How to add a free AI chatbot to your small business website
You can put an AI chatbot on your website for free in about 15 minutes. It reads your website, answers visitors’ questions in your business’s name, and collects their name and email when they want a quote or a call back. Here’s how, step by step.
What a good small business chatbot should do
- Answer from your information (services, prices, area, hours), not general internet answers.
- Collect leads: name, email or phone, and what they need.
- Tell you when a new lead comes in.
- Match your website’s colors and use your business name.
- Keep a history of every chat so you can see what people ask.
Step by step with Maurie AI’s free plan
- Create a free account at maurieai.com. No card needed.
- Add your website address. Maurie reads up to 25 pages and learns your services, prices and hours.
- Add your own answers to the questions you get most (FAQs).
- Test it in the preview window. Ask it what a customer would ask.
- Make it yours: name, picture, colors, greeting and suggested questions.
- Turn on lead capture so it asks for a name and email, and emails you each new lead.
- Add it to your website: copy one line of code into your site (most website builders have a “custom code” or “footer code” setting). No website? Share the chat link instead.
What the free plan includes
| Free | Starter | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 | $49 a month billed yearly ($59 monthly) |
| AI Agents | 1 | 3 |
| AI messages a month | 50 | 1,000 |
| Website pages it learns | 25 | 250 |
| CRM contacts | 250 | 5,000 |
| Lead capture + email alerts | Yes | Yes |
| Learns from files (PDF and more) | No | Yes |
| Hand the chat to a person | No | Yes |
| Book appointments (Google Calendar) | No | Yes |
The free plan is enough to try it on a real website and see what visitors ask. When you need more messages, upgrade from inside the app. All plans: Pricing.
Tips that get more leads
- Write a greeting that offers help with something specific: “Need a quote? Ask me anything.”
- Add 3 suggested questions so visitors don’t have to think of one.
- Read the chat history once a week and add answers for the questions it couldn’t answer.
QUESTIONS
Common questions
Will it make things up?
It answers from your website and the answers you add. You train it the way you want, including what it should do when it doesn’t know, for example offer to take the visitor’s details.
Does it work with WordPress, Wix or Squarespace?
Any site that lets you add a line of code. See AI Agents.
Can it answer the phone too?
Yes, with an AI Receptionist package. See AI Phone Receptionist.