You can switch chatbot tools without losing your answers if you move them in the right order: export everything you added by hand, let the new tool recrawl your website, test both bots side by side with real questions, and only then swap the script tag. Website content is the easy part, because any tool can read it again. The answers that get lost are the Q&A pairs, corrections and instructions you built up over months, and those need exporting before you cancel.
This guide applies whichever tool you are leaving. If it is Drift specifically, our Drift migration checklist covers its playbooks and lead routing.
Know where your answers actually live
A trained chatbot's knowledge usually sits in four layers. Each moves differently.
| Layer | Example | How it moves |
|---|---|---|
| Crawled website pages | Services, pricing, policies | The new tool crawls your site again |
| Uploaded files | Price list PDF, brochure | Re-upload from your own originals |
| Q&A pairs and corrections | "Do you deliver on Sundays?" with your exact answer | Export or copy from the old tool |
| Instructions | Tone, hand-off rules, things never to say | Copy the text by hand |
The first two are low risk, as long as you still have the original files. The last two are where months of fixes live. Every time you noticed a wrong answer and corrected it in the old tool, that correction is now stored there, not on your website.
Step 1: Export before you lose access
Do this while the old account is still active, ideally on the day you decide to switch.
- Q&A pairs and custom answers. Look for an export or download option. If there isn't one, copy them into a spreadsheet with two columns: question and answer.
- Corrections. Some tools store corrected answers separately from Q&A. Check revision or improvement sections too.
- Instructions and persona. Copy the system prompt or instructions field into a document.
- Transcripts. Download recent conversations if the tool allows it. They show what visitors really ask, which becomes your test set.
- Leads. Export contacts the old tool captured, so none are stranded.
If the old tool has no export at all, budget an hour to copy the important answers by hand. It is tedious but it is the step that saves you.
Step 2: Rebuild the knowledge in the new tool
Start with the website, because it covers the most ground for the least effort. In SpideyChat the crawler reads your sitemap, or follows links from the home page, and learns up to 150 pages per run on Starter and above. Blog posts are skipped unless you ask for them. Then add the layers on top:
- Files. Upload your originals: PDF, DOCX, TXT, CSV or Markdown.
- Q&A pairs. Save your spreadsheet as a CSV with "question" and "answer" headers and upload it. SpideyChat imports each row as a Q&A pair, and a plain two-column CSV works too. Pasted text in a "Q:" and "A:" format is also accepted.
- Instructions. Paste your old instructions into the "System prompt (persona & instructions)" field, then reread them. Rules written around another tool's quirks may no longer be needed.
After importing, open the knowledge manager and spot-check a few entries by source, so you know the import landed as separate questions rather than one long block. Our guide to building an FAQ that doubles as training data helps if your Q&A needs tidying on the way across.
Step 3: Run a private parallel test
Don't put two chat widgets on the live site. Keep the old bot live and test the new one privately.
- Take 20 to 30 real questions from the old tool's transcripts, including the ones it answered badly.
- Ask each one in the new bot, using its preview, and compare with the old answer.
- Mark each as better, same or worse.
- Fix every "worse" by adding the missing fact, then ask again.
SpideyChat has a built-in test suite for this: save each question with the text a good answer must contain, run them all at once, and see which fail. Re-running later flags anything that used to pass and now doesn't, which is useful after future content changes too.
Move on when the new bot is the same or better on every question that matters to you.
Step 4: Swap the script tag in one go
When the new bot passes, switch over in a single change so visitors never see two chat buttons:
- Remove the old tool's script or plugin.
- Add the new script tag, or the WordPress plugin, in the same place.
- Make sure the website is allowed on the new chatbot's license. SpideyChat allows each chatbot on 1 website on Free, 3 on Starter, 10 on Pro and unlimited on Enterprise.
- Clear any page cache, then check desktop and mobile.
If the new button doesn't appear, our widget troubleshooting checklist covers the usual causes. The installation guide has platform-specific steps.
Step 5: Watch the first two weeks
The first fortnight shows what your test set missed. Read every conversation for the first few days. Check the questions the new bot couldn't answer: SpideyChat logs these as knowledge gaps, and you can turn one into a Q&A pair directly from the list. Confirm leads are arriving where they should.
Keep the old account, on its cheapest tier if possible, until this is done. If a visitor asks something the new bot fumbles, you can check how the old one answered it.
Then cancel on purpose, with your exports saved somewhere the team can find them.
If you are still deciding where to move to, the comparison pages set SpideyChat against the common tools feature by feature.