Short answer: Gorgias is the best AI chatbot for ecommerce in 2026 for a Shopify or WooCommerce store that wants order actions inside the same tool as the ticket queue, with Starter at $40 a month. A store selling from its catalog first should price Rep AI, which runs a 14-day trial but publishes no list price, or Octane AI, from $50 a month for quizzes that recommend products. A brand selling through Instagram and WhatsApp DMs should start with ManyChat, from $14 a month, or Chatfuel. A team that wants the Fin AI agent inside a shared inbox should read Intercom, from $29 a seat.
10 tools compared on price, features and fit, with prices checked on vendor pages in September 2026.
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A chatbot that only answers a support question is doing half the job a store actually needs. The other half is reading the live catalog, checking an order, and putting the right product in front of a shopper who has not decided yet. Gorgias and Zowie can change the order from inside the thread. Octane AI, Rep AI, and Salesforce Agentforce read the catalog and recommend, but most of them cannot touch the order without a handoff. Treat those as two different purchases, because a vendor demo rarely says which one you are buying.
Toolradar data: of the 100 chatbot tools we track, 4 are free and 48 are freemium (52% with a free or freemium plan), while 47 are paid only (47%).
Methodology: these 10 chatbots were ranked for ecommerce fit against the 100 tools in the chatbots category. Prices were verified on vendor pages in September 2026. The backend ticket queue behind the widget is a separate purchase, covered in the help desk for ecommerce guide, and a chatbot ranked for any industry, not only stores, is the AI chatbots for customer service guide.
Top Picks
Picked by editorial review, informed by G2 and Capterra review volume and rating and by media mentions, the signals behind our category rankings. How we rate
The Shopify default that can cancel, discount, or edit an order from inside the same chat thread.
Starting price
From $40 /mo
4.6 (716 reviews)
Best for
Shopify or WooCommerce stores that want order actions and the ticket queue in one tool.
A proactive AI sales agent that reads the live Shopify catalog and greets shoppers before they ask.
Starting price
No list price
4.9 (65 reviews)
Best for
Shopify stores whose main goal is converting browsers, not just answering tickets.
A storefront widget with Lyro AI priced on its own, for a store not ready to buy a full helpdesk.
Starting price
From $24.17 /mo
4.6 (2,552 reviews)
Best for
Small ecommerce sites that want an AI chat widget without a ticket-bundle commitment.
| Tool | Starting price | Rating | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gorgias Visit | From $40/mo | 4.6 716 reviews | Shopify or WooCommerce stores that want order actions and the ticket queue in one tool. |
| Rep AI | No list price | 4.9 65 reviews | Shopify stores whose main goal is converting browsers, not just answering tickets. |
| Tidio Visit | From $24.17/mo | 4.6 2,552 reviews | Small ecommerce sites that want an AI chat widget without a ticket-bundle commitment. |
| Octane AI | From $50/mo | 4.4 10 reviews | Shopify brands that want a quiz-style chat to recommend products and lift average order value. |
| ManyChat Visit | From $14/mo | 4.5 165 reviews | Social-first sellers who need cart recovery and product replies inside Instagram and WhatsApp. |
| Chatfuel | From $69/mo | 4.4 73 reviews | Brands running product sales and comment automation through Meta channels and WhatsApp. |
| Intercom | From $29/seat/mo | 4.5 3,906 reviews | Ecommerce brands that want the storefront widget and the support inbox to be the same tool. |
| Zowie | Quote only | 4.7 73 reviews | Large retailers that need deterministic refund and return rules enforced across voice, chat, and app. |
| Ada | Quote only | 4.6 173 reviews | Large, multi-market retailers that want a proven enterprise vendor over a self-serve tool. |
| Salesforce Agentforce | From $2/conversation | 3.2 2,129 reviews | Merchants already running Salesforce Commerce Cloud who want a native AI shopping agent. |
- Starting price
- From $40/mo
- Free plan
- No
- Rating
- 4.6 (716 reviews)
Best for: Shopify or WooCommerce stores that want order actions and the ticket queue in one tool.
- Pro: Starter bundles a 50-ticket helpdesk line with a 30-interaction AI Agent line for $40 a month, billed monthly only. Basic moves to $90 a month, or $77 on annual billing, for 300 tickets and the same 30 automated interactions, so the ticket volume grows well past the AI allowance.
- Pro: Shopify and WooCommerce sit on every published plan, and Basic and above include 500 seats, so a seasonal hire does not need a new license. Cancel, discount, and apply actions activate from Basic upward. See the Gorgias profile and Gorgias alternatives.
- Pro: The AI Agent's per-interaction rate drops from $1.00 on Starter to $0.90 on Basic and Pro, and $0.85 on Advanced, so a high-volume store pays less per automated reply as it grows into the upper tiers.
- Con: Cancel and discount actions are off on Starter, so a store that signs the entry plan to issue refunds hits a wall in the first week and has to move to Basic.
- Con: An automated close can draw both the ticket fee and the AI interaction fee on the same invoice, so a busy launch bills two meters at once rather than one.
It's best for businesses with predictable, moderate ticket volumes that can optimize their tier selection.
Watch out
AI Agent: $0.90 per resolved ticket.
- Starting price
- No list price
- Free plan
- No
- Rating
- 4.9 (65 reviews)
Best for: Shopify stores whose main goal is converting browsers, not just answering tickets.
- Pro: The trial runs 14 days with no card and no long setup, syncing the store's catalog and policies so the bot can recommend from current stock rather than a static FAQ.
- Pro: It connects into 175 or more tools, including Klaviyo, Gorgias, Zendesk, and WooCommerce, so a store that already runs a helpdesk can keep that queue and add Rep AI purely for the sales conversation.
- Pro: The vendor backs the product with a 5x ROI guarantee, which is a stronger commitment than most sales-chat vendors publish, though it is Rep AI's own claim and worth testing on your own traffic before you rely on it.
- Con: No plan price appears anywhere on the site. A store that wants a number to put in a spreadsheet this afternoon has to start the trial or book a demo first, unlike Octane AI or Tidio.
- Con: The product is built to sell, not to run a ticket queue, so a store with a real support backlog still needs Gorgias, Zendesk, or another helpdesk behind it.
Best for stores with moderate traffic that want to automate customer interactions without high upfront costs.
- Starting price
- From $24.17/mo
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 4.6 (2,552 reviews)
Best for: Small ecommerce sites that want an AI chat widget without a ticket-bundle commitment.
- Pro: Starter is $24.17 a month, billed annually, for 100 billable human conversations. Lyro replies do not spend that quota, so the bot can keep answering while the human-reply count stays untouched.
- Pro: Lyro starts at $32.50 a month for 50 conversations and can be bought on its own, and on Shopify it can check product availability, order status, and discount codes without leaving the widget.
- Pro: The 7-day trial needs no card, and order-status lookup is included even on the free plan, so a tracking-heavy store can test deflection before paying anything. The live chat guide is the wider list if the widget is the whole job.
- Con: New accounts get 50 Lyro conversations that do not refill without a paid package, so a quiet pilot that suddenly gets busy runs out mid-month.
- Con: Tidio answers from the support content you load into it, not a live product feed, so it is a weaker fit than Rep AI or Octane AI for a store whose main ask is product recommendations.
It's best for small to medium businesses prioritizing live chat and chatbot automation, with the Plus plan targeting enterprise-level needs.
Watch out
Conversation limits can lead to overage if not monitored.
Octane AI
AI quizzes and product recommendations synced to your live Shopify catalog, built for upsell.
- 4.2 on G2 (9 reviews)
- 5.0 on SourceForge (1 reviews)
- Starting price
- From $50/mo
- Free plan
- No
- Rating
- 4.4 (10 reviews)
Best for: Shopify brands that want a quiz-style chat to recommend products and lift average order value.
- Pro: Basic is $50 a month, or $43 on annual billing, with 400 credits and Klaviyo and Shopify sync included, so quiz answers can route into an email flow the same day.
- Pro: Plus, at $200 a month or $170 annual, adds unlimited quizzes and A/B testing, which matters once you are running more than a couple of funnels at a time.
- Pro: The 14-day trial includes full feature access, and a credit only spends when the AI actually does the work: about 0.3 of a credit for a product recommendation and 0.1 for AI-written copy.
- Con: Credits run out past the included pool at $0.10 each, and a quiz completion itself spends a full credit, so a viral quiz can burn the monthly allowance faster than the price suggests.
- Con: The product is built around quizzes and recommendations, not a support inbox, so a store with real ticket volume still needs a helpdesk alongside it.
Octane AI's pricing is on the higher side, especially for smaller Shopify stores.
- Starting price
- From $14/mo
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 4.5 (165 reviews)
Best for: Social-first sellers who need cart recovery and product replies inside Instagram and WhatsApp.
- Pro: Free covers 25 active contacts with two connected channels and basic automations, so a small account can test comment-to-DM flows before paying anything.
- Pro: Essential is $14 a month, or $168 billed annually, for 250 active contacts. AI-powered conversations arrive on Pro, which also raises the contact cap to 2,500 and adds a third channel.
- Pro: Manychat is an official Meta Business Partner and a TikTok partner, so Instagram comment automation and DM replies are built on an approved integration rather than a workaround.
- Con: An Active Contact is anyone Manychat messaged or who messaged in during the month, not a message count, so a broadcast to a large list can push a small account into overage even without new conversations.
- Con: The AI reply feature sits behind Pro at minimum, so the free and Essential tiers are automation without an actual conversational bot.
The Free tier offers significant value for small businesses just starting out, while the Pro plan unlocks powerful features without a steep price increase.
- Starting price
- From $69/mo
- Free plan
- No
- Rating
- 4.4 (73 reviews)
Best for: Brands running product sales and comment automation through Meta channels and WhatsApp.
- Pro: Business is $69 a month billed monthly, and the site is currently running a yearly-billing offer at $18 a month, or $216 for the year, through September 30, 2026, a discount worth checking before you buy at list price.
- Pro: Business includes $20 of AI credits a month and covers WhatsApp conversion tracking, lead scoring, product sales inside the chat, and CRM sync, which is a wider automation set than a pure quiz tool.
- Pro: All plans start with a free trial and no card is required to sign up, and the vendor states you can cancel a paid plan at any time from billing settings.
- Con: Agency S, the next tier up, is $100 a month, or $90 a month when billed yearly ($1,080), and it exists mainly for agencies running several client accounts rather than a single store that outgrows Business.
- Con: Usage limits apply on top of the AI credit pool, and the vendor does not spell out the overage rate on the pricing page itself, so a heavy month needs a support conversation to size correctly.
The Enterprise tier lacks transparent pricing, which can be a red flag for larger organizations.
- Starting price
- From $29/seat/mo
- Free plan
- No
- Rating
- 4.5 (3,906 reviews)
Best for: Ecommerce brands that want the storefront widget and the support inbox to be the same tool.
- Pro: The seat price above is the annual term. Month to month, Essential runs $39 a seat instead. Live chat, support email, and in-app messages are unlimited on every plan, so the base seat is not the meter for basic conversation volume.
- Pro: Fin is billed once per completed conversation at $0.99 per outcome, whether that outcome is a resolved question or a handoff, and outcomes can be capped to control spend.
- Pro: The 14-day trial needs no card, and Advanced and Expert seats include 20 and 50 free Lite seats, so a growing team is not paying full price for every login. See the Intercom profile.
- Con: There is no free plan, and a handoff still counts as a billed outcome, so a bot that gives up on a hard question costs the same as one that actually solved it.
- Con: Fin answers from your help content and order history, not a live product feed, so a shopper asking about current stock or a size gets a weaker answer than on Rep AI or Octane AI.
Intercom is the gold standard for AI-first customer support with its Fin AI agent resolving ~60% of conversations.
- Starting price
- Quote only
- Free plan
- No
- Rating
- 4.7 (73 reviews)
Best for: Large retailers that need deterministic refund and return rules enforced across voice, chat, and app.
- Pro: The product is built around commerce actions specifically, refunds by country and tier, claims, and order history lookups, rather than a general FAQ bot repurposed for a store.
- Pro: One agent runs across voice, chat, the app, and the contact center, so a large brand is not stitching together separate bots per channel.
- Pro: The site emphasizes deterministic execution for transactions, meaning refunds and eligibility checks follow fixed business rules rather than a probabilistic model guessing at policy.
- Con: No pricing appears anywhere on the public site. The only path in is a demo, so a smaller store cannot get even a ballpark number without a sales conversation.
- Con: There is no self-serve trial, which rules out testing the product on real traffic before a contract, unlike Rep AI's 14-day trial or Gorgias' monthly Starter plan.
- Starting price
- Quote only
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 4.6 (173 reviews)
Best for: Large, multi-market retailers that want a proven enterprise vendor over a self-serve tool.
- Pro: Retail and ecommerce is one of Ada's named focus industries, with public case studies from IPSY and Loop Earplugs and Barnes & Noble among the customer logos on its site.
- Pro: The platform runs across 85 or more countries and supports voice, messaging, and email in one agent, which suits a retailer selling into several markets at once.
- Pro: Ada frames its product around converting returns into revenue rather than only processing them, which is a more specific pitch than a generic support-bot claim.
- Con: No free trial or self-serve signup exists. Every path on the site leads to a demo request or a contact form, so there is nothing to test before a sales call.
- Con: No pricing appears anywhere public, so a smaller ecommerce brand has no way to compare Ada's cost against Gorgias, Intercom, or Tidio without engaging sales first.
Salesforce Agentforce
A Personal Shopper agent for Commerce Cloud that recommends products and takes natural-language cart requests.
- 4.3 on G2 (1,477 reviews)
- 1.5 on Trustpilot (610 reviews)
- 3.9 on PeerSpot (42 reviews)
- Starting price
- From $2/conversation
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 3.2 (2,129 reviews)
Best for: Merchants already running Salesforce Commerce Cloud who want a native AI shopping agent.
- Pro: Pay-per-conversation pricing is $2 per conversation, a simple unit if your Commerce Cloud volume is predictable, and Salesforce Foundations includes the Agentforce Builder tooling at no charge with no credit consumption.
- Pro: The Personal Shopper agent reads the retailer's catalog and inventory directly and answers natural-language product questions, recommends items, and can add to cart inside chat or WhatsApp, not just describe a product.
- Pro: Flex Credits are sold at $500 per 100,000 credits for teams that would rather budget a pool than pay per conversation, with a standard action costing 20 credits and a voice action 30.
- Con: Flex Credits and pay-per-conversation cannot run in the same org, so a merchant has to commit to one pricing model rather than mixing them as volume changes.
- Con: The Agentforce 1 Edition that bundles a meaningful Flex Credit allowance starts at $550 a user a month, which prices out a small or mid-size store that is not already a Commerce Cloud customer.
What an AI chatbot for ecommerce is
An AI chatbot for ecommerce is the bot a shopper talks to on the storefront, in Instagram or WhatsApp DMs, or inside a support widget, that can look at your product catalog or an order and act on it. That is a narrower job than a general support chatbot, which may only read a help center article and never see inventory or a cart.
Two families sell under this label. Gorgias, Zowie, and Ada also carry the support queue, so the bot and the ticket share a record and a handoff is a normal event. Rep AI, Octane AI, ManyChat, and Chatfuel are built to sell first, sitting on the storefront or in DMs to recommend, quiz, and recover a cart, with support as a secondary job. Salesforce Agentforce and Tidio sit across both, depending on the plan you buy.
The line that changes the buy is whether the bot can see live inventory. Octane AI and Rep AI sync the Shopify catalog and price directly, so a recommendation reflects what is actually in stock. Intercom's Fin and Gorgias' AI Agent answer from your help content and order history, not the product feed, so a shopper asking "do you have this in a medium" gets a worse answer from a support-first bot than from a sales-first one.
Why the seat price is not what you pay to sell through a bot
Gorgias Starter looks like the cheapest line in this guide, and it is a ticket bundle plus an AI Agent line, not a seat. Move past Starter and the AI Agent still meters per automated interaction, so a store running a promo and a support queue through the same bot pays the ticket bundle and the automation fee on the same invoice.
Octane AI and Chatfuel meter the opposite way: a flat monthly fee that includes a credit pool, then an overage once a quiz, an upsell recommendation, or an AI reply burns through it. Octane AI's overage is $0.10 a credit past the included pool, which is cheap per unit and easy to miss on a viral week. ManyChat and Chatfuel both bill on active contacts reached that month, not on messages sent, so a proactive discount campaign to a large list can move you up a tier even if the bot answered nothing.
Rep AI, Zowie, and Ada publish no list price at all. Rep AI runs a self-serve 14-day trial before a quote, while Zowie and Ada are demo-only from the first click, which suits a brand that already knows its volume and wants a contract, not a self-checkout signup. If the shortlist is a Shopify-native sales bot against a support-first one, the help desk for ecommerce guide is the closer read for the ticket side of that decision.
Key Features to Look For
What counts as a billable event (Essential)
Gorgias bills a per-interaction rate that drops from $1.00 on Starter to $0.85 on Advanced. Intercom's Fin charges $0.99 per outcome, counted once even when the bot hands off. Octane AI and Chatfuel spend a credit pool instead, and ManyChat counts an active contact, not a message. Four different meters for the same word, chatbot, and none of them convert cleanly into the others.
Order actions versus product talk (Essential)
Gorgias can cancel, discount, and apply an order edit from Basic upward, and Zowie is built around refunds and returns that follow rules by country and tier. Octane AI, Rep AI, and Agentforce's Personal Shopper read the catalog and recommend, add to cart, or run a quiz, but a shopper asking to cancel an order still needs a handoff on most of these plans.
Does the bot read live inventory (Essential)
Rep AI syncs the Shopify catalog directly and recommends from current stock and price. Octane AI's quizzes route to live products through the same sync. Gorgias' AI Agent and Intercom's Fin answer primarily from your help content and order history, which is the wrong source for a real-time stock question.
Where the bot actually sits (Important)
Gorgias, Tidio, Octane AI, and Rep AI live on the storefront as a widget. ManyChat and Chatfuel are DM-first, built for Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, and treat the website as a secondary channel. Zowie, Ada, and Intercom run across both, which matters if your sales happen in comments and DMs rather than on-site.
Platform lock-in (Important)
Octane AI, Rep AI, and Gorgias are built around Shopify first, with WooCommerce support on Gorgias and Rep AI too. Tidio, Intercom, Zowie, and Ada are platform-agnostic and will plug into any storefront. A Salesforce Commerce Cloud merchant is the one buyer Agentforce's Personal Shopper is actually built for.
Self-serve versus a sales cycle (Important)
Gorgias, Tidio, Octane AI, ManyChat, Chatfuel, and Intercom let you sign up and pay today. Rep AI signs up for a trial but quotes the paid plan later. Zowie and Ada start with a demo and never show a price on their own site, which is the tell that they are built for a volume the self-serve tools were not sized for.
What the free tier actually includes (Nice to have)
ManyChat's free plan covers 25 contacts with no AI. Tidio's Lyro grants 50 conversations that never refill without a paid package. Octane AI, Rep AI, Chatfuel, Gorgias, and Intercom skip a free plan entirely and run a trial instead. None of the ten hands you a staffed AI bot for nothing past a trial window.
What to weigh before you put a bot on the storefront
-
Price a launch week separately from a quiet one. Octane AI and Chatfuel meter credits and active contacts, so a viral post can move the bill more than headcount does.
-
If the store sells through Instagram or WhatsApp DMs first, start with ManyChat or Chatfuel rather than a storefront widget that treats DMs as an afterthought.
-
Zowie and Ada quote a contract, not a plan. Budget a sales cycle and ask for their unit price in writing before you compare it with a self-serve tool.
Evaluation Checklist
Ask the bot a real stock question, such as whether a specific size is available today, and check whether the answer comes from live inventory or a static help article.
Try to get the bot to add an item to the cart or start a return without you switching to a human. Gorgias and Rep AI should manage this. A pure FAQ bot will hand off instead.
Pricing Overview
Free or trial only
$0 to 14-day trial
Storefront widget, entry
Tidio's Starter and Lyro pair, Gorgias Starter's ticket-and-AI bundle, and Octane AI Basic sit here for a small catalog testing a bot for the first time.
Under $60/mo
Credit or contact metered
Octane AI, ManyChat, and Chatfuel bill a monthly pool of credits, contacts, or AI replies, so the invoice tracks traffic more than headcount.
Scales with volume
Seat plus outcome
Intercom and Gorgias' upper tiers sell a seat or a ticket bundle, then meter the AI on top as a second line.
Per agent, per resolution
Pricing Comparison
| Tool | Best for | Entry price | AI meter | Free plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Gorgias | Shopify order actions in the ticket | $40/mo (Starter) | $1.00 per automated interaction | No (trial) |
Tidio | Small stores testing a bot first | $24.17/mo, 100 chats | Lyro from $32.50/mo | Yes, after 7-day trial |
AI sales agent on Shopify | No list price | Quote after 14-day trial | 14-day trial, no card | |
Shopify quizzes and upsell | $50/mo (Basic) | $0.10 per credit over the pool | No (14-day trial) | |
Instagram and WhatsApp DM selling | $14/mo (Essential) | AI arrives on Pro, from $29/mo | Yes, 25 contacts | |
Chatfuel | Messenger and WhatsApp automation | $69/mo (Business) | $20 AI credits/mo included | No (free trial) |
Intercom | Widget and inbox in one product | $29/seat/mo annual | $0.99 per Fin outcome | No (14-day trial) |
Zowie | Enterprise refunds and returns | No list price | Not published | No (demo only) |
Ada | Large multi-market retail | No list price | Not published | No (demo only) |
Commerce Cloud shopping agent | $2 per conversation | Flex Credits, $500 per 100,000 | Yes, Foundations (no live agent) |
Verified September 2026 on vendor pages: Gorgias pricing, Tidio pricing, Rep AI pricing, Octane AI pricing, ManyChat pricing, Chatfuel pricing, Intercom pricing, Zowie, Ada, and Salesforce Agentforce pricing.
Mistakes to Avoid
- ×
- ×
Buying a quiz or recommendation tool like Octane AI expecting it to also run a support queue. It reads the catalog well and does not replace a helpdesk.
- ×
- ×
- ×
Expert Tips
- →
Pilot the sales-focused bot and the support bot separately for two weeks and compare add-to-cart or resolution counts before merging them into one contract.
- →
- →
- →
For the backend ticket queue behind any of these bots, use the help desk for ecommerce guide, and for a chatbot ranked outside the ecommerce niche, read best AI chatbots.
Red Flags to Watch For
-
A homepage conversion or resolution percentage with no denominator, such as Rep AI's 5x guarantee, is the vendor's own marketing claim. Ask for it rerun on your own traffic before you budget from it.
-
Quote-only pricing with no unit, whether it is per conversation, per seat, or per resolution, is not something you can compare against a priced tool this week.
-
A chatbot pitched as a sales tool that cannot show you a live product recommendation on a real SKU during the demo is answering from static content, not your catalog.
-
Chatfuel's current annual-billing discount runs only through September 30, 2026. Confirm the standing rate before you assume the promotional price is permanent.
The Bottom Line
Pick Gorgias when the job is Shopify or WooCommerce order actions inside the same tool as the ticket queue, at the Starter rate in the table above. Pick Rep AI or Octane AI when the job is selling from the live catalog rather than answering support tickets. Pick ManyChat or Chatfuel when the sales conversation already happens in Instagram or WhatsApp DMs.
Intercom is the widget-and-inbox combination for a brand that wants one shared record. Zowie and Ada are the enterprise path for a large retailer that needs deterministic refund rules or proven multi-market case studies and will run a sales cycle to get them. Salesforce Agentforce is the native option only if you already run Commerce Cloud. None of the ten hands you a staffed AI bot for free past a trial.
How we ranked: 10 chatbots from the 100 in the chatbots category, vendor prices checked September 2026. Cite this: Toolradar, "Best AI chatbots for ecommerce 2026", September 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best AI chatbot for ecommerce in 2026?
Gorgias is the best default in 2026 for a Shopify or WooCommerce store that wants order actions and the support queue in the same chat, at the Starter rate in the table above. For a bot built to sell from the live catalog, Rep AI and Octane AI are the closer fit. For DM-first sellers, ManyChat and Chatfuel handle Instagram and WhatsApp natively. Intercom is the pick when the widget and the shared inbox should be one product.
How much does an AI chatbot for ecommerce cost?
Verified September 2026, Gorgias Starter bundles 50 tickets and 30 AI interactions on monthly billing (see the pricing table), and Basic moves to $90 a month, or $77 annual. Tidio's Starter is $24.17 a month with Lyro from $32.50. Octane AI's entry plan and ManyChat's entry tier are both in the table above. Rep AI, Zowie, and Ada publish no list price and quote after a trial or a demo.
Is there a free AI chatbot for ecommerce?
ManyChat's free plan covers 25 active contacts with no AI conversations included. Tidio grants 50 Lyro conversations that do not refill without a paid package. Gorgias, Octane AI, Rep AI, Chatfuel, and Intercom skip a free tier and run a trial instead, from 7 to 14 days. None of the ten offers a permanently free, fully staffed AI bot.
What is the difference between an ecommerce chatbot and a help desk?
A chatbot is the conversation a shopper has on the storefront or in DMs, whether it is answering a question or recommending a product. A help desk is the ticket queue and agent tooling behind it. Several vendors in this guide, including Gorgias and Zowie, sell both together. Others, like Octane AI, Rep AI, ManyChat, and Chatfuel, are chat-only and expect you to run a separate helpdesk for tickets. The queue side of that decision is the help desk for ecommerce guide.
Gorgias vs Rep AI vs Tidio: which should a Shopify store buy first?
Buy Gorgias if the priority is order actions, cancel, discount, and refund, inside a ticket you also need for support. Buy Rep AI if the priority is converting browsers with a proactive sales agent that reads live inventory, and you are fine starting on a 14-day trial with no published price. Buy Tidio if you want a lighter widget with Lyro AI priced separately and a 7-day trial, without committing to a full ticket bundle yet.
Can an AI chatbot actually sell products, not just answer questions?
Rep AI, Octane AI, and Salesforce Agentforce's Personal Shopper are built to recommend from a live catalog and, on Agentforce and Rep AI, add an item to the cart inside the conversation. Gorgias' AI Agent and Intercom's Fin are built to resolve support tickets and answer mostly from help content and order history, so they can mention a product but are weaker at a real-time stock or fit question than a catalog-synced tool.
Which AI chatbot works for Instagram and WhatsApp DM selling?
ManyChat and Chatfuel are both built DM-first for Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, with Meta partner status and comment-to-DM automation. ManyChat's entry tier covers 250 active contacts, with AI conversations arriving on the Pro plan (see the table for both rates). Chatfuel's Business tier is $69 a month and includes an AI credit pool. Intercom, Zowie, and Ada also reach WhatsApp but are priced and built for a wider support operation, not DM-first selling alone.
Cite this page: Toolradar, "Best AI Chatbots for Ecommerce in 2026", updated September 2026, https://toolradar.com/guides/best-ai-chatbots-for-ecommerce
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