A Review of Ako Chatbot for Shopify

Ako is one a of a few chatbot platforms that specifically target Shopify. There is a lot of potential for chatbots to improve the user experience in e-commerce. Unfortunately, neither Ako nor any of its current competitors seem to be making headway in fulfilling that potential. The behaviour of their bots is trivial, to say the best.

The main purported benefit of using Ako is that you can specify answers to frequently asked questions which bot users can access. In practice, all you can really do is set up a bunch of menu options and standard responses. A conversational interface it is not.

Ako has a free “Starter Plan” which doesn’t seem to do anything, so you’ll need to fork out $12 a month if you want some actual features.