Gorgias vs Zendesk: Tickets per Account vs Seats per Agent (2026)

Gorgias and Zendesk meter different things, and that one difference decides most of this comparison. Gorgias prices the whole account by billable tickets a month: Pro is $300 a month billed annually for 2,000 tickets, whether two agents or forty log in.^[1] Zendesk prices each agent: Suite Team, its first plan with live chat and messaging, is $55 per agent per month billed annually.^[2] By our arithmetic, five Suite Team agents cost $275 a month and six cost $330, so the sixth agent tips Zendesk past Gorgias Pro while volume stays under 2,000 tickets. Our verdict: Gorgias fits Shopify brands with many agents and moderate volume. Zendesk fits small teams carrying heavy volume, or companies whose support reaches beyond a store.

Tickets per account or seats per agent

A Gorgias billable ticket is any conversation that gets at least one reply from a human agent, a Rule or AI Agent, and it counts once however many messages follow. Spam, newsletters and auto-responders are filtered out and never billed, but a Rule auto-reply makes a ticket billable. A customer who writes back after a pause opens a new ticket: after 10 days on email, after 3 days on chat, SMS or voice. Seats are only a cap, 3 on Starter and 500 on Basic and higher. Above Starter's 3 seats, headcount does not move the price.

Past the allowance you pay per ticket, $0.40 on Gorgias Starter and Basic and $0.36 on Pro and Advanced, and Gorgias publishes no pause at the limit. Basic is $60 a month billed monthly or $50 a month billed annually for 300 tickets, and Starter is $10 a month billed monthly only for 50 tickets. On Basic, Pro and Advanced, paying monthly costs 20% more than paying yearly, which works out to about 17% saved on an annual plan, by our arithmetic. Every plan tier, add-on and overage rule sits in our Gorgias pricing guide.

Zendesk counts people instead. Every agent, admin, the owner and even suspended agents take a paid seat, while light agents take no paid seat: up to 100 come with Suite Professional, and Support Team and Suite Team get them only through an add-on. Support Team costs $19 per agent per month billed annually or $25 billed monthly, but it covers only email ticketing and public social channels. Messaging, live chat, voice and one help center start on Suite Team, and Suite Professional is $115 per agent per month billed annually or $149 billed monthly. Zendesk labels annual billing 20% off. By our arithmetic the real saving is about 24%, 20% and 23% across those three plans. Our Zendesk pricing guide covers its add-ons.

Where the two price lines cross

The comparison that matters pits Gorgias Pro, with 2,000 tickets a month, against Zendesk Suite Team, Zendesk's first plan with live chat. Billed annually, Pro at $300 a month equals about 5.5 Suite Team seats at $55 each. Billed monthly, Pro at $360 a month sits between five Suite Team seats at $345 and six at $414, by our arithmetic. The threshold is six agents on both billing terms. With six or more agents and fewer than 2,000 tickets a month, Gorgias Pro costs less for the helpdesk alone. With five or fewer, Zendesk Suite Team costs less than Gorgias Pro, though Gorgias Basic can undercut it at lower volume, as the next paragraph shows.

Volume moves the line in the other direction. Take ten agents on annual billing: Zendesk Suite Team costs $550 a month, and Gorgias Pro reaches that figure at about 2,690 tickets once overage at $0.36 a ticket is added, by our arithmetic. Now take five agents answering 600 tickets a month. Gorgias Basic billed annually comes to $170 a month with 300 tickets of overage, against $275 for five Suite Team seats, and Basic stays the cheaper of the two until about 860 tickets a month.

One asymmetry tilts every scenario above. Zendesk Suite Team includes five automated AI resolutions per agent a month, while Gorgias AI Agent is a separate line on the bill. A team that wants AI from day one should compare the bundles in the next section, not the helpdesk prices alone. Voice and SMS are separate Gorgias add-ons with their own ticket counts, so phone-heavy teams should price those too.

AI: an add-on meter against a per-agent allowance

Gorgias sells AI Agent as an add-on with its own allowance. Pro with AI Agent is $471 a month billed annually and includes 190 automated interactions; Basic with AI Agent is $77 a month billed annually with 30. Included interactions cost $1.00 each on monthly billing and $0.90 on annual billing, then $1.50 per automated interaction past the limit. Every AI Agent resolution also counts as a billable helpdesk ticket, so it uses one of the plan's tickets too. An interaction only counts as automated if the shopper does not reach a human within 72 hours. Starter can add AI Agent for $40 a month billed monthly, but Actions and brand voice need Basic or higher.

Zendesk puts AI agents in every plan: 5 automated resolutions per agent a month on Support Team and Suite Team, 10 on Suite Professional, up to 10,000 a year. Extra resolutions cost $1.50 each committed or $2.00 each pay-as-you-go, and unused included ones do not roll over. At the limit, admins choose overage or a pause that routes requests to live agents. Copilot, the agent assistant, costs $50 per agent per month paid yearly on Professional and higher plans, for every agent seat.

Compare overage prices only, after both allowances run out. Past its allowance, a Gorgias AI resolution costs $1.50 plus a ticket, which is free inside the ticket allowance and $0.36 to $0.40 beyond it; Zendesk charges $2.00 pay-as-you-go or $1.50 committed. For example, Gorgias Pro with AI Agent on monthly billing against ten Suite Professional agents, at 300 AI resolutions a month. Gorgias bills 110 extra interactions for $165 that month, while Zendesk bills 200 extra resolutions for $400 a month pay-as-you-go or $300 a month committed, by our arithmetic. Those 300 interactions also use 300 of Gorgias Pro's 2,000 tickets.

Shopify depth and order actions

Gorgias was built for e-commerce, and Shopify gets its full feature set. The sidebar shows the shopper's 10 most recent orders, and agents can create, duplicate, edit, cancel and refund orders from the ticket, including through macros. AI Agent goes further with Actions: it can cancel an order, edit a shipping address, remove or replace an item, reship for free and add an order note.^[3] Cancellations and address edits apply only to unfulfilled orders and are not passed to 3PL apps. Revenue reports that tie support to sales start on Pro.

The limit is the platform itself. AI Agent, Shopping Assistant and Order Management work only with a connected Shopify store. Magento 2 needs Pro or higher and has no built-in order actions, BigCommerce starts on Basic, and WooCommerce gets sidebar data only. A brand off Shopify keeps the helpdesk but loses most of the automation it would be paying for. Our Gorgias for Shopify guide goes through every order action and its limits.

Zendesk reaches Shopify through its own free app, built by Zendesk and listed with 16,495 installs. Agents see orders and handle refunds and cancellations from the ticket sidebar, and the app supports multiple storefronts. Several stores are no edge for Zendesk, though: Gorgias includes multi-store management on every plan. Zendesk is also a general service platform that covers IT and HR employee service. That matters when the same team answers shoppers, wholesale partners and internal staff. Gorgias, by contrast, is a help desk for e-commerce brands only.

Trials, contracts and switching

The trials differ in length and in what survives them. Gorgias gives 7 days with no card and every feature, but a help center cannot be created during the trial, and an account that never upgrades is deleted after 90 days. Zendesk gives 14 days with no card, up to five people and one extension, and most trials start on Suite Professional. Its trial data is lost unless you buy or export.

Both renew automatically. On an annual plan, both want written notice at least 30 days before the term ends, so set a reminder 45 to 60 days ahead. Zendesk renews at then-current rates, and Gorgias can raise fees for a renewal term on at least 60 days' notice. Neither allows a downgrade mid-term. Gorgias fees are non-refundable under its Master Subscription Agreement, except where the law requires or at Gorgias's discretion. Zendesk's charges are likewise non-refundable under its Customer Agreement, except in the cases that agreement lists. Uninstalling the Gorgias app from Shopify does not cancel the subscription.

Switching from Zendesk runs through Gorgias's importer, available on every plan. It brings over tickets, macros, users, tags and ticket fields from the last two years, newest 14 days first, then keeps syncing until you pause it; attachments and ratings stay behind.^[4] The importer asks for a Zendesk API token. Zendesk stopped new token creation on 27 Oct 2026, and all Support API tokens stop working on 30 Apr 2027. Confirm the import method with Gorgias before planning.

Who should pick which

Gorgias wins on cost when many agents share moderate volume on a Shopify store. It also wins when you want AI that changes orders, not only answers questions. Zendesk wins when a few agents carry heavy volume, when AI should be in the plan from day one, or when support reaches beyond a store into IT, HR or other non-commerce service.

Read the ratings by audience. Trustpilot reviewers of Gorgias are mostly unhappy customers, and their complaints cluster around support, billing charges and cancellation, which tie back to ticket overage, AI fees and annual renewal terms. The mobile app store ratings rate the Gorgias phone app, which cannot place calls, not the web helpdesk. The Shopify App Store rating comes from merchants who installed the app.

The bottom line

Choose by the number your business grows in. If agents grow faster than conversations, Gorgias's account price holds still while Zendesk's rises by $55 per agent per month billed annually on Suite Team, and the crossover comes at six agents. If conversations grow faster than agents, Zendesk's seat price holds still while Gorgias's ticket overage climbs. Count both numbers first. Shopify depth and order-changing AI favor Gorgias; AI included per agent and a broader service scope favor Zendesk.