Gorgias alternatives for a small Shopify store, and when to stay

For a two-person store where most messages ask "where is my order?", Gorgias with its AI Agent costs between $90 and $225 a month in our worked example below, depending on how many order questions the AI answers. Here is where those numbers come from, and what else you could use.

Why small stores look past Gorgias

You pay by ticket. Gorgias doesn't charge per agent. It charges per ticket: a conversation that includes a reply from a person, a rule or AI Agent. Starter is $10 a month for 50 tickets, 3 seats and monthly billing only. Basic is $60 a month for 300 tickets ($50 billed yearly). Above the plan, each ticket costs $0.40 on Starter and Basic.

AI Agent is billed on top, and counts as a ticket too. On monthly billing, AI Agent adds $30 a month on Starter or Basic for 30 automated interactions (Gorgias lists $1.00 per interaction on monthly billing and $0.90 on annual), so Basic becomes $90. Each interaction also uses up a helpdesk ticket. Beyond the 30, Gorgias lists $1.50 per interaction, and the worked example below uses that rate.

Order lookups count as automation. An automated interaction is any request solved without a person, whether by AI Agent or by Gorgias's own Flows, Quick Responses or Order Management. So order-tracking answers that Flows, Order Management or AI Agent resolve without a person are metered.

Here is one month, worked out. Say you get 200 conversations, and 120 of them ask where an order is. On Basic with AI Agent, billed monthly, the $90 covers 300 tickets and 30 automated interactions. If AI Agent answers all 120 order questions, that is 90 over the allowance at $1.50 each, $135, so the month comes to $225, the most this month can cost. If it answers fewer, each one fewer saves $1.50, down to the $90 floor. The 120 answers also count as tickets, but 200 in total still fits in 300. This is our arithmetic from the pricing page, not a quote.

Starter is thin. Its AI can't take actions such as cancelling an order or applying a discount. There is no free plan; the Shopify App Store listing shows a 7-day trial.

When Gorgias is still the right choice

Stay if people work in the helpdesk all day and a good share of it is email, SMS or phone. Its AI Agent can handle returns, refunds and order edits, not just answer questions, and it answers email, which ChatPal and Shopify Inbox don't.

It also fits if you sell on BigCommerce (from the Basic plan) or Magento (from Pro) as well as Shopify, or if most of your tickets are complaints and returns that need a person anyway.

How we chose

We picked tools that answer order questions in some form and publish prices. For each we read the pricing page, the help center and the Shopify App Store listing on September 29, 2026, and noted what is metered, which channels are included and how the AI answers. We make ChatPal; we did not test the other tools hands-on.

We left out Zendesk. It is priced per agent, from $55 an agent a month billed yearly on its Shopify listing, and AI resolutions past a monthly allowance are billed as overage by default. That suits a support team more than a two-person store.

Gorgias and six alternatives, by situation

The same month on each tool

Take the month from above: 200 conversations, 120 of them order questions the AI answers, and two people on the team. Each line prices those 120 AI-answered order questions in that tool's own unit.

• Gorgias: Basic with AI Agent, billed monthly: $90 covers 300 tickets and the first 30 interactions; the other 90 cost $1.50 each, $135, for $225 total.

• ChatPal: it counts AI replies, not conversations, so we assume three replies per order conversation. That is our guess, not a measure. It gives 360 replies, which fits the $20 plan (500 replies); at five per conversation it is 600, which needs the $50 plan (1,500). The free plan's 100 replies won't cover it. You get a warning at 80% and at 100% of the month's replies.

  So the same 120 order questions cost $20 to $50 in ChatPal against $225 in Gorgias. The units differ (replies against tickets and interactions), so treat it as a range, not a like-for-like price. ChatPal doesn't answer email, so email stays in Gorgias or your mail inbox. If you kept Gorgias Starter ($10 for 50 tickets) for email and used ChatPal for order chats, that would be $30 to $60 a month, before any tickets past 50.

• Shopify Inbox: $0 for the app, on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus Shopify plans, but it answers only in your store's chat window. Order questions on WhatsApp, Instagram or email still need another tool or a person.

• Re:amaze: we priced Basic. For two people it is $58 a month with 10 AI resolutions included; 110 more at $0.85 add $93.50, about $152.

• Richpanel: two agents at the Shopify listing's $89 a month plus $89 for the second user is $178 a month billed monthly, plus 120 AI conversations at $0.20 ($24), about $202.

• eDesk: Essential for two is $98 billed monthly, plus 120 outcomes at $0.99, about $217.

• Tidio: we didn't price it. It publishes Customer Service at $29 a month for 100 conversations and Lyro AI from $39, billed in USD through Shopify, but not how many Lyro conversations $39 buys, so count in its unit.

If your conversations run longer, or more of them need a person, count your own month in each tool's unit before you choose. Prices were checked on September 29, 2026.

Gorgias or ChatPal: which fits

Choose Gorgias if:

• a good share of your support arrives by email, SMS or phone;
• you want the AI to process returns, refunds or cancellations itself;
• more than one person works a shared queue every day and needs rules and automations.

Choose ChatPal if:

• most questions are about orders and products, and they come in through your site chat, WhatsApp, Instagram or Telegram;
• your order chats fit within a plan's reply count (500 on the $20 plan, 1,500 on the $50 plan);
• your customers will sign in to your store to ask about an order. The assistant answers order questions only after the customer signs in to their store account, so check with a guest order whether your customers can do that;
• you are happy for cancellations and delivery changes to come to you as a request, with the order number and the customer's own words.

On WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and Telegram, ChatPal answers only when the customer writes first. On all four it reads up to 4 photos per message (10 MB each), so a photo of a damaged parcel works. Voice messages and video are not answered on any of them, and it takes no voice calls. On Instagram it doesn't see which story a reply refers to, and story mentions aren't supported; Telegram works in private chats only.

Moving off Gorgias

1. Export before you cancel. A view export gives ticket details such as tags, channel, customer and dates, without the messages, and its download link lasts 14 days. The analytics export that includes message text covers the most recent 30 days; for older message history, ask Gorgias support for a custom export. Gorgias deletes your data within 90 days of the contract ending.

2. Bring your Help Center along. Gorgias can't export Help Center articles directly; you ask its support. If your Help Center is public, you can add its pages in ChatPal as website links instead, and the assistant answers from them.

3. Decide what to rebuild. List the Gorgias rules and macros that answer order questions; those are the ones to recreate first. Richpanel has a one-click importer for Gorgias tickets, macros, tags and users.

4. Connect your store, then test order support on your own order. In ChatPal, click Integrations → Shopify in the left navigation, enter your store's Shopify address and click Connect Shopify. Then find Order support. The first time, Grant order access opens Shopify's permission screen, and the switch turns on by itself when you come back. If your store still uses classic customer accounts, the same section says so, and customers can't sign in from the chat until you move to the new ones.

   What the customer sees: on your website they tap Continue once, a small window opens and closes itself, and the answer arrives. Someone already signed in to your store types nothing; someone who isn't sees your store's login first. On WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram the assistant sends a sign-in link. Test with a guest order too if your store allows guest checkout.

5. Move WhatsApp last. A phone number can be tied to only one WhatsApp account at a time (Gorgias docs). ChatPal needs the number to be either live in the WhatsApp Business app, if you keep the app, or free of the WhatsApp app, if you move it, so check the Gorgias setup and the ChatPal connect popup first. Do the switch at a quiet hour. Start with your site chat instead: take the Gorgias chat widget off your store when you add the new one, so the chat has one tool. Run it for a week or two and read its answers in Chats in ChatPal's left navigation, then move the number.

If you are still choosing between chat tools for a small store, the list of AI chatbots for Shopify stores compares six of them.

If you are also weighing Tidio, see Tidio alternatives. For the order questions themselves, see how to answer "where is my order?" on Shopify.