Free AI Chatbot for Shopify: The Honest Maths of a 500-Message Cap
You can put an AI chatbot on a Shopify store for nothing. The real question is how many days of your traffic that free plan survives. Here is the arithmetic, using our own free tier as the example.
The short version
- 500 messages a month fits a store up to roughly 250 orders.
- Free is a test, not a finished setup. It answers one question: does chat sell anything here?
The disclosure first
EzyConn is our product. We use our own free plan as the example because it is the one whose limits we can state exactly.
This post is only about the free tier. If you want the paid story, the AI chatbot for Shopify page and the Shopify integration page cover that ground already, and we are not going to repeat them.
What $0 actually covers
| What you get | On the free plan |
|---|---|
| Price | $0 forever, no credit card |
| Seats | 2 |
| Messages | 500 a month, reset each month |
| Chatbots | 1 |
| Vendor branding on the widget | EzyConn badge, removable on Professional |
| Mobile app and notifications | Included |
| AI models | GPT-4o and Claude |
| Training | Crawls your own site |
One detail matters more than the headline number. The free plan counts messages, so 500 a month is a budget you spend across your busiest pages. Short, accurate answers stretch it furthest, and a typical chat runs to roughly eight messages, so the table below reads chats against that budget.
The maths on a store that actually sells things
Chat volume follows traffic, not orders. So work backwards from orders to sessions, then forwards to chats. A store converting at 2% needs around 50 sessions per sale. Between a quarter and one percent of sessions will open a chat window, depending on how visible you make it. Take the middle of that range and the picture gets clear fast.
| Orders a month | Sessions at 2% | Chats at 0.5% | Do 500 messages last? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 | 2,500 | ~13 | Yes, easily |
| 100 | 5,000 | ~25 | Yes |
| 250 | 12,500 | ~63 | Yes, but watch it |
Those rates are a planning estimate, not a measurement of your store, so replace them with your own after the first month. Three things move chat volume more than traffic does. An auto-opening greeting can triple the count. Showing the widget only on product and checkout pages cuts it. And better answers stop the same frustrated shopper coming back.
Treat the free month as an experiment
Five hundred messages is a sample size, not a support strategy. What it is good for is settling an argument you cannot settle any other way: does chat sell anything on this store? Three numbers answer that. What share of chats started on a product page. How many chatters ordered in the same session. And which single question repeated most, because that one belongs on the product page rather than in a chat window.
Automate the catalogue, escalate the money
The AI is trained by crawling your site, so it is strong wherever your site already has the answer.
| Let the AI answer | Send to a person |
|---|---|
| Sizing and fit | Refunds and partial refunds |
| Stock and restock dates | Discount codes and price matching |
| Delivery times and shipping cost | Failed payments and chargebacks |
| Returns window and exchange policy | Replacements for damaged goods |
| Care and washing instructions | Address changes after dispatch |
| Materials, ingredients, compatibility | Wholesale and bulk pricing |
The rule of thumb is one line long. If answering it moves money, a person answers. A wrong sizing answer costs you a return. A wrong refund answer costs you the refund and the argument about whether you promised it.
Moving up from the free plan
- WhatsApp, Slack and Microsoft Teams work on the free plan too. A store that wants shoppers asking about orders over WhatsApp can add it today, within the free plan's 2 integrations.
- Workflows, outbound campaigns and phone answering start at Starter, $25 a month. Starter also lifts the cap to 5,000 messages a month with 3 agent seats and 5 integrations.
- AI Insights and AI Email start at Professional, $95 a month. Professional covers 25,000 messages a month, 10 agent seats and 10 chatbots.
- One chatbot. A second storefront or a second brand needs its own chatbot, which a paid plan provides.
The paid plans are Starter at $25 a month and Professional at $95 a month, with 20% off on annual billing. Message caps climb with them: 5,000 on Starter and 25,000 on Professional. Enterprise is available for larger teams. Full detail sits on the pricing page.
How this compares with other free tiers
Free plans in this category differ more than the marketing suggests. Crisp has a free tier, but it includes no AI, so you cannot test the automated part at all. Removing the Crisp watermark starts on its Plus plan at $295 a month.
Tidio gives you 50 Lyro conversations on the free plan, described as a one-off allowance rather than a monthly reset. Removing Tidio branding costs roughly $16.67 a month, and Lyro AI starts around $32.50 a month for 50 conversations. Intercom has no free plan at all: it is $39 per seat per month, with Fin billed at $0.99 per resolution on top.
We rank the wider field on our best free AI chatbot comparison.
Installing it without an app
The widget is one script tag. You paste it into your theme layout just before the closing body tag, save, and it loads on every page. No app install, no extra permissions on your store data, and nothing that breaks when you switch themes beyond pasting the tag again.
Then point the crawler at your store so the AI learns your products, shipping page and returns policy. Give it your best three policy pages before your catalogue, because policy questions are the ones shoppers ask at 11pm.
When to stop being free
Four signals, any one of which is enough. You hit the cap before day 25 two months running. A third person needs to answer chats. Customers start messaging you on WhatsApp. Or you launch a second store and find that one domain means one domain. None of these are failures. They are the outcome you were testing for.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a genuinely free AI chatbot for Shopify, or is it always a trial?
Free forever plans do exist. EzyConn's free plan is $0 with no credit card: 2 seats, 500 messages a month, 1 chatbot and the mobile app. It is a plan, not a countdown.
How many chat conversations does a Shopify store actually get in a month?
It depends on traffic, not orders, so work backwards. A store converting at 2 percent needs about 50 sessions per order, so 500 orders means roughly 25,000 sessions. If half a percent of those open chat, that is about 125 conversations. Those rates are a planning estimate, but the shape holds: a store past a few hundred orders a month will use up the free 500 messages.
Do I need a Shopify app to add a free AI chatbot?
No. A chat widget is a single script tag, so you paste it into your theme layout just before the closing body tag and it loads everywhere. No app install, no extra store permissions. EzyConn works this way, which is why the same free plan runs on Shopify, WordPress or a plain HTML page.
Which Shopify questions should the AI never answer on its own?
Anything that moves money. Refunds, discount codes, price matching, failed payments, chargebacks, replacements for damaged goods and address changes after dispatch should all route to a person. The AI is strong where your site already has the answer: sizing, stock, delivery times, returns window.
Run the test on your own store
2 seats, 500 messages a month, no credit card. One script tag in your theme, and a month later you will know whether chat sells.
Start freePublished . Traffic and chat-rate figures in the tables are planning estimates, not measured data. Competitor pricing was checked in July 2026. View more guides.