# Shoply AI Alternative for Shopify: Chats, Searches and a Catalog Cap

> Shoply AI meters chats or searches, then caps your catalog size on top. Arbyn is $99/mo flat, unlimited, or $0 for 150 AI conversations.

Source: https://arbyn.app/compare/shoply-ai

## How Shoply AI charges

Chat volume, plus a catalog cap. $0 for 50 chats or 150 searches a month on up to 50 products, self-serve only. $49.99 for 500 chats or 1,500 searches on up to 1,000 products, the cheapest tier with live chat escalation and WhatsApp. $149.99 for 1,500 chats or 4,500 searches on up to 10,000 products. $449.99 for 4,500 chats or 13,500 searches on up to 50,000 products. Enterprise is custom. Two caps run on every paid tier at once, and Shoply does not publish what happens if you exceed either one mid-cycle.

Shoply AI meters chats or searches per month, on top of a separate product-catalog cap, and gates live chat escalation and WhatsApp behind its $49.99 tier. Arbyn is $99 a month, flat, with a $0 plan underneath it, and no catalog size ever changes the price.

## Where Shoply AI beats Arbyn

- Their Smart Start tier is $49.99 a month, half of Arbyn's flat $99, and it covers up to 500 chats. Under that volume, they are cheaper, plainly.
- Product search and merchandising is a real, named capability: a "Product Expert" that recommends and searches a catalog claimed up to 50,000 products on their top published tier. Arbyn is built around support conversations, not product discovery, and does not compete on this axis at all.
- WhatsApp ships today, on their $49.99 tier and up. Arbyn does not have WhatsApp yet; it is roadmap. And their review record is real, if small: 5.0 stars across 22 Shopify App Store reviews.

Their free Forever Free tier is real: $0 for 50 chats or 150 searches a month, self-serve, no card required beyond the Shopify install. That is a smaller cap than Arbyn Starter's 150 AI conversations, but it costs nothing, and it sits underneath a paid tier that genuinely undercuts ours for a store staying under 500 chats a month. Their listing also claims replies in 20-plus languages. We did not re-verify Arbyn's own multilingual depth this session, so we are not claiming a language win here either way.
Product search is where Shoply is a different product, not a weaker one. Their listing markets a "Product Expert" that indexes the catalog and finds and recommends products for a shopper, at a claimed scale up to 50,000 products on Elite Engage and beyond on request. Arbyn does not build for product discovery; it is built to resolve a support conversation and act on the order behind it. If product search and merchandising across a large catalog is the job, Shoply is built for it and Arbyn is not the tool for that job.

Switch to Shoply AI anyway when: your monthly volume is genuinely under 500 chats, you want WhatsApp today, or product search and merchandising is the primary job, not support conversations.

## Where Arbyn wins

### Arbyn performs the action. Shoply routes to your team.

Shoply's own blog says it plainly: "the chatbot cannot process a cancellation in Shopify Admin autonomously without explicit configuration to do so... actual order modifications in Shopify Admin remain with your team." Arbyn cancels the order, issues the refund, applies the discount, sends the gift card and reships the order once you tap approve, and performs the real Shopify mutation itself.

_Their own words, not ours: "not autonomously by default."_

### One volume cap, not two stacked ones

Shoply meters chats or searches AND a separate product-catalog size on every paid tier, so either one can force the next tier even when the other still has room. Arbyn's $99 does not care how many chats you run or how many products you list.

_Cross either cap on Smart Start (500 chats or 1,000 products) and you are paying $149.99 for Pro Perform, whichever cap you hit first._

### No feature gating on the free plan

Shoply's Forever Free tier is self-serve only; live chat escalation, WhatsApp and Judge.me integration are locked behind Smart Start at $49.99/mo and up, per their own plan table. Arbyn's $0 Starter plan has every feature on. The only difference between Starter and Agent is the monthly conversation cap.

_Free means fewer features on their side. On ours it means the same product, a lower cap._

## Cost at real volumes

| Scenario | Volume | Their cost | You save with Arbyn |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo store, light volume | 400 AI chats/mo | $49.99/mo | They win |
| Growing DTC, past one cap | 1,200 chats/mo, 3,000-product catalog | $149.99/mo | $50.99/mo, $611.88/yr |
| Scale, large catalog | 4,000 chats/mo, 40,000-product catalog | $449.99/mo | $350.99/mo, $4,211.88/yr |

Source: [shoplyai.ai/pricing](https://shoplyai.ai/pricing). Verified July 2026. All five Shoply AI tiers, prices, chat/search volumes and product caps are published on both the Shopify App Store listing and shoplyai.ai/pricing, independently confirmed with no discrepancy. The "not autonomously by default... actual order modifications in Shopify Admin remain with your team" concession is from Shoply's own blog. Shoply publishes no overage rate for a tier's monthly cap. 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.