Richpanel Pricing Explained (2026)
Richpanel rebuilt its pricing around AI: $0.20 per AI-handled conversation and $99 per human seat, with a promise you are never billed for both on the same ticket.
| Plan | Price | Billing | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI Agents | $0.20 per conversation | usage-based, per AI-handled conversation, across email, chat, social, SMS, WhatsApp and voice | Autonomous handling with policy-based escalation to humans; 50% resolution in 30 days or money back |
| Helpdesk Seats | $99/seat/mo | per human agent, per month | Unified omnichannel inbox, one view per customer, AI copilot assistance for agents |
| Returns & Exchanges portal | $0 | included with any plan | Customer-facing returns and exchanges workflow |
| Self-Service Portal | $0 | included with any plan | Order tracking and help centre for customers |
The pricing model was rebuilt around AI
Richpanel's older pricing — modest monthly tiers banded by conversation volume — is gone. If you are working from a comparison article quoting nine dollars a month, discard it.
The current model has two independent lines. AI Agents cost $0.20 per handled conversation. Helpdesk Seats cost $99 per human agent per month. Returns, exchanges and the self-service portal are free with either.
Richpanel's framing is "one bill, no double-meter" — you pay for AI conversations or for seats, not both stacked on the same work. That is a genuine structural claim and it deserves to be tested during evaluation rather than assumed.
$0.20 is the cheapest AI rate in the category
| Product | AI billing | Effective rate |
|---|---|---|
| Richpanel | Per handled conversation | $0.20 |
| eDesk | Per resolved outcome | $0.99 |
| HelpDesk.com | $49.50 per 50 resolutions | $0.99 |
| BoldDesk | Credit allowance, $20 per 1,000 | Varies by action |
Richpanel is roughly a fifth of the nearest comparable per-unit rate. Some of that gap is definitional — "handled" is a lower bar than "resolved" — but not five-fold's worth.
For a brand doing 20,000 support conversations a month with 60% AI handling, that is 12,000 AI conversations at $2,400 on Richpanel against $11,880 on a $0.99 model. The difference funds a lot of seats.
$99 a seat is the other side of the bet
Nothing else in this price bracket charges $99 for a help desk seat. Zendesk Suite Growth is roughly half that. HelpDesk.com Growth is $79 and Essential is $19. BoldDesk lands near $10 to $20 at scale.
Richpanel's implicit argument is that you will need far fewer seats. Run it:
| AI handling rate | Conversations/mo | AI cost | Seats needed | Seat cost | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20% | 10,000 | $400 | 8 | $792 | $1,192 |
| 50% | 10,000 | $1,000 | 5 | $495 | $1,495 |
| 70% | 10,000 | $1,400 | 3 | $297 | $1,697 |
The uncomfortable result is that on these assumptions the total goes up with better AI performance, because $0.20 a conversation is cheap but not free and seats do not fall proportionally.
The saving that matters is not in the Richpanel bill. It is in salaries — three support agents instead of eight is a six-figure annual difference that dwarfs everything in the table. That is the real case, and it should be argued on headcount, not on software line items.
Model your peak, not your average
Usage pricing punishes seasonality. An ecommerce brand doing 8,000 conversations in a normal month and 35,000 in the fortnight after Black Friday has an AI bill that swings from $960 to $4,200 at 60% handling.
That is manageable if forecast and unpleasant if not. Before signing, pull twelve months of contact volume and price the worst month, not the median one.
Note also there are no published volume discounts. A brand at 50,000 AI conversations a month pays the same unit rate as one at 500, which is unusual for usage pricing and removes the scale relief most buyers expect.
The free portals are the quiet win
Returns and exchanges, order tracking and the self-service help centre are included at no cost.
For ecommerce — Richpanel's core market — "where is my order" and "how do I return this" are the majority of contact volume. Every one of those handled by a portal is a conversation that costs neither $0.20 nor a seat.
Deployed properly, the free tools reduce the metered lines more than any tier negotiation would. Treat portal adoption as the first optimisation, not an afterthought.
What to test in evaluation
Three things, in order.
What counts as a "handled" conversation for billing, including ones the AI attempts and escalates. Get it in writing.
Your actual deflection rate on real traffic over at least two weeks — the 50% guarantee is a 30-day commitment, and your steady-state number is what the business case rests on.
Whether the free returns and self-service portals materially cut inbound volume for your catalogue. If they do, your metered costs drop before you have negotiated anything.
Who should buy it
Ecommerce brands with high, repetitive contact volume — order status, returns, exchanges — where AI can genuinely carry a majority of conversations and headcount can fall as a result. At $0.20 a conversation the AI economics are the best published in the category, and the free returns portal is a real asset.
It suits badly low-volume or high-complexity B2B support, where deflection rates are poor and $99 a seat buys a conventional inbox at a premium price, and any brand with sharp seasonal spikes that has not modelled its peak month. Check richpanel.com for current rates and pull your own twelve-month volume before committing.
What the pricing page doesn't show
- $99 a seat is high for this category — roughly five times HelpDesk.com's entry tier and double Zendesk Suite Growth. The model only makes sense if AI genuinely removes seats; a team that buys ten seats and light AI usage is paying a premium for a conventional inbox.
- AI conversation volume is unpredictable in month one. At $0.20, 10,000 handled conversations is $2,000 — potentially larger than the seat bill. Ecommerce brands with seasonal spikes should model Black Friday, not a quiet Tuesday.
- The 'no double-meter' promise means AI and seats are separate lines, not that escalated conversations are free of AI cost. A conversation the AI attempts and then escalates has still been handled.
- There are no published volume discounts on AI conversations. A brand doing 50,000 AI conversations a month pays the same $0.20 as one doing 500, which removes the scale economics most usage-priced products offer.
- The 50% resolution guarantee runs 30 days. After that window the outcome is whatever your actual deflection rate is, and the business case has to survive on that number rather than on the guarantee.