Shopify Inbox AI vs an AI Chatbot Trained on Your Store

Shopify Inbox AI now comes in two parts: suggested replies, which are drafts a person reviews and sends, and an opt-in Inbox agent that answers customers automatically from your catalog, policies and store pages. Inbox is free, so for many small Shopify stores it's the right place to start. A separate AI chatbot earns its cost when you want answers drawn from material beyond your Shopify store, a strict "I don't know" when the answer isn't written down, and a list of every question it couldn't answer.

That's a different answer from the one many older guides give, so here's what changed and how the two compare.

What Shopify Inbox AI actually does

Shopify Inbox is Shopify's own chat app. Its App Store listing gives the price as "Free" and describes it as "An AI sales associate for your online store."

There are two separate AI features, and they behave very differently:

1. Suggested replies. Drafts that appear in the reply box for your staff. Nothing is sent until a person sends it.
2. The Inbox agent. An assistant that, once you switch it on, chats with customers by itself.

There's a third feature worth knowing about. Instant answers are question-and-answer pairs you write, shown as clickable questions in the chat window (up to 100 can be displayed). Shopify can suggest some from your store policies, in English only, but you check and publish them. When the Inbox agent is on, it provides the conversation starters instead.

Until recently, a lot of owners only knew about the first one. A Shopify Community thread from January 2025 has an owner asking for a chatbot that can "Provide accurate responses to customer inquiries without human intervention," and the replies are almost all third-party apps. If you read guides written around then, they'll tell you Inbox can't answer on its own. That's no longer true.

Suggested replies: drafts for a person to send

Older guides call these Shopify Magic suggested replies, and the help article's address still uses that name, though Shopify's AI features page now lists them simply as suggested replies for Inbox. Shopify's suggested replies article describes them as a composing aid. A draft appears when there's an unanswered message and enough store information to answer it, and Shopify is clear that someone should check it: "You need to read an automatically generated reply closely and edit it if necessary."

The limits, per the same article:

• "Automatically generated suggested replies are available only in English."
• Your online store and Shopify admin need to be in English.
• Your store needs 200,000 products or fewer.
• Suggested replies "don't drive the automatic responses" sent by the Inbox agent. They're a separate feature.

If you answer chats yourself and want to type less, this is useful and costs nothing. It doesn't help a customer at 11 p.m. while you're asleep.

The Inbox agent: Shopify's own answering bot

According to Shopify's Inbox overview, Inbox "includes an Inbox agent that you can turn on to chat with customers automatically." It answers questions about products, shipping, returns, sizing and store policies, using your catalog, policies, Knowledge Base content and published storefront pages. It's opt-in; until you switch it on, conversations stay with your staff.

From Shopify's article on assigning the Inbox agent:

• It's available only on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Shopify Plus plans.
• Your store must use new customer accounts. "The Inbox agent doesn't work with legacy customer accounts."
• It "replies in the language that the customer uses in the chat."
• For order information, "The customer is prompted to sign in before the Inbox agent shares order information."
• When a customer asks for a person, the conversation moves to your staff if they're available. If not, the agent shares your store's email address.

That last-but-one point matters. The Inbox agent can share order information with a signed-in customer. Our chatbot can't see orders at all. If "where's my order?" is most of your chat, that's a real point in Inbox's favor.

You can shape how it sounds, too. Shopify's training article describes practice scenarios and thumbs-up or thumbs-down ratings on real conversations, which feed suggested updates to the agent's persona. That training shapes voice and style; what it knows still comes from your products, policies and pages.

What an answering chatbot does differently

Our chatbot is the other kind of tool: a script you add to your theme (or the WordPress plugin, if that's where you are), trained on pages and feeds you give it. Here's where it differs from the Inbox agent, as far as Shopify's documentation lets us compare.

It reads what you point it at, not only your Shopify store. The Inbox agent uses your Shopify catalog, policies, Knowledge Base and storefront pages. Ours reads any public page you give it, on any site, plus notes you type in. If your sizing guide lives on a separate blog, or your wholesale terms are on another site, it can learn those too. On Growth, one account covers three sites.

It's built to refuse. When the answer isn't in what it was given, ours says it doesn't know. It doesn't fill the gap with what shops usually do. Shopify's own article says you're responsible for the accuracy of what the Inbox agent tells customers and should keep your store content up to date, which is good advice for any bot. Ours is designed to stay inside what you wrote and to say so when it can't. We explain how in stopping a chatbot making up policies.

It catches the lead in the chat. When ours can't help, it offers a short form for a name and email, then emails you the lead with the question attached. The Inbox agent hands over to your staff, or gives the customer your store email if nobody's available. Both are reasonable; ours keeps the customer in the chat instead of sending them to their email app.

It shows you what it couldn't answer. Every unanswered question goes on a list in the dashboard. Each one is a page you haven't written. Shopify's articles describe rating conversations, not a list of gaps, so if Inbox has one, we haven't found it documented.

It costs money, and Inbox doesn't. After a three-day free trial, ours is $49 a month for 1,000 replies on Starter, $149 for 5,000 on Growth. There's no fee to remove our branding. Inbox is free. That difference should weigh on your decision.

Product questions from your catalogue

This is where a Shopify-native tool has a head start. Inbox's listing says it "Connects to your catalog, inventory, and policies automatically." There's nothing to set up.

Ours needs to be told. Shopify's sitemap at yourstore.com/sitemap.xml includes "links to all your products", so pasting it once teaches the bot every product page. For live price and stock, add a product feed in the Google Merchant Center format; the product questions page shows what it can answer from one. Re-import the feed when prices or stock change. It doesn't sync on its own.

On Growth and above, ours can also suggest one related product after it has answered, only from your feed, and never on a complaint. Shopify says the Inbox agent can personalize product recommendations too. For a store that sells mainly through Shopify, neither has a clear edge here; it comes down to which one answers your customers' questions better on your products, which only a test shows.

When Inbox is enough

Be honest with yourself about these, because for a lot of stores the free tool is the right one.

Inbox is enough if:

• You answer most chats yourself and mainly want to type less. Suggested replies do that.
• Your customers mostly ask about orders. The Inbox agent can share order information with signed-in customers; ours can't.
• Everything a customer needs is already on your Shopify store, and you're on new customer accounts.
• Your budget for this is zero.

A separate chatbot is worth a look if:

• You've switched on the Inbox agent and it's answering things you'd rather it didn't, or you want answers strictly limited to your own pages.
• Your answers live partly outside Shopify: a blog on another platform, a price list you'd paste in as text, a second store.
• You want every unanswered question in one list so you can fix your pages.
• You want leads captured in the chat when nobody's around.

If you're comparing third-party apps too, the usual name that comes up is Tidio. As of October 2026, Tidio listed its Lyro AI Agent from $32.50 a month for 50 AI conversations, and its Growth plan from $49 a month for 250 billable conversations. Our Tidio comparison goes through the differences, including where Tidio is the better pick (it's a full live-chat helpdesk, which we aren't).

Using both

You can, with one rule: don't show two chat bubbles. Two buttons in the same corner overlap, and customers don't know which one to use.

A sensible way to run both:

1. Keep Shopify Inbox installed for staff conversations and suggested replies.
2. Turn off the Inbox chat button on your storefront. Shopify puts the chat button's appearance and placement settings in the theme editor, so that's where to look.
3. Add our script to your theme following our Shopify install steps, so ours is the one bubble customers see.
4. Point ours at your order lookup page, so "where's my order?" gets a link instead of a guess.

Or run them one after the other: switch on the Inbox agent for a week, then try ours for the three-day trial, and compare the answers to the same twenty real questions. Whichever gives fewer answers you'd have to correct is the one to keep. For a broader look at what a chatbot does for a store, see our ecommerce chatbot page, and if cost is the sticking point, what an AI chatbot costs a small business breaks it down.

What doesn't work

• Ours can't see orders, so it won't answer "has my parcel shipped?". The Inbox agent can, for signed-in customers.
• Ours stays off the checkout page, as our install page explains. A chat bubble over a payment form isn't something you want anyway.
• Neither knows what you haven't written. Shopify says the agent draws on your store content; ours draws on what you give it. A missing returns page is missing for both.

Frequently asked questions

Does Shopify have a free AI chatbot?

Yes. Shopify Inbox is listed as free on the Shopify App Store, and it includes an opt-in Inbox agent that answers customers automatically from your catalog, policies and store pages. Shopify's help center says the agent needs the Basic, Grow, Advanced or Shopify Plus plan and new customer accounts.

Can Shopify Inbox answer customers automatically?

Yes, if you turn on the Inbox agent. Suggested replies are different: they're drafts in the reply box that a person reviews and sends, and Shopify says they're available only in English. The Inbox agent replies in the customer's language and can hand the chat to your staff.

What's the best chatbot for a small Shopify store?

Start with Shopify Inbox, because it's free and already knows your catalog. If it answers things you'd rather it didn't, if your answers live partly outside Shopify, or if you want a list of every question it couldn't answer, try a dedicated chatbot alongside it on a free trial. Test both on the same real customer questions before you pay for anything.

What are Shopify Magic suggested replies?

It's the name older guides use for Shopify Inbox's suggested replies: AI drafts that appear in the reply box when a customer is waiting. A person reads, edits and sends them. They're available only in English, and Shopify says they don't drive the Inbox agent's automatic answers.