# Willdesk Alternative for Shopify: Four Meters, No Published AI Rate

> Willdesk meters conversations, tracked orders, WhatsApp and AI separately, and the AI rate is not published. Arbyn is $99/mo flat, unlimited, on Shopify.

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

## How Willdesk charges

Four meters, AI rate unpublished. Willdesk sells three plans and runs four meters underneath them. Free is $0 for 20 conversations a month, Basic is $16.90 for 100, Pro is $89.90 for 1,000. Past the quota their own plan cards publish $12 per 100 conversations on Basic and $10 per 100 on Pro, $4 per 100 tracked orders on both, and $10.00 per 100 WhatsApp messages. The fourth meter is the AI, and its rate is published on neither their pricing page nor their App Store listing: both paid cards say only "usage-based for AI". At 1,000 conversations a month they are cheaper than Arbyn, and paid yearly their Pro is $755.16 against our $990, so in year one they are cheaper there too.

Conversations, tracked orders, WhatsApp messages and AI are four separate quotas on one invoice. Three of them carry a published overflow rate. The fourth, the AI, does not: both of their paid plan cards say only "usage-based for AI". At 1,000 conversations a month their Pro plan is $89.90 and Arbyn is $99, so in that band they are cheaper, and this page says so rather than hope you never check.

## Where Willdesk beats Arbyn

- They are cheaper than us in a real band, and cheaper on annual billing. At 1,000 conversations a month Willdesk Pro is $89.90 against Arbyn's flat $99. Paid yearly their Pro is $755.16 against Arbyn's $990, so in year one they cost $234.84 less. Their price page labels that 30% off a "Discount for the first year" and publishes no year-two price, which is worth knowing, but the first sentence is still the true one.
- Channels that are live for them and not for us. Their price page shows email, live chat, Facebook Messenger and Instagram on all three plans including the free one, and WhatsApp as a metered channel at $10.00 per 100. Arbyn is support email and on-site live chat, SMS is on our roadmap, and Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp are still coming. If your support actually arrives through Instagram DMs, they cover it today and we do not.
- Things in their box that are not in ours. Unlimited agent seats on every plan including Free, so seats are never the meter and we will not imply they are. Basic covers 3 stores and Pro covers multiple, where Arbyn installs per store. Branded order tracking is built in, their words: "Branded Self-service widget,with Trackingmore API default, no extra tracking app". A help center with a custom FAQ domain and premium templates. 21 languages listed, and 4.8 stars across 363 Shopify App Store reviews.

Willdesk is a real product with real reach. Their homepage claims 30,000 Shopify brands, which is their claim and not something we can check, but 4.8 stars across 363 App Store reviews is on the listing and it is not nothing. Seats are free on every plan they sell, including the free one, so nobody should leave this page thinking they charge per person. They do not, and neither do we. Their tracked-order meter is also fairer than it first looks: their price page says that if you already run another tracking app it is prioritized and Willdesk "will not deduct limits", so a store on a separate tracker may never touch that counter.
And in one band they are simply cheaper. At 1,000 conversations a month Pro is $89.90 and Arbyn is $99. Paid yearly, Pro is $755.16 against our $990. We would rather you read that here than find it yourself and stop believing everything else on the page.
The disagreement is the shape of the bill. Four counters run at once, conversations, tracked orders, WhatsApp messages and AI, and a good month for your store is a bigger invoice on three of them. The fourth has no published rate at all: both paid plan cards say only "usage-based for AI", and the "Enable Will AI Agent" block on their pricing page carries no price, no per-conversation cost and no credit pack. Their listing is clear about where usage lands: "All charges are billed in USD. Recurring and usage-based charges are billed every 30 days." Arbyn is $99 a month, unlimited conversations, unlimited AI, and there is no fourth line waiting to be totalled.

Stay with Willdesk if Instagram and Messenger are the job you are hiring for today, if you run several stores off one subscription, or if a branded tracking page in the box matters more to you than a flat bill. Switch to Arbyn when you want one number instead of four counters, when you want to know the AI rate before it is on your invoice, and when you want the AI to issue the refund, send the gift card and reship the order once you approve it.

## Where Arbyn wins

### One number, not four counters

Arbyn is $99 a month, flat. Unlimited conversations, unlimited AI resolutions, and nothing metered: no per-ticket fee, no per-resolution fee, no per-seat fee, no per-AI-reply fee, no per-visitor fee. Under 150 AI conversations in a calendar month it is $0 on Starter, with every feature on. December costs what June costs.

_Willdesk's Basic card, verbatim: "Overage is charged per unit: $12/100 conversations, $4/100 tracked orders, and usage-based for AI." The Pro card reads the same with $10/100. Add WhatsApp at $10.00 per 100 and that is four counters on one invoice._

### You can read our AI price. You cannot read theirs.

Arbyn's AI is the product, not an add-on, and it is inside the $99. There is no usage line, no token bill, no credit pack and no per-resolution fee, and the first 150 AI conversations of every calendar month are free on Starter.

_Both Willdesk paid plan cards describe the AI fee only as "usage-based for AI". Their pricing page carries an "Enable Will AI Agent" block with no price on it: no per-conversation cost, no per-resolution cost, no credit pack. We fetched both of their first-party pages in the session we wrote this, and there is no number to read._

### Arbyn performs the money-moving action

Arbyn updates the shipping address on its own. Cancel an order, issue a refund, apply a discount that the checkout already carries, 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 it to the order timeline. That approval is a deliberate money control, not a missing feature. Arbyn does not edit orders or line items, and we say so. The same agent also sells, and that is inside the $99 too: product quizzes, a bundle builder, discount offers, in-chat upsells, abandoned-cart recovery inside the chat, with revenue attribution on every order it sources.

_Willdesk claims order tracking, returns, cancellations and address updates "via smart AI agent", and their own comparison table names the row "After-Sale order self-service". No first-party Willdesk page claims a refund, a gift card or a reship. We have not watched their agent run, so we quote them and stop there._

## Cost at real volumes

| Scenario | Volume | Their cost | You save with Arbyn |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steady month | 1,000 conversations/mo | $89.90/mo | Willdesk is $9.10 cheaper here. We are not going to pretend otherwise. |
| One busy month | 1,100 conversations/mo | $103.90/mo | $4.90/mo |
| Scale / BFCM | 5,000 conversations/mo | $89.90/mo + an unpublished slider price | Arbyn is $99 at 5,000 conversations, and $99 at 50,000. Their number at 5,000 is not on the page. |

Source: [willdesk.com/price](https://www.willdesk.com/price/). Verified July 2026, read first-party in the same session this was written, on willdesk.com/price and on their Shopify App Store listing (apps.shopify.com/self-faq). Their three plans: Free $0, Basic $16.90/month, Pro $89.90/month. Their included quotas: 20 conversations and 20 tracked orders a month on Free, 100 conversations on Basic, 1,000 on Pro. Their overflow rates, quoted from their own plan cards: "Overage is charged per unit: $12/100 conversations, $4/100 tracked orders, and usage-based for AI" on Basic, and the same line with $10/100 on Pro. Their price page table confirms both: "Overflow conversation cost | Free: none | Basic: $12 / 100 | Pro: $10 / 100". WhatsApp is "$10.00 / 100" on the paid plans. Every rate above is theirs. Every calculation in the scenario cards is ours, and it is labelled where it appears. Two things we deliberately do NOT publish. First, no AI price: both paid cards say only "usage-based for AI" and the "Enable Will AI Agent" block on their pricing page carries no price, no per-conversation cost, no per-resolution cost and no credit pack, so any AI figure you see quoted for Willdesk did not come from Willdesk. Second, no bill between the rungs: their Basic slider sells 100 to 500 included conversations and their Pro slider 1,000 to 10,000, and the price at each step is not published, so we price the base quotas only and refuse to extrapolate across a band their own slider covers. Pro annual is $755.16/year on both of their pages, below Arbyn's $990, and their price page labels it a "Discount for the first year" against a $1,078.80 list without publishing a year-two price. Basic's annual price appears as two different figures on their two first-party pages, so we publish only its monthly $16.90. 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.