# Kustomer Alternative for Shopify: From $89/Seat, $0.60/Chat

> Kustomer bills a conversation the moment its AI touches it, finished or not. Seats start from $89/mo. Arbyn is $99/mo flat, unlimited, on Shopify.

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

## How Kustomer charges

Per seat, plus $0.60 per engaged conversation. Two meters. Seats start at "From $89 per month, per user" for Enterprise and "$139 per month, per user" for Ultimate, and those are the only first-party per-seat figures that exist: their own pricing pages carry no price row at all. On top of the seat, the customer-facing AI (AI Agents for Customers, called Kustomer Concierge in their help center) is listed at $0.60 per engaged conversation. Their help center defines engaged as any conversation their AI was involved in at any point, including one where it only attempted a response that was never sent, or merely viewed or opened the conversation and resolved nothing. The rep-facing copilot is another $40 per user per month.

Their meter is not the resolution. Kustomer's own help center says a conversation becomes billable once their AI is involved at any point, including a response it attempted but never sent, and a conversation it merely viewed or opened. Arbyn is $99 a month, unlimited conversations, with a $0 plan under it.

## Where Kustomer beats Arbyn

- At one Enterprise seat with almost no AI, they are cheaper than us. Their floor is "From $89 per month, per user" against Arbyn Agent's $99, and the crossover is 16.67 engaged conversations a month. Under 17, Kustomer costs less. We are not going to hide that. Arbyn Starter covers that same store for $0.
- Voice, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger are live for them and are not for us. Kustomer Voice is a real telephony channel starting at $0.02 per minute across the US and Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Australia, with no upfront cost and no long-term commitment. Arbyn has no voice channel at all, and SMS, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp are all still to come.
- It is a genuine CRM and a genuine enterprise platform, and Arbyn is not trying to be either. Custom objects up to 100M, 100 custom klasses, 300 custom attributes per klass, skills-based routing, Team Pulse real-time supervision, SAML SSO and SCIM on Ultimate, data masking in beta, and a HIPAA-enabled subscription at $25 per user per month. They also carry 5.0 stars from 24 Shopify App Store reviews. It is a small base and we are not going to spin it: the stores that reviewed them are happy.

Kustomer is a serious platform with a real data model behind it, and a regulated or enterprise buyer will have a checklist it passes and we do not. Audit log, message redaction and multi-region disaster recovery are on both current tiers. Language coverage runs to 20 on Enterprise and all offered languages on Ultimate, with automatic detection. A Customer Success Manager comes with both. If you are staffing a contact centre rather than trying to stop staffing one, that is the shape of the tool you want.
Their AI meter also has published carve-outs, and leaving them out would mean we had not read the page. Verbatim from their help center: a conversation marked as spam "is not considered an Engaged conversation"; "Responses or summaries generated by AI Summaries or Copilot automated actions are not billed as engaged conversations"; and "Kustomer Voice calls are not considered engaged conversations". There is a gate on the front of it too: for Concierge, "The conversation is marked engaged only if Smart Routing determines that the conversation's intent should be handled by your AI Automation." So the meter is not indiscriminate. The problem is what happens after that gate opens. From that moment the conversation is billable even if the AI never sends anything and resolves nothing, because their own page counts engagement when "An AI automation attempted to generate a response, regardless of whether it was ultimately sent" and when "An AI automation team viewed or opened the conversation, even without sending a response."
The disagreement is the shape of the bill and who takes the action. Kustomer charges for every person on your team, charges again for every conversation its AI touches, and its own Shopify listing puts the refund and the cancellation in the Timeline, which is where a human agent works. Arbyn charges $99 a month, flat, with no seat fee and no per-conversation fee, and $0 for your first 150 AI conversations every calendar month. Arbyn updates a shipping address on its own. You approve a cancel, a refund, a discount, a gift card, a reship or a return with one click, and then Arbyn performs the real Shopify mutation and confirms it to the customer. That approval is a deliberate money control, not a missing feature. Arbyn does not edit orders or line items, and we say so on our own page.

Stay with Kustomer if you need voice, WhatsApp and social live today, if you are staffing a support floor that needs skills-based routing and SCIM, or if your store handles fewer than 17 AI conversations a month on a single seat, where their $89 floor genuinely beats our $99. Switch to Arbyn when you are done paying a seat fee and a per-conversation AI fee to answer the same conversation once, when you want the AI to perform the Shopify action rather than surface it for a person, and when you want the AI selling as well as supporting.

## Where Arbyn wins

### One number, and nothing meters

Arbyn Agent is $99 a month at any volume: unlimited conversations, unlimited AI resolutions, no seat fee, no per-conversation fee, no minimum. Arbyn Starter is $0 a month with 150 AI conversations every calendar month, resetting on the 1st, on the full feature set. There is nothing to forecast because there is nothing that moves.

_Kustomer bills a conversation whether or not it was solved. Their help center counts a conversation as engaged when the AI "attempted to generate a response, regardless of whether it was ultimately sent", and when it "viewed or opened the conversation, even without sending a response."_

### Arbyn performs the Shopify action

Arbyn updates the shipping address on its own. Cancel an order, issue a refund, apply a discount so the checkout already has the code on it, send a gift card, reship, start a return: you approve with one click and then Arbyn performs the real Shopify mutation and confirms it to the customer, writing every action to the order timeline. Arbyn does not edit orders or line items, and we say so.

_Kustomer's Shopify listing sells three order capabilities, verbatim: "Full View of Customer Orders via Shopify Data Integration", "Direct Order Refunds/Cancellations from Kustomer Timeline" and "Efficient Order Data Access and Search within Kustomer". The Timeline is the human agent's workspace, and nothing they publish says the AI performs any of it. Their platform does expose REST calls inside workflows, so a technical team could build a mutation, but that is a project you own and maintain, not a shipped capability._

### It sells, not just supports

Arbyn runs product quizzes, a bundle builder, discount offers and in-chat upsells, recovers an abandoned cart the moment the shopper opens the chat, and attributes revenue on every order it sources. All live, on the same $99, and on the $0 plan too.

_Kustomer's AI agents page reaches for revenue language, naming "CSAT, upsell rate, customer lifetime value" and "turning every touchpoint into an opportunity to drive retention and revenue", but ships no product quiz, bundle builder, in-chat upsell, discount offer, abandoned-cart recovery or revenue attribution behind it. Their AI is scoped to resolving inbound conversations._

## Cost at real volumes

| Scenario | Volume | Their cost | You save with Arbyn |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where Kustomer wins | 16 AI conversations/mo | $98.60/mo | $98.60/mo |
| Growing DTC | 1,000 engaged conversations/mo | $689/mo | $590/mo |
| Scale / BFCM | 5,000 engaged conversations/mo | $3,089/mo | $2,990/mo |

Source: [kustomer.com/comprehensive-pricing-details](https://www.kustomer.com/comprehensive-pricing-details/). Verified July 2026, read first-party in the same session this was written. THEIR RATES, from kustomer.com/comprehensive-pricing-details, a page headed "Current pricing:" and stamped "Last Updated: December 19, 2025": AI Agents for Customers at "$0.60 / engaged conversation" on both Enterprise and Ultimate; AI Agents for Reps at "$40 per user / month"; HIPAA Compliance at "$25 per user / month"; Kustomer Voice "Starting at $0.02 / minute"; data storage at "$50 per GB per month"; outbound messages at "$0.025 per message (only for conversation pricing program)"; and a WhatsApp fee of "20% of Meta's per-template message fee" passed through on top of Meta's. THEIR SEAT PRICES, from apps.shopify.com/kustomer, verbatim: "From $89 per month, per user for Enterprise and $139 per month, per user for Ultimate", followed by "All charges are billed in USD." Those are the only first-party per-seat dollar figures that exist anywhere: the current Enterprise/Ultimate table on their own pricing-details page carries no price row, and kustomer.com/pricing publishes no price and no named tier at all, only "Flexible pricing that fits your business needs" and a "Schedule Demo" button. Both seat figures are prefixed "From", so they are floors, not prices, and every use on this page keeps the word. The engaged-conversation definition, the Smart Routing gate, the spam, AI Summaries, Copilot and Voice carve-outs, the 24-hour threading rule and the line "Engaged conversations are billed at the rate outlined in your Kustomer order" are all quoted from help.kustomer.com/engaged-conversations-r1CGisY21g, which is why we attribute $0.60 as their list rate and never as what every customer pays. OUR ASSUMPTIONS, in a separate sentence so you can tell them apart: one Enterprise seat, the published list rate, and no annual commitment assumed either way, because their listing states no commitment term. One seat understates them. We publish no seat minimum, because no Kustomer-owned page states one. We publish no rate for their legacy or conversation-based plans, because they publish none. AI meter verified against

## 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.