Gorgias vs Zendesk
Pick Gorgias if you sell on Shopify and most tickets are about an order, because its AI Agent cancels and edits unfulfilled orders and reships lost ones by itself, and the bill follows ticket volume with no charge per agent. Pick Zendesk if phone is a main channel, your data has to live in Europe or Asia Pacific, or a security review asks for more than SOC 2. In most cases the deciding question is whether your queue is mostly order changes, which Gorgias automates on its own AI price, or calls and compliance, where Zendesk has the deeper product.
| Fact | Gorgias | Zendesk |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $40/ticket | $25/agent/mo |
| Plans | Starter, Basic, Pro, Advanced, Custom plan, Enterprise | Support Team, Suite Team, Suite Growth, Suite Professional, Suite Enterprise + Copilot |
| Best for | Ecommerce brands, Shopify merchants | Large support orgs, Multi-brand deployments, Complex routing |
| Deployment | Cloud | Cloud |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, US | San Francisco, US |
| Founded | 2015 | 2007 |
| Facts checked |
Which one fits your team?
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Pick Gorgias if
Pick Zendesk if
Tick what describes your team. We'll tell you which way it leans.
What each costs
The same team on both: 5 agents, 1,500 tickets a month, 300 of them resolved by the AI agent with no human involved, billed annually. The two AI meters are close enough to price at one volume. Gorgias counts an automated interaction when no agent gets involved within 72 hours, and Zendesk counts an automated resolution when its AI agent resolves a conversation without escalation.
Gorgias's plan is Pro, the smallest whose 2,000-ticket allowance covers 1,500 (Basic plus overage would run $77 + $480 in ticket overage + $405 in AI overage = $962 a month). Zendesk's is Suite Growth, the cheapest plan on its pricing page with SLA management.
Gorgias Pro, billed annually
- Plan: $471 a month, $5,652 a year, for 2,000 tickets and 190 AI interactions a month, with no charge per agent. The 300 AI-resolved tickets count against both allowances
- AI past the allowance: (300 − 190) × $1.50 = $165 a month, $1,980 a year
- Year one: $5,652 + $1,980 = $7,632
Zendesk Suite Growth, billed annually
- Seats: 5 × $89 = $445 a month, $5,340 a year
- AI: 10 included resolutions per agent a month is 50. The other 250 × $1.50 committed = $375 a month, $4,500 a year ($6,000 at the $2.00 pay-as-you-go rate)
- Year one: $5,340 + $4,500 = $9,840
At five agents Gorgias is $2,208 cheaper. Seats widen the gap. At 10 agents Gorgias stays at $7,632, while Zendesk reaches $14,280 (10 × $89 × 12 = $10,680, plus 200 resolutions past a 100 allowance at $1.50, $3,600 a year). Ticket volume narrows it. Past 2,000 tickets Gorgias charges $0.36 a ticket, and Advanced, its next plan, is $1,227 a month billed annually.
Zendesk Suite Team is the cheaper seat. Five agents cost 5 × $55 × 12 = $3,300 a year, plus 275 resolutions past a 25 allowance at $1.50, $4,950 a year, for $8,250. It has no SLA management, and Zendesk's export help article keeps its export tools off Team plans (the "Data exports" tick on its pricing table covers report exports only), so we wouldn't budget an ecommerce team on it.
Fees the headline leaves out:
- Gorgias: Voice and SMS are add-ons, billed in tiers by Voice or SMS ticket. Voice starts at $25 a month and SMS at $17 a month, billed annually, and the price rises with call and text volume. The add-on section says any plan, but Gorgias's comparison table leaves them off Starter, so check before buying Starter
- Zendesk: text messages, phone numbers and call minutes are add-ons on Suite plans
- Zendesk: Copilot, which takes actions in Shopify such as returns with an agent's oversight, is $50 per agent a month billed annually, from Suite Professional up, so a Suite Growth team would move up a plan to add it. That is another $3,000 a year for five agents on top of Professional's seats. Refunds and cancellations from the ticket sidebar don't need it
- Zendesk: its AI agents page says resolutions are now priced in tiers by the value each one delivers, and gives no rate. Its billing article describes the per-resolution model as the one in place before May 18, 2026, when resolution tiers were introduced. We priced the $1.50 committed rate from the pricing page. Ask Zendesk which model a new account gets
Gorgias plans
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed annually | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $40 | – | 50 tickets/month and 30 automated interactions included. |
| Basic | $90 | $77 | 300 tickets/month and 30 automated interactions included. |
| Pro | $550 | $471 | 2,000 tickets/month and 190 automated interactions included. |
| Advanced | $1,430 | $1,227 | 5,000 tickets/month and 530 automated interactions included. |
| Custom plan | Contact sales | – | For teams over 5,000 conversations a month with complex security, compliance, or integration needs. |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | – | Custom volume, quoted. |
Prices are a month, in US dollars. Source: gorgias.com/pricing, checked ; docs.gorgias.com/en-US/legacy-pricing-for-helpdesk-and-ai-agent…, checked .
Zendesk plans
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed annually | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Support Team | $25 | $19 | Ticketing without the wider Suite. |
| Suite Team | $69 | $55 | The entry point to the Suite, which is where the AI and the extra channels start. |
| Suite Growth | $115 | $89 | Listed in the "Compare all plan features" table on Zendesk's pricing page, not on the plan cards. |
| Suite Professional | $149 | $115 | Marked Most Popular by Zendesk. |
| Suite Enterprise + Copilot | Contact sales | – | Quoted, not published. |
Prices are an agent a month, in US dollars. Source: zendesk.com/pricing, checked .
Where the features differ
30 of the 30 features we checked on both differ in availability or the plan you need. Each answer links to the page on the vendor’s own site that says so.
| Feature | Gorgias | Zendesk |
|---|---|---|
| Channels | ||
| Contact form and widget | Every plansource | Some plansfrom Suite Teamsource |
| Every plansource | Every plansource | |
| Live chat | Every plansource | Some plansfrom Suite Teamsource |
| Phone | Paid add-onfrom Starter (Voice add-on)source | Some plansfrom Suite Teamsource |
| SMS | Paid add-onfrom Starter (SMS add-on)source | Some plansfrom Suite Teamsource |
| Social DMs | Every plansource | Some plansfrom Suite Teamsource |
| Every plansource | Some plansfrom Suite Teamsource | |
| AI and automation | ||
| Agent copilot | Every plansource | Paid add-onfrom Suite Professionalsource |
| AI agent (customer-facing) | Paid add-onfrom Starter (AI Agent subscription)source | Every plansource |
| AI agent takes actions | Paid add-onfrom Starter (AI Agent subscription)source | Paid add-onsource |
| AI pricing published | Every plansource | Every plansource |
| Automation rules | Every plansource | Every plansource |
| Intent detection and routing | Every plansource | Some plansfrom Suite Professionalsource |
| Macros and saved replies | Every plansource | Every plansource |
| Self-service | ||
| Customer-facing help centre | Every plansource | Some plansfrom Suite Teamsource |
| Multilingual support | Every plansource | Some plansfrom Suite Growthsource |
| Workflow and admin | ||
| Audit log | Every plansource | Some plansfrom Suite Enterprisesource |
| Custom fields | Every plansource | Every plansource |
| Native mobile app for agents | Every plansource | Some plansfrom Suite Growthsource |
| Public API | Every plansource | Every plansource |
| Roles and permissions | Every plansource | Some plansfrom Suite Enterprisesource |
| Single sign-on | Some plansfrom Advancedsource | Every plansource |
| SLA management | Every plansource | Some plansfrom Suite Growthsource |
| Reporting and quality | ||
| QA and agent scoring | Paid add-onfrom Starter (AI Agent subscription)source | Paid add-onsource |
| Reporting dashboards | Every plansource | Every plansource |
| Ecommerce | ||
| Multiple storefronts | Every plansource | Some plansfrom Suite Growthsource |
| Order actions in the ticket | Every plansource | Some plansfrom Suite Teamsource |
| Security and reliability | ||
| HIPAA | Every plansource | Some plansfrom Suite Professionalsource |
| Public status page | Every plansource | Every plansource |
| SOC 2 Type II | Every plansource | Every plansource |
Shopify orders and the AI agent
Gorgias handles this better, by a wide margin for a Shopify store.
- Gorgias's AI Agent cancels an unfulfilled order with restock and full refund, edits the shipping address once the shopper confirms it, removes or swaps an item, reships a lost or damaged order free and adds an order note
- Its limits are written down. Cancels and address edits apply to unfulfilled orders only, a cancellation happens in Shopify only, so an order already sent to a 3PL needs a 3PL Action such as ShipStation, ShipMonk or ShipBob, and a swap that raises the total goes to a person
- Agents get the order toolkit in the ticket sidebar: create, duplicate, cancel, refund, edit (orders up to 60 days old), draft order, shipping address and tags
- Zendesk's Shopify integration, on every Suite plan from Suite Team, lets agents refund an order from the ticket sidebar, fulfilled or not, in full or line by line, and cancel an unfulfilled one. Its help article lists no order edits, address changes or draft orders
- Zendesk says Copilot can take actions in third-party systems such as Shopify and, with agent oversight, trigger actions like processing returns. It doesn't list which Shopify order changes it makes. Copilot is an agent-side add-on at $50 per agent a month
- Zendesk includes AI agents on every plan and says they take actions across connected systems, but its AI agents page doesn't name Shopify or list which order changes they make on their own
Channels and phone
Zendesk handles phone better. Gorgias puts the ecommerce messaging channels on every plan.
- Gorgias includes email, live chat, Instagram and Facebook DMs, WhatsApp and a contact form on every plan, Starter included
- Gorgias's AI Agent answers on email, chat, SMS, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, in more than 80 languages
- Gorgias Voice and SMS are separate add-ons, and the Gorgias mobile app can't take calls
- Zendesk's Support Team plan, $19 an agent a month billed annually, is email ticketing only. Messaging, live chat and telephony start at Suite Team, $55 an agent a month billed annually
- Zendesk Suite Professional adds IVR, plus overflow and after-hours call routing
- A team that takes more calls than chats gets more from Zendesk Suite Professional, where IVR and call routing come with the seat and phone numbers and call minutes are extra
Compliance, hosting and getting your data out
Zendesk is stronger here, with conditions on its cheaper plans.
- Zendesk hosts in the United States, Europe (EEA) and Asia Pacific. Its pricing table lists data center location on Suite Professional, with the UK as a fourth choice and some restrictions. Suite Growth and the Team plans don't include it, and the other route is the Data Center Location add-on, whose price isn't published
- Zendesk lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, 27017, 27018, 27701 and 42001, FedRAMP LI-SaaS and HDS. Its Trust Center says HIPAA needs the Advanced Security or Advanced Compliance add-on, its required security settings and a signed BAA, yet its pricing table marks Suite Professional "HIPAA Enabled", so get the terms in writing
- Gorgias lists SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA compliance, runs on Google Cloud, and states no choice of hosting region
- Gorgias offers Google and Microsoft 365 sign-in, and custom SSO through OpenID Connect on Advanced and Enterprise. Its pricing page lists SAML SSO and SCIM for custom plans. Zendesk lists SAML, OpenID Connect and JWT
- Zendesk's export help article puts its export tools on Suite Growth and above or Support Professional, and points Team plans to the REST API. The "Data exports" tick on every plan in its pricing table covers exporting reports, not ticket data
- Even on a qualifying Zendesk plan, exports stay off until the account owner asks Zendesk support, and CSV exports leave out ticket comments and descriptions
How we checked this
- Plan prices are the readings on file from each vendor's rendered pricing page
- Checked 2026-10-29
Sources
- gorgias.com/pricing
- docs.gorgias.com/en-US/how-youre-billed-for-using-gorgias-199385
- helpcenter.gorgias.com/en-US/ai-agent-explained-497772
- docs.gorgias.com/en-US/ai-agent-actions-make-changes-to-shopify…
- helpcenter.gorgias.com/en-US/shopify-actions-461552
- docs.gorgias.com/en-US/set-up-custom-sso-for-gorgias-2553083
- docs.gorgias.com/en-US/user-permissions-196938
- docs.gorgias.com/en-US/gorgias-mobile-app-82015
- gorgias.com/security
- zendesk.com/pricing
- support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/5352026794010
- zendesk.com/service/ai/ai-agents
- zendesk.com/service/ai/copilot
- zendesk.com/trust-center
- support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408886165402
- support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408837984026
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