Gorgias Buyers Checklist: What to Check Before You Commit

Gorgias prices the whole account, not each person on it. It bills by billable tickets a month, so the first thing to check is your volume, not your headcount. Starter covers 50 tickets, Basic 300, Pro 2,000 and Advanced 5,000, and each ticket past the limit is billed as overage rather than blocked. The AI Agent adds a second meter on top, your store platform decides which features work at all, and the annual contract has notice rules that catch buyers late. Our verdict: Gorgias suits Shopify brands that can estimate their monthly ticket count within a few hundred. Skip it if you need a general service desk. Skip it too if you sell on WooCommerce and want automation.

Count the tickets you will actually pay for

A billable ticket is a conversation on any channel that gets at least one message sent from the helpdesk by a human agent, a Rule or the AI Agent, and it counts once however many messages follow.^[1] Plenty of traffic stays free. Tickets nobody answers, tags and internal notes without a reply, spam, newsletters and auto-responders (filtered automatically), replies sent directly inside Facebook or Instagram, and imported emails you never answer all stay off the bill. So your real number is replies, not inbound messages.

Two rules push the count up. First, a Rule auto-reply makes the ticket billable, so a we got your message rule turns every inbound email into a paid ticket. Second, a customer reply after a quiet spell opens a new ticket: email splits after more than 10 days, chat, SMS and voice after more than 3 days.^[2] A shopper who writes back two weeks after delivery can cost you twice. Count those reopenings when you size your plan.

The thresholds matter more than the list prices. By our arithmetic, on monthly billing the cheaper plan plus overage catches up with the next plan's price at 175 tickets a month (Starter against Basic) and at 1,050 tickets a month (Basic against Pro). Below those points, paying overage is cheaper. Above them, move up. Past 5,000 conversations a month, the custom Enterprise plan is sold through sales, and no price for it is published. Full plan detail sits in our pricing guide.

• Pull one busy month of email, chat and social threads and count only the ones that got a reply.
• Add the reopen splits: email after 10 days, chat and SMS after 3.
• List every Rule that sends an auto-reply and decide whether it earns its ticket.
• Check seats: Starter allows 3 user seats, so a fourth user means Basic; from Basic up, adding people (up to 500) does not change the price.
• Remember Starter has no annual option; annual billing, about 17% cheaper by our arithmetic, starts on Basic.

Price the AI Agent as two meters, not one

The AI Agent is an add-on with its own allowance: 30 automated interactions a month on Starter and Basic, 190 on Pro and 530 on Advanced. Included interactions cost $1.00 each on monthly billing and $0.90 each on annual billing, and every interaction past the limit costs $1.50 on every plan. The catch is the double count. Each interaction the AI Agent resolves also counts as a billable helpdesk ticket, so it uses one of your plan's tickets, or adds ticket overage, and charges the automation fee as well.

Not every automation works that way. Flows, Order Management and Article Recommendations resolutions carry only the automation fee, with no ticket fee. And an interaction counts as automated only if the shopper does not reach a human within 72 hours; if they do, you pay the ticket fee alone. That window also means the most recent three days in AI reports are not final yet, so read last week's numbers, not yesterday's.

Run the overage case before you sign. By our arithmetic, an account with 190 included interactions that resolves 300 in a month pays 110 extra at $1.50 each, or $165 more, and those 300 resolutions also take 300 tickets from the helpdesk allowance. Volume spikes in November and December hit both meters at once. Our AI playbook covers what the agent can and cannot do once it runs. Budget for both meters.

• Confirm your store is on Shopify: the AI Agent, Shopping Assistant and Order Management work only with a connected Shopify store.
• On Starter you can buy the AI Agent, but Actions (such as cancelling an order or editing an address) and brand voice and guardrails start on Basic.
• Estimate monthly AI resolutions, then add them to your ticket count, not instead of it.
• Use test conversations and Flow test mode freely; neither creates billable tickets.

Match the plan to your store and your inbox

Gorgias is an e-commerce help desk, and the depth depends on the platform. Shopify gets the full set: order actions from the sidebar, the AI Agent and Order Management. BigCommerce works on Basic and higher, with order create, duplicate and refund but no AI Agent or Order Management. Magento 2 needs Pro or higher and has no built-in order actions; teams use an HTTP hook or a custom widget instead. WooCommerce shows profiles and orders in the sidebar only, with no order actions, rule conditions or AI features.

Email setup also follows the plan. On Basic and Pro you can connect Gmail or Outlook directly if you send fewer than 500 emails a day; Advanced and Enterprise must use automatic forwarding.^[3] Gorgias has no spam filter of its own, so your email provider has to catch spam first. Starter connects email by forwarding. Business and holiday hours and email-history import are listed for Basic and higher. Starter is a small-team plan.

• Write down your platform and check its lowest plan: BigCommerce Basic, Magento 2 Pro.
• Check your daily email volume against the 500-a-day line for direct Gmail or Outlook.
• Voice and SMS are add-ons with their own ticket counts, from $25 and $17 a month on annual pricing.
• If you leave Zendesk, its API tokens can no longer be created since 27 Oct 2026 and all stop on 30 Apr 2027, while the Gorgias importer asks for one. Confirm the import method with Gorgias first.

Check the reporting, security and data gates

Several features finance and IT ask about sit on higher plans. The revenue report, which ties tickets to Shopify sales, starts on Pro and needs a connected Shopify store. Audit logs also start on Pro and keep events for 12 months. Custom SSO through OpenID Connect, for providers such as Okta and JumpCloud, starts on Advanced; SAML SSO and SCIM provisioning belong to the custom Enterprise plan. Google and Microsoft sign-in and two-factor authentication work on every plan. Pick the plan for the gate you need, not only the ticket count.

Health and AI data need a closer read. Gorgias's Trust Center lists HIPAA and offers a Business Associate Agreement, yet its Master Subscription Agreement says customers must not upload protected health information under that agreement. Clear that with Gorgias in writing before any patient data arrives. On AI, the agreement lets Gorgias use Customer Data to build and improve its own models, while it will not use your data to train third-party providers' models, which run under zero data retention. Gorgias holds a SOC 2 Type II report.

• Ask for the BAA terms if you sell health products and confirm how they sit with the agreement.
• Read the AI data clause with your counsel before you connect order and customer data.
• Note hosting: Google Cloud in the US, EU and Australia, placed by your location.

Read the contract before you choose annual billing

Plans renew automatically for the same term. On an annual plan, written notice must reach Gorgias at least 30 days before the term ends, in the product or at billing@gorgias.com.^[4] Set a reminder 45 to 60 days ahead. Downgrades are not allowed mid-term, so the plan you sign carries you to renewal. Fees are non-refundable under the Master Subscription Agreement, except where the law requires or at Gorgias's discretion. Price rises need at least 60 days' notice before a renewal term.

Uninstalling the Gorgias app from Shopify does not cancel the subscription. Cancel under Settings, Billing instead; cancelling the helpdesk removes AI Agent, Voice and SMS at once, effective at the next renewal date. After termination, request your data export within 45 days, because Gorgias deletes customer data within 90 days. Help Center articles cannot be exported directly, so ask support for them. Do this before access ends.

Before any of that, use the trial well. It runs 7 days, needs no card and opens every feature, but you cannot build a help center during it. Setup is kept when you upgrade. An account that never upgrades is deleted with its data after 90 days. That is a short window. Plan your test week before you sign up, with real channels connected from day one.

• Test your real channels in the 7-day trial and count the tickets they create.
• Calendar the annual notice date the day you sign.
• Keep the Shopify app installed until the cancellation is confirmed.

The bottom line

Gorgias rewards buyers who know their numbers. If you can count replied conversations, add the reopen splits and the AI resolutions, and you sell on Shopify, the ticket model is easy to forecast and team size never moves the bill. If your volume swings wildly, your store runs on WooCommerce, or you need HIPAA cover in writing, settle those points with Gorgias first. Then pick the smallest plan whose gates you need, and set the renewal reminder before you forget.