# Shopify Inbox Alternative for Shopify: Free AI Chat

> Shopify Inbox is free, but its AI answers questions and hands the rest to staff. Arbyn acts on the order: address changes on its own, refunds on approval.

Source: https://arbyn.app/compare/shopify-inbox

## How Shopify Inbox charges

Free, first-party, no documented order actions. 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.

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 plan or $99 flat.

## Where Shopify Inbox beats Arbyn

- Shop sign-in personalization is real, and Arbyn does not match it today. When a shopper is signed into Shop, Inbox can recognize them across every store they have used Shop with and personalize replies using their preferences and purchase history.
- It has a genuine brand voice, and our old page was wrong to say otherwise. Shopify's listing sells persona controls that set the agent's tone, style and rules, plus a training loop where you rate chats to sharpen it.
- It is free. One tier, no paid plan, and no conversation cap published anywhere on the listing. Nothing Arbyn does changes that math for a store that only needs questions answered.

Shopify Inbox is a free, first-party app with a real AI agent behind it, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. It answers product, shipping, returns, sizing and policy questions from your own catalog and policies. It can be given a persona so replies sound on-brand, and it gets better as you rate its chats. If the shopper is signed into Shop, it can personalize around their purchase history across every Shop store, which is a structural advantage no third-party app can copy. For a store that wants questions answered and is happy for a human to take it from there, that is a good tool at a price nobody can beat.
The line is what happens when the customer wants something changed. Shopify's docs are clear about the shape of it: the agent answers, and when the conversation needs more, it goes to your staff. It can review an order once the customer signs in with Shop. Shopify documents no way for it to refund, cancel, edit or re-address one. Arbyn re-addresses the order inside the conversation on its own, and issues refunds and starts returns with your approval, on email and on chat, and writes every action to the Shopify order timeline so you can see what it did. That is $0 a month for 150 AI conversations, or $99 flat for unlimited. If the tickets you actually dread are the ones that end in a refund, that is the difference.

Stay on Inbox if your support volume is mostly pre-purchase questions and you have someone to handle the refunds and address changes by hand. It is free and it is good at that. Come to Arbyn when the handoffs are the job.

## Where Arbyn wins

### It changes the order, not just reads it

Arbyn re-addresses real Shopify orders inside the conversation on its own, and issues refunds and starts returns with your approval, and logs every action to the Shopify order timeline. Shopify's docs put the Inbox agent on the other side of that line: it answers, and when a conversation needs staff attention it is handed off to your staff.

_Shopify documents the Inbox agent reviewing an order after Shop sign-in. It documents no way to change one._

### Email and chat, one agent, same powers

Arbyn runs support over email and live chat with the same agent, the same knowledge, and the same ability to act on the order. A customer who emails you gets the same resolution as one who opens the chat widget, not a different queue with a different brain.

_SMS, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and voice are on the roadmap, not live. We will say so plainly._

### The agent is live on day one, on every plan

Arbyn's AI agent runs from your first conversation, on the $0 Starter plan (150 AI conversations per calendar month, full features) and on the $99 Agent plan (unlimited, flat). No waitlist, no eligibility, no per-resolution fee.

_Shopify's manual: the Inbox agent "is in early access and is available only to some stores."_

## Cost at real volumes

| Scenario | Volume | Their cost | You save with Arbyn |
|---|---|---|---|
| The customer wants a refund, not an answer | "I want to return this and get my money back" | Inbox: hands the conversation to staff | Arbyn: issues the refund on your approval |
| Wrong address, and it has not shipped yet | "Can you send it to my new place instead?" | Inbox: no documented order change | Arbyn: updates the address, writes it to the timeline |
| Whether your store even has the agent | You install Inbox this afternoon | Inbox: agent is early access, some stores only | Arbyn: agent runs from the first conversation |

Source: [help.shopify.com/en/manual/inbox](https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/inbox). Every claim on this page about Shopify Inbox comes from Shopify's own material: the agent's scope, the staff handoff, the order review after Shop sign-in and the early-access availability note are from Shopify's Inbox manual, and the single free pricing tier plus the persona and rating-based training features are from the Shopify App Store listing. Verified July 2026. Where Shopify documents nothing, we say so rather than assert a negative.

## 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.