Richpanel

What it is

Richpanel is an ecommerce helpdesk rebuilt around the assumption that most tickets should never reach a person. It has three layers. A customer-facing self-service portal lets shoppers track orders and start returns without writing in at all. An AI agent resolves the conversations that do arrive — order status, returns, refunds, cancellations, and subscription changes — end to end, reading store policies and order data mostly through the Shopify integration. And a conventional shared inbox covers email, chat, SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and phone for whatever the AI hands back.

Around that sit a QA agent that reviews every closed conversation, a “manager AI” that studies past tickets and policies to draft the playbooks the agent follows, and a Returns & Exchanges module that tries to convert refund requests into exchanges. Named integrations are Shopify, Recharge, Loop, Yotpo, Klaviyo, CheckoutChamp, AfterShip, and Aircall, Dialpad, and JustCall for voice.

The company is small. Richpanel Inc. is based in San Jose, founded by Amit RG, listed its Shopify app in November 2019, and last disclosed funding in December 2020, from Surge. Third-party trackers put headcount at roughly 30. It claims 3,000-plus brands, a 4.7/5 G2 rating, and holds 4.9/5 across 138 reviews on the Shopify App Store.

Why it shows up in Customer Success stacks

• It is the cheap meter in the category. The pricing page lists $0.20 per AI-handled conversation, where a conversation is the whole back-and-forth thread, not a single message. Gorgias charges $0.90 to $1.00 per AI resolution. That gap is why Richpanel is the recurring head-to-head in Gorgias evaluations, and why Gorgias itself publishes a “Richpanel alternatives” page.
• Deflection happens before the ticket. The self-service portal is included at no add-on fee. A shopper who tracks the order in the portal never becomes a conversation on either meter, which is the cheapest resolution available.
• It puts outcomes in the contract. Every new account gets a written guarantee: the AI autonomously resolves at least 50% of eligible conversations in the first 30 days after go-live, or you get a refund or credit for that window’s subscription fees. A separate pre-purchase promise commits to a total bill at least 30% below your current helpdesk-plus-AI spend, or you walk away without cost.
• Seats are the only fixed line. Human seats are $99 per month with no per-ticket fees, and annual billing takes 17% off.

Pricing

As published on 2026-09-26: $99 per seat per month, $0.20 per AI-handled conversation, QA AI, the social media agent, and the self-service portal included, and Returns & Exchanges from $99 per month. The Shopify App Store listing shows a different ladder — Pro $89, Pro Max $119, Self Service $119, each with a 14-day trial and AI conversations “from $0.20.” A competitor’s September 2026 teardown reported quotes built on a $500-per-month AI agent base and roughly $0.25 per conversation. Treat the website figure as the list price and the demo quote as the real one.

Model it on your own volume. A brand handling 3,000 conversations a month that routes all of them through the AI agent pays $600 in AI charges whether the agent resolves or escalates. If the agent resolves half and four agents work the rest, add $396 in seats: about $1,000 a month. The same brand on Gorgias Pro annual pays $300 plus 1,000 overage tickets at $0.36, then 1,500 resolutions at $0.90 — roughly $2,010. The per-handled meter stays cheaper per resolution until the resolution rate drops to about 22%; below that, $0.20 per attempt costs more per success than Gorgias’ $0.90 per success.

Best for

Heads of customer experience at Shopify brands running 3 to 30 agents, where order-status, return, and subscription tickets dominate the queue and the current per-resolution AI bill is the line finance is questioning. It is the wrong pick for stores on platforms other than Shopify that need the agent to take order actions, and for B2B support, where tickets turn into engineering work rather than refunds.

Watch-outs

• The price is quoted three different ways. The pricing page, the Shopify listing, and third-party reports disagree on the seat price, whether there is an AI base fee, and the per-conversation rate. The guard: get a written quote listing every line — seats, AI rate, any platform or minimum fee, add-ons, and the renewal uplift — and model it against the pricing-page numbers before you sign. The $500 base report comes from a competing vendor, so weigh it as a prompt to ask, not as fact.
• The meter charges attempts, not successes. The pricing page defines an AI-handled conversation as the whole thread between the customer and the AI, which reads as including conversations the agent starts and then escalates. The guard: ask in writing whether an escalated conversation bills, then track cost per resolved conversation weekly for the first 90 days — if your resolution rate sits under 22%, the cost advantage over per-resolution vendors has disappeared.
• The 50% guarantee is narrower than the headline. The remedy is limited to subscription fees for the first 30-day window; setup, services, and add-on fees are excluded. Out-of-policy issues, unconfigured languages, and channels added after launch drop out of the denominator, a resolution only counts if the customer does not reopen within 72 hours, you cannot change the agent’s instructions during the window without written approval, and claims must be filed within 15 business days. The guard: agree the eligible-conversation set and go-live date in writing, measure the rate yourself on the 72-hour definition, and calendar the claim deadline on day one.
• Vendor scale is a real risk. Around 30 employees and no disclosed funding since 2020 means a small team owns the platform your whole support queue depends on. Trustpilot shows 4.3/5, but 17% of its 29 reviews are one-star, citing slowness and order and subscription sync glitches. The guard: negotiate a full data-export clause covering tickets, macros, SOPs, and AI playbooks, and keep your policy documents in a system you own so a migration takes weeks, not a quarter.

Alternatives, and when to pick them instead

Gorgias is the ecommerce incumbent and Zendesk is the category leader overall. Pick Gorgias when you sell on BigCommerce, Magento, or WooCommerce as well as Shopify, or when you want a larger vendor and are willing to pay more than double per AI outcome for it — $0.90 per resolution against about $0.40 at a 50% resolution rate. Pick Zendesk when support spans B2C and B2B or the store is not the center of the conversation.

Siena AI is the fastest-growing entrant in ecommerce CX and sits on top of the helpdesk you already run rather than replacing it. Pick Siena when your helpdesk is fine and only the automation is missing; pick Richpanel when you are replacing both and the bill is the driver.

Intercom renamed itself Fin in May 2026, and Salesforce announced on 2026-06-15 that it will acquire the company for about $3.6B. Pick it when in-app messaging for software users is your main channel. Kustomer and Gladly fit above roughly 50 agents with heavy voice and repeat-purchase volume. Under 200 tickets a month, skip all of them: a shared inbox and a returns app cost less than any AI meter.