Gorgias alternatives for small Shopify stores
What Gorgias costs a small Shopify store each month, and what seven alternatives cost instead, from Shopify's free inbox to full help desks.
Gorgias is the help desk many Shopify stores start with, because it is made for them. For a small store, though, the bill can grow faster than expected. Its Basic plan is $60 a month for 300 tickets, and its AI Agent costs $1 for each conversation it resolves on its own. A conversation the AI resolves also counts as one of your tickets, so you pay for it twice. For a store with 500 conversations a month, where the AI resolves 300 of them, that comes to about $440 a month, or $400 if you pay yearly.
I looked at seven alternatives and worked out what each would cost that store a month, using each company's own pricing page. The cheapest is free and the most expensive is $438. ChatFrom, which I make, is one of them, but it is not a help desk, and for some stores that matters more than the price.
What Gorgias costs a small store
Gorgias does not charge for each person on your team. It charges by tickets, which is every conversation that gets a reply from your team, a rule or its AI. These are the plans a small store chooses between.
| Gorgias plan | Tickets a month | Paid monthly | Paid yearly, per month | Each extra ticket |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 50 | $10 | Not offered | $0.40 |
| Basic | 300 | $60 | $50 | $0.40 |
| Pro | 2,000 | $360 | $300 | $0.36 |
The AI Agent comes on top. On Basic it starts as a bundle of 30 conversations for $30 a month, and the pricing page puts each one it resolves at $1.00 if you pay monthly and $0.90 if you pay yearly. A conversation counts as resolved when nobody on your team has to step in within three days. If someone does, you pay for the ticket only.
The part that surprises people is that a resolved conversation is charged both ways, once as an AI conversation and once as a ticket. Order tracking and automated flows count as AI conversations too. For the store above, 500 conversations are 200 more than Basic's 300 tickets, which adds $80, and the 300 the AI resolves add another $300.
In return you get a lot. Gorgias puts email, chat, social messages and WhatsApp in one inbox, and its AI can cancel an order that has not shipped, change the address before it ships, swap or remove an item, and send an order again for free. Returns go through Loop or AfterShip. There is no free plan, and the trial lasts seven days.
A help desk, or answers?
Before you compare prices, it helps to know which of two jobs you are paying for. A help desk is where a team works. Every conversation becomes a ticket with a status and an owner, and several people share one inbox. An AI that answers is for the questions that come every day, such as where an order is or how returns work, answered from your store and your pages without anyone at the desk.
Gorgias sells both, and so do most of the alternatives below. A small store with one or two people often needs mostly the second, and pays help desk prices for it. If most of your messages are about orders, delivery and returns, that is worth knowing before you choose.
The alternatives at a glance
Here is what each one is, how it charges for AI, and what its AI can do with a Shopify order.
| What it is | Price to start | How the AI is paid for | What the AI can do with an order | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gorgias | Help desk for online stores | $10 a month for 50 tickets | $0.90 to $1.00 per resolved conversation, which also counts as a ticket | Look it up, cancel or change it before it ships |
| Shopify Inbox | Shopify's free chat inbox | Free | Included | Look it up once the customer signs in |
| Tidio | Live chat and help desk | Free, then $24.17 a month | Bundles, from $39 a month for 50 conversations | Look up its status |
| Help Scout | Email help desk | Free for 5 users, then $25 a user a month | $0.75 per resolution, in website chat only | None, your team can refund or cancel from the sidebar |
| Re:amaze | Help desk for online stores | $29 a user a month | 5 to 20 resolutions a user included, then $0.85 each | Reads order details, your team can refund or cancel |
| Richpanel | Help desk with AI built in | $299 a month on an annual plan | About $0.20 a conversation, with a $200 monthly minimum | Track, edit before shipping, exchanges and returns, refunds after approval |
| Crisp | Chat inbox with an AI called Hugo | Free for 2 seats, then $45 a month | Credits included from $45 a month | Not said, though Shopify connects on every plan |
| ChatFrom | A chatbot that answers and looks up orders | Free, then $29 a month | Included in the plan | Look it up and request a return, which you approve |
What each one costs a month
Here is what each one would cost that store every month. It gets about 500 conversations, the AI handles 300 of them without anyone stepping in, and two people answer the rest. The prices are for paying monthly, with the yearly price in brackets where there is one.
| A month (paid yearly) | How it adds up | |
|---|---|---|
| Gorgias Basic | $440 ($400) | $60 plan, 200 extra tickets at $0.40, 300 AI conversations at $1.00 |
| Richpanel | $438 ($398) | Two seats at $119, and the $200 AI minimum |
| Re:amaze Basic | $304.50 ($298.70) | Two users at $29, 10 resolutions included, 290 more at $0.85 |
| Help Scout Standard | $285 ($275) | Two users at $30, 300 resolutions at $0.75 |
| Tidio Growth with Lyro | $269 ($224.17) | Growth for 250 conversations at $59, and the 300-conversation Lyro bundle at $210 |
| Crisp Essentials | About $95 | Ten seats, with AI credits for about 450 conversations |
| ChatFrom Pro | $29 | About 1,500 replies, one credit each, of the 7,000 included |
| Shopify Inbox | $0 | Free, chat on your store only |
Two things move these numbers more than anything else. The first is how much of the AI is paid for per conversation. Every help desk here charges for each conversation its AI handles, so the bill rises with how well the AI works. The second is whether you pay for people. Re:amaze, Help Scout and Richpanel charge per person, Gorgias by tickets, and Crisp, Tidio and ChatFrom by plan.
A few of these prices come with small print. Gorgias publishes only a 30-conversation AI bundle on Basic. If the higher rate its blog gives for conversations over the bundle applied, the bill would be $575 a month instead. Help Scout gives new accounts their first three months of AI free, so for those months the bill is $60. And Richpanel showed me two different pricing pages depending on where I opened it from, so ask them which applies to you.
The alternatives, one by one
Shopify Inbox
Shopify Inbox is Shopify's own chat app, and it is free. Its AI answers questions about your products, shipping and returns from your catalog and policies, recommends products and can add them to the cart. It can look up an order once the customer signs in to their account, and a separate Track my order answer works with the order number and email.
It only works in the chat on your store, so there is no email or social inbox, and it needs a Basic Shopify plan or higher. When nobody is around, it gives the customer your email address. If you are happy to answer chats yourself and want something free, start here.
Tidio
Tidio is live chat and a simple help desk in one, with Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp on every plan, including the free one. Its AI is called Lyro and comes in bundles, from 50 conversations at $39 a month to 1,000 at $700. Lyro can look up an order's status in Shopify on every plan.
The bundles are the thing to watch. A conversation that Lyro answers and a person then picks up counts in both quotas, and there is no published price for going past your bundle, so you choose a size in advance. For the store above, that comes to $269 a month, or $224.17 if you pay yearly.
Help Scout
Help Scout is an email help desk that many teams like for its simplicity. You pay per user, from $25 a month if you pay yearly, and its AI costs $0.75 for each chat it resolves. You can set a spending cap, after which the AI switches off for the rest of the month.
For a Shopify store it has two gaps. The AI answers in website chat only, since email is listed as coming soon. And while your team can refund, cancel or edit an order from the sidebar, Help Scout does not say its AI can look one up. It suits a team that mostly works by email and wants a calm inbox.
Re:amaze
Re:amaze is the closest to Gorgias in what it does, a help desk made for online stores with email, chat and social in one place. You pay per user, $29 a month on Basic, and each user brings five AI resolutions a month. After that, each one is $0.85. There is also a $59 plan for unlimited users with up to 500 conversations a month, but its AI resolutions are all charged, and replies from its chatbot count toward the 500.
Its Shopify connection shows every order and lets your team refund, cancel or create a draft order. Its AI reads order details to answer, but Re:amaze does not say it can change an order on its own. For the store above, that comes to $304.50 a month.
Richpanel
Richpanel is built around its AI, and its AI does the most with orders of anything here. It can track an order, change the address before it ships, handle exchanges and returns, and prepare a refund that waits for your approval. Each action has its own permission.
The cost is the entry price. Seats are $99 a month if you pay yearly or $119 if you pay monthly, and the AI has a $200 monthly minimum, so one person plus AI starts at $299. There is no trial, only a demo and a pilot. For a store that answers a few hundred conversations a month, the minimum is most of the AI bill.
Crisp
Crisp charges per workspace, not per person, which makes it cheap for a small team. The free plan has two seats and a chat inbox. Essentials is $95 a month for ten seats and adds Instagram, WhatsApp and phone, with credits for its AI, Hugo, that cover about 450 conversations. Crisp says a conversation Hugo handles costs about 5 to 10 cents, and when the credits run out, Hugo stops and passes conversations to your team.
Crisp's Shopify integration is on every plan, the free one included. I did not find anything saying Hugo can look orders up on its own.
ChatFrom
ChatFrom is what I make, and it is a different kind of product from the rest of this list. It is not a help desk. It is a chatbot that answers your customers from your store's pages, and when you connect your Shopify store, it finds an order from its number and the email used to buy, gives the tracking link, and sends a return request that you approve in Shopify. I wrote about how that works in the guide to an ecommerce chatbot for Shopify.
It costs $29 a month on Pro, with 7,000 credits. Each reply uses one, so the store above would use about 1,500 a month, with nothing added on top. The 200 conversations that need a person are handed to your team by email, in Slack or in Crisp. If you want a shared inbox for those, ChatFrom can answer inside Crisp's chat and step aside when your team writes. Crisp's documentation says its web hooks work on the free plan and lists its developer API there too, which would make the whole setup $29 for two people. I have not tried it on a free Crisp workspace yet, so check that before you rely on it.
What ChatFrom does not do
- It is not a help desk. There are no tickets, statuses or reports for a team. People answer in Crisp, by email or in Slack.
- It does not refund, cancel or change orders. It looks orders up and sends return requests, and every decision about money stays with you.
- It does not answer on Instagram or Facebook. It works on your website, WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Crisp and email.
- There is no app in the Shopify App Store yet. You create a small private app in your store and copy its two keys, which takes about ten minutes.
- It looks up orders from the last 60 days. Older ones need extra access from Shopify.
Common questions
Is there a free alternative to Gorgias?
Shopify Inbox is free and made by Shopify, though it only covers chat on your store. Tidio, Help Scout and Crisp have free plans with limits, and ChatFrom's free Hobby plan comes with 50 credits a month, enough to try it on real orders.
Why does Gorgias charge twice for one AI conversation?
Gorgias counts every conversation that gets a reply as a ticket, whether the reply comes from a person or its AI. A conversation the AI resolves is also charged as an AI conversation, so it appears on the bill twice.
Which alternative is most like Gorgias?
Re:amaze. It is a help desk made for online stores, with email, chat and social in one inbox and a Shopify connection your team can refund and cancel from. It charges per user instead of by tickets.
Can an AI refund or cancel orders on its own?
Some can. Gorgias' AI can cancel an order that has not shipped, and Richpanel's can prepare a refund that waits for your approval. ChatFrom leaves refunds and cancellations to you on purpose, and sends return requests for you to approve.
What does ChatFrom cost for a small store?
$29 a month on Pro, or $49 on Business. A typical conversation takes one to three replies, one credit each, and Pro includes 7,000 credits a month, so a store with a few hundred conversations stays well within it.
Which one to choose
| If | Look at | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You answer chats yourself and want it free | Shopify Inbox | Free, made by Shopify, with AI for product questions. |
| You want a help desk like Gorgias for less | Re:amaze | Close to Gorgias in what it does, and about $135 a month less for the store above. |
| Your team works mostly by email | Help Scout | A calm email inbox, with AI in chat priced per resolution. |
| You want AI to change orders, and have the budget | Richpanel | The most order actions, with approval for refunds. |
| You want chat, Instagram and WhatsApp in one cheap plan | Tidio or Crisp | Flat plans with AI bundles or credits. |
| Most of your messages are about orders, delivery and returns | ChatFrom | It answers them and looks up orders for $29 a month, and hands the rest to your team. |
If you need a help desk, the cheapest way to run one is to keep the AI part small, because that is what grows with every conversation. If you mostly need answers, you may not need a help desk at all. I would start with the question of which job you need done, then try one or two of these on a week of your real messages before you decide.
ChatFrom builds a chatbot that answers your customers from your store's pages and looks up orders and returns in Shopify. You can start on the free Hobby plan, with no card, and see how it compares on the compare page and the pricing page.