Most support software was built for Shopify, or for a call centre, or for a company with a support department. A store with three people answering between other jobs needs something else — and the difference shows up in three places: what the AI is allowed to do on its own, what it knows about your catalogue, and what the bill does when you get busy.
Most of them can, and most of them default to it. Relay Panel drafts; a person sends. When it is set to answer on its own it will only do so where the answer rests on something from your own site, and it says which page.
A helpdesk that reads your help centre can tell somebody your returns policy. It cannot tell them whether the 400W is in stock in Golden, what their last order was, or what a pallet costs to Wyoming. Relay Panel reads WooCommerce directly.
Per-agent pricing plus per-resolution AI billing means a good month costs more. Relay Panel is per seat, per company, and an AI answer costs nothing extra — the model is billed to your own API key at cost.
The closest in spirit — an e-commerce helpdesk with a self-service portal and an AI agent. Built Shopify-first, and its agent is designed to resolve without you.
The enterprise standard. Enormous, capable, priced per agent with AI resolutions on top, and it knows nothing about your catalogue unless you build that yourself.
Cheap per agent and genuinely broad, if you are willing to live inside Zoho. The WooCommerce story is a plugin and a webhook rather than a first-class citizen.
Two products, two prices: tickets in one, messaging in the other. Relay Panel is one inbox for email, chat, forms and phone.
Not a mock-up. This is the application, at the width you are reading on — the same stylesheet a laptop gets and the same one a phone gets.
A comparison that only flatters itself is worth nothing. These are real, and if one of them is what you need, buy theirs.
Every one of these has been running for a decade or more, with the certifications, the audit trail and the support contract that come with that. Relay Panel is new, and new software has bugs older software has already found.
Hundreds of integrations, built by other people, for tools we have never heard of. Relay Panel integrates deeply with WooCommerce and speaks email, chat and phone. If your support depends on a fourth system, theirs will already talk to it.
Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, X. Relay Panel handles email, live chat, your contact form and phone calls today. Text messages are next and the social channels follow — but “planned” is not “shipped”, and if your support lives in a DM inbox right now, theirs is the honest answer.