Every support tool compared. One page at a time.

Gorgias is the Shopify support standard, and it is honest about how it charges: you pay one bundled Helpdesk + AI Agent price that steps up with your ticket volume, and you pay again when AI Agent resolves more than your plan's included allowance.

Gorgias bundles Helpdesk + AI Agent into one monthly price: $40 to $1,430/mo by ticket volume, moving with an automation-rate assumption their own page loads with. Past your plan's included AI allowance, a separate $1.50 fee applies per automated interaction. Stay on a lower tier instead of upgrading and you also pay $0.36 to $0.40 ticket overage on top.

An outcome is not the same thing as a solved ticket. Fin's own pricing page counts Procedure handoffs and disqualifications as billable outcomes, so the meter can run on a conversation that still ends up with your team.

$0.99 per outcome, where an outcome means a resolution, a Procedure handoff or a disqualification, with a 50-outcome monthly minimum. Qualifications bill separately at $9.99 each. Seats cost extra if Intercom is also your helpdesk.

Zipchat meters the outbound AI reply, not the conversation. By their own numbers a conversation runs about 2.5 replies, so a longer back-and-forth costs more than a short one and the bill climbs as reply volume grows.

$49 to $499/mo across four published tiers, metered by AI reply, plus $49 per 250 extra replies on every tier. Included allowances are 500, 1,500, 3,000 and 6,000 AI replies a month. At 2,000 conversations (about 5,000 AI replies at Zipchat's own ~2.5 replies per conversation) you clear Pro's 3,000-reply cap and land on Scale at $499/mo.

Zendesk is the enterprise standard. It also runs two meters at once: the agent seats, and the automated resolutions, at $1.50 each if you commit to a volume or $2.00 pay-as-you-go.

$19 to $115 per agent per month billed yearly, and AI billed separately per automated resolution on top: $1.50 committed or $2.00 pay-as-you-go, past the small per-agent allowance each plan includes. Three agents on Suite Professional is $345/mo on an annual commitment, before a single AI resolution.

Rep AI prices by monthly site traffic. Every plan is a visitor band with $12 for every additional 1,000 visitors on top, so an ad push or a launch adds cost whether those visitors ever open the chat. Arbyn is $99 a month flat with unlimited conversations, and it re-addresses real Shopify orders inside the conversation on its own, and issues refunds and starts returns with your approval.

$99 to $350+/mo on the Shopify App Store, metered by monthly visitor traffic, plus $12 for every additional 1,000 visitors over your plan cap. Their own site prices Sales and Support as two separate agents off a 3K to 500K monthly-session slider, and gates 500K+ sessions behind custom pricing. The bill tracks how many people land on your store, not how many of them you actually help.

Supportify is genuinely generous at the very low end, but the rate is linear with no volume discount, so the bill tracks your support volume all the way up. You can cap the spend, and the cap is a stop, not a discount.

Free to install, with 50 chat sessions included at full features. After that it meters: $0.60 per resolved chat session and $0.50 per support ticket. At 2,000 resolved sessions that is $1,170 in an uncapped month. No seat fees, and you can set your own monthly spend cap.

Commslayer bills by billable conversation, which their pricing page defines as an email, live chat or DM you reply to at least once, billed once per thread per month. Every plan comes with a conversation cap and a per-conversation overage above it. Arbyn is $99 a month, unlimited, with a $0 plan underneath it.

$0 for 300 conversations, $39 for 800, $99 for 2,000, $299 for 6,000, then custom above that. AI agent replies and AI drafts are included on every plan, including the free one, and seats are unlimited. Every tier has a conversation cap, and conversations past that cap bill as overage.

Gladly is built for high-touch, relationship-driven retail. The seat is the floor, and the AI runs on two meters above it.

Two paths. A self-serve Shopify plan at $120/mo per team member plus $1.50 per AI Resolution and $0.25 per AI Assist, under a monthly spend cap you set, free to install for 30 days. Or the enterprise platform, which publishes no price at all: the pricing page is demo-gated and Gladly's own billing docs say rates are "negotiated in your agreement".

Inbox is free, first-party, and genuinely good at answering. The gap is what happens when the customer wants something changed. Arbyn runs the conversation on email and chat and takes the real Shopify order action inside it, on a $0, $59 or $99 flat plan.

Free to install from the Shopify App Store. One tier, no paid plan, no per-conversation fee. Shopify markets it as an AI sales associate: it answers questions about products, shipping, returns, sizing and store policies, and hands the conversation to your staff when it needs more than an answer. Shopify's docs show the agent reviewing an order after the customer signs in with Shop, and document no way for it to change one.

SmartBot's paid plans genuinely do not cap conversations. On BestChat's own pricing page, every paid tier carries the line "Unlimited AI chats." What moves the price is your product catalog, and the cheapest tier that lists AI email reply is $100/mo, more than Arbyn's flat $99.

SmartBot does not meter conversations on any paid tier. What sets your plan is how many products it has to index: 50 on the free plan, 500 on Starter at $30/mo, 3,000 on Growth at $100/mo, 20,000 on Pro at $300/mo. The free plan is a one-time 300 AI chats plus a 7-day Growth preview, and AI email reply is not listed below the $100/mo Growth tier.

Human conversations, Lyro AI conversations and Flows visitors are three separate quotas that stack on one bill. There is nothing to absorb a busy month, because there is no overage rate. Tidio's own help center says that at the limit you "will no longer be able to respond to incoming messages, nor see their details."

Tidio meters three things separately and stacks them on one invoice. Human conversations: $0 for 50 (Free), $29 for 100 (Starter), then Growth from $59 for 250 up to $349 for 2,000. Lyro AI conversations are a separate pack, $39 for 50 a month up to $700 for 1,000, with anything above 1,000 sold as a custom subscription. Flows visitors reached is a third quota, from $29. There is no overage rate. Run a quota out and Tidio stops you until you upgrade or the month resets.

The unit Richpanel bills for is the AI-handled conversation, so the better their AI works the more of your bill it becomes. Add $89 for every person on your team who uses the helpdesk. Re-read August 2026: the $200 monthly minimum we previously published could not be found on either of their first-party pages, so this page no longer states one. Arbyn is $99 a month, unlimited conversations, no seat fee, no minimum, with a $0 plan under it.

Their Shopify App Store listing prices PRO at $89 per seat per month for your human team, plus about $0.20 per AI-handled conversation, which is the average Richpanel states and not a quoted rate, because it is billed on your actual token use. Re-read August 2026: the $200 monthly minimum we previously published under the AI line could not be found on either richpanel.com/pricing or the Shopify listing this session, so we no longer state one. richpanel.com/pricing's own seat toggle also shows a second, ambiguous figure ($50 to $100, depending on a billing-cycle state we could not cleanly resolve without live interaction) and has been restructured into named seat tiers since July, so we price from the unambiguous Shopify listing instead. Richpanel also sells PRO MAX ($119/mo) and a separate order-volume Self Service product; neither is priced here.

Help Scout is a serious shared inbox, and their seat-plus-resolution math only edges under Arbyn's in a sliver of a few conversations right around 151 a month, a margin of cents. Below that Arbyn Starter is already $0, and above it Arbyn Growth's $59 stays cheaper. The only lever that bounds their line is a cap that switches AI Answers off for the rest of the month.

Help Scout meters two things at once. Seats: $25, $45 or $75 per user per month on annual billing, or $30, $54 and $90 on monthly, with Pro published as 'Unlimited (minimum 10)' users. AI: $0.75 for every conversation AI Answers resolves on its own, sold as an add-on with no included allowance and billed in arrears. You can set a monthly resolution cap, and hitting it switches AI Answers off for the rest of the cycle. Their Free plan is a real $0 for 5 users, 1 Inbox and 1 Docs site, capped at 100 contacts a month. At very light AI volume the math is close, within a couple of cents right around 151 conversations a month, but Arbyn is cheaper at every volume this page tests.

Re:amaze's Starter plan is $59 flat for 500 responded conversations. Arbyn Growth is $59 flat for 500 AI conversations. That is an exact tie on the headline number, and we are printing it as one. Every plan past Starter charges per team member per month, and then charges again when the AI resolves a conversation. Arbyn never adds a second meter, at any tier.

$29 / $49 / $69 per team member per month on Basic, Pro and Plus, plus $0.85 per AI resolution once you pass an allowance of 5, 10 or 20 resolutions per user per month. One exception: a flat $59 Starter plan that covers unlimited team members but caps you at 500 responded conversations, with extra conversations sold in 100-count packs for $15.

Yuma's entry plan is $14,400 a year on a 12-month commitment, and their Shopify listing separately starts at $850 a month for a package of automated tickets with overage fees on top. Arbyn is $0, $59 or $99 a month, flat, with no commitment, and every number is on the page.

Two price surfaces that do not line up. Their pricing page, re-read in August 2026, gives illustrative ANNUAL figures on a 12-month commitment: $14,400, $40,000 and $90,000 a year, at roughly $1.20 down to $0.75 per AI-resolved ticket, with a stated $0.55 floor above that. Their Shopify App Store listing separately prints two MONTHLY plans, $850 and $1,200, and describes both with the same line: "Monthly fee including a package of automated tickets, overage fees apply. Additional support fees may apply." On the listing the package size and overage rate are both unpublished, so no cost per ticket can be computed from that surface. There is no $0 tier on either.

Siena publishes two numbers and no tiers: $750 a month for the platform, and $0.90 for each ticket the AI automates on top. Those are their rates. Ours is $99 a month, unlimited, with a $0 Starter plan underneath it. This page also concedes the thing most compare pages would hide: Siena takes real Shopify actions with nobody in the loop, and we make you click once first.

$750/month for the platform, then $0.90 for every ticket the AI automates, both published on their own pricing page. No named tiers, no published seat price, no annual option, and the final contract is quoted by their sales team on your ticket volume and team structure. The floor is the part to notice: the $750 is charged before a single ticket is automated.

The seat licence runs $19 to $107 per agent per month. Freddy AI is bought separately, in packs, at $49 per 100 sessions, and the 500 they include are once per account, ever. We will start with the part that does not flatter us: for a small team that wants human ticketing and no AI, Freshdesk is genuinely cheaper than Arbyn, and we say so plainly below.

Two meters on one invoice. A per-agent seat licence: Growth $23 per agent per month billed monthly and $19 billed annually, Pro $66 and $55, Enterprise $107 and $89. Then Freddy AI is bought on top, in packs, at $49 per 100 AI sessions. A session is a 72-hour email window, not a reply. The 500 included sessions are once per account, ever, not a monthly allowance. Freshdesk's agent-assist add-on is a second per-seat charge at $35 per agent per month billed monthly, $29 billed annually. Chat, social and AI Agent Studio need Freshdesk Omni, a separate product with its own price list.

Chatty bundles a fixed number of AI conversations into each plan and bills $0.40 for every one past it, so the bill moves with how much your customers talk to the bot. Arbyn Growth ($59) beats Chatty across nearly the entire middle of Chatty's own range, 198 to 500 AI conversations a month. Chatty is only cheaper in two narrow slivers either side of that, and we print both rather than hide them.

$0 Free (50 AI conversations a month), $19.99 Basic (100), $68.99 Pro (500), $199 Plus (1,000). Every paid plan bills $0.40 for each AI conversation past its allowance, so the bill moves with how much your customers talk to the bot. On Free the AI switches off at 50 and your team keeps replying by hand. Seats are capped, not charged: 1, 5, 10, unlimited. Arbyn Growth ($59) beats Chatty across nearly the entire middle of Chatty's own range, 198 to 500 AI conversations a month, a band where Chatty used to win outright. Chatty is only cheaper in two narrow slivers either side of that, 151-197 and 501-575, and Arbyn wins permanently again from 576 on.