CookPal Reader Engagement

CookPal is a reader engagement tool custom-built for food bloggers. Instant answers for your readers. Clear insights and recommendations for you.

CookPal bridges the gap between you and your audience. It adds a lightweight AI chat assistant to your recipe posts that answers reader questions instantly — and there are no generic answers here: every answer draws from your blog post, your recipe card and your expertise first. General cooking knowledge is only the fallback when the answer isn’t on the page; your post is always the primary source.

Answering questions on the spot keeps readers on your site instead of losing them to search engines and other blogs. Readers stay on your post longer — more time on page, more ad impressions — and casual visitors turn into an engaged audience. Finally, a tool that works for both you and your readers.

Built by food bloggers, for food bloggers.

Learn more at whimzi.ai | See CookPal live on a SugarYums recipe

For your readers

• Instant answers, right on your post — ingredient swaps, timings, techniques, storage: answered on the spot, no scrolling away to search
• Your content answers first — every answer draws from your post and recipe card before general cooking knowledge, so readers get your method, your measurements and your tips
• Discover more of your recipes — when your post links to a related recipe, CookPal recommends it in the chat
• Any language — readers can ask questions in almost any language
• Guardrails built in — CookPal won’t give medical advice and is careful with substitutions you haven’t tested, so readers feel supported, understood and confident making your recipes

For you

• More time on page — readers who get instant answers stay longer: more engagement, more ad impressions
• Respects your affiliate links — product recommendations come from the links already in your post, with nofollow/sponsored attributes preserved
• Opt-in analytics dashboard — monthly chat volume, average chat time and your most-asked-about post, right in wp-admin (disabled by default; no personal reader data is collected)
• CookPal Insights report (Scale and Enterprise plans) — a personalised monthly report: which posts generate the most questions, where readers get stuck, and specific, plain-language recommendations for improving your content
• WP Recipe Maker integration — an optional “Need Help? Get Instant Answers!” button right in the recipe card opens the chat
• Make it yours — custom assistant name, greeting message, pop-up message and duration, input placeholder, and accent, hover and bubble colours to match your theme; button position and chatbox size are set independently for desktop and mobile
• Show it where it belongs — the chat appears on single posts only, and Visibility Settings let you exclude whole categories (sub-categories included)

Fast and lightweight

• Scripts load deferred and non-blocking, with zero Core Web Vitals impact
• Plays nicely with full-page caching plugins such as WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache and LiteSpeed Cache
• Set up in about ten minutes: install, paste your license key, customize, done

Plans and pricing

CookPal Reader Engagement is a Software as a Service (SaaS) plugin: the plugin is free and all of its code is fully functional GPL code, while the chat assistant is powered by the external Whimzi AI service, which requires a license. Plans start at $11.99/month, cancel any time:

• Grow — for blogs up to 100K monthly pageviews: the full chat experience, customization and a monthly engagement summary
• Scale — up to 1M monthly pageviews: everything in Grow, plus the monthly CookPal Insights analytics report with reader question themes and content recommendations
• Enterprise — beyond 1M monthly pageviews: scalable infrastructure, dedicated support and custom onboarding

See current pricing and full plan details at whimzi.ai/buy-cookpal. Use of the service is subject to the Whimzi AI Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

About Whimzi AI

CookPal is built by Whimzi AI — smart tools for creators, by creators — a member of the NVIDIA Inception program.

Support

For plugin questions, use the support forum. For account and billing questions, reach us via whimzi.ai.

Privacy Policy

CookPal Reader Engagement is a Software as a Service (SaaS) plugin that connects to external Whimzi AI servers to provide AI-powered cooking assistance.

Data Collection and Usage:

• Chat Messages and Post Content: When users interact with the CookPal chat widget, their messages are sent to Whimzi AI servers (https://cookpal-api.whimzi.ai) for processing and generating responses. So the assistant can answer questions about the post being viewed, CookPal also sends that post’s rendered content, its post metadata, and its approved comments – including public commenter display names, any comment author URLs, and star ratings – to the same service. This is required for the plugin to function.

• Analytics (Optional): If you enable analytics in the plugin settings, anonymous usage data (such as chat interactions and feature usage) may be sent to Whimzi AI analytics servers (https://analytics-api.whimzi.ai) to help improve the service. Analytics is disabled by default and requires explicit opt-in.

• License Key: Your license key is used to authenticate API requests and is stored in your WordPress database.

User Consent:

• By installing and activating CookPal, and configuring it with a license key, you consent to the chat service functionality.
• Analytics tracking requires explicit opt-in via the “Enable Analytics” checkbox in plugin settings.
• No tracking occurs unless you explicitly enable it.

Third-Party Service:

CookPal relies on Whimzi AI’s external services. For more information, please review the Whimzi AI Terms of Use at https://whimzi.ai/terms and the Whimzi AI Privacy Policy at https://whimzi.ai/privacy

Data Security:

All communication with Whimzi AI servers is conducted over secure HTTPS connections.