Kustomer sells on quote. Reponse is free, with public pricing
Kustomer is a customer service CRM for large organisations: multi-brand, skills-based routing, voice and SMS. Reponse gives Shopify brands the helpdesk, unlimited human live chat and unlimited seats free forever, with AI agents that sell as an option at $69 a month.
Why leave Kustomer?
Helpdesk and human chat free forever, AI agents optional.
Free-forever helpdesk
Tickets, shared inbox, unlimited human live chat, reviews, CRM and analytics at $0 forever, no credit card and no annual contract.
Unlimited seats
Kustomer counts its quotas per full-time user. On Reponse, adding a person to the inbox does not change the bill.
AI per agent, not per conversation
AI agents are optional: $69 a month per agent with 2,500 AI conversations included, instead of $0.60 per AI-handled conversation.
Public pricing, live in 5 minutes
No quote and no integration project: connect Shopify, the widget is live, and the Ambassador agent advises from the live catalog if you switch it on.
In the real world
Scenario: Launch of a collection
With Kustomer
At Kustomer, the Concierge AI agent is built to resolve routine and complex requests without escalation and to hand off actionable context to humans when it routes a conversation, which can absorb part of the backlog. Platform and Concierge pricing is not displayed: it goes through an ROI calculator and a sales demo, with no AI-free plan or published conversation quota.
With Reponse
Your whole team answers in the shared inbox, with no per-seat fee. If the Ambassador agent is switched on, it knows the new collection as soon as Shopify syncs it, presents it to every visitor who asks, 24/7, and builds the cart before Shopify checkout.
A fair pricing model
Stop paying per seat, per ticket or per resolution. See the difference with Kustomer.
Kustomer Enterprise
Source: kustomer.com/comprehensive-pricing-details, checked September 2026
Reponse
Optional AI agents at $69/mo, or All-in at $299/mo
Reponse or Kustomer, in plain terms
How does Reponse pricing compare with Kustomer pricing?
Kustomer does not publish a seat price for its current Enterprise and Ultimate plans.
You get a figure through its ROI assessment or a sales conversation, and its AI is priced separately at $0.60 per AI-engaged customer conversation plus $40 per user per month for AI for reps. Reponse publishes its prices: the CX suite, human live chat and seats are free forever, and each AI agent is $69 a month ($62 billed annually) with 2,500 AI conversations included, or $299 a month for all 7 agents. Adding a teammate to the inbox therefore does not change the Reponse bill, and AI is bought per agent instead of being metered per conversation. Voice, SMS and HIPAA compliance, on the other hand, are Kustomer add-ons with no Reponse equivalent.
What actually happens to my Kustomer data if I switch?
Kustomer stores more than tickets.
Customer objects, a unified conversation timeline and any custom Klasses your team modelled, and getting them out means exporting through the Kustomer API. Reponse has no Kustomer importer, it rebuilds the customer picture from Shopify instead, migrating customers, orders, discounts and shipping profiles, then keeping the catalogue current through Shopify webhooks. Review history can be imported from Judge.me, Trustpilot, Stamped or Klaviyo. Keep your own Kustomer export if past transcripts matter for compliance or for the context your agents rely on.
What does Reponse not replace from Kustomer?
Reponse covers web chat, email, WhatsApp and Instagram, and it has no telephony, so Kustomer Voice, its call transcription and its native SMS have no equivalent. There is also no custom-object modelling comparable to Kustomer Klasses, no sandbox environment, no SCIM provisioning and no HIPAA option. Reponse works on the Shopify object model (products, variants, orders, carts) rather than a configurable CRM schema. If your service desk runs on call volume, regulated data or a bespoke object model, Kustomer covers ground Reponse does not.
Who is Kustomer the better choice for?
Kustomer is built for large service organisations.
Multi-brand setups (up to 300 brands on its Ultimate tier), skills-based routing, SLA management, sandbox, SAML and SCIM, and a timeline that pulls phone, SMS and social into one thread. A team with an annual budget, a dedicated CX ops owner and a data model that goes well beyond commerce will get more out of it. Reponse fits a Shopify brand that wants the AI to sell as much as it supports: it reads the live catalogue, builds the cart, answers from real order data and hands over to a human when needed, with reviews, loyalty and referrals in the same product instead of separate apps. The useful question is not which platform is more powerful, but whether your problem is a Shopify revenue problem or an enterprise service-desk problem.