ConvertWay review 2026: WhatsApp and SMS marketing for Shopify, real costs and verdict

What is ConvertWay?

ConvertWay is a WhatsApp, SMS, RCS and email marketing app for ecommerce stores, built by Shipway, a shipping software company in Gurgaon, India. It first went live on the Shopify App Store on January 17, 2017, under the name The ConvertWay (the help center still calls it TCW). Shipway is now part of Unicommerce, which completed its acquisition of Shipway on December 17, 2024, per Unicommerce's Q4 FY25 press release. That release puts ConvertWay at an annual run-rate of 92 million+ notifications, and the product now carries the "Convertway by Unicommerce" name.

The homepage pitch is clear about the job: an "AI-Powered Marketing Platform for E-commerce Revenue" that recovers abandoned carts, confirms cash-on-delivery orders and turns "high-intent shoppers into revenue." Support shows up as one use case among several, which is the right frame for the rest of this review.

The pricing page says ConvertWay is used by "3,000+ Shopify stores". The three newest Shopify reviews, from October and September 2026, all come from Indian brands, and the help center covers India-specific rules such as DLT sender ID registration and TRAI sending windows. A store outside India can use it, but most of the product's detail is written for the Indian market.

How ConvertWay works

ConvertWay sits between your Shopify store and your customers' phones. It reads Shopify events (a checkout started, an order placed, an order shipped) and sends a message on the channel you pick, then tracks whether that message led to a sale. You build three kinds of things in it: automated flows, one-off campaigns, and chatbots.

Automated flows

Flows are the core of the product. The flows help section covers abandoned cart recovery on WhatsApp and SMS, COD verification, win-back messages after a set time since the last order, welcome series for new subscribers, feedback and upsell, and browse abandonment. The G2 listing promises 15+ automation flows, and custom flows with your own triggers are "available starting from the Growth plan," per the custom flow guide.

COD confirmation is the flow that explains who ConvertWay is for. In markets where many shoppers pay cash on delivery, a share of orders gets refused at the door and shipped back, which Indian sellers call RTO (return to origin). ConvertWay's COD confirmation flow asks the customer to confirm on SMS or WhatsApp and tags the Shopify order with the answer. The homepage claims a 28% reduction in RTOs, a vendor figure with no method shown.

Campaigns and segments

Campaigns are one-off broadcasts: a flash sale, early access, a holiday offer. Starter sends to Shopify customer segments and uploaded lists, Growth adds "advanced RFM segmentation" (grouping customers by how recently, how often and how much they buy), and both plans include DND hours and fallback templates. ConvertWay's WhatsApp page mentions SMS fallback for failed WhatsApp messages, carousel templates, an AI template generator, and "WhatsApp Retry" to lift reach by up to 20%.

WhatsApp's own rules apply on top. You need the official WhatsApp Business API, templates need Meta's approval (ConvertWay says custom templates are "usually approved within 30 minutes"), and a free-form reply only goes out inside the 24-hour window after a customer writes in. My explainer on Meta's policy changes and the 2026 WhatsApp updates cover what you can and can't send.

Chatbots, the inbox and AI

Every plan gets a unified inbox for WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and email, and a no-code chatbot builder where you drag in blocks like Send Message, Conditions, Ask Question and a Shopify lookup. These are flow bots: they follow the buttons and rules you set. ConvertWay says the builder takes about 5 minutes and can cut "support time by up to 60%."

The AI chatbots that "solve queries, suggest products and convert" on the website, WhatsApp and Instagram are a separate thing, and on the Shopify listing they appear only in the $399 Enterprise plan. I found no help center article on how they are trained or what they learn from. If you want an AI that writes its own answers, that is the first question I would put to ConvertWay's team, along with how it hands a chat to a person. My guide to testing an AI agent has the questions I would bring.

Catalyst, the AI voice agent

The newest piece, pushed hardest on the homepage, is Catalyst, an AI voice agent that calls shoppers. Per the voice agent page, it rings abandoned checkouts, confirms COD orders and runs voice broadcast campaigns, speaks English and Hindi with language switching, is "built on your product catalog," and runs Monday to Sunday, 9am to 7pm.

The page shows a 14.88% conversion uplift and 1.22k recovered checkouts from what looks like one account, with no store, date range or method named. Catalyst isn't on any Shopify plan card, so its price comes from a demo call. For a wider look at the category, see my roundup of AI voice agents.

What ConvertWay does well

ConvertWay is good at the thing it was built for: getting a message in front of a shopper at the moment it can still change the outcome.

Cart recovery and COD flows that pay for themselves

The case studies are the clearest evidence. Getmymettle, an Indian sports nutrition brand using ConvertWay for 3 years, reports Rs 472K+ recovered in 30 days and a 62x return from its abandoned cart flow, plus 211x from browse abandonment, per ConvertWay's Getmymettle case study. Those are vendor-published numbers, but they match what reviewers on G2 describe, including one consumer goods brand:

"Thanks to Convertway, we're recovering ₹6 lakhs in abandoned carts every month, significantly boosting our revenue."

Verified user in consumer goods, G2

For a store with real cart drop-off and a COD-heavy customer base, this is a fair trade: a $49 to $99 plan plus a few cents a message against orders that would otherwise be lost. Order updates also head off "where is my order?" chats before they start, which my guide to WISMO automation covers in more depth.

Many channels on the cheapest plan

Starter already includes WhatsApp and SMS marketing, a WhatsApp catalog synced from Shopify, Shopify segments, flow chatbots and the unified inbox for WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and email. Growth adds RCS, email marketing and Instagram comment automation. For a small team, one app that covers the post-purchase messages on every channel saves a lot of switching, and SMS fallback means a message that fails on WhatsApp can still arrive. My guide to AI SMS support covers how that channel fits in.

A team that does the setup with you

On G2 and in the newest Shopify reviews, the support team is the most praised part. The plan cards back it up: Growth includes "dedicated onboarding support," and Enterprise a "dedicated account manager" plus help with WhatsApp migration. A G2 reviewer on a small plan wrote that the team "help me with all the setup even though I had the basic plan." For a brand moving onto the WhatsApp Business API for the first time, which means verifying a Meta Business account and getting templates approved, that hand-holding is worth a lot.

Where ConvertWay falls short

None of these rule ConvertWay out. They are the things I would check before signing.

The message bill is hidden until you sign up

Every plan card says the same thing: "Additional charges will apply as per the notifications sent." ConvertWay doesn't publish those rates. Its WhatsApp number guide says country-wise pricing for transactional and broadcast messages lives in "APP >> Billing section >> Pricing", and the older price list linked from the WhatsApp FAQ no longer loads. So you can only see what a message costs after you install.

What you can check is the floor. Since July 1, 2025, Meta has charged WhatsApp per delivered message, by country and category, per Meta's pricing docs. On Meta's rate card effective October 1, 2026, a marketing message to an Indian number costs $0.0118 and a utility message $0.0014; to North America, $0.025 and $0.0034. Since October 1, 2026, Meta also charges support replies after 1,000 free a month per number.

That 8x gap is why template category matters. A COD confirmation or shipping update should go out as a utility template; a cart reminder with a discount is marketing. One G2 reviewer who used ConvertWay for a year and a half found out the expensive way:

"A bug secretly switched my approved "Utility" COD confirmation flow to some random "Marketing" template. I've been overcharged on who-knows-how-many messages, and I only found out by accident."

Manan U., Owner, G2

That is one reviewer's account, and I can't verify it from outside. The lesson holds for any WhatsApp tool, though: check the category on your busiest flows every month, and ask the vendor how far back the billing logs go. My breakdown of WhatsApp API pricing goes through the categories in detail.

Three different price lists

Depending on where you look, ConvertWay's plans have three different prices. The Shopify listing, where you are actually billed, shows Starter $49, Growth $99 and Enterprise $399. ConvertWay's own pricing page still shows Growth at $149 and Enterprise at $249, under a banner about price changes on April 1, 2025. G2 shows "starting at $36." I used the Shopify numbers throughout, since that is the bill you approve.

Price changes come up in reviews too. One G2 reviewer asked for "a fixed plan rather than changing it to frequently," and another, writing in 2024, said the WhatsApp conversation pricing changed partway through a subscription month. I would screenshot the plan card the day you sign up.

AI support sits at the top of the ladder

The app is called "WhatsApp, SMS & AI Chatbot," and the AI chatbot is in the $399 plan. Starter and Growth get flow-based bots, which are fine for a menu of order tracking, returns and FAQs, but they only answer what you have drawn into the flow.

That is a big jump for a store whose main reason to buy is AI answers. It also leaves open questions the public docs don't answer: what the AI chatbot learns from, whether it reads past chats, and how it passes a chat to a person. If those matter to you, my comparison of no-code bot builders and the WhatsApp chatbot roundup show what other tools publish on each.

Docs and the inbox lag the product

The help center covers the flows well, but several core articles are from 2022: the WhatsApp FAQ was last updated in May 2022, the SMS FAQ in June 2022 (it still says MMS "should be live soon"), and the WhatsApp setup guide in June 2022, when Meta form checks took "10-12 days." I found no help article for the AI chatbots, Catalyst or RCS. The 2024 G2 reviews flag the live chat side too:

"Firstly, they don't have an application. Any new notifications from customers will be waiting for you to refresh from the browser, causing delays in customer support."

Mohamad K., G2

Another G2 reviewer who rated it 4 out of 5 said some messages "don't reach certain numbers," so COD confirmation sometimes "has to be done manually." Both reviews are from 2024 and the product has moved since, but neither the listing nor the docs describe a mobile app for the inbox. If your team answers chats on the go, ask for a demo of the inbox before you commit. My comparison of shared inboxes vs ticketing covers when an inbox stops being enough.

ConvertWay pricing

ConvertWay has three plans on Shopify, billed in USD through Shopify every 30 days, with recurring and usage charges on the same bill. Paying yearly saves 20% on Starter, 10% on Growth and 8% on Enterprise.

Plan details are from the Shopify listing on October 21, 2026. One oddity: the Enterprise card lists "Everything in Starter, plus" rather than everything in Growth, so RFM segmentation isn't named there. I would expect it to be included, but ask. The AI voice agent isn't on any card.

Since the message rates sit in the app, the honest estimate is the plan fee plus Meta's per-message floor. Here is a quick way to see it.

Pick a plan and your monthly message volume to see the floor of a ConvertWay bill, and what a miscategorized utility flow would add.

A worked example: a Growth store sending 10,000 marketing messages and 5,000 utility messages a month to Indian numbers pays $99 plus at least $125 to Meta, about $224, before ConvertWay's own message margin, SMS or any voice calls. If those 5,000 COD confirmations went out as marketing instead, Meta's share alone rises by about $52 a month. For the wider view of what automated messaging costs, see my guide to chatbot cost.

ConvertWay pros and cons

Who ConvertWay fits, and who it doesn't

ConvertWay fits a Shopify D2C brand in India (or selling into India) whose biggest leaks are abandoned carts and COD orders that come back. For that store, the flows, the SMS fallback, the DLT handling and a team that sets it all up are worth the plan fee, and Growth at $99 is the plan I would start on, since custom flows and RFM segments are where the value is.

It fits less well in three cases:

• You mostly need support answers. ConvertWay sends messages; it doesn't run a support queue. The replies that come back from your campaigns still need someone, or something, to answer them.
• You want AI answers on a small budget. The AI chatbots start at $399 a month, before message charges.
• You sell mainly outside India. It works, but the docs, case studies and voice agent languages are built around Indian brands.

ConvertWay or eesel: which one fits?

eesel doesn't plug into ConvertWay, and it doesn't do what ConvertWay does: no broadcasts, no cart reminders, no COD flows. They cover different ends of the same order. ConvertWay sends the messages a store starts. eesel is an AI helpdesk teammate that answers the ones customers start, on WhatsApp, email and chat, inside helpdesks like Gorgias or Zendesk, and it checks the order in Shopify before it answers.

What it learns from is the part that differs most. eesel reads your help center, website, products and past tickets, so the answers your team already wrote are the starting point. Rúngne, a Norwegian climbing apparel brand on Gorgias and Shopify, runs three eesel agents: one tags every ticket, one leaves a draft with the order, tracking and per-warehouse stock already checked, and one answers plain questions on its own. In a month that was about 2,100 tickets, with around one in seven answered by eesel on its own. Question Beauty's agent replies in the language the customer wrote in and hands refunds and complaints to a person with a note.

Pricing works differently too. eesel is one fixed monthly plan: free to try with 100 credits, then from $299 a month for 500 credits, where a ticket or chat is 1 credit however long it runs, with no separate message margin and no per-seat fee. That's more than ConvertWay's Starter plan, and if your job is recovering carts, ConvertWay is the better buy. If WhatsApp is turning into a support channel and your team is drowning in "where is my order?" replies, the AI helpdesk teammate is the one I would test against last month's real questions.

ConvertWay alternatives

The right shortlist depends on why ConvertWay isn't the fit:

• Zoko if you want a WhatsApp-first Shopify platform with selling inside the chat and published per-conversation rates. Plans run $49.99 to $499.99 a month, and its AI agents use your own OpenAI account, as my Zoko pricing breakdown explains.
• respond.io if you need one inbox across many messaging channels for a larger team; see my respond.io pricing and respond.io alternatives posts.
• Klaviyo if email is your main channel and SMS is the add-on, especially now that it has its own AI features, covered in my Klaviyo AI post.
• Shopify Inbox if you only need free live chat on your store; my Shopify Inbox guide covers its limits.
• A helpdesk plus an AI teammate if the job is support, not campaigns. My Gorgias review and the Gorgias WhatsApp setup guide are the place to start, and my list of the best AI helpdesks for Shopify compares the AI side.

For more options in this space, browse my Shopify chatbot apps list and the guide to automating WhatsApp support.

My verdict on ConvertWay

3.5 out of 5. ConvertWay does the revenue jobs well: cart recovery, COD confirmation, win-backs and campaigns across WhatsApp, SMS and more, with a team that sets it up for you. For an Indian Shopify brand losing orders at checkout and at the door, it is a sensible pick, and the Growth plan is where I would start.

It loses points on everything around the plan fee. The per-message rates live inside the app, the public price lists disagree with each other, template categories can quietly change the bill, and the AI that the app's name promises sits in the $399 plan. Ask for the in-app rate card and the AI chatbot details before you install, and check your busiest flows are going out as utility.

Try eesel

Recovered carts turn into orders, and orders turn into questions. eesel is an AI teammate for that second half: it answers customers on WhatsApp, email and chat, looks up the Shopify order before it replies, and learns from the replies your team has already written. Stores like Question Beauty run it next to their existing tools on Gorgias and Shopify.

You can try eesel free with 100 credits and run it on last month's real WhatsApp questions before a single customer sees it.