Settings › Channels › Who can chat has three settings. Pick the one that matches how much you need to know before you answer.
Anyone can chat
No name, no email. Someone lands on your site with a question and gets an answer.
Best for a shop, a restaurant, a coworking space — anywhere most questions are about you rather than about a specific customer’s account.
The trade-off: you often cannot follow up, because you have no way to reach them.
Everyone says who they are
The visitor gives a name and an email before the first message. Both are required.
Best when you need to be able to write back. The catch is that a form before a question costs you some conversations — people in a hurry close the tab.
These details are taken at face value. airys shows the contact as unverified, because anyone can type any name.
Only signed-in customers
The widget stays hidden until your own site vouches for the person. Your server signs a small token saying “this is Ana, ana@example.com”, your page hands it to the widget, and airys checks the signature against your signing secret.
Best inside a product where everyone is already logged in. Nobody types anything, contacts are verified, and a customer’s history follows them across devices.
This one needs a developer for about an hour.
It also keeps the bubble off your help site. A help site visitor has nothing to sign in with, so there is no token to check and the bubble would never appear for anyone. Pick one of the other two if you want chat there.
Changing your mind
Switching settings does not affect conversations that already happened. It only changes what is asked of the next visitor.