I tried over a dozen Shopify live chat apps: Here are the 7 best for 2026

If you run a Shopify store, you know the feeling. It’s that tipping point where the small trickle of customer questions suddenly turns into a flood. You're trying to answer emails about order statuses, reply to Instagram DMs about returns, and handle website chats asking if that one hoodie comes in green. It's absolute chaos, and it can seriously slow down your growth.

So, I went on a quest to find the best Shopify live chat apps to manage the madness, give customers a better experience, and hopefully, ring up a few more sales along the way. I dove into more than a dozen of the most popular apps out there, putting them through their paces against the real-world demands of a growing ecommerce business. I’ve whittled it all down to the top seven that are actually worth your time in 2026.

My biggest takeaway from all this? A great live chat app is your foundation. But the secret to actually scaling without hiring a whole support team is adding a smart AI on top to handle all the repetitive stuff for you.

What are Shopify live chat apps?

First off, let's be clear. Modern live chat apps are so much more than that little chat bubble in the corner of your website. The best ones are basically complete customer service platforms, often called helpdesks.

They’re built to pull all your customer conversations, whether they come from email, social media DMs, or your website chat, into one single inbox. That means your team isn't jumping between ten different tabs just to talk to people.

Even better, they plug right into your Shopify store. This gives your support agents instant access to a customer's order history, shipping status, and past conversations. They can give fast, personalized help without having to ask "Can I have your order number?" for the hundredth time that day.

How I chose the best Shopify live chat apps

Not every live chat tool is made for the unique grind of ecommerce. A B2B software company has totally different needs than an online store shipping hundreds of packages a day. With that in mind, here’s the checklist I used to figure out what are the best Shopify live chat apps:

• Deep Shopify integration: How well does it actually connect with Shopify? I wanted to see if I could edit orders, check inventory, and view customer data right from the helpdesk.

• Automation and AI: Does it have tools to cut down on manual work? I looked for things like chatbots, rules, and automated workflows to handle the simple, repetitive questions that eat up so much time.

• Agent experience: Is the tool actually pleasant to use? A good app should help your team work faster and smarter, not make their jobs more complicated.

• Scalability: Can it grow with the business? The right app should work when you're a one-person show and still be effective when you have a whole support team.

• Transparent pricing: Nobody likes surprise bills. I looked for clear, predictable pricing without confusing per-conversation fees that punish you for growing.

What are the best Shopify live chat apps? A quick comparison for 2026

App	Best For	Starting Price (Billed Annually)	Key Shopify Feature	Built-in AI Capability
Gorgias	Shopify-native CX	$50/month	Edit Shopify orders directly in the helpdesk	Rules-based automation, reliable intent detection
Tidio	Stores wanting an all-in-one tool	Free plan, paid from $29/month	See live visitor carts and history	Visual chatbot builder (Lyro AI)
LiveChat	Sales-focused teams	$19/agent/month	Product cards to showcase items in chat	Basic chatbots, AI writing assistant
Shopify Inbox	New stores on a budget	Free	Native integration with Shopify admin	Basic saved replies, no true AI
Zendesk	Large or enterprise stores	$55/agent/month	Robust data sync and unified agent workspace	Advanced AI agents (add-on)
tawk.to	Businesses needing a free solution	Free	Basic Shopify data integration	No native AI, knowledge base only
Re:amaze	Small to medium businesses	$26.10/user/month	Live view of visitor activity and cart contents	Rules-based chatbots

The 7 best Shopify live chat apps for ecommerce stores

After digging through all the options, these seven apps really stood out. Here’s a breakdown of what makes each one great, and where they might not be the best fit.

1. Gorgias

If an app was built from the ground up specifically for Shopify, this is it. Gorgias has the tightest Shopify integration I've ever seen. Your agents can do pretty much anything, like edit orders, issue refunds, or check loyalty points, without ever leaving the helpdesk. It’s a huge time-saver.

Pros:

• Honestly, its Shopify integration is the best out there, period.

• It pulls in email, chat, and social media DMs into one clean, manageable view.

• You can create rules and macros to automatically answer common questions like "Where's my order?"

Cons:

• Gorgias provides structured and reliable rule-based automation, which ensures that responses follow your specific business logic.

• The platform's Gorgias AI features are purpose-built to integrate seamlessly with the Shopify ecosystem.

• Gorgias offers tiered pricing plans based on ticket volume, allowing teams to choose a level that matches their growth.

Pricing: Gorgias's pricing is ticket-based.

• Starter: $10/month for 50 tickets.

• Basic: $60/month ($50/mo if billed annually) for 300 tickets.

• Pro: $360/month ($300/mo if billed annually) for 2,000 tickets.

• Advanced: $900/month ($750/mo if billed annually) for 5,000 tickets.

A 7-day free trial is available.

2. Tidio

Tidio is an interesting one. It packs live chat, a helpdesk, and a surprisingly good AI chatbot called Lyro into one platform. If your main goal is to automate as much of your frontline support as you can, Tidio’s visual chatbot builder is one of the easiest to use.

Pros:

• It has a really generous free plan, which is perfect for stores just getting started.

• The visual chatbot builder is simple to use, letting you map out custom flows without needing to code.

• You can see what visitors are typing in real-time, which helps you get answers ready faster.

Cons:

• The Lyro AI is limited to the information you manually upload to its FAQ. It can't learn from your past tickets or other knowledge sources on its own.

• It has trouble with custom actions, like checking a shipping status with an outside logistics provider.

• The Shopify integration just isn't as deep as what you get with a native tool like Gorgias.

Pricing: Tidio offers a few different plans and products.

• Free Plan: Includes 50 live chat conversations.

• Starter: $29/month (billed annually) for 100 conversations and other basic features.

• Lyro AI Agent: Starts at $32.50/month for 50 AI-powered conversations.

• Flows: Starts at $24.17/month to reach 2,000 visitors with automated flows.

3. LiveChat

LiveChat is the tool to get when you want to turn support chats into sales. It’s loaded with features for proactive engagement, like sending "product cards" right in the chat or automatically popping up a chat window after a visitor has been looking at a product page for a bit.

Pros:

• Great for sales-focused teams that want to help guide customers toward a purchase.

• The agent dashboard is clean, modern, and easy to find your way around.

• It has solid reporting tools to keep track of agent performance and customer happiness.

Cons:

• Its more advanced AI and chatbot features are often sold as separate add-ons (like their product, ChatBot), which can make your monthly bill a bit confusing.

• It’s less focused on automating the tricky post-purchase support issues like returns or order changes compared to specialized tools.

• The AI doesn't learn from your team's past conversations to give better, more relevant answers over time.

Pricing: LiveChat is priced per agent.

• Starter: $25/month ($19/mo if billed annually) for one agent with basic features.

• Team: $59/month ($49/mo if billed annually) adds more reporting and customization.

• Business: $89/month ($79/mo if billed annually) adds scheduling and staffing prediction.

A 14-day free trial is available.

4. Shopify Inbox

This is Shopify's own live chat tool, and it’s 100% free. For any new store, it’s a no-brainer. You can turn it on in a few clicks and start having real-time conversations with customers right away. It's the definition of a low-risk, high-reward first step.

Pros:

• It costs nothing and is incredibly simple to set up.

• It's built right into the Shopify dashboard you already use every day.

• The mobile app is handy for managing chats when you're away from your computer.

Cons:

• It's really, really basic. There’s no automation, no AI, and no real ticketing system.

• It doesn't scale well. Once you start getting more than a few chats a day, things get messy fast.

• It only works for your website chat, so you still have to manage email and social media in different places.

Pricing: Free with any Shopify plan.

5. Zendesk

Zendesk is an industry leader in the customer service world. It's incredibly powerful, offers comprehensive customization, and is built to handle the sophisticated ticket volumes of growing companies. If you're running a global, multi-brand empire on Shopify Plus, Zendesk is the gold standard for enterprise-grade support.

Pros:

• It's extremely scalable and reliable for businesses with sophisticated, high-level needs.

• It offers some of the most advanced reporting and analytics you can find in the market.

• Their pre-trained AI agents are world-class, providing a powerful way to enhance your customer experience.

Cons:

• Because the platform is so feature-rich, it can require more initial time to set up and optimize compared to simpler tools.

• Zendesk offers tiered plans to match different team sizes, though the pricing reflects its enterprise-grade capabilities.

• The platform provides the most value when used as a unified hub for your entire support operation.

Pricing: Zendesk's plans are designed to grow with you. Their suite plans include:

• Suite Team: $69/agent/month ($55/mo if billed annually).

• Suite Professional: $149/agent/month ($115/mo if billed annually) adds more advanced features like SLA management.

AI agents are available as an additional add-on to further strengthen your setup.

6. tawk.to

If you're on a tight budget but need more than what Shopify Inbox gives you, tawk.to is the answer. It's the most feature-rich free live chat app I could find. You get unlimited agents, unlimited chat history, and even basic ticketing without paying a cent. They make money through optional add-ons and by letting you hire their agents to staff your chat.

Pros:

• The core software is 100% free, which is pretty amazing.

• It lets you monitor your website visitors in real-time to see who's looking at which pages.

• You have the option to hire live agents for as little as $1/hour to cover nights and weekends.

Cons:

• The user interface feels a bit clunky and outdated compared to the paid tools.

• It has no advanced automation or AI to help lighten your team's workload.

• The Shopify integration is very basic and doesn't let you do much beyond seeing simple customer data.

Pricing: Free. You can pay for add-ons, like removing the "Powered by tawk.to" branding for $19/month.

7. Re:amaze

Re:amaze finds a really nice middle ground. It's more powerful than the free apps but not as complicated or expensive as an enterprise tool like Zendesk. It brings chat, email, social media, SMS, and an FAQ into one platform, making it a strong choice for small to medium-sized businesses that want an all-in-one tool.

Pros:

• It's a true omnichannel platform that puts all your support channels in one spot.

• It includes rule-based chatbots and automated workflows to handle simple stuff.

• It has a live dashboard so you can see what customers are doing on your site in real-time.

Cons:

• Its AI is limited to the rules you program yourself. It can't learn from your past support tickets to figure out context.

• Some people find the interface can feel a bit busy and crowded.

• The per-user pricing can add up quickly as your support team grows.

Pricing: Re:amaze is priced per team member.

• Basic: $29/user/month ($26.10/user/mo if billed annually).

• Pro: $49/user/month ($44.10/user/mo if billed annually) adds multi-brand support and advanced reporting.

• Plus: $69/user/month ($62.10/user/mo if billed annually) adds features like live screen sharing and performance reporting.

The scaling problem

Here's the hard truth. While all these tools are great for getting your conversations organized, they all eventually lead you to the same dead end: more chats mean more work for your team. As your store grows, so does your support volume, and you're left with two traditional, and pretty flawed, options.

1. Hire more agents: This gets expensive, fast. It's also not very efficient, since you're paying people to answer the same three or four questions all day long.

2. Use built-in chatbots: Many chatbots that come with these platforms are rule-based, meaning they follow the specific logic you've programmed. While they provide great control, they can sometimes struggle with typos or weird phrasing, which might require extra manual configuration to manage.

This creates a growth ceiling. You can't give instant, amazing, 24/7 support without either breaking the bank on payroll or spending countless hours building manual bot flows.

The solution: An intelligent AI layer

That's when I realized the solution wasn't a different helpdesk, but a smarter layer on top of one. A tool like eesel AI doesn't force you to ditch the helpdesk you just chose. Instead, eesel AI integrates with it in a few minutes and acts as a complementary "brain," making your current setup truly intelligent.

Get accurate answers by unifying all your knowledge

Here’s the big difference. eesel AI learns from all of your company's knowledge, not just a manually created knowledge base. It can instantly connect to your past support tickets in Gorgias or Zendesk, your private team guides in Confluence or Notion, your Google Docs, and even your Shopify product catalog.

This means that from day one, the AI actually understands your brand's voice, your common product questions, and the answers that have worked before. It gives hyper-relevant, contextual answers that a generic chatbot could never come up with.

Go live in minutes with a self-serve setup and risk-free simulation

Honestly, this was a huge breath of fresh air. Most AI tools want you to book a demo and sit through a long sales pitch. eesel AI is completely self-serve. You can sign up and connect your helpdesk with a single click, no sales call needed.

Best of all, you can use its powerful simulation mode. eesel AI will analyze thousands of your past support tickets and show you exactly how it would have replied to them. You get a precise, data-backed forecast of how much you can automate and save before you ever turn it on for live customers. It takes all the risk and guesswork out of launching an AI agent.

Take control with a fully customizable workflow engine

I get it, the idea of an AI "going rogue" and talking to your customers can be scary. That's why eesel AI gives you complete, fine-grained control over how it behaves.

You can use features like:

• Selective Automation: You choose exactly which types of tickets the AI handles. You can start small by having it only answer "order status" questions and send everything else to a human.

• Custom Actions: You can empower the AI to do more than just talk. You can set it up to perform actions like looking up live order information from Shopify, automatically tagging a ticket, or sending a complex issue to a specific agent.

The takeaway: Pick a foundation, then add intelligence

So, the smartest way to scale your Shopify support seems to be a two-step plan.

First, pick a solid live chat app from this list that fits how your team works and what your budget allows. Zendesk is fantastic for its professional-grade features and reliability, while Gorgias is known for its deep Shopify integration and dedicated ecommerce focus.

Second, give that app a serious boost with an intelligent AI layer like eesel AI. This is how you automate up to 80% of your repetitive questions, offer instant 24/7 support, and free up your human agents to focus on the high-value conversations that actually grow your business and build loyalty.

Ready to see what a true AI agent can do for your Shopify store?

eesel AI plugs into your existing helpdesk in minutes. You can simulate its performance on your past tickets and see your potential automation rate today.

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