# Richpanel Alternative for Shopify: No Seats, No AI Meter

> Richpanel bills per seat and then meters the AI on top of it. Arbyn is flat at $0, $59 or $99 a month, with no seats and no AI meter, for Shopify.

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

## How Richpanel charges

Per seat, plus per AI conversation. 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.

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.

## Where Richpanel beats Arbyn

- Channels. Their hero is "Every channel: email, chat, social, SMS, WhatsApp, voice" and their FAQ adds marketplaces. Arbyn is support email and on-site live chat, SMS is on our roadmap, and Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and voice are still to come. This is their clearest win over us and we are not going to dress it up.
- Security and compliance posture we do not claim parity with: SOC 2 Type II audited annually, third-party audited HIPAA, GDPR audited and EU-ready, AES-256 at rest with TLS in transit, 99.9% uptime on AWS across three availability zones, annual third-party penetration tests, SAML SSO, 2FA and RBAC.
- A track record and a commitment behind it. They say they power support for 3,000+ businesses since 2020, they carry 4.8 stars from 129 Shopify App Store reviews, and they publish this: "If it doesn't resolve at least 50% of conversations autonomously in 30 days, we refund every dollar. No proration."

Richpanel's pricing page has been rebuilt since we last read it, and one thing has not changed: they tell you where they do not fit, in their own words. It pays off best above about three agents or 2,000 conversations a month, and below that they suggest you book a call first. That is a straighter answer than most pricing pages give, and it held up on a re-read in August 2026. The capacity-block and volume-rollover terms we previously described here were part of the flat usage model their page has since moved away from; we could not re-confirm them this session, so we no longer state them.
They also let you decide, action by action, what the AI may do without a person. Refunds and cancellations can be signed off by a human, or you can turn them loose. We have made a different call and we will defend it rather than hide it: on Arbyn, money-moving actions wait for your one-click approval, and then Arbyn performs the real Shopify mutation and confirms it to the customer. That is a money control, not a missing feature. Shipping address changes run on their own. Full autonomy on the money-moving actions is a beta authorization we are still building.
So the disagreement is not about whether Richpanel is a serious product. It is about the shape of the bill. Their model charges $89 for every person on your team who opens the helpdesk, and then charges again for the thing you actually want, which is the AI handling the conversation. Arbyn Agent charges $99 a month, flat, at any volume, with no seat fee, Arbyn Growth is $59 for 500, and Arbyn Starter is $0 for 150 AI conversations every calendar month.

Stay with Richpanel if you need voice, WhatsApp, social and marketplaces live today, or you are running a support floor of several people who need SOC 2 and HIPAA on the paperwork. Switch to Arbyn when your volume is under their 2,000-conversation sweet spot, or when you are done paying a seat fee and an AI fee to answer the same conversation once.

_2020_

## Where Arbyn wins

### $99 is the whole bill

No seat fee, no per-conversation fee, no capacity blocks to buy. Arbyn Agent is $99 a month at any volume, Arbyn Growth is $59 for 500, and Arbyn Starter is $0 with 150 AI conversations every calendar month on full features.

_Richpanel's own PRO tier is $89 a seat before a single AI conversation, and 500 AI conversations on top of that is $189, almost double our flat $99._

### Your team is not a line item

Add a second person, a seasonal helper, an agency, a co-founder. Arbyn does not care and the price does not move. Richpanel's PRO tier is explicit: $89 per additional user, per their Shopify App Store listing.

_Three seats on their model is $267 a month before a single AI conversation. Richpanel themselves say the model pays off best above about three agents._

### The AI conversation is free, not the meter

Arbyn handles unlimited conversations on the $99 plan. Richpanel bills about $0.20 for each AI-handled conversation, on their own stated average, so every conversation their AI takes off your team's hands is a conversation that lands on your invoice instead.

_Their AI line is billed on actual token use and the model you pick, so $0.20 is an average across all their customers, not a rate you were quoted. A complex month costs more than a simple one._

## Cost at real volumes

| Scenario | Volume | Their cost | You save with Arbyn |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo store | 500 AI-handled conversations/mo | $189/mo | $130/mo |
| Growing DTC | 2,000 AI-handled conversations/mo | $489/mo | $390/mo |
| Scale / BFCM | 5,000 AI-handled conversations/mo | $1,089/mo | $990/mo |

Source: [richpanel.com/pricing](https://richpanel.com/pricing). Re-verified August 2026. richpanel.com/pricing has been restructured since July: it now shows named seat tiers (Incubator $9/mo for 3 agents, Pro at either $69/agent or $50/mo depending on a billing-toggle state this read could not cleanly resolve, Pro Max $99-$100/agent) and a separate "Customer Service AI" add-on billed at about $0.20 per AI-handled conversation with graduated volume bands, rather than the flat "$100/seat, no plans or tiers" model this page previously quoted. The $200 monthly minimum we previously published under the AI line, and the "a common starting setup, one AI agent plus one seat, is about $300 a month" line, could not be found on richpanel.com/pricing or on the Shopify App Store listing this session, and are dropped rather than carried forward unsourced; we are not asserting the minimum was removed, only that it is not on either page we read. The $0.20 per-AI-conversation rate is reconfirmed on both surfaces. Because richpanel.com/pricing's own seat figures are ambiguous in this session's read, this page prices from the unambiguous Shopify App Store listing instead: PRO $89/mo (or $828/yr), PRO MAX $119/mo (or $1,188/yr), Self Service $119/mo (or $1,188/yr, priced by order volume, not conversations), "$89 per additional user", "AI conversations from $0.20 each", 4.8 stars from 129 reviews. The scenario assumptions are ours: one PRO seat, and every conversation handled by the AI. The rates are theirs. We publish no migration timeline, because their own pages give two different ones. Verified against

## Pricing

- **Arbyn Starter** - $0/month, permanently free. 150 conversations / month. Resets 1st of each month.
- **Arbyn Growth** - $59/month flat. 500 conversations / month. Resets 1st of each month. Or $600/year (just under two months free, saves $108, 15% off).
- **Arbyn Agent** - $99/month flat. Unlimited conversations. Or $990/year (two months free, saves $198, 17% off).
- **There is no trial.** Billing starts immediately on any paid plan. The free Arbyn 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.