# AI Chatbot for OpenCart: A Setup Guide Without a Module > How to give an OpenCart store an AI chatbot that answers from its own catalog: getting a product feed out of OpenCart, adding the widget to your theme, and what the assistant handles. Published: 2026-09-21 | Author: Vendigit Canonical: https://vendigit.com/journal/ai-assistant-for-opencart OpenCart is still behind a lot of online stores, especially older ones that have grown their catalog over many years. Those stores often have a long tail of products, a well-worn theme and a few custom modules nobody wants to touch. Adding an AI chatbot for OpenCart shouldn't mean another module in that stack. Vendigit doesn't need one: it reads your product feed and your policy pages, then answers customers on your website and in Telegram. This guide covers where an OpenCart store gets its feed, how to add the widget to your theme, the five setup steps, and what the assistant answers on its own. ## Why an AI chatbot for OpenCart makes sense OpenCart stores often have big catalogs and small teams. The owner or one manager answers the chat, and the questions repeat: is it in stock, what does it cost, is there a cheaper version, what's compatible with my model, how is delivery paid. With thousands of products, even the person who knows the shop best has to look things up. An AI assistant that reads your catalog does the looking up. It searches by meaning, not just by keyword, so "a charger for the DX-450" finds compatible chargers even if the customer doesn't know the exact name. It suggests alternatives when something is out of stock and accessories that go with what they're buying. Say your store has 4,000 products and gets 25 questions a day, of which 15 are lookups. Each lookup takes a few minutes by hand. The assistant answers those 15 in seconds, and the other 10 come to you with the full conversation. (Illustrative arithmetic, not a measured result.) The assistant picks the product by id, and Vendigit fills in the name, price and link on the product card straight from your feed. The assistant is instructed not to state a price or stock level it didn't find. ## Getting a product feed out of OpenCart Current versions of OpenCart don't ship a ready-to-use public product feed. You get one from an extension, and there's a good chance your store already has one. ### Check what you already have If you sell on Rozetka, Prom, Hotline or Google Shopping, your store almost certainly runs a feed extension already. Look in **Extensions → Extensions** and choose the **Feeds** type from the list. Open the feed you use and find its URL. It usually looks like `https://your-shop.com/index.php?route=extension/feed/...` or a friendlier `.xml` address, on your own domain. Older OpenCart versions included a **Google Base** feed under the product feeds section; [Antropy's guide](https://www.antropy.co.uk/blog/opencart-product-feed-google-shopping) shows how it was enabled. If your store is on one of those versions and the feed is enabled, that URL will work too. ### Install a feed extension if you don't The [OpenCart Marketplace](https://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=marketplace/extension) lists feed extensions for Google Merchant, Facebook, Rozetka, Prom and generic XML or CSV, and Ukrainian OpenCart developers sell YML export modules built for local marketplaces. We don't recommend a particular one. Check three things before you buy: - **It supports your exact OpenCart version.** Extensions written for 2.x or 3.x often won't run on 4.x. - **It publishes the file on your own domain.** Vendigit accepts a feed URL only from your shop's domain or its subdomains. - **It exports what customers ask about:** price, special price, availability or quantity, category, manufacturer, images, product link and attributes. Vendigit reads YML (`` with `param` tags), Google Merchant XML, generic XML, RSS and Atom, CSV/TSV and JSON, so most extension output works. A feed URL is re-synced every 6 hours. If you need a quick start before the extension is ready, you can upload a feed file instead (up to 20 MB). An uploaded file doesn't re-sync, so replace it when prices change. For more on the format, read [what a YML product feed is](/journal/what-is-yml-product-feed). ## The five setup steps ### 1. Add your shop Enter the store's name and address. ### 2. Verify your domain Vendigit shows a TXT record (`vendigit-verify=…`). Add it in the DNS settings at your registrar or hosting provider and press **Verify**. Vendigit checks several times over about a quarter of an hour; DNS changes can take up to an hour. Keep the record afterwards. Verification also starts the site crawl. Vendigit reads up to 20 pages from your Information section and elsewhere (delivery, payment, returns, warranty, contacts, terms) and re-reads them weekly. Make sure those pages exist and are linked from your site, because the assistant answers delivery and payment questions only from what is written there. ### 3. Add the widget to your theme, or connect Telegram **Widget.** In **Assistant → Widget**, choose position, accent colour and welcome message, then copy the snippet. It needs to sit right before `` on every page. In OpenCart that's the footer template of your theme: `common/footer.twig` in OpenCart 3 and 4, or `common/footer.tpl` in older versions. Some commercial themes have a field for custom footer code in the theme settings, which survives theme updates better. After editing a template, refresh the theme cache (and the modification cache if you use OCMOD) or the change may not show. Back up the file first. The widget runs inside its own isolated container, so your theme's styles can't break it. It works only on your domain and its `www.` version. **Telegram** is available from the Growth plan. Create the channel in **Assistant → Telegram**, open the generated `t.me` link once, then share it with customers. No bot to create, no token to paste. ### 4. Add the product feed Paste the feed URL or upload the file. Vendigit streams the file (large feeds are fine), maps the fields automatically and shows you the mapping. Check that price, availability, category, manufacturer and link are matched. A safety rule protects you from a broken export: if a scheduled sync would cut a catalog of 100+ products to less than half, Vendigit keeps the existing catalog and reports the problem. Feed issues are covered in [common product feed errors](/journal/product-feed-errors). ### 5. Test, then go live In **Assistant → Simulator**, ask what your customers ask, including the awkward ones. The simulator runs the real assistant on your catalog and doesn't count against your plan. When you're happy, press **Go live**. ## What it answers, and what it hands over **On its own:** price and stock from the feed; finding products by description or purpose; alternatives, cheaper options, accessories and compatible items; comparing products already mentioned; brands and categories you carry; delivery, payment, returns and warranty from your pages. It answers in English, Ukrainian or Russian, matching the customer. **To a person:** when the customer asks for one, complains, disputes a return or warranty, asks about wholesale or a custom price, reports a damaged or wrong delivery, or asks about an existing order. The customer is told a manager will reply in the same chat, and your chosen team members get an email. You can reply or take the dialog over; the assistant waits until you return it. Read more in [when an AI should hand over to a manager](/journal/when-ai-should-hand-over-to-manager). **Never:** taking orders, checking order status, taking payment or asking for personal data. If a term isn't written on your site, it says the shop doesn't publish it. ## Plans and catalog size Large OpenCart catalogs should check the product limit per shop as well as the dialog count. | Plan | Price | Products per shop | Dialogs / month | Channels | |---|---|---|---|---| | Starter | $20 / month | 10,000 | 300 | Website widget | | Growth | $65 / month | 15,000 | 2,000 | Widget and Telegram | | Business | $99 / month | 50,000 | 4,000 | Widget and Telegram | If your feed has more products than the plan covers, Vendigit indexes up to the limit and tells you so in the dashboard. Starter has a 14-day free trial. See the [pricing section](/pricing). ## FAQ ### Do I need to install a Vendigit extension in OpenCart? No. Vendigit needs only a product feed URL and the widget snippet in your theme. If you don't have a feed yet, that comes from a feed extension of your choice, not from us. ### Which OpenCart versions work? Any version that can publish a product feed on your domain. Vendigit reads the feed, not OpenCart itself. ### Will the assistant answer about products hidden from the feed? No. If a product isn't in the feed, the assistant doesn't know it exists. ### My catalog has 20,000 products. Is that a problem? No, as long as your plan covers it: Growth indexes up to 15,000 products per shop and Business up to 50,000. ### Can managers still answer customers themselves? Yes. Every dialog is in the dashboard, and a manager can reply or take over at any point. Your OpenCart catalog already knows every price and every spec. Let it answer customers directly. [Start the 14-day free trial](https://app.vendigit.com/register). No card required.