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Proactive AI in ecommerce is an assistant that starts a conversation or a message on its own, instead of waiting for the shopper to type first.
Most storefront chats wait. The button sits on the page until the shopper opens it and types. A proactive assistant does the opposite. It sends the first message, or opens the window, because of a rule the merchant set or a signal the tool claims to see: time on a page, a product viewed twice, the cursor moving toward the close button, an exit the tool predicts.
That first move changes the job. A shopper who typed a question asked for help. A shopper who received an unsolicited message did not. The message can still be welcome. It can also be a distraction on a page the shopper was about to buy from. Whether a vendor's proactive feature is a greeting, a discount, or a product suggestion is a fact to read on that vendor's page, not a fact implied by the word proactive.
Vorena does not do this today. Proactive chat is listed on Scale, Scale is coming soon, and the feature is not built. Lite and Starter wait for the shopper to start. The comparison that sets that ask-first concierge next to a product whose vendor describes proactive outreach is Vorena vs Carti.
If you are choosing a tool, separate two questions. Does it answer when the shopper asks? Does it speak first? An AI shopping assistant can do the first without the second. Buying one does not mean you bought the other.
What Vorena charges
Vorena uses flat monthly plans with a conversation allowance. It is not unlimited. Only Lite ($29 a month, 100 products and 50 conversations) and Starter ($99 a month, 250 products and 500 conversations) can be bought today. A conversation counts toward the allowance when it starts, and the allowance resets monthly. At the limit, the Vorena chat is hidden from the store until the allowance resets next month or the plan is upgraded. Chats already under way can finish. Nothing on Lite or Starter charges for extra conversations. Growth and Scale are coming soon. Plan changes go through Shopify. The pricing page lists both plans.