You ran a scan, and it told you that ChatGPT does not mention your store. Then it stopped. You were left staring at your Shopify admin with no idea which field to touch. Answer engine optimization is not about earning a link in a list. It is about being the answer the engine gives. The tool worth paying for is the one that closes the loop between the report and the fix.
- A mention chart is a symptom log, not a treatment. The useful output is the sentence the assistant said, plus the on-store change that would alter it.
- On Shopify, the fix surface is small and concrete. Structured data, llms.txt, product copy that answers a literal buyer question, and an answer page an engine can lift.
- Know which line reports and which line deploys. Arenza's Free tier at $0 reports the gap. The Pro tier at $299/month deploys on-site technical fixes for you.
Quick verdict
| Dimension | Arenza | Where it starts |
|---|---|---|
| Verbatim AI answers you can read | ✅ ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity | Free — $0, no credit card |
| Agentic Visibility Score and Agentic Conversion Score | ✅ ACS always shown with its coverage | Free — $0 |
| Accuracy diagnostics on AI answers | ✅ Outdated specs, false claims, brand-attribution errors, miscategorization, with severity and frequency | Free — $0 |
| Articles published to your Shopify blog or CMS | ✅ 5 articles/month | Starter — $49/month |
| Head-to-head competitor comparison | ✅ Unlimited tracked competitors | Starter — $49/month |
| On-site technical fixes deployed for you | ✅ llms.txt, schema and JSON-LD | Pro — $299/month |
| Articles hosted on your own domain | ✅ brand.com/blogs/... | Pro — $299/month |
1. The tool worth paying for is the one that changes something on your store
Measurement is the easy half. Prompts go in, mentions come out, and a dashboard charts the share. That is genuinely useful. Then the merchant asks the question that decides the budget: what do I change on my store, and who makes the change?
Here is what the named vendors publish, so you can price the measurement half yourself. Verify current pricing on each vendor's page before you budget.
- Profound — Starter $99/month billed yearly, published as ChatGPT tracking only, with 50 prompts tracked, 1,500 responses monthly, 1 language and 1 region. Growth $399/month billed yearly, for three answer engines. Enterprise is custom, up to nine. Profound also publishes content-generation Agents and a "Try for free" option on Growth.
- Otterly.AI — Lite $29/month for 15 search prompts. Standard $189/month for 100. Premium $489/month for 400. Enterprise is custom from $1,000/month. Core engines are ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and MS Copilot; Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode are paid add-ons. Otterly also publishes API and MCP access on Standard.
- Ahrefs Brand Radar — Custom Prompts from $50/month, included in Ahrefs paid plans Lite and above. AI Visibility Index $199/month. That pricing sits on top of a paid Ahrefs base plan, so $50 is not a standalone total. Coverage includes AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, ChatGPT, Copilot and AI Mode, with Claude as an add-on.
Free checkers and free trials exist in this category too, so treat a first look as widely available.
Arenza starts from the repair end. It measures ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity, across the US, UK, DE and JP markets. Free and Starter each cover one of those markets; Pro covers three. There are three headline numbers. The Agentic Visibility Score (AVS) asks whether you are found. The Agentic Conversion Score (ACS) asks whether the answer sells you once you are found. The third is AI-attributed revenue.
That is the shape of ARC — Answer, Reach, Convert. Answer is what the assistant says about you. Reach is how many buyer questions you show up in. Convert is whether that answer moves a shopper. ARC Autopilot is included from Free.
2. On a Shopify store, the fix surface is four things you can actually touch
The abstraction "improve your AI visibility" is unhelpful. Walk the store instead.
Structured data and JSON-LD. Machine-readable product facts are designed to be easier for an assistant to reuse than a marketing paragraph. Price, availability, ratings and specifications belong in schema, not only in a theme section. Arenza deploys schema and JSON-LD fixes for you on Pro at $299/month.
llms.txt. This file gives a model a clean, canonical map of what your brand is and what it sells. It is a small file with outsized leverage. It is also easy to leave unwritten forever. Arenza's Pro tier deploys it for you.
Product copy that answers a literal buyer question. Assistants lift sentences that stand alone. A line like "fits a 15-inch laptop and weighs 780g" is built to survive extraction; "engineered for the modern commuter" is not. This is where the verbatim answers earn their keep, because you can read the phrasing the model already prefers.
An answer page an engine can lift. When a buyer asks a comparison or "which one should I buy" question, the engine needs a page that answers it directly. Arenza generates articles and publishes them to your own CMS or Shopify blog from Starter at $49/month, at 5 articles per month. Pro raises the ceiling to 100 articles per month. Pro also hosts them on your own domain at brand.com/blogs/, so the resulting authority is designed to accrue to your store.
3. The verbatim answer, not the score, tells you which sentence to rewrite
A number tells you that something is wrong. The sentence tells you what. Arenza shows the verbatim AI answers from the Free tier, alongside brand accuracy checks and the brands AI cites as evidence.
The accuracy surface is often the fastest thing to act on. Arenza detects outdated specs, false claims, brand-attribution errors and category miscategorization. Each one is reported with severity, frequency and the quote itself. If an assistant is quoting a discontinued variant, or filing you under the wrong category, no amount of extra content fixes it. You correct the source, then re-scan.
4. A score without coverage can hide the whole problem
Two stores can post the same conversion score. One appeared in a tiny share of the answers scanned; the other appeared in most of them. The first score rests on thin evidence, the second on broad evidence, and a headline number that omits coverage flatters both equally.
Arenza is deliberate here. ACS is scored only over the answers where the business actually appeared, and it always ships with its coverage. When a brand is absent, AVS is 0 and ACS is not scored at all, never 0. Absence is a visibility fact. Pretending it is a conversion failure would send you to fix the wrong thing.
5. Cost math: what the loop costs at each tier
Start with $0. Arenza's Free tier needs no credit card. It scans your brand across three AI assistants in one market, weekly. You get AVS and ACS, all buyer intents, verbatim AI answers, brand accuracy, and the brands AI cites shown as evidence. It does not include tracked competitors, articles or API access.
Starter at $49/month adds daily scans on three AI assistants, in one market, with unlimited tracked competitors and head-to-head comparison. It adds 5 articles per month published to your own CMS or Shopify blog, plus API, MCP, Slack and Lark. Starter does not include own-domain hosting, off-site analysis, or auto-deployed technical fixes.
Pro at $299/month is the line where the loop closes. It adds daily scans on all three AI assistants, 3 markets and 3 brands, and articles hosted on your own domain. It also adds on-site technical fixes deployed for you, covering llms.txt, schema and JSON-LD, plus off-site analysis of where to publish next, Arenza Agents and white-label. The 100 articles per month is headroom for a catalogue or a portfolio, not a quota to fill.
If you sell into all four measured markets, note the ceiling. No purchasable tier covers four at once, so pick the market where the revenue is and start there.
A Performance tier is also available, on an outcome basis, sales-led at hello@arenza.ai. Arenza runs ARC end to end and is paid when the agreed outcome happens.
Arenza meters tracked prompts too, and the number belongs next to everyone else's. Arenza tracks 10 prompts on Free, 30 on Starter and 120 on Pro. Buyer intents are uncapped on every tier, but tracked prompts are not, so compare prompt counts against prompt counts.
The choice comes down to this
If you only need to know whether ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity mention your store, start free at $0. Read the verbatim answers before you spend anything.
If you can write and publish yourself, but want the articles and the competitor comparison, start with Starter at $49/month. Push the articles straight to your Shopify blog.
If nobody on your team is going to hand-edit JSON-LD or write llms.txt, go to Pro at $299/month. Pro deploys those on-site technical fixes for you and hosts articles on your own domain.
If you want the outcome rather than the operating, talk to hello@arenza.ai about the Performance tier.
FAQ
What is AEO, and how is it different from SEO for my Shopify store?
AEO is about being the answer an assistant gives, not a link it lists. Classic SEO optimizes for a ranked page of results a shopper clicks through. Answer engine optimization targets the synthesized reply itself. The work shifts toward machine-readable facts and self-contained sentences a model can lift. Both matter, but they reward different page structures.
Which changes on my Shopify store actually affect how an AI assistant answers?
Four surfaces do most of the work. They are structured data and JSON-LD, an llms.txt file, product copy that answers a buyer question literally, and answer pages built around real purchase questions. Specifications written as plain, standalone sentences are designed to travel better than atmospheric brand copy. Arenza's Pro tier at $299/month deploys the llms.txt, schema and JSON-LD changes for you.
Do I have to pay to find out whether AI assistants mention my store?
No. Arenza's Free tier is $0 with no credit card, and scans your brand across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity in one market. It returns AVS and ACS, all buyer intents, weekly scans, verbatim AI answers, brand accuracy checks, and the brands AI cites as evidence.
Can I publish the articles to my Shopify blog, or do they sit on someone else's domain?
You can publish to your own Shopify blog or CMS starting on Starter at $49/month, which includes 5 articles per month. Pro at $299/month raises that to 100 articles per month. Pro also hosts articles on your own domain at brand.com/blogs/. Hosting on your own domain is designed so the resulting authority accrues to your store rather than to a vendor's site.
Why would my conversion score be blank instead of zero?
Because your brand did not appear in those answers at all. ACS is scored only over answers where the business actually appeared. Absence leaves AVS at 0 and leaves ACS unscored rather than 0. A zero would wrongly claim the assistant discussed you and failed to sell you. ACS is always shown together with its coverage, so you can see how many answers it is based on.