reply.

Everything Butter says comes from its knowledge base. You build it under AI Agent → Knowledge Base (Owner-only), and nothing reaches the AI without your approval.

The review-before-embed pipeline

1. 1

   Add a website

   Choose Add website and paste a public URL. Butterchat scrapes the page into clean text — but does not add it to the AI yet.
2. 2

   Review the content

   The scraped text opens in a review panel where you can read and edit it before anything is saved.
3. 3

   Approve to embed

   Only when you approve is the content embedded into the AI's memory. You can set a website to re-sync on a schedule — and a re-sync is reviewed again, showing what changed, before it replaces the old version.

Other ways to train Butter

• Upload documents — PDF, Word (DOC/DOCX), CSV, TXT, Markdown and Excel (XLS/XLSX), up to 100 MB and 10 files at a time. Uploads go through the same review-then-approve step before they are embedded.
• Forms — structured tables of information you want the agent to draw on.

Tools let Butter do things, not just talk. Enable them per company under AI Agent → Tools (Owner-only). Anything that changes data asks the customer to confirm first.

Ask Butter AI is a built-in assistant for your team — a chat you open from the Ask Butter AI button in the sidebar. It is separate from the customer-facing agent: this one helps you run the workspace, it never talks to your customers.

What you can ask

• Everyone — inbox insights: conversation counts, search, channel breakdown, escalation trends, and order counts.
• Owners & Admins — team oversight: who is active and how work is distributed across agents.
• Owners — test the knowledge base to see how the AI would answer, and add knowledge notes or time-bound offers.

The inbox is where your team lives. Every conversation, from every channel, in one place — with the AI's work already done on the ones it could handle.

The queues

• Your Inbox — the ongoing conversations you are handling.
• Unassigned — new conversations waiting to be picked up. Anyone can claim one; accepting it assigns it to you.
• Hold — chats you have parked; the customer's next message brings it back.
• Closed — resolved conversations, with each one's close reason recorded.

Who sees what

• Owners and Admins see the whole company's conversations.
• Employees see the conversations assigned to them, plus the shared unassigned queue so they can pick up new chats.

The tools your agents reach for dozens of times a day, built into every conversation.

Saved replies are canned answers your team can drop into any conversation. Manage them from Save Replies in the sidebar.

1. 1

   Add a reply

   Choose Add reply, give it a title, and write the reply text (up to 1,000 characters). Pick a language and add tags to find it faster.
2. 2

   Choose who can use it

   Public replies are available to everyone in your company; Private replies are scoped to a department you choose.
3. 3

   Set the type

   General for everyday answers, or Order, Event or Account update — these map to Meta message tags so they can be sent outside the Messenger 24-hour window.

Using them

• In a conversation, open the saved-replies picker, search, and insert or send.
• Owners and Admins see every reply; agents see public replies plus the private ones for their departments.
• For the tagged types, Butterchat runs a quick compliance check so an out-of-window message follows Meta's rules (genuine updates, no promotions).

The Customers page is a directory of everyone who has messaged you, collected automatically across every channel.

• Customers are created automatically the first time someone writes in — from Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, web chat or email.
• The list shows each customer's name, channel, when they were last active, and how many conversations they have had. Search by name or contact, and filter by channel.
• Open a customer to see their profile and full conversation history, and click any past conversation to read it.

Send an approved WhatsApp template to many customers at once from the Broadcasts page — a promotion, an announcement, a reminder — then watch it deliver in real time.

Sending a broadcast

1. 1

   Pick a template

   Give the broadcast a name (for your reference only) and choose one of your approved WhatsApp templates. You'll see a live preview of the message.
2. 2

   Fill in the content

   If the template has variables (like a name or a code) or a header image, fill them in — the preview updates as you type. Templates with no variables skip this step.
3. 3

   Choose the audience

   Send to all WhatsApp customers, or hand-pick people on the Customers page and use Broadcast to selected. A live count shows how many will actually receive it.
4. 4

   Review & send — or schedule

   Confirm everything, then send now, schedule it for a future date and time, or save it as a draft to finish later.

Built-in guardrails

• Consent is respected. Anyone who has opted out never receives a broadcast. Customers can reply STOP at any time to unsubscribe (and START to opt back in) — they're removed automatically and sent a confirmation.
• Frequency cap. By default, anyone already reached by a broadcast in the last 24 hours is skipped, so you never over-message. You can turn this off per broadcast.
• No duplicates. The same phone number is never messaged twice in one broadcast.
• Quality warning. If your WhatsApp number's quality rating has dropped, you're warned before sending a large broadcast — sending anyway can lower it further or hit your messaging limit.

Tracking results

• Each campaign shows live tiles — recipients, sent, delivered, read and failed — with a progress bar that fills as the send runs.
• A delivery-over-time chart plots sent, delivered and read as they happen.
• The recipient list lets you filter by status and see exactly who received it — and the reason for any failure.
• A scheduled or draft broadcast can be sent immediately or deleted; an in-progress one can be cancelled, which skips anyone not yet sent.

Your dashboard home gives you a live read on how support is going, computed from your own conversations and customers. Use the date-range selector (today, yesterday, 7 / 15 / 30 / 90 days, or 6 months) to change the window.

The Activity log is your workspace's audit trail — a searchable, categorized record of what happened across your account. Open it from the avatar menu → Activity. It is available to the Owner and Admins only.

Browse by category

Finding what you need

• Switch tabs to focus on one category, each with a recent-activity count.
• Search by who did it or what it affected, and filter by status (success or failed).
• Long histories are paginated, newest first.
• Every entry shows the event, a short description, who performed it and when.

Butterchat keeps your team in the loop in three ways: a live bell in the dashboard, alerts to your own tools, and transactional email.

The Support page in the sidebar is your hub for getting help with Butterchat — reach our team, find answers, and stay in the loop.

Need help from the Studio Butterfly team? Raise a support ticket from Support in the dashboard. Tickets are private to your company and answered by our team.

1. 1

   Open Support and create a ticket

   Give it a subject and description, pick a category and priority, and attach anything that helps — a screen recording (up to 25 MB), screenshots, or documents.
2. 2

   Track the thread

   You and the Studio Butterfly team reply back and forth on the ticket. You are notified by email as it progresses.
3. 3

   See your team's tickets

   Visibility follows your role — see roles & permissions.