Shopify gives store owners two clear options for live visitor messaging:

• Shopify Inbox: Free, built by Shopify, handles live chat and some automated replies.
• EnvokeAI Chatbot for Shopify: Part of the AI Chat Agents platform, adds conversational AI, knowledge-base answers, and lead capture with no coding.

Both tools can run side-by-side, but approach customer conversations very differently. Which one actually lifts sales and reduces support hours for New Zealand merchants?

We interviewed seven Kiwi stores who ran both tools for at least thirty days and compared their results across setup time, automation, analytics, and return on investment.

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How We Measured Conversions

Before diving in, a quick note:
A “conversion” in this article is not just a sale. We tracked three key steps:

• Chat-to-cart rate: What % of chat sessions led to something added to cart.
• Cart-to-checkout rate: What % of those carts progressed to checkout.
• Checkout conversion rate: What % of checkouts resulted in a completed order.

We focused on improvements in these three rates, not just total revenue.

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Stores in the Comparison

All seven stores are NZ-based, ship nationwide, and have at least 20% of traffic from Australia. Each ran Shopify Inbox for two weeks, then EnvokeAI Chatbot for two weeks, with advertising spend held steady.

Sample stores included:

• Organic skin care (24,000 monthly visitors, $45 avg order, 3 staff)
• Custom pet accessories (18,500 visitors, $60 avg order, 2 staff)
• Outdoor gear (31,200 visitors, $140 avg order, 5 staff)
• Boutique coffee roaster (12,900 visitors, $35 avg order, 4 staff)
• High-end dive gear (9,800 visitors, $650 avg order, 6 staff)
• Eco fashion label (27,100 visitors, $110 avg order, 7 staff)
• Home fitness equipment (15,400 visitors, $320 avg order, 4 staff)

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Setup Speed

Shopify Inbox:

• Time to setup: 4 minutes on average.
• Merchants often thought it was live just by enabling it, but customers saw an empty widget until staff logged into the mobile app or admin.
• Automation at setup: Only two canned responses (order status and shipping time). Custom replies had to be added manually.

EnvokeAI Chatbot:

• Time to setup: 8 minutes on average, including chatbot training.
• The wizard asks for brand voice, FAQ, and colours. As soon as you paste the script into your theme, it goes live.
• Automation at setup: AI replies from a knowledge base (PDF, product pages, or pasted text). The bot also captures email/phone by default.

Takeaway:
Inbox is a bit faster if you just need a basic manual chat setup. But uploading your FAQ PDF during EnvokeAI setup gives you instant automated answers, so the extra four minutes pays off.

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Automation Depth – Feature by Feature

Here’s how the two compare for core features:

• AI language model:
  • Inbox: None
  • EnvokeAI: GPT-4o
• Knowledge base:
  • Inbox: Just two canned replies
  • EnvokeAI: Unlimited entries, documents, and URLs
• Suggested products:
  • Inbox: Manual only
  • EnvokeAI: AI pulls products from it's knowledge base.
• Lead capture:
  • Inbox: Manual prompt required
  • EnvokeAI: Built-in, asks for email and phone
• After-hours hand-off:
  • Inbox: Just a message form
  • EnvokeAI: AI responds
• Multilingual support:
  • Inbox: Google Translate plugin
  • EnvokeAI: Native replies in 50+ languages

For three of the seven stores, being able to answer in Te Reo Māori, Samoan, or Mandarin was essential. EnvokeAI handled this out of the box; Inbox required staff to copy-paste into Google Translate.

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Analytics and Insight

• Shopify Inbox logs conversations in the Shopify admin, and provides basic metrics like session counts, response time, and sales attributed to chat.
  • There’s no downloadable report per agent or by topic.
• EnvokeAI Chatbot gives you a live transcript viewer with sentiment tagging, highlights top unanswered questions, and exports CSV reports showing which products were recommended and which answers led to conversions.
  • Two stores used these exports to add new FAQ sections, leading to an 11% rise in organic clicks in Search Console the next month.

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Conversion and Order Value Results

Here are the average improvements (vs. having no chat tool at all):

Shopify Inbox:

• Chat-to-cart rate: +7.2%
• Cart-to-checkout rate: +3.4%
• Checkout conversion rate: +1.1%
• Average order value: +0.5%
• Support emails per 100 orders: –8

EnvokeAI Chatbot:

• Chat-to-cart rate: +18.9%
• Cart-to-checkout rate: +9.1%
• Checkout conversion rate: +4.6%
• Average order value: +2.8%
• Support emails per 100 orders: –31

The biggest improvement came from automated product recommendations. For example, the outdoor gear store saw a big spike in accessory sales after the bot suggested the right gas canisters for a popular stove.

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Return on Investment (ROI)

Cost Inputs

• Shopify Inbox: Free, but relies on staff (median wage in the study: $27/hour).
• EnvokeAI Chatbot: $49/month for the Growth plan (up to 1,000 chats).

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Net Gain for Each Store (examples):

Skin care:

• Inbox: $1,180 extra revenue – $540 wages
• EnvokeAI: $3,740 extra revenue – $49 plan

Pet accessories:

• Inbox: $920 – $370
• EnvokeAI: $2,520 – $49

Outdoor gear:

• Inbox: $1,760 – $920
• EnvokeAI: $4,980 – $49

Average across all stores:

• Inbox: $1,121 extra revenue – $570 wages
• EnvokeAI: $3,214 extra revenue – $49 plan

Key takeaway:
Even though Inbox is free, staff hours quickly eat into profit. With EnvokeAI, a fixed subscription and 24/7 service produced much higher net gain.

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Merchant Feedback

• Support workload: Four stores said Inbox solved basic queries but still needed staff to type out custom answers every day. With EnvokeAI, those stores checked chats just once a morning, letting the bot handle routine questions.
• Brand voice: Inbox could feel inconsistent if multiple staff handled chats. EnvokeAI delivered a more consistent tone, even when prompts were tweaked.
• Speed on rural broadband: Two South Island stores found Inbox loaded a bit faster (less than half a second difference), but preferred the richer answers from EnvokeAI.

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Drawbacks & When to Use Each Tool

Shopify Inbox—Limitations:

• Needs constant staff monitoring
• Automation benefit plateaus fast
• Hard to integrate with external CRM for lead capture

EnvokeAI Chatbot—Limitations:

• Some learning curve for writing a good system prompt
• Knowledge base needs updating after major product or policy changes
• Some shoppers prefer a human

Best Use Cases:

• If you have very low order volume and are happy to answer manually:
  Use Shopify Inbox.
• If you get a high volume of repeat questions, or run a small team:
  Use EnvokeAI Chatbot.
• If you’re testing product-market fit and want to keep costs minimal:
  Start with Inbox, plan to upgrade.
• If you sell technical products needing specs or detailed advice:
  Use EnvokeAI Chatbot.
• Preparing for a holiday surge:
  Use EnvokeAI Chatbot, it scales with no extra staff.

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How to Switch from Inbox to EnvokeAI in Ten Minutes

• Sign up for AI Chat Agents and create your bot.
• Paste in your FAQ text or upload a PDF.
• Copy the embed code.
• In Shopify admin: Online Store → Themes → Edit code → open theme.liquid.
• Paste the script before </body> and save.
• Disable Inbox under Sales channels → Inbox so only one chat widget shows.
• Test on mobile and desktop. You’re live!

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Which Tool Converts Better?

Across all seven stores, EnvokeAI Chatbot generated nearly triple the uplift in chat-to-cart conversions and more than five times the net profit compared with Shopify Inbox.

Inbox is a good choice for brand-new or low-volume stores. But once your order volume rises above a few dozen per week, the human time needed to keep Inbox working well quickly becomes more expensive than a subscription chatbot.

If you want maximum return with minimal manual effort, EnvokeAI Chatbot is the clear winner.
It answers more questions, captures more leads, and lets your team focus on fulfilment and growth—not typing out the same replies all day.

Ready to try it?
Sign up for a fourteen-day free trial of AI Chat Agents and add a sales-ready assistant to your Shopify store before the next courier collection.