HeySpark – Live Chat and Call Now Plugin

No. Conversations are stored in your WordPress database. All real-time communication happens between the visitor’s browser and your own server via the WordPress REST API.

HeySpark uses long-polling against the WordPress REST API. The visitor’s browser holds an open request that returns as soon as new activity happens on your conversation. It works on standard PHP hosting with no special server configuration.

Yes. The widget loads via deferred JavaScript and fetches its state over the REST API after the page loads, so cached HTML is fine. The admin inbox is not cached (WP-Admin is never cached).

Open HeySpark → Settings , pick a brand color, change the greeting text or launcher position, and save. The live preview shows your changes before you commit.

Yes. Uncheck Show on mobile devices in Settings.

The conversation is marked closed. The visitor sees a “This conversation has ended” banner with a button to start a new live chat. Past conversations appear in their widget home screen so they can view the history.

Enable the GDPR consent checkbox in Settings and set your consent text. The pre-chat form will require the visitor to agree before sending. Visitor conversations are stored with a hashed, HttpOnly cookie. No personal data beyond what the visitor submits.

By default HeySpark does not contact any third-party service with visitor data. See the FAQ entry below if you want to enable Gravatar-based visitor avatars (off by default; requires explicit opt-in).

By default, no. Conversations, settings, agents and visitor sessions all live in your own WordPress database.

There is one optional integration: under Settings → Visitor tracking you can turn on “Fetch visitor avatars from Gravatar”. When enabled, hashed visitor emails are sent to Gravatar (run by Automattic) to fetch avatar images shown in the admin inbox. This setting is off by default and the plugin makes no external requests for visitor data unless you opt in.

A second optional integration: under Settings → Visitor tracking you can turn on “Look up visitor country from IP”. When enabled, visitor IPs are sent to a geolocation service (ipapi.co) to resolve a country for the visitors dashboard. This setting is off by default and results are cached per IP.

Agent avatars in the admin inbox use WordPress’s built-in get_avatar_url() for the logged-in agent’s own account — this is standard WordPress behaviour, governed by the agent’s own profile rather than the plugin.

Each site in a multisite network runs its own HeySpark install with its own conversations and settings. No network-wide inbox in v1.

A POT file is included at /languages/heyspark.pot . Use Poedit, Loco Translate, or translate.wordpress.org to create a translation.

Audio calls are off by default. Turn them on under Settings → Audio calls . Once enabled, visitors see a “Call us” option in the chat widget and agents can start a call from any conversation. Audio flows directly between the two browsers using WebRTC, so the voice stream never passes through your WordPress server. Only the call signaling (the setup handshake) and the call record (duration, who called) touch your site.

For setup, the browsers contact public STUN servers (Google and Cloudflare) to discover how to reach each other. No audio is sent to those servers. On restrictive networks a TURN relay is needed to carry the audio; this is off by default. You can either enable the optional HeySpark managed TURN relay (hosted on Cloudflare; audio passes through in transit but is never stored) or point the plugin at your own TURN server. Your conversations, messages and call history always stay in your WordPress database either way.

If every agent is offline, or all online agents are already on a call, the visitor is shown the message form instead with a short note, so the contact is never lost. Visitor-initiated calls that ring without an answer are recorded as missed and can trigger an email to the address set under Settings.

Yes. After a call ends or is missed, a “Call back” button appears on the call note in the conversation thread. Agents can also start a call at any time from the phone icon in the conversation header.

Audio calls show two small level meters on the call card: the top bar is your microphone, the bottom is the other person. If your bar does not move when you speak, your microphone is blocked or muted at the OS level. If the other bar stays flat and a “No audio detected” notice appears, the media path is being blocked (common on strict corporate or mobile networks); enabling a TURN relay under Settings usually fixes this. For deeper diagnosis, turn on Verbose call debug logging in the Audio calls settings and reproduce the issue; events are written to wp-content/uploads/heyspark/calls-YYYY-MM-DD.log .

Video calls are a HeySpark Pro feature. When enabled, a “Video call” button appears alongside the audio “Call us” option, and video flows camera to camera, peer to peer, between the two browsers. Relayed video (for restrictive networks) uses your own TURN server, so it stays on infrastructure you control. If a video call cannot connect, it falls back to the audio path.

Optionally, yes. Under Settings → Visitor tracking you can turn on “Look up visitor country from IP”. It is off by default. When enabled, the visitor’s IP is sent to a third-party geolocation service (ipapi.co) to label their row in the visitors dashboard with a country, and you can filter the list by country. Results are cached per IP. A VPN or proxy can make the country inaccurate.