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| Subscription | Any plan |
| Access | Admin |
Two widgets share a name. Knowing which you have explains why half the instructions you find do not match.
The two
- Web Widget (Classic) is the older one. It works with live chat, and it has its own settings and its own API. It also does two things messaging does not: callback requests, and deep customisation through that API.
- The Web Widget for messaging is the current one. Persistent conversations, social channels, AI agents.
They are separate products that happen to be named similarly, which is the source of most of the confusion.
How to tell which you have
Start with the account's age, because that settles it without looking at anything. Web Widget (Classic) is only available on accounts created before 5 June 2023. A newer account cannot have it, so any instruction about Classic is not about you.
Between the two dates there is one more distinction: accounts created before 2 November 2021 got Classic by default and had to opt in to messaging, so an older account that nobody migrated is almost certainly still on Classic.
After that, behaviour confirms it: if a conversation disappears when the visitor reloads the page, that is Classic with live chat. If it is still there, that is messaging.
In Admin Center, the messaging channel settings only show a widget if you are on messaging.
Why it matters when reading instructions
Documentation, forum answers and code examples for Classic do not apply to messaging, and the reverse. An article explaining how to customise the widget with an API is almost certainly about Classic, and following it produces nothing.
Check which product an instruction is for before spending time on it.
Classic is legacy
Still supported, not developed. New features arrive in messaging. If you are on Classic and building something new, weigh that before you invest in it.
And if your Classic widget carries live chat, it has a date. Zendesk Chat is removed on 31 January 2028, so the widget on your site has to become the messaging one before then. That makes any customisation you build against the Classic API now a thing with a known end.
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