# Yep AI Alternative for Shopify: From $199/mo in AI Credits

> Yep AI starts at $199/mo for 4,000 AI credits, a meter that does not map to conversations. Arbyn is $99/mo flat, unlimited, or $0 to start, for Shopify.

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

## How Yep AI charges

From $199/mo, priced by AI credit. Yep AI's cheapest tier is Core at $199/mo for 4,000 AI credits, a meter neither their pricing page nor their comparison table converts into a number of conversations. Social chat and order follow-up are gated behind the $599/mo Pro tier, itself marked "Coming soon", not yet purchasable.

Yep AI's cheapest tier, Core, is $199 a month, already double Arbyn's flat $99, for 4,000 AI credits. Neither their pricing page nor their Shopify listing states how many credits one customer conversation uses, so there is no way to know what your actual conversation volume will cost until you are already metered.

## Where Yep AI beats Arbyn

- Yep AI's own annual-billing discount is real: 20% off any tier if you commit for a year, which brings Core down to $159/mo effective.
- The AI Employee framing is a genuinely different pitch: separate roles for marketing, support and operations rather than one general chatbot, and each role is visible in their comparison table.
- 1,769 reviews on their broader product line and 3.5 stars specifically on this Shopify listing is a real, checkable track record, not a new, unproven app.

_2025_

## Where Arbyn wins

### One flat price, not an opaque credit meter

Arbyn is $99 a month, unlimited conversations, and you never have to guess what a conversation costs. Yep AI's cheapest tier is $199, already double Arbyn, for a bucket of 4,000 AI credits that neither their pricing page nor their comparison table converts into a number of customer conversations.

_Yep AI's own FAQ states "Every plan starts with 100 free AI credits" but never states how many credits one AI reply, let alone one full conversation, actually spends._

### No social tier tax

Arbyn's roadmap is the same email and chat channels on every plan, no upcharge structure. Yep AI's own feature table gates Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp chat support behind Pro, three tiers and $400 a month above their entry price, and that tier's social chat is itself still marked "Coming soon" on yepai.io/pricing.

_Growth, the $299/mo middle tier, still does not include social chat support per Yep AI's own comparison table._

### Order actions on every plan, today

Arbyn updates a shipping address inside the conversation on its own, and prepares a refund for your approval, the same on the free Starter plan as on Agent. Yep AI's own comparison table lists order and logistics follow-up as a Pro-tier feature, and Pro itself is not yet purchasable at any price.

_Yep AI's Core and Growth tiers, $199 and $299 a month, do not list order or logistics follow-up as included per their own feature comparison, and the Pro tier that does is marked "Coming soon" on yepai.io/pricing, its CTA button reads "Coming soon" instead of "Start free trial"._

## Cost at real volumes

| Scenario | Volume | Their cost | You save with Arbyn |
|---|---|---|---|
| You want to know what a conversation costs | Any volume | Yep AI: credits, no published conversion to conversations | Arbyn: $99/mo flat, or $0 for 150 conversations |
| You want social channels included | Instagram, Facebook or WhatsApp support | Yep AI: gated behind the $599/mo Pro tier, which is not yet purchasable | Arbyn: email and chat live today, IG and FB on the roadmap |
| A customer wants their money back | Refund or address change, mid-chat | Yep AI: order and logistics follow-up claimed only on Pro, which is itself "Coming soon" | Arbyn: changes the address itself, prepares the refund for approval, on every plan, today |

Source: [apps.shopify.com/yep-ai-chatbot and yepai.io/pricing](https://apps.shopify.com/yep-ai-chatbot). Every Yep AI figure here comes from apps.shopify.com/yep-ai-chatbot (the "From $199/month" listing price, the 3.5-star rating and the May 9, 2025 launch date) and yepai.io/pricing (the Core, Growth, Pro and Scale tiers, their AI-credit allowances, the 20% annual discount, and the feature-comparison table that gates social chat and order/logistics follow-up behind Pro and up). The entire $599/mo Pro tier is itself marked "Coming soon" on yepai.io/pricing as of July 2026, its call-to-action button reads "Coming soon" rather than the "Start free trial" shown on Core and Growth, so it is not currently purchasable at any price. Both pages checked July 2026. 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.