Top 6 contenders for the best chatbot for e-commerce in 2025

If you run an online store, you know the drill. Your customers expect instant, helpful support around the clock. At the same time, every abandoned cart feels like a lost sale, and the costs of hiring more support staff can quickly add up. If you’re feeling spread thin, you’re definitely not alone.

The good news is that AI chatbots are here to help. They’ve moved way beyond simple Q&A bots. Today’s chatbots are smart assistants that can scale up your support, give every shopper a personalized experience, and help you turn more visitors into customers.

This guide will walk you through the top 6 AI chatbots for e-commerce in 2025. We’ll help you find the right fit for your business, whether you’re using Shopify, BigCommerce, or another platform, so you can start turning more chats into sales.

What defines the best chatbot for e-commerce?

Let’s get one thing straight: a modern e-commerce chatbot isn’t the clunky, frustrating bot you might be picturing. The best ones today are smart, AI-powered assistants that plug right into your business’s tools. They feel less like a robot and more like your most efficient team member.

At their core, these tools use AI to understand what your customers are asking, even if they use slang or make a typo. But the real magic happens when they connect with your other apps. This allows them to do more than just talk; they can actually take action in real-time, like checking an order status, looking up product availability, or even starting a return.

This is a huge leap from older, rule-based bots that just followed a strict script. Those bots could only handle specific, pre-programmed questions. Any curveball question would get you the classic "Sorry, I don’t understand." A modern AI chatbot, on the other hand, learns, adapts, and actually solves problems.

Key benefits and use cases for the best chatbot for e-commerce

So, why should you get an AI chatbot for your store? It really comes down to a few key benefits that directly affect your bottom line.

• Increase sales and conversions: A good chatbot is like a personal shopper for every visitor. It can recommend products based on what someone’s been browsing, suggest complementary items at checkout, and help rescue abandoned carts by popping up with a timely discount or a bit of help. It’s like having a helpful sales associate on every single page.

• Lower support costs: AI chatbots are your first line of defense, ready 24/7 to handle the wave of common questions about shipping, returns, and product details. This frees up your human agents to focus on the tricky, high-value issues where their skills matter most. A Juniper Research study found that chatbots in retail, banking, and healthcare could save businesses over $11 billion annually by 2023, showing just how much of a difference they can make.

• Improve the customer experience: In e-commerce, speed is everything. Customers want instant answers, and a chatbot gives them just that. Whether someone is tracking an order at 2 AM or has a quick question before buying, that immediate support builds trust and loyalty, making for a smooth experience from start to finish.

Our criteria for choosing the best chatbot for e-commerce

To cut through the marketing noise, we looked at dozens of tools based on what actually matters for an online store. Here’s what we focused on:

• AI & learning abilities: Does the bot learn from your actual business data? We looked for tools that can be trained on things like your help center articles, past customer tickets, and product catalogs, not just a simple FAQ page.

• E-commerce integrations: A chatbot is only as useful as the tools it connects to. We searched for smooth integrations with popular e-commerce platforms like Shopify and help desks such as Gorgias or Zendesk.

• Actions & automation: Can the bot just talk, or can it actually do things? The best chatbots can perform actions, like looking up live order information, tagging a support ticket for a human to review, or starting the return process.

• Ease of use & control: You shouldn’t need a programming background to manage your chatbot. We preferred platforms with a simple setup that lets you customize the bot’s tone, behavior, and when it should hand off to a human.

Comparing the top platforms to find the best chatbot for e-commerce

Here’s a quick side-by-side look at how our top picks compare.

Feature	eesel AI	Tidio	ManyChat	Botpress	ChatBot	Drift (Salesloft)
Best For	All-in-one CX Automation	Live Chat & Ticketing	Social Media Marketing	Custom Developer Projects	No-Code Rule-Based Flows	B2B Lead Generation
Trains on Past Tickets	✅ Yes	❌ No	❌ No	❌ No	❌ No	❌ No
Shopify Catalog Integration	✅ Yes (Live Actions)	✅ Yes (Native Plugin)	✅ Yes	✅ Yes (Custom)	✅ Yes (Native)	❌ No
Works with Existing Help Desk	✅ Yes (Zendesk, etc.)	❌ No (Is its own help desk)	❌ No	✅ Yes	❌ No	✅ Yes
Starting Price	$239/mo (annual)	$29/mo (per seat)	$15/mo	$495/mo	$52/mo	Custom

The 6 best chatbot for e-commerce platforms in 2025

Now, let’s get into the details of each platform.

1. eesel AI

eesel AI is different because it’s designed to be a smart AI layer that works with your existing tools, not replace them. It connects to all your company knowledge from past tickets in Zendesk and help articles to internal docs in Google Docs and product data in Shopify. This allows it to give incredibly accurate and relevant answers.

Its biggest selling point is its ability to learn from your past customer conversations and perform "AI Actions." These are real-time lookups that let the bot check an order status, see if a product is in stock, or even tag a ticket without any human help. This turns it from a simple chatbot into a true AI Agent. Plus, its simulation feature lets you test its performance on thousands of your past tickets before going live, giving you a clear idea of its value from day one.

Pros:

• Learns from your entire knowledge base, including messy data from past tickets, for super accurate answers.

• Works with your current help desk, so you don’t have to leave tools you already use, like Zendesk or Intercom.

• Performs "AI Actions" to check live order status, inventory, and more, giving customers instant solutions.

Cons:

• Pricing is based on how much you use it, so high-volume stores might need to keep an eye on usage.

• The most powerful features, like training on past tickets, are on the Business plan and up.

Pricing:

eesel AI’s pricing starts at $239/month (with annual billing) for the Team plan, which covers up to 1,000 AI interactions.

2. Tidio

Tidio is a well-known all-in-one customer service platform that includes live chat, an AI chatbot called Lyro, and its own help desk. It’s liked for its clean design and easy setup, which makes it a popular choice for small businesses and new Shopify stores.

It’s a great starting point if you need a single tool to manage all your customer conversations. But that all-in-one approach has a flip side. If you already use a help desk like Zendesk or Freshdesk, Tidio makes you switch. That’s a big ask for established teams. Unlike a tool like eesel AI that plugs into your current setup, Tidio requires a complete migration. Its AI also learns mostly from FAQs and documents, not from the valuable context hidden in your past support tickets, which limits how well it can solve problems.

Pricing:

Tidio has a limited free plan. Paid plans with the Lyro AI start at $29/month per seat.

3. ManyChat

ManyChat is a leader in chat marketing. It’s built to automate conversations on social media platforms like Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The whole point of the tool is to drive sales through interactive flows, targeted promotions, and automated ad campaigns.

If your store gets a lot of action on social media, ManyChat is a great way to engage customers where they hang out. It’s especially good for recovering abandoned carts with automated DMs and running marketing campaigns. The trade-off is that its customer support features are fairly limited. It runs on rule-based flows and can’t learn from unstructured data like internal notes or past support tickets. This means it often gets stuck on unique or complex support questions and has to pass them to a human, making it more of a marketing tool than a complete support solution.

Pricing:

ManyChat has a free plan to help you get started. The Pro plan starts at $15/month.

4. Botpress

Botpress is a very powerful and flexible AI chatbot platform made for developers and teams with technical skills. It gives you a visual, drag-and-drop workflow builder and is known for being highly customizable, letting you connect to just about any system you can think of.

For businesses that want to build a completely custom e-commerce experience from scratch, Botpress offers a ton of flexibility. You can design complicated workflows for anything from personalized shopping guides to detailed support processes. However, all that power comes with a steep learning curve. Building and maintaining a Botpress chatbot requires real technical know-how, which puts it out of reach for most non-technical teams. The setup is much more complicated than prompt-based platforms like eesel AI, which are built to get you up and running quickly.

Pricing:

Botpress offers a free plan for individual developers. Team plans start at $495/month.

5. ChatBot

ChatBot, from the makers of LiveChat, offers a friendly visual builder for creating chatbots without writing code. It comes with a bunch of e-commerce templates to help with common tasks like recommending products, generating leads, and answering FAQs.

It’s a solid, dependable tool that works well with its sister product, LiveChat, and other platforms like Shopify. It’s a good choice for businesses that want a straightforward, easy-to-manage bot. The catch is that it’s mostly a rule-based system with a bit of AI sprinkled on top. It doesn’t have the deep learning abilities of platforms that train on real data like past support conversations. This means its answers can feel a bit generic and it tends to hand off to a human agent sooner when faced with unusual questions.

Pricing:

ChatBot plans start at $52/month when billed annually.

6. Drift (now part of Salesloft)

Drift is a big name in the "conversational marketing" space and is a beast for B2B sales. Its main job is to engage website visitors in real-time, identify high-potential leads, and automatically book meetings for sales teams.

While it’s mostly a B2B tool, its ideas about proactive engagement can be useful for any business. It’s great at starting valuable conversations. However, it wasn’t built for the typical B2C e-commerce store. It doesn’t have deep integrations with platforms like Shopify for key tasks like order tracking or looking up products. On top of that, its price tag is aimed at large B2B companies, putting it out of reach for most online stores.

Pricing:

Drift only offers custom pricing and is typically sold to enterprise clients.

How to choose the best chatbot for e-commerce for your business

Feeling a bit lost in all the options? Here are a few practical tips to help you decide.

• Tip 1: Start with your existing tools. The last thing you want is a painful migration. The best chatbot for your store should work with your current help desk and knowledge bases, not force you to ditch them. This is a key advantage of a tool like eesel AI, which plugs into the software you already use.

• Tip 2: Make sure it learns from real data. A bot that only learns from a static FAQ page will get stuck pretty fast. Your history of customer conversations is a goldmine of data. Look for a tool that can train on past tickets to understand how your customers actually talk and what they need.

• Tip 3: Test before you commit. Don’t just take a company’s word for it. Look for a platform that offers a simulation mode. For example, eesel AI’s simulation feature shows you exactly how the AI would have handled thousands of your past tickets, giving you a clear, data-driven look at its performance before you spend a penny.

• Tip 4: Check that it can take action. A great chatbot doesn’t just give answers; it provides solutions. Make sure it can connect to your store’s backend to do things like check an order’s shipping status in real-time or process a refund request directly.

Best chatbot for e-commerce: Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Here are answers to some of the most common questions about e-commerce chatbots.

Can the best chatbot for e-commerce fully replace my human support team?

No, and that really shouldn’t be the goal. The role of a good chatbot is to help your team, not replace it. It’s there to handle the 80% of repetitive, simple questions, which frees up your human support team to focus on the complex, high-value conversations that require a human touch.

How much does the best chatbot for e-commerce cost?

Costs vary a lot, from free plans with basic features to enterprise setups costing thousands per month. It’s usually best to look for clear, usage-based pricing. For example, eesel AI’s plans scale based on the number of AI interactions, so you only pay for the value you get.

How do I make sure the best chatbot for e-commerce sounds like my brand?

The best platforms give you full control over the bot’s personality. With eesel AI, you can use simple, plain-language prompts to guide its tone, like "Respond in a friendly but professional voice" or "Never make promises about future products." You can even give it examples of your best agents’ past replies to help it learn your brand’s style.

What integrations are most important for the best chatbot for e-commerce?

At a minimum, you need a smooth connection to your e-commerce platform (like Shopify) and your help desk (like Zendesk or Gorgias). Beyond that, connecting to your [knowledge sources](https://www.amio.io/blog/the-best-ai-chatbot-for-ecommerce-2025-list#how-to-choose-the-best- chatbot-for-your-online-store), like a Confluence wiki or internal Notion pages, is key for giving accurate, complete answers.

How long does it take to set up the best chatbot for e-commerce?

This can range from a few minutes to several months. Complex, custom-coded bots can take a long time to build. On the other hand, modern platforms like eesel AI are designed for a quick start you can connect your data, customize the prompts, and have a working bot ready to test in under an hour.

The future is integrated: why the best chatbot for e-commerce needs to be a team player

When it comes down to it, the best chatbot for e-commerce isn’t just a widget you stick on your website. It’s a smart, deeply connected platform that becomes part of your team. It should work smoothly with your existing tools, learn from your specific business data, and take action to solve customer problems on the spot.

This integrated approach is what leads to lower support costs, higher conversion rates, and genuinely happier customers. It’s about working smarter, not just harder.

Ready to see how a truly integrated AI can transform your customer support? Start your free trial with eesel AI or book a demo to see it in action with your own data.