Which AI Support Tool Fits Your Shopify Store?

Comparing Richpanel vs VivoChat comes down to a single question: are you buying a support operation or a conversation-to-revenue engine? Richpanel is an AI-native helpdesk built to resolve tickets autonomously and give agents a serious workspace. VivoChat is a completely free AI support and conversational commerce platform where an AI agent handles support and a shopping assistant handles the people still deciding whether to buy. Both run on Shopify. They suit different stores, and this comparison says which.

What Richpanel is

Richpanel positions itself as the AI-native helpdesk for ecommerce, and it competes directly with Gorgias and Zendesk in the mid-market. It brings email, live chat, SMS, phone and social channels into one platform alongside its AI agents, and it has built its go-to-market around aggressive claims against the incumbents, including a guaranteed savings promise versus Zendesk and Gorgias and a stated 50% AI resolution rate.

Its real strengths are worth naming clearly.

Autonomous resolution is the core product, not a bolt-on. Richpanel's AI agents handle resolution across email, chat and SMS, and the company connects tools so the AI can act inside them within your permissions, with custom OMS or ERP going through the API.

The self-service portal. This is the feature most Richpanel customers actually buy it for: customers handle returns, order status and other actions themselves without opening a ticket. For a store drowning in WISMO and returns, moving those flows into self-service is a direct volume reduction.

Multi-platform reach. Richpanel names Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and Amazon among its integrations, so if you sell on more than Shopify, it covers you in a way that Shopify-only tools do not. Worth knowing: its deepest transactional actions, like subscription edits and returns, run through Shopify-side partners such as Recharge and Loop.

A real agent workspace. Multi-brand support, advanced analytics and the operational tooling a support team of five or fifteen needs to work efficiently.

If your problem statement is "our support operation needs to run better," Richpanel is a serious answer.

Richpanel pricing, and what it means at your volume

Richpanel prices at roughly $99 per seat per month plus about $0.20 per AI conversation, with a $200 monthly minimum. That is the figure Richpanel itself publishes, framed as an illustrative comparison against Gorgias's per-resolution pricing. Check their current page before you decide, since the model has been revised during 2026.

Taken on its own terms, the per-conversation rate is a real argument. At about $0.20, Richpanel is substantially cheaper per unit than Gorgias's roughly $0.90 per resolution, and that gap is the centre of Richpanel's pitch to brands leaving Gorgias.

The part worth modelling is the shape rather than the rate. This is per-seat pricing with usage pricing layered on top, which means two lines that both grow: one with your headcount, one with your volume. A five-agent team is past $500 a month in seats before the AI resolves a single conversation, and the monthly minimum applies whether or not you hit it. As one independent analysis of the category put it, the honest comparison is total cost per resolved ticket at your real volume, not the per-conversation sticker.

For contrast, the model on the other side of this comparison has none of those lines: no seat charge, no per-conversation fee and no minimum. That is not a discount on the same structure, it is the absence of the structure, which matters most in exactly the months when usage-based pricing hurts.

There are also two friction points worth knowing before you commit, neither of them about price directly. Richpanel has no native voice, so phone means Aircall, Dialpad, JustCall or similar, and Aircall's three-licence minimum means a single person taking calls still costs you three seats. And migrating off Richpanel later is described as a data extraction problem: its Graph API is rate-limited to 100 calls per minute, automation rules, portal flows and widget configurations do not transfer, and one analysis suggests planning one to three weeks with most of that time spent rebuilding workflows rather than moving data.

What VivoChat is

VivoChat starts from a different premise: most messages reaching an online store are not tickets, they are purchase decisions in progress.

Two roles in one assistant. The Vivo AI Agent handles support — order status, shipping, returns, availability, product and policy questions — answered from your own knowledge base. The Vivo Shopping Assistant handles the pre-purchase side, using your product catalog and real-time shopping behaviour to recommend products, compare options and grow average order value. This is the structural difference from Richpanel, which approaches the problem as a helpdesk with excellent automation.

One unified inbox across channels. Website chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and Telegram land in a single inbox, with messages, comments and DMs included, so questions from the channels your marketing actually works on do not sit unanswered in a separate app. All channels are included, because everything is.

Trained on what you already have. Help centre articles, FAQs, product pages, PDFs, Notion pages and past conversations. Every channel answers from the same source, so the WhatsApp answer and the email answer match.

Reported results. Up to 70% of repetitive conversations automated from day one, average first response times near 30 seconds, and support costs cut by around half.

Clean escalation. Complex, sensitive or ambiguous cases go to your team with the full conversation attached.

Extend without replatforming. Add specialised agents for billing, onboarding, sales or retention from the marketplace in one click.

Installs in minutes. No code, straight from the Shopify App Store.

It is free, with no limits. Not a trial, not a freemium tier with a conversation cap waiting to catch you in November. No per-seat charge, no per-conversation fee, no monthly minimum, no channel sold as an add-on. Specialised agents from the marketplace may be priced in future, but the platform itself is free, which turns the decision from a procurement exercise into an experiment you can run this week.

Where VivoChat concedes: it is younger than Richpanel, its integration list is shorter, it does not offer a Richpanel-style customer self-service portal, and it has less enterprise agent-workspace tooling. If you are staffing a support department of ten and need multi-brand routing and deep analytics, Richpanel is built for that and VivoChat is not.

The real difference: support operations vs revenue conversations

Strip away the feature lists and the two tools answer different questions.

Richpanel answers: how do we resolve more tickets with fewer people? Everything follows from that — autonomous resolution, the self-service portal, the agent workspace, the savings guarantee against Zendesk and Gorgias. The metric is cost per resolved ticket.

VivoChat answers: how do we turn more conversations into orders while automating the repetitive ones? Hence the shopping assistant working alongside the support agent, and the emphasis on channels like Instagram where the conversations are top-of-funnel rather than post-purchase.

This matters because the two goals produce opposite verdicts on the same store. A store where 80% of tickets are WISMO and returns should buy the ticket-resolution machine. A store where a third of inbound messages are "will this fit," "what's the difference between these two" and "does this work with my setup" is leaving money on the table with a tool that measures itself on deflection, no matter how good the deflection is.

About those resolution rates

Both vendors publish headline numbers. Treat all of them, ours included, as claims to test rather than facts.

Richpanel states 50% resolved with AI, guaranteed, and its site contrasts that with 10–20% for Gorgias in the real world. Elsewhere it has stated 70–80% at maturity. One independent analysis checked Richpanel's own named customers and found a range from 72% at Pela down to 40% at Bumpboxx, and explicitly recommended applying that same scepticism to every vendor in the category.

VivoChat reports up to 70% of repetitive conversations automated from day one. Note the qualifier: repetitive conversations, not all conversations. Those are different denominators, which is exactly the kind of detail worth pinning down with any vendor.

Your actual rate depends on two things neither vendor controls: how repetitive your conversation mix is, and how good your documentation is. A store with a tidy help centre and heavy WISMO volume will beat a store with a thin FAQ and complex technical products, on any platform.

How to decide

Do this before booking a demo with either company.

1. Export your last 300 conversations and sort them into five buckets: order status, pre-sale and product questions, returns and exchanges, subscription changes, and complex or escalated.

2. Look at the pre-sale bucket first. If it is large, prioritize a shopping assistant. Deflection tools do not improve conversion, and this bucket is revenue rather than cost.

3. Look at the self-service opportunity. If order status and returns dominate and you have real volume, a customer self-service portal is the single biggest lever available, and that is Richpanel's home ground.

4. Count your agents. Per-seat pricing is fine at two agents and a serious line item at eight. At five seats you are past $500 a month in Richpanel seats before any AI usage, and that cost recurs whether or not the AI performs.

5. Model your peak month. Take November volume, apply seat costs, per-conversation AI costs and any minimum, and compare against your current spend. Ask for the calculation in writing from any vendor, including us.

6. Check your channels. If WhatsApp and Instagram carry meaningful volume, confirm with any vendor whether those channels are included in the quote you were given.

7. Test before migrating. You do not need to move your whole operation to evaluate an alternative. Run one on a single channel in parallel.

What it costs to evaluate

This is the asymmetry, and it is worth stating plainly because it changes how you should run the comparison.

Evaluating Richpanel means seats, a monthly minimum and per-conversation AI fees while you find out whether your automation rate is 40% or 72%. Learning that number costs real money, and the number you learn then sets your ongoing bill. That pushes the decision into a procurement process, which is why vendors in this category sell through demos and annual contracts.

VivoChat is free. You can connect the store, load your existing documentation, run it against real traffic for two weeks and measure the automation rate, the first response time and the effect on average order value without a budget approval, a contract or a sales call. Whatever you conclude, you will be deciding on your own numbers rather than anyone's benchmark — and if the answer is that Richpanel's portal and agent workspace are what your operation needs, you will know that too.

FAQ

Is VivoChat a direct replacement for Richpanel?
‍For smaller and mid-sized Shopify stores where pre-sale questions matter and the team is lean, often yes. For a multi-agent support department that relies on a customer self-service portal, multi-brand routing and advanced analytics, Richpanel does things VivoChat does not. Sort your ticket mix before deciding.

Which is cheaper, Richpanel or VivoChat?
‍VivoChat is free, with no seat charge, no per-conversation fee and no monthly minimum. Richpanel publishes roughly $99 per seat per month plus about $0.20 per AI conversation with a $200 monthly minimum, so a five-agent team is past $500 a month in seats before the AI resolves anything. Cost is not the only consideration: if your operation genuinely needs a customer self-service portal and a full agent workspace, that is what you would be paying for. Verify Richpanel's current pricing page before deciding, since their model was revised during 2026.

Is VivoChat really free, or is it a limited free tier?
‍Free, without the usual limits. There is no cap on conversations, no charge per seat, no channel sold separately and no monthly minimum, so the thing you test is the thing you keep. The one honest caveat: specialised agents from the marketplace may be priced in future. The platform is free.

Does either tool handle product recommendations?
‍VivoChat's Shopping Assistant is built for it, working from your catalog and live shopping behaviour. Richpanel's focus is autonomous ticket resolution and self-service, so evaluate its recommendation capability directly if that matters to you.

How hard is it to migrate away later?
‍Worth asking about any platform before you commit. For Richpanel specifically, one analysis describes migration as primarily a workflow-rebuilding exercise, with automation rules, portal flows and widget configurations not transferring and a rate-limited API, and suggests budgeting one to three weeks.

What resolution rate should I expect?
‍Measure it rather than believe it. Published figures for Richpanel's own named customers range from 40% to 72%, and every vendor headline in this category, ours included, describes a best case with a specific denominator. Your documentation quality and ticket mix decide your number.

Try VivoChat alongside whatever you use now

If your inbox is a mix of "where is my order" and "which one should I get," the fastest way to see which shape of tool fits your store is to run one against your own traffic instead of comparing feature lists. VivoChat installs from the Shopify App Store in minutes with no code, trains on the FAQs, policies and past conversations you already have, answers repetitive volume across website chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and Telegram from a single knowledge base, recommends products to shoppers who are still deciding, and escalates the rest to your team with full context. It is free, so parallel testing costs you nothing and the data is yours. Get started for free, or see how the product works first.

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