I have now been using Re:Plain for a while so it’s time we get a bit in-depth on how it works and what it allows us to do.

We have a Re:Plain Preview already that you can check, to gain some initial insights and expectations:

We’d expect a very easy to use Chat widget for a website that allows us to answer via Telegram, Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger to any question a visitor asks us. In addition, we’d expect an easy way to handle in-widget FAQs, messages, limited automation, schedules and what not.

Let’s Get this Re:Plain Started

We will install Re:Plain on our MasterStack website for the purpose of this review, so we can directly see what it looks like.

To note: We have to add AppSumo codes for each website we add in order to gain the benefits, but that’s just when we first set it up.

So, we get started by following Re:Plain’s instructions, found at https://replain.cc/faq . We are using Telegram and 3 stacks, as I personally like how Telegram handles bots and conversations. You can also use Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp.

We connect our website by going through https://replain.cc/how_to_connect_replain_to_your_website and press the “Connect” button

We then follow the sequence until we get the code to add to our website. The onboarding is very easy and afterwards we can add as many websites as we wish.

This is what greets us as we choose a website:

With that we can easily click on the buttons, activate, configure and deactivate power-ups, remove the branding on the website and all that.

Navigation is really easy and by clicking “Show Code” we have our own code we can add on our website.

We can easily do that by adding it on our Google Tag Manager, code, or if we use WordPress we could just install the RePlain Plugin. We can just add our code there and there we go, we have our own chat widget ready.

This whole process takes little more than 5 minutes, and we can then add our power-ups, banners, analytics, automation, ratings and anything else we might want to, such as more operators.

On the website it looks great, just like on the Re:Plain’s own website. we can change colors and descriptions as we wish:

There are many languages available and now that we have our chat up we can direct through email when we’re not there and add an automatic schedule. That’s it, unless we want to get fancy, all it takes is less than 10 minutes to be up and running.

Let’s Power-Up our Chat

As of this writing, these are the available power-ups, with Video Manager being the newest one.

Video Manager is a bit of an exception so let’s discuss it further: its pricing consists of two parts, one as a monthly sub and the other as credits for video usage. With 3 AppSumo stacks, the monthly sub part is covered, however we still have to pay for credits on video usage.

What Video Manager does is.. video conference 1-on-1 with your visitors, you can prompt the video call, have a talk with your visitor directly from the widget. The payment is per-call, in bundles of credits.

All of the other power-ups are available for free if you have three stacks. They also have a roadmap here: https://trello.com/b/QNmihgtB/replain-public-roadmap They are quite a bit behind it seems, but they’re still rolling out features.

The currently present power-ups, other than Video Manager, are:

• Conversation Ratings
• My Messengers (add social buttons other than the chat widget, for direct 1-to-1 conversations)
• Custom Forms
• Schedule for Work Hours
• Automate Support (very simple chat automation with prepared responses)
• Chat History
• Blacklist
• Click-to-chat Link
• Video Welcome Message
• Active Invitation
• Zapier Integrations
• Banners (announcements, sales)
• Analytics

Most of these features are self-explanatory, and according to their roadmap they’re planning on buffing up their chatbot, so we’ll have to wait and see for that.

What do We Think about Re:Plain?

We went in expecting a quick and easy to use chat widget we can easily add operators and handle it via our messaging platforms.

Everything went without a hitch, I’ve used Re:Plain for the past few weeks on other websites and it has worked very well so far. The Whatsapp integration is a little bit rough around the edges still, but both Facebook Messenger and Telegram work very well.

The restrictions in having to use a platform with no website can sometimes make things a little different than usual, but so far both me and my colleagues have had no issues at all, and we find this a solid addition to our toolsets.