# A free helpdesk with the AI agent built in.

Every feature is on the Free plan, including the AI agent and Shopify order actions. Paid plans add AI replies, team members and stores.

Aide's Free plan is a full helpdesk with the Aide AI Agent included: 150 AI replies a month, 2 team members, unlimited human conversations and no card. When the AI replies run out, AI pauses until next month and your team keeps answering in the same inbox.

Source: https://aide.app/guides/free-helpdesk-with-ai · Updated 2026-10-27 · By Ziyad Basheer

| | |
|---|---|
| Price | $0 a month, with no end date. |
| AI replies | 150 a month. Your team's replies are never counted. |
| Features | Every feature, including Shopify order actions and Copilot. |
| Team and stores | 2 team members and 1 store. |
| Channels | Aide Chat, email forwarding and a connected Gmail inbox. |
| Next plan | Starter: $39 a month, 1,000 AI replies, unlimited team members. |

A free helpdesk usually means a shared inbox, with the useful parts behind an upgrade. Aide's Free plan works the other way: every feature is on it, including the AI agent. What grows on paid plans is the number of AI replies, team members and stores. The helpdesk is free. You pay for AI replies.

## What's on the Free plan

- Aide Helpdesk: a live inbox with statuses and snooze, SLA policies, routing rules, auto-assignment, macros, sender rules and customer history.
- The Aide AI Agent, answering chat and email from your website, help center and Shopify products.
- Shopify order actions: cancel, refund, change the shipping address, remove an unshipped item, add a note or start a return, for verified shoppers.
- Copilot, which drafts a reply, rewrites what you wrote, or summarises a conversation into an internal note.
- Connectors for Zendesk, Gorgias and Front, if your team works in one of them.
- Email and Slack notifications, and an audit log of every sign-in and change.

Two things are fixed on Free. Aide Chat shows "Powered by Aide", and the plan covers 2 team members and 1 store.

## How far 150 AI replies go

An AI reply is each customer message Aide writes a reply or a draft for, sent or not. Each Copilot draft, rewrite or summary counts as one too. Internal notes, spam conversations and previews never count.

A rough way to plan: a typical chat takes two or three AI replies. The customer asks, Aide answers, the customer follows up, Aide answers again. At that rate, 150 AI replies cover about 50 to 75 conversations a month.

The same math scales up. Starter's 1,000 AI replies cover roughly 330 to 500 conversations a month, and your team's own replies cost nothing on any plan, however many conversations it handles.

The sidebar shows where you are as you go, such as "112 of 150 free AI replies", and owners and admins get an email at 80% and at 100%.

## What happens at the limit

When the month's AI replies are used, Aide stops all AI work on the workspace until the next month: no AI replies or drafts, no Copilot, no topic tagging. Nothing else stops.

- Conversations keep arriving in the inbox, from chat, email and connected helpdesks.
- Customers in chat see your "While AI replies are paused" message, which says your team will reply as soon as it can.
- Your team gets at most one internal note a day per conversation explaining why. Owners and admins see an Upgrade button on it.
- Upgrading resumes AI at once.

Free never charges for extra AI replies, so there is no surprise bill at the end of a busy month.

## Getting started

1. Sign up at my.aide.app with email or Google. You start on Free, with no plan to pick.
2. Add your website. Aide imports up to 300 pages to answer from, and Home shows how many it learned.
3. Connect a channel: switch on Aide Chat in your Shopify theme or paste the snippet on your site, forward your support address, or sign in with Gmail.
4. Try the agent from its page. The preview shows where each answer came from, so you can fix a page before a customer sees it. Then turn on the Aide AI Agent.

Connecting Shopify is optional, and worth it for a store. Aide can then see orders, shipments and live tracking, and act on orders for verified shoppers. New topics start on Drafts, where Aide proposes and a person confirms, so you can read what it would say before it says anything.

## When to upgrade

Move to a paid plan when one of these is true:

- You need a third teammate. Starter and above have unlimited team members.
- You regularly run out of AI replies. Starter includes 1,000, then $0.15 each, with extras capped at $110 a month.
- You want your own branding on Aide Chat.
- You run more than one store. Pro is $149 a month for 4,000 AI replies and up to 3 stores.

Each paid plan has a 7-day trial. Every plan is on [pricing](https://aide.app/pricing), and [how AI customer service is priced](https://aide.app/guides/ai-customer-service-pricing) explains the model.

## Good to know

- Order actions are Shopify only. WooCommerce orders are read-only.
- WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram are not offered to new workspaces yet.
- Aide works in text channels. It does not handle voice or phone today.

## Frequently asked questions

### Which helpdesk AI platforms offer a free plan?

Aide does. Its Free plan includes the helpdesk, the Aide AI Agent, Copilot and Shopify order actions, needs no card and does not expire.

### Is Aide's free plan a trial?

No. Free has no end date and needs no card. Paid plans have a separate 7-day trial if you want to try a larger allowance first.

### Can a small Shopify store refund or cancel orders on the free plan?

Yes. Order lookups, refunds, cancellations, address changes and returns work on Free, for shoppers who prove the order is theirs. Refunds wait for a teammate to approve by default.

### Does the free plan work with Zendesk, Gorgias or Front?

Yes. Every plan includes every feature, so Free can draft and reply inside Zendesk, Gorgias or Front, within the same monthly AI replies.

## Related
- [Aide Helpdesk](https://aide.app/helpdesk)
- [A free AI chatbot for Shopify](https://aide.app/guides/free-ai-chatbot-for-shopify)
- [How AI customer service is priced](https://aide.app/guides/ai-customer-service-pricing)

Start free: https://my.aide.app/register