# Gladly Alternative for Shopify: $120 a Seat, Plus $1.50 an AI Resolution

> Gladly's Shopify plan bills $120 per seat plus $1.50 per AI resolution and $0.25 per assist. Arbyn is $99/mo flat, unlimited, or $0 for 150 AI conversations.

Source: https://arbyn.app/compare/gladly

## How Gladly charges

Self-serve $120/seat + $1.50/resolution. 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".

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

## Where Gladly beats Arbyn

- Every channel in one platform, including voice and SMS. Their billing docs itemise telephony, SMS and campaign registration fees, so those channels are real product, not roadmap.
- Support built around the customer, not the ticket. One lifetime conversation view instead of a queue of disconnected tickets is a genuinely better model for high-touch retail.
- Role-based licensing built for large support organisations. Support users, Task users and Analyst users are separately licensed, which is what a 200-person support floor actually needs.

If you run a big, high-touch support organisation with phone lines, SMS campaigns and a dedicated analytics team, Gladly is a serious platform and Arbyn is not trying to be it. Their whole design centre is the human relationship at scale.
Arbyn is built for the other store: the one where a small team, or one store owner, needs the AI to actually close the loop on email and chat without a support floor behind it, and needs the bill to be the same number every month.

Switch when you want the AI to take the order action itself and you want a price you can predict before the month starts.

## Where Arbyn wins

### $99, flat, published

One number, on our pricing page, no demo call to see it. Not $99 plus a resolution meter. Not $99 plus an assist meter. $99.

_Gladly's enterprise platform publishes no price at all. The CTA is Get a demo._

### A real free plan, permanently

Arbyn Starter is $0/mo with 150 AI conversations every calendar month, full features, forever.

_Gladly's free-to-install window runs 30 days and stops at 100 AI interactions and one seat._

### Acts on the order, in the conversation

Arbyn re-addresses real Shopify orders inside the thread on its own, and issues refunds and starts returns with your approval, and logs every action to the Shopify order timeline.

_Gladly's listing prices AI Assist at $0.25 and AI Resolution at $1.50, so an assist that does not resolve still bills._

## Cost at real volumes

| Scenario | Volume | Their cost | You save with Arbyn |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo store | 500 conversations/mo | $870/mo | $771/mo |
| Growing DTC | 2,000 conversations/mo | $3,120/mo | $3,021/mo |
| Scale | 5,000 conversations/mo | $7,620/mo | $7,521/mo |

Source: [apps.shopify.com/gladly](https://apps.shopify.com/gladly). Every Gladly figure on this page is verbatim from Gladly's own Shopify App Store listing, verified July 2026: "$120/mo per team member", "$1.50 per AI Resolution", "$0.25 per AI Assist", "Free to install" for 30 days with "100 AI interactions to test out" and "1 team member seat", and a spend cap you set ("Set your monthly limit and pay as you go"). Scenario totals assume one seat and that every conversation becomes a billable AI Resolution; the spend cap means your real bill can stop below these numbers. We publish no enterprise per-seat figure because Gladly publishes none: gladly.ai/pricing lists no prices and its CTA is "Get a demo", and Gladly's billing documentation says rates are "negotiated in your agreement".

## Pricing

- **Arbyn Starter** - $0/month, permanently free. 150 conversations / month. Resets 1st of each month.
- **Arbyn Agent** - $99/month flat, unlimited conversations. Or $990/year (2 months free, saves $198, 17% off).
- **There is no trial.** Billing starts immediately on the Agent plan. The free Starter plan is permanent.
- The conversation cap is the only difference between plans. There is no feature gating.

## Channels

Live today: **support email** and **on-site live chat**. That is the complete list.

SMS, Instagram DMs, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Voice are on the roadmap and are NOT live. Arbyn does not edit orders or change line items. Money-moving actions (cancel, refund, discount, gift card, reship, return) require the store owner's approval, and then Arbyn performs them. Running them fully autonomously is a beta authorization and is in development. Shipping address changes are already autonomous.

## What Arbyn does on a Shopify order

- **Change the shipping address**: Live. Arbyn does this on its own. Arbyn updates the shipping address on the Shopify order itself, inside the conversation, and writes the change to the order timeline.
- **Cancel an order**: Live. You approve it, then Arbyn cancels the order. Anything that moves money waits for the store owner's approval. That is a deliberate control, not a missing feature. Once you approve, Arbyn fires Shopify's order cancellation itself and confirms it to the customer.
- **Issue a refund**: Live. You approve it, then Arbyn issues the refund. Arbyn prepares the refund against the original payment method and sends it to you. On approval it files the refund in Shopify. You can cap the value it is allowed to prepare, per channel.
- **Apply a discount**: Live. Arbyn creates a real Shopify discount and applies it to the cart, handing the shopper a checkout with the code already on it. It can also issue a discount code on an order once you approve it.
- **Send a gift card, or reship an order**: Live. You approve it, then Arbyn does it. Arbyn creates the gift card, or raises the replacement order, in Shopify once you approve.
- **Start a return**: Live. You approve it, then Arbyn opens the return. Arbyn opens the return in Shopify on your approval.
- **Look up a gift card or store-credit balance**: Live. Arbyn does this on its own. "Do I have store credit left?" is a question most support tools answer with a human. Arbyn reads the balance itself, for a verified customer or from the code they give you, and reports the masked card, the balance and the expiry. If there is no card, it says so rather than guessing.
- **Handle a subscription question**: Live. You choose what it does. Arbyn knows which of your products are sold as a subscription, shows that on the product card in the conversation, and sends a subscriber to their subscription management page to pause, skip or cancel. It answers how your subscriptions work from your own knowledge, but it does not read an individual customer's contract, so it will not state their renewal date or status. Most cancels are a customer with product piling up, and the fix is getting them to the page where they can slow the cadence down. Reading the contract itself is on the roadmap.
- **Answer support email and live chat**: Live. Arbyn reads every inbound support email and every chat, works out the intent, pulls the live Shopify context, and replies in your brand voice.

Money-moving actions (cancel, refund, discount, gift card, reship, return) require the store owner's approval, and then Arbyn performs them. Running them fully autonomously is a beta authorization and is in development. Shipping address changes are already autonomous.