Alhena AI alternatives: AI shopping assistants compared on price and channels

Alhena AI is an AI shopping and support assistant for online stores, and it charges per conversation: $239 a month for 200 on monthly billing, which works out to about $1.20 each. That price includes extras such as review management and tracking how AI search engines show your products. If you mainly need an assistant that answers product and order questions in chat and DMs, each alternative below starts at a lower price. We checked every price on 19 October 2026.

What Alhena AI is

Alhena was called Gleen until its rebrand, and its website still says so. It sells several products under one account:

• AI Shopping Assistant: conversational product search, guided questions that narrow down a choice, and nudges when a shopper hesitates.
• AI Support Concierge: order tracking, returns and order cancellations, with a handoff to your team that carries the full conversation history.
• AI Social Commerce: replies in Instagram comments, DMs and live sessions, on WhatsApp, Facebook and Messenger.
• Voice AI, review management and AI Visibility: a voice agent, replies to product reviews, and reports on how ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini describe your products.

It works with Shopify, WooCommerce and Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and connects to Zendesk, Gorgias, Freshdesk, Gladly, Kustomer, Intercom and other helpdesks. Its Shopify listing says it is built for fashion, beauty, jewelry and home brands. The listing was rated 5.0 from 6 reviews when we checked.

What Alhena costs

Alhena publishes its prices, which helps. On the Shopify App Store, where Shopify bills you every 30 days:

The per-conversation figures are our arithmetic. Alhena's own website shows the same plans at $199, $499 and $999 a month when you pay for a year upfront ($2,388, $5,988 and $11,988), a 17% saving. Every conversation past your plan costs $1.20, on any paid plan.

Three details from the pricing FAQ matter when you estimate a bill:

1. A conversation counts when the AI resolves or assists it. An FAQ answer served and a nudge a shopper interacts with cost a credit too. Spam, irrelevant questions and chats handed straight to a person are free.
2. Credits reset every cycle. Unused conversations don't carry over.
3. There's no hard stop. Alhena keeps answering past your limit and bills each extra conversation at $1.20. You can set usage alerts in its dashboard.

The 14-day trial on paid plans gives you half the plan's monthly credits and needs a card or Shopify billing approval; it turns into a paid plan unless you cancel. The Free plan needs no card but covers 25 conversations and 500 products or pages.

Why stores look for an alternative

The entry price is high for a small store. A store with 100 AI conversations a month needs four times the free allowance and pays $239 a month on monthly billing. Much of what the paid plans add, such as AI search visibility tracking, optimization credits and competitor benchmarks, is aimed at brands with a marketing team.

The bill has no ceiling. Being "never cut off" is good for customers and harder to budget. A sale, a viral post or a shipping delay that doubles your chats doubles the overage at $1.20 each.

You may not need the extras. If you don't use review replies, social comment automation or AI visibility reports, you're paying for them inside the plan.

When to stay on Alhena AI

Stay if:

• you run WooCommerce or Salesforce Commerce Cloud and want live product data in the chat;
• you want the AI to cancel orders and start returns itself;
• you want replies under Instagram posts and in live sessions, not only in DMs, or a voice agent;
• you use the AI visibility reports and review management, and they would cost you more as separate tools.

How we chose

We read each tool's pricing page, Shopify App Store listing and product or help pages, most recently on 19 October 2026. We make ChatPal, so weigh what we say about it accordingly; we didn't test the other tools hands-on. The tools are grouped by how they charge and who they suit, not ranked.

Alhena AI and five alternatives

What three stores would pay

Three example stores answer 100, 300 and 600 AI conversations a month in website chat and DMs. Where a tool counts replies, we assumed three AI replies per conversation. That's our assumption; count a week of your own chats and use your number.

Our arithmetic on each tool's published prices, in US dollars per month. The Alhena yearly row is paid for the whole year upfront, plus overage at $1.20 a conversation. For each store we picked the cheapest plan or plan plus overage.

Rep AI and Tidio don't fit this table. Rep AI's website chat is priced by visitors, not conversations: $104 a month covers up to 10,000 visitors. Tidio's Lyro is sold in steps of AI conversations from 50 for $32.50 a month billed yearly, with higher steps on its pricing page.

The gap is large, and it's fair to say why. Alhena's plans include tools ChatPal and Zipchat don't sell: AI visibility reports, review replies, comment automation and voice. If you'd buy those anyway, compare the bundle, not just the chat.

Catalog answers: what to test before you switch

Alhena, ChatPal and Shopify Inbox all answer product questions from your catalog. What differs is where the data comes from and how fresh it is:

• Alhena syncs your Shopify catalog, inventory and prices, and its paid plans hold up to 50,000 products or pages. It also works on WooCommerce and Salesforce Commerce Cloud.
• ChatPal keeps its own copy of your Shopify catalog that follows your store within minutes, with prices for the customer's country, and reads your collections, so "what's on sale?" lists what's actually in your sale collection. A Horoshop store's products refresh once a day. On any other platform the chat answers from your website pages and uploaded files.
• Shopify Inbox answers from your catalog, policies and pages, in the store chat only.

Ask each candidate the same questions on your own store before you commit: a product that sold out yesterday, a price you changed this morning, something you don't stock, and "where is my order?". Note who it shows order details to and what it asks first. Our guide to AI shopping assistants explains what to expect from each kind of tool.

This is ChatPal answering from the catalog of our own test store.

Alhena AI or ChatPal

Choose Alhena if you want one vendor for shopping chat, support actions, social comments, voice and AI search visibility, and your volume makes $1 to $1.20 a conversation worth it.

Choose ChatPal if:

• you run a Shopify store and want a price you can predict, starting free and then $20 to $120 a month;
• your customers write on WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger or Telegram as well as your website, and you want one assistant answering all of them from your catalog;
• you want order answers only after the customer signs in to your store, with cancellations and changes left to your team.

ChatPal doesn't reply to Instagram comments, has no voice or email channel, and won't change an order. If those are the reasons you bought Alhena, keep it.

Moving off Alhena AI

1. Write down what Alhena does for you. Note your plan, your monthly conversations from its dashboard, and which features you use: order cancellations, comment replies, review management, AI visibility. Anything ChatPal doesn't do becomes a job for your team or another app.
2. Connect your store in ChatPal. Go to Integrations, then Shopify, enter your store's Shopify address and click Connect Shopify. Shopify asks for read-only permissions. Setup reads your store's pages and drafts the welcome message and instructions for you to review.
3. Test in the Playground with last month's most common questions. Its replies count toward your monthly messages.
4. Check Order support on the Shopify page in ChatPal. It is on from the moment you connect, so customers who sign in to your store can ask about their own orders; switch it off there if you don't want order answers. Your store needs Shopify's new customer accounts.
5. Swap the chat. Turn off Alhena's widget so shoppers don't see two. In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store, then Themes, then Customize, open App embeds, toggle on ChatPal Chat Widget and save. Connect WhatsApp, Instagram or Messenger from their tiles under Integrations.
6. Read the first week of conversations in Chats, then cancel Alhena before its next billing date.

If Rep AI or Manifest AI is also on your list, read Rep AI alternatives and Manifest AI alternatives. Setup details are on ChatPal's Shopify page.