E-commerce content: AI, copywriter or ChatGPT?

Three routes exist in 2026 for producing a store's content, blog articles and product descriptions alike: the professional copywriter, generic AI like ChatGPT, and the specialized tool wired into the store. Here is the comparison we would have liked to read, figures included. We sell the third option, which doesn't stop us being honest about the other two.

Price first

A copywriter charges €150 to 350 for a blog article (1,200 words, brief included), €300 to 500 if it's a consultant or an SEO agency taking on the angle, the data and rank tracking; and €50 to 150 for a worked product description. At four articles a month: €7,000 to 17,000 a year. To rewrite a 300-item catalog: €15,000 to 45,000. Those prices are justified, because typing is the smallest part of the work (the detail and the benchmarks).

ChatGPT costs €0 to 25 a month. The cost that bites is your time: 5 to 10 minutes of handling per piece (context to re-paste, instructions to repeat), plus the review, plus copying into PrestaShop field by field. Across a whole catalog, that runs into tens of hours.

A specialized tool (Publium, in this case) costs a fixed monthly subscription with a clear generation quota, nowhere near a per-article rate. Your time is limited to the brief and the review: count 15 to 30 minutes per article, 5 minutes per product description, publishing included.

Quality, plainly

The copywriter wins at the top end: a good writer who knows your sector produces content no machine matches, in tone, in angles and in actual research. But the market is uneven: at the floor rate, you're often paying… someone who uses ChatGPT without telling you.

Raw ChatGPT produces fluent, empty text by default. Well prompted, with your data pasted into the conversation, it climbs a long way. But the quality depends entirely on your rigor at every single generation, and it drifts over time (tone, format, forgotten instructions).

The tool wired into the catalog plays a different game: quality comes from the data injected automatically (products, features, price, photo) and from structural guardrails (tags at the right lengths, keyword checked, linking built in). The text alone is worth what a good prompt produces; consistency, SEO and publishing are another matter. Human review stays the rule: the AI drafts, you sign.

SEO: where the gap widens

Content can be well written and badly ranked. The three routes are not equal here:

• Copywriter: SEO depends on their profile. An SEO copywriter handles title, meta, headings and linking, at the top rate. A generalist delivers lovely text with no tags.
• ChatGPT: produces what you ask for, but nobody checks tag lengths or places internal links item after item. In real life, those steps get skipped.
• Specialized tool: the SEO constraints live inside the product. 70-character title tag, 160-character meta description, Google preview, keyword presence checks, products linked from the brief. You can't forget them, because they are the default path.

Turnaround and scale

• Copywriter: 1 to 3 weeks per batch, dependent on their availability. Going from 4 to 12 articles a month means renegotiating or juggling suppliers.
• ChatGPT: instant for one piece, but linear. Ten times the content, ten times your time. It's a helper, not a production chain.
• Specialized tool: built for batches, with queued generation, scheduled publishing and a monthly pace one person can hold. The gap only shows at scale.

What you take away

One criterion rarely compared: where does the text end up?

With a copywriter you get a document. With ChatGPT you get a conversation to copy from. With Publium you get a deliverable in four formats (Markdown, plain text, bare semantic HTML, HTML styled to your theme) with the SEO framing already applied, publishable from the app or usable anywhere else. It also means you can take only the production and keep your own publishing route: that use is supported.

The verdict by profile

You publish 1 to 2 pieces a month and budget isn't a concern → a good specialist copywriter. It's the luxury option, it costs, and it's worth it.

You have 12 products and time on your hands → well-prompted ChatGPT is enough. Keep the discipline on tags.

You have a catalog, a blog to keep alive, and no half-time to spend on it → the tool wired into the store is the only route that lasts. That's the case for most independent stores and for agencies running several clients.

Nothing forbids combining them: the tool for volume (product pages, guides, regular articles), a copywriter for flagship content (brand pages, in-depth features), ChatGPT to brainstorm. That's the combination we see most among advanced users.

The prices of all three approaches are on the pricing page, next to market rates.