Documentation
Getting started
This guide takes you from a new account to an inbox that is handling real conversations. You do not need to finish everything in one sitting — Squid Support tracks your progress and you can pick up where you left off.
Create your account
Sign up at app.squidsupport.ai. Whoever creates the account becomes the Owner of the organisation — the one role that always has full access, including billing.
If you are arriving from the Shopify App Store instead, the install flow creates your account for you and hands you straight to the brand picker. See Connecting Shopify for that path.
The setup checklist
After signing up you land on a guided setup checklist. It is split into two groups: a short essential list that gets you to a working inbox, and a longer optional list of everything else the platform can do.
Essential steps
- Create your first brand — give it a name, slug and timezone.
- Set up email — start with demo incoming emails, or prepare a live support address.
- Configure the AI agent — build a configuration, deploy it to the brand, validate its tools, then enable it.
- Create conversation tags — labels used for AI routing, inbox filtering, automation and reporting.
- Explore the inbox — practise the workflow against demo emails before you go live.
The demo-email option in step two matters more than it looks. It lets you exercise the whole loop — a message arrives, the AI drafts, you approve, the reply sends — without pointing real customer traffic at a configuration you have not tested yet.
Optional steps
The rest of the checklist covers connecting Shopify, configuring the chat widget, automations, SLA policies, inviting your team, roles and permissions, the dashboard, reports, outbound email, the Refund Hub, the AI dashboard and the AI builder. Work through them as you need them.
What a brand is
A brand is one storefront you support. It owns its own inbox, support address, chat widget, return policies and AI configuration.
One organisation can run several brands, which is the point: if you operate three storefronts, your team works from a single account and a single login, while each storefront keeps its own voice, its own policies and its own connected Shopify store. A conversation always belongs to exactly one brand, so reporting and AI behaviour never bleed between them.
Each brand connects to at most one Shopify store. If you try to attach a store to a brand that already has one, Squid Support tells you which store is already connected and asks you to disconnect it first or pick another brand.
Invite your team
Invite teammates from the settings area. Every member gets a role, and roles are what decide which screens and actions they can reach.
The roles
| Role | What it can do |
|---|---|
| Owner | Full access to everything, including billing. One per organisation. |
| Admin | Full access except billing. Can manage all settings and team members. |
| Supervisor | Can manage the team, view reports, and handle all conversations. |
| Senior Agent | An agent who can also assign, merge, and manage AI drafts. |
| Agent | Can handle conversations, view customers, and use macros. |
| Viewer | Read-only access to conversations, customers and the dashboard. |
Start people on Agent and promote as needed. If the predefined roles do not fit, you can build a custom role from the same underlying permissions.
Plans and trials
New organisations start on a trial. Which billing rail you are on depends on how you signed up: merchants who install from the Shopify App Store are billed through Shopify, and merchants who sign up on our website are billed by card. The two never mix. See Plans & billing for the detail.
Your first fifteen minutes
- Create a brand for your storefront.
- Turn on demo incoming emails so you have something safe to practise on.
- Connect your Shopify store so conversations arrive with order context attached.
- Configure the AI agent and leave it in draft mode, so every reply waits for your approval. See The AI agent.
- Open a demo conversation, read the draft, edit it, and send it. That is the whole daily loop — see The inbox.
- Invite one teammate and watch assignment work.
Once that loop feels right, point your real support address at Squid Support and, when you trust the AI on a topic, let it send those replies without waiting for approval.
Getting help
Email hello@squidsupport.ai. Include your store domain, and the ticket number if your question is about a specific conversation.