Gorgias Chat: How to Set Up the Widget, Campaigns and AI

Gorgias Chat is the live chat widget that comes with every Gorgias Helpdesk plan, so switching it on adds no separate fee. The cheapest way in is Starter at $10 a month, billed monthly only, with 50 tickets a month included ^[1]. That bill grows with volume, not headcount: overage is charged per ticket, as our Gorgias pricing guide shows. Every chat conversation creates a ticket in the helpdesk. Chat itself is included; answered chats spend your ticket allowance, and automation on chat is the paid layer. Here is how to set it up without surprises.

What Gorgias Chat is, and what each chat costs

Only the account owner and admins can set chat up, while every user except Observers can answer chat tickets ^[2]. You can run a separate chat integration per store, each with its own wait time, Flows and look. Billing follows the ticket meter. A chat nobody answers is not billable. A chat that gets one reply from an agent, a Rule or AI Agent counts once, however long it runs. If the shopper comes back after more than 3 days of silence, that reply opens a new ticket.

The features around chat sit behind different gates, and the gate decides your setup order more than any setting does. The widget, its appearance and the chat report work on every Helpdesk plan. Everything that automates or sells on chat needs a subscription on top, and the AI pieces need a connected Shopify store. The grid below is the short version, with no prices, so you can see which rows apply to your store before you start.

Step 1: Install the widget where your store lives

On Shopify, Gorgias recommends quick installation, because it survives theme changes. It has one catch. Quick installation re-injects the default chat every time and removes custom code, so any scripted change needs the manual installation method instead. Headless storefronts on Shopify Hydrogen also go manual: you paste the embed code and pick the platform type for any other website. The widget installs on BigCommerce, Magento 2 and other websites too, but the store connection that feeds order data is gated by plan, from Basic for BigCommerce and from Pro for Magento 2.

After install, watch the integration status. A chat integration shows Not detected when no visitor has loaded the widget in the past 72 hours, which is the quickest way to spot a broken embed. If you plan to run campaigns, install the separate Campaign bundle as well. Gorgias split it from the chat package for security, and campaigns do not stay active or visible without it. Do this once per store, since each store gets its own integration.

Customizing the widget with code

Developers work through a global GorgiasChat object, available on every Helpdesk plan; the BigCommerce store connection itself needs Basic or higher. It loads asynchronously, so scripts must wait for it to initialize. Events include ready, widget opened and closed, message received and sent, unread count and campaign opened. Methods cover open, close, hideOnMobile, hideOutsideBusinessHours, captureUserEmail, updateTexts for labels, setPosition and disableAttachments. You can also set custom business hours by script in IANA time zones, and a gs_open_chat URL parameter opens chat on page load.

Two defaults deserve a decision. The chat opens by itself for returning visitors whose last visit was under four days ago, except on mobile, unless you disable it. Gorgias also runs Segment analytics inside the widget, which disableSegment turns off. Keep a developer on any custom code. The button, window and campaigns render in separate iframes, injected CSS may break when the widget updates, and Gorgias support does not troubleshoot custom chat code.

Step 2: Set the look, the hours and the offline path

Appearance settings are on every Helpdesk plan, for owners and admins only. A blank or invalid brand color falls back to blue. The home-page logo can be a PNG, JPG or GIF up to 500 KB. The launcher shows an icon alone or an icon with a label of up to 20 characters, in any of four corners, bottom right by default, with pixel offsets. The window is Expanded or Compact, but the widget size itself cannot change. Greetings, inside and outside business hours, stop at 50 characters each.

Availability has three modes: live when agents are available, always live during business hours, or offline capture only. Business hours are a Basic-and-higher setting. Offline capture messages arrive as email tickets, so the shopper gets the reply by email. Dynamic wait time is calculated per chat integration from its own ticket history. When the estimate passes 15 minutes, shoppers can keep waiting or switch to the offline form. Transcripts go out by email 30 minutes after the last reply.

Privacy is your job, not Gorgias's. You can set a separate privacy disclosure per chat language, but Gorgias says it is not responsible for configuring chat to meet privacy laws; you supply the disclosures and collect consent. Once AI Agent is enabled on chat, an AI-powered notice is added to the disclosure automatically and cannot be edited. The satisfaction survey setting also applies to all chat integrations at once, so a store-by-store survey choice is not available.

Step 3: Check the campaign gate before paying for Convert

Light campaigns are the simple version. You get up to three of them, with two triggers only, current URL and time on page, and only admins can create them. A campaign becomes a billable ticket only when a shopper replies. It will not fire if the widget is off, if the shopper already closed a campaign that session, or if the shopper opened chat first ^[3]. Before you build a campaign plan, open the campaign settings in your own account and see what your widget lets you create, then decide whether you need Convert on top.

Convert is the paid layer. Its audience conditions include exit intent, cart amount, out-of-stock pages, Shopify customer tags, orders placed and visitor location, plus scheduling by business hours. Convert costs $30 a month for 150 clicks, and its plans climb to $2,000 a month for 4,000 clicks ^[4]. A click is any shopper interaction with a campaign, billed up to three per browser session. An email-capture submit counts as one. At the limit, the plan upgrades itself if auto-upgrade is on; otherwise campaigns stop. Convert campaigns also stay silent until business hours are set.

Step 4: Put Flows and AI Agent on chat

Flows are guided menus, and they need an AI Agent subscription. They run on Shopify, BigCommerce and Magento 2 stores across chat, the help center and the contact form. You can build unlimited Flows, but only 6 can be enabled per chat integration, and an option step holds up to 6 answers. Flows are hidden when they are not available in the shopper's chat language. A Flow resolution carries only the automation fee, with no ticket fee, and it counts as automated only if the shopper does not reach a human within 72 hours.

AI Agent on chat needs a connected Shopify store; BigCommerce, Magento and WooCommerce stores cannot use it. Turning it on switches off Article Recommendations. Before sharing order history, it asks the shopper for a one-time code sent by email or SMS. Its opening greeting cannot be customized yet. A chat idle for 10 minutes counts as abandoned and closes. It hands over when confidence is low, knowledge is missing, a handover topic comes up, the shopper asks for a person or anger shows.

Shopping Assistant, the sales side of AI Agent, shows Shopify product cards in chat that link to the product or add it to the cart. It is included in AI Agent for accounts that signed up after May 28, 2025; older AI Agent subscribers may need to upgrade, and accept the updated pricing, to get it. Its AI FAQs and search assist need chat installed. Discount codes it creates are unique, single-use and valid for 3 days. It recommends at product level, not variant level, so a variant in another color can be missed. Our AI Agent playbook covers the knowledge setup.

What chat automation costs

Starter with AI Agent costs $40 a month billed monthly and includes 30 automated interactions, though Actions and brand voice start on Basic. Included interactions cost $1.00 each on monthly billing or $0.90 on annual billing, then $1.50 per automated interaction past the limit, and every AI Agent resolution also counts as a billable ticket. A handover costs the ticket only. By our arithmetic, a Pro account with AI Agent billed monthly, 190 interactions included, that resolves 300 chats in a month pays $165 extra, and those 300 chats also use 300 of its 2,000 tickets. Test mode is free.

The chat report, on every Helpdesk plan, measures only tickets from the widget. First response time counts a human reply only, so AI Agent messages and automated greetings never stop the clock. Reports span up to 365 days and export as CSV or PDF. Drill-down exports reach 2.5 years of metadata but only one month of message content, and only leads and admins can export. Compare automated and human chats there before you raise any limit.

The bottom line

Gorgias Chat is worth installing on day one if you already pay for a Helpdesk plan: the widget, its appearance and the report cost nothing extra. Plan the bill around tickets, not people. Check every Rule that auto-replies and keep custom code on manual installation. Try light campaigns before you pay for Convert, the campaigns product billed per click. Add Flows or AI Agent only once you can count your automated chats. On BigCommerce or Magento 2, expect Flows, with an AI Agent subscription, but no AI Agent; WooCommerce and other sites get neither.