Your store doesn't stop taking orders at 6pm, and neither does Arbyn. This page is about something narrower and just as useful: telling Arbyn what your team's actual working hours are, and choosing exactly what an emailing customer hears when a message lands outside them.
What it does
You set a weekly open and close time for each day of the week. When that schedule is on and an email arrives outside it, Arbyn sends a short, customizable acknowledgment instead of holding the message silently, then queues it for your team. A separate message covers a different situation entirely: what a customer hears if your store is at its plan's conversation limit for the month.
Where to find it
Settings → Hours and Greeting.
Setup (step by step)
Turn on Set business hours.
Your store's timezone is shown for reference, it's pulled directly from your Shopify store settings rather than picked here, so it's always accurate and never needs updating separately.
For each day, check the box to mark it open and set an open and close time (24-hour HH:MM, like 09:00 and 17:00). Leave a day unchecked to mark your store closed that day.
Under Outside business hours, turn the reply on and write the subject and message customers get when they email outside your schedule.
Under Agent paused, write the message customers get if your store reaches its monthly conversation limit. This is a completely separate situation from business hours, covered below.
Click Save.
How it works
This page only governs email. Your chat widget has no hours gate at all, it's available to shoppers around the clock regardless of anything set here. If you want a different welcome message in chat, or want the widget to hide outside certain hours, that's a separate setting under the chat widget's own content and behavior pages, not this one.
The schedule. When Set business hours is on, Arbyn checks every incoming email against your weekly schedule, interpreted in your store's real Shopify timezone (not a separate timezone picker, so it can never drift out of sync with the rest of your store). If the email arrives during an open window, Arbyn processes it completely normally. If it arrives outside your schedule, on a day marked closed, or before your opening time, or after closing, Arbyn does three things: it sends your outside-hours message to the customer, it marks that conversation as queued rather than drafting or sending a reply, and it never runs the AI on that message at all this turn. Your team picks it up like any other queued conversation once you're back. If Set business hours is off entirely, none of this applies, Arbyn answers emails the moment they arrive, any hour of the day.
The outside-hours message. This is a short, automatic acknowledgment, not an AI-written answer, so it's worth writing something genuinely useful: when you'll likely reply, a link to your FAQ, or anything else that helps a customer who just emailed you at 2am. You can use {{customer_name}} in the message and it's filled in automatically. It's sent once, immediately, has its own subject line you control, and it's separate from anything the AI would have said had the message arrived during business hours.
The agent-paused message. This one has nothing to do with your schedule. Starter and Growth each have a monthly conversation allowance, and Arbyn Agent has none (see Arbyn's plans and how conversation limits work for the exact numbers). Once a store on a capped plan goes over its allowance, new email conversations are queued for your team with zero AI processing rather than answered automatically. The agent-paused message is what that customer hears the moment that happens: a short, automatic note letting them know their message was received and a person will follow up, sent once per conversation so a customer waiting in the queue isn't emailed the same note again every time a new message comes in on the same thread. Turning this message off doesn't lift the limit, it only means a capped customer's first email gets no automatic acknowledgment at all while it waits in your team's queue.
Both messages are entirely optional. Turn either one off and Arbyn simply says nothing automatically in that situation, the email still gets queued for your team either way, only the customer-facing acknowledgment is skipped.
Good to know
Chat is always on. The schedule and both automatic messages on this page apply to email only. Nothing here changes how or when your chat widget is available to shoppers.
A closed schedule doesn't lose the email. It's queued for your team exactly like any other conversation, the AI is simply skipped for that turn so nobody gets an unreviewed automatic reply sent at 3am.
The agent-paused message is unrelated to your schedule. It fires only when your store's monthly conversation limit is reached, on any plan, any time of day, whether or not business hours are turned on.
Your timezone always matches your store. It's read from Shopify directly, there's no separate timezone picker to keep in sync.
Every setting saves independently and takes effect immediately on the very next email; it's never retroactive on messages already sitting in your inbox.
FAQ
Does turning off business hours mean Arbyn never sleeps? Yes, in the sense that matters: with the schedule off, Arbyn processes every email the moment it arrives, any hour, any day, with no automatic outside-hours message ever sent.
Will my chat widget hide when I'm closed? No. Chat has no hours gate; a shopper can open it and get an answer at any hour regardless of what's set here. This page only affects email.
What happens to an email that arrives outside my hours? Does Arbyn just ignore it? No. Arbyn sends your outside-hours message right away and queues the conversation for your team. It isn't answered by the AI on that turn, but it's sitting in your inbox waiting exactly like any other conversation once you're back.
Why is there a separate message for "agent paused"? Isn't that the same as outside hours? No, they're unrelated. The agent-paused message fires only when your store has used its full monthly conversation allowance, at any hour, whether your schedule is on or off. The outside-hours message fires only when an email arrives outside your set schedule.