# Octocom Alternative for Shopify: 17 Brackets, None Under $99

> Octocom prices 17 conversation brackets from $100 to $1,250 a month, and every one sits above Arbyn's flat $99. Free up to 150 AI conversations.

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

## How Octocom charges

Per conversation, bracketed. $100 to $1,250/mo across 17 published conversation brackets. You pick a plan, then pick your expected monthly conversation volume from a dropdown, and the headline price steps up with the bracket. Basic runs $100/mo (0 to 50 conversations) to $190/mo (176 to 250). Advanced runs $200/mo (250 to 350) to $1,250/mo (4,201 to 5,000). There is no free plan and no annual option, and above 5,000 conversations Enterprise is quoted with no number published.

Octocom's pricing page has a dropdown on it. You tell it how many conversations you expect this month and the price changes. Seventeen published brackets, from $100/mo at the floor to $1,250/mo at 4,201 to 5,000 conversations. Every one of them sits above Arbyn's flat $99, and ours does not move.

## Where Octocom beats Arbyn

- Channels are their clearest win and we are not going to fudge it. Instagram DMs, Facebook Messenger and Instagram and Facebook comment automation are live on their Advanced plan, $200/mo and up. WhatsApp and SMS are live there too, as add-ons that cost extra on top, with no price published. Their AI voice agent is Enterprise only, so it has no published price either. For Arbyn, SMS, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp are all still to come. A store that needs Instagram or a phone line today cannot buy it from Arbyn at any price.
- They advertise order actions Arbyn does not have. Octocom says it can pause a Recharge, Skio or Bold subscription, update a payment method, reschedule a delivery, send an invoice, process returns through Loop, AfterShip or Happy Returns, and refund through Stripe, PayPal, Braintree or Adyen rather than only through Shopify. They also advertise product swaps, and Arbyn does not edit orders or line items at all. Their homepage shows a per-action "Max without approval" threshold set to $100, so a store that wants refunds under a set amount to fire with no human can configure that with Octocom and cannot with Arbyn.
- Platform reach, help desk depth and enterprise paperwork. Shopify and WooCommerce on their entry plan, then Magento 2, BigCommerce, PrestaShop and multi-store above it, plus two-way sync with Zendesk, Gorgias and Intercom as a paid add-on, and SSO, SCIM, audit logging, data residency and an SLA at Enterprise. Arbyn is Shopify-only and publishes none of that. They also hold 4.9 out of 5 on the Shopify App Store, on 10 reviews.

Octocom is not a thin chat widget and we are not going to run the easy attack. They publish a catalog of 200+ pre-built actions, name the ones that matter, and expose a per-action approval threshold so a store can decide how much money the AI is allowed to move on its own. That is more autonomy than Arbyn offers, not less, because we require one-click approval on every money action. We treat that as a deliberate money control rather than a missing feature, but you should pick the one you actually want. What we can verify is that Octocom publishes these claims. We have not tested their code, so read them as their claims.
The disagreement is the meter, and what their entry plan actually includes. Octocom's price is a step function of how much support your store generates, so a shipping delay or a viral product moves your bill for reasons that have nothing to do with the value you got. And Basic is feature-gated, not just volume-gated: on their $100 to $190/mo plan, product recommendations, order tracking automation, multi-step workflows, webhooks and the API are all excluded. Arbyn gates nothing. The conversation cap is the only difference between our two plans and both get every feature.

Switch to Arbyn anyway when: you want one price that does not move with your support volume, you want the whole product on the cheap plan instead of the expensive one, and you want the AI selling as well as answering, running quizzes, building bundles, recovering the cart when the shopper opens the chat, and attributing the revenue it sources.

## Where Arbyn wins

### One price, no brackets

Arbyn Agent is $99 a month at any volume, and Arbyn Starter is $0 with 150 AI conversations per calendar month and full features. There is no dropdown to pick, no bracket to cross, and no invoice waiting for you the morning after a busy week.

_Octocom's lowest published price anywhere is $100/mo, and that bracket covers 0 to 50 conversations. That is $2.00 a conversation at their floor, which is our arithmetic on their published price. They have no free plan._

### Nothing is locked behind the bigger plan

Both Arbyn plans get every feature. The 150-conversation cap on Starter is the only difference between $0 and $99, and it is the only thing $99 buys you.

_Octocom's Basic tier ($100 to $190/mo) excludes product recommendations, order tracking automation, multi-step workflows, sentiment analysis, webhooks and the REST API on their own comparison table. Their entry plan cannot automate where-is-my-order._

### It sells, it does not only answer

Arbyn runs product quizzes, builds bundles, makes discount offers, upsells in the chat, recovers an abandoned cart the moment the shopper opens the chat, and attributes the revenue on every order it sources. That half is live on both plans, including the $0 one.

_None of that appears on Octocom's homepage or pricing page. We searched each term and found nothing. That is what they publish, not proof of what they can do, and we are not going to claim otherwise._

## Cost at real volumes

| Scenario | Volume | Their cost | You save with Arbyn |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo store | 150 conversations/mo | $160/mo | $160/mo |
| Growing DTC | 2,000 conversations/mo | $500/mo | $401/mo |
| Scale | 5,000 conversations/mo | $1,250/mo | $1,151/mo |

Source: [octocom.ai/pricing](https://www.octocom.ai/pricing). Verified July 2026. Every bracket price here was read live by operating the "Monthly conversations" dropdown on Octocom's own pricing page: Basic $100 (0 to 50), $130 (51 to 100), $160 (101 to 175), $190 (176 to 250); Advanced $200 (250 to 350), $220 (351 to 500), $235 (501 to 700), $250 (701 to 1,000), $325 (1,001 to 1,300), $400 (1,301 to 1,600), $500 (1,601 to 2,000), $600, $700, $800, $925, $1,050 and $1,250 (4,201 to 5,000). Enterprise is published as "Custom" with no number, so we publish none. Those are their rates. The conversation volumes in the scenario cards, the $2.00-per-conversation floor rate and the 12.6x multiple are our arithmetic on their prices. Octocom's pricing page never defines what counts as a conversation, so we do not claim their unit and ours are the same. Their Shopify App Store listing sells a different Basic plan ($200/mo, 350 conversations included, $15 per each additional 50 conversations) which we have deliberately not blended with the figures above. Action claims, the 200+ catalog and the $100 "Max without approval" threshold are quoted from octocom.ai and are their claims, not tested facts. Prices 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.