Cian

Cian brings conversations about your property listings into the shared inbox. Messages from Cian chats arrive in Lalexi, replies go back to Cian, and the conversation shows which listing the client is writing about.

Connecting has two parts, and the first one is not technical. Cian does not hand the chats over to every account: it takes an agency account on a paid plan with the Messages service switched on and an API access key issued by Cian. Until that is in place there is nothing to connect.

Part one: preparation on Cian's side

Everything in this section happens in your Cian account and in correspondence with Cian, before you open Lalexi.

1. An agency account on a paid plan

API access comes with a paid plan — at Cian that is "Базовый" (Basic) — and the account has to be set up as an agency, not as a private person. The terms are described in Cian's help centre.

2. The Messages service

The Messages service has to be switched on in the account — it is what creates the listing chats in the first place. Without it a key will still be issued, but the API will return no chats.

3. Who answers messages in the Cian account

This is the point that most often produces a surprise. The Cian account has a setting that decides who owns the chats:

Connect the main agency account — the key is only issued there. Changing that setting moves existing chats between accounts, so settle it before connecting rather than after.

4. The Cian API access key

The key is a single string that Lalexi uses to read and send your account's messages. There are two ways to get it.

By e-mail to Cian. If the plan is not in place yet, the plan and the key are agreed in a single exchange: write to import@cian.ru — that is how it went for us, and the key came back in the reply. Cian's help centre also names fb@cian.ru for connecting the plan itself. Either way, say which regions you publish listings in. Roughly:

Hello,

I would like to set up an integration with your API. According to support.cian.ru I need the "Базовый" plan, and connecting it means writing to you.

I plan to publish listings in Moscow and the Moscow region.

Account: <login or account number>, connecting on behalf of "<organisation>", tax number <VAT/INN>.

Please approve the plan and tell me what else is required from my side.

The reply carries the Cian API access key and a warning that the key opens access to the account's private information. Nothing else has to be agreed — that key is enough to connect the channel.

In the account. If the plan and the Messages service are already in place, you can issue the key yourself: Settings → More → Cian API → "Get API key". The key is sent to the e-mail the account is registered to (it is listed under "Registration data") rather than shown on screen.

The callback URL: nothing to prepare

The address Cian delivers incoming messages to is registered by Lalexi itself at connection time — you never type it anywhere, and every connection has its own. Other integrations already subscribed to your account are left alone.

Part two: connecting in Lalexi

1. Open Settings → Inboxes, press Add Inbox and pick the Cian tile.
2. Press Connect — the link page opens in a new tab.
3. Paste the access key and, if you like, give the connection a name — the agency's name, for instance.
4. Press Connect. The key is checked immediately with a live request to Cian: if it is not accepted, the form says so and no inbox is created.

Once linked, the inbox appears in the list as Cian · "the connection name" with the status Connected.

Right after linking you land on the Connection tab, where you choose which chats to mirror and, if you want, import earlier conversations — see sync settings. Until the filter is set, nothing is imported and incoming messages are ignored.

A reissued key means reconnecting, not a new inbox

A Cian key can be reissued in the account, and the previous one then stops working: the channel moves to Reconnection required. Paste the new key on the Connection → Reconnect tab — the channel, its conversations and the history all survive.

Adding a new inbox and pasting the reissued key there instead leaves you with a second channel with an empty history, while the earlier conversations stay in the old one: to Lalexi a new key looks like a different account, and the two cannot be joined afterwards.

Which listing the client is writing about

On a classifieds site a client contacts you about one specific listing rather than "the agency", so Lalexi labels the conversation with it: the listing title, price, address and link arrive together with the message itself and are shown in the conversation header and in the conversation list row, so incoming messages can be triaged without opening each one. For new-build projects the development's name and address are shown the same way.

Conversations that came from a history import, and have not received a new message yet, show "Объявление №…" with the listing number instead: the chat list only gives out the listing id, and the card with the title and price arrives with an incoming message.

What the channel can and cannot do

The limits here are Cian's, not ours:

• It only answers people who wrote first. A chat on the platform is always opened by the client; the API has no "start a conversation" method. So the channel is not available in New message, campaigns or warm-up.
• There is a chat list and history — you can choose which chats to mirror and import earlier conversations, see sync settings.
• Importing does not touch the account. After an import the chats stay unread in the Cian account — we deliberately do not mark them read, so your work there is not disturbed.
• An agent's reply marks the chat as read in the Cian account. Until somebody answers it stays unread there — an honest signal of an unanswered enquiry.
• Replies sent from the Cian account show up in Lalexi. If somebody answered the client straight from the account, their message appears in the conversation as outgoing, so an agent does not greet the client twice.
• Cian does not give out the client's phone number: the contact is identified by their Cian user id and is not merged with a contact from WhatsApp or Telegram. The name comes from what Cian sends with the message.
• Files only in the types Cian accepts: JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, HEIC/HEIF, DOC, PDF. Anything else (video, audio, an archive, a spreadsheet) is refused with an error right in the chat, before anything is sent. The text goes as a caption to the files — there is no need to repeat it in a separate message.
• A long reply is not split: Cian sets no limit on the length of the text.
• Cian's service messages (read receipts and system events) are not mirrored. Messages from Cian's chat bot are shown, but it never becomes the counterpart of the conversation.
• The pace is capped at five requests a second per key — which is why a large history import arrives gradually rather than at once.
• One key, one inbox. Linking the same key again does not create a second channel — it refreshes the existing one.

The connection takes a slot in the connection limit.

If something is wrong