A complete guide to Gorgias AI intents: Features, pricing, and limitations for 2025

If you're running support for an ecommerce store, you know the drill. Your inbox is probably a constant stream of the same questions: "Where's my order?" "How do I start a return?" "Do you have this in blue?" Answering these one by one is a fast track to burning out your team and leaving customers waiting.

This is where AI-powered intent detection comes in. It automatically figures out why a customer is getting in touch, so you can sort, route, and even answer tickets without anyone having to click a button. Tools like Gorgias have built-in features like AI Intents to handle this, but it’s always a good idea to look under the hood. How does it really work, what’s the actual cost, and where does it fall short?

This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about Gorgias AI Intents. We'll cover the features, setup, and common uses. But more importantly, we’ll get into the complicated pricing and limitations that might have you searching for a more powerful and flexible alternative.

What are Gorgias AI Intents?

Gorgias AI Intents is a feature that automatically scans incoming customer messages to figure out the "intent" behind them. Think of it as a first-pass sorting system for your support tickets. Its main job is to categorize conversations so you can set up automated rules to manage them better. For instance, it can spot a return request and automatically tag it for the right person on your team.

This feature is part of the larger Gorgias AI Agent, which is built specifically for the chaos of ecommerce support. It works by looking for keywords and phrases that match a pre-set list of common ecommerce topics.

A screenshot of the Gorgias dashboard, which is the user interface for Gorgias AI Intents.

Gorgias gives you a fixed list of intents it can spot, which covers most of the usual questions an online store gets.

The system uses AI to understand the context of a message and can detect these intents in 16 different languages, which is pretty handy for brands selling internationally. At its core, it’s a tool designed to bring a little order to a messy inbox.

How to set up and use Gorgias AI Intents

Getting started with Gorgias AI Intents is pretty simple since it's baked right into the platform's rule engine. You don't need a developer, just a bit of time to poke around in the settings.

The whole thing works by creating "Rules" that get triggered when a certain intent is detected. The workflow usually looks like this: a customer sends a message, Gorgias AI detects an intent like return/request, and a rule you created automatically kicks in. That rule might add a "Return" tag to the ticket and assign it to the agent who handles returns.

Here are the basic steps:

1. Go to Settings -> Productivity -> Rules in your Gorgias dashboard.

2. Look for the pre-built template called Identify intents and sentiments. This is the quickest way to get up and running.

3. From there, you set the condition. For example, you’d set it to IF message intent is refund/request.

4. Then, you define what you want to happen next. This could be something like, THEN add tag 'Refund Request'.

Once your tickets are getting tagged automatically, you can create dedicated "Views" for your team. This lets you have separate queues for returns, shipping questions, and damaged item reports, making it much easier for agents to focus on the tickets they are best at solving.

The use cases, costs, and limitations of Gorgias AI Intents

While the setup is easy, using it in the real world comes with some important details. Let's look at where it works well and where it might cause some headaches.

Common use cases

For many ecommerce brands, this feature can provide some quick wins. The most popular uses include:

• Automated Ticket Tagging: This is the big one. It saves a ton of time by instantly categorizing tickets, so your team doesn’t have to do it by hand.

• Smarter Ticket Routing: By automatically sending tickets to the right person based on intent, you get the query to an expert from the start, which helps speed up resolution times.

• Performance Analytics: The data you collect is really useful. Gorgias provides reports on which intents are popping up most often, giving you a clear view of why customers are writing in. If you see a sudden jump in order/damaged intents, you might have an issue with your packaging or shipping partner.

The hidden costs: Understanding the pricing model

Okay, this is where things get a little complicated. Gorgias’s pricing isn’t just a simple subscription fee, and its AI features can add unpredictable costs to your bill. Their model has a base monthly fee that’s tied to your ticket volume, but on top of that, you pay for each ticket the AI handles.

According to their pricing page, each AI Agent resolution costs $0.90 on an annual plan or $1.00 on a monthly plan. Every single time the AI successfully automates a ticket, that’s another dollar on your invoice.

When you put this next to platforms with a more predictable model, the difference is pretty clear.

This kind of variability can be a real issue for growing businesses that need to know what their costs will be each month.

Key limitations to consider

Beyond the price tag, there are some functional limits that can become major problems as your support needs get more complex.

• You're stuck with their list of intents: You have to use Gorgias's predefined list, and you can't change it. There’s no way to create custom intents that fit your specific business. For example, if you run a subscription box service, you can't create an intent for subscription/skip-month. You'd have to lump those requests under the generic other/question tag, which kind of defeats the purpose of detailed automation and leaves your team doing manual work anyway.

• Limited control and basic actions: The automations you can build are stuck with the actions available in Gorgias Rules, like tagging a ticket or assigning it to someone. You can't set off more complex, multi-step workflows. Need to check inventory in a separate system or automatically process a subscription change through an API? You can't do it. The system just isn't built for that kind of custom work.

• Vendor lock-in: Gorgias AI Intents is a closed system. It only works inside the Gorgias helpdesk. If your business outgrows it and you decide to move to a platform like Zendesk or Freshdesk, you lose everything. All your rules, workflows, and history are gone, and you have to start completely over. That's a huge risk for any brand with long-term growth plans.

A flexible alternative to Gorgias AI Intents: Building custom workflows with eesel AI

The limits of a closed system like Gorgias AI Intents really show why a more flexible and powerful solution is needed. This is where eesel AI comes into the picture. It’s built to give you complete control over your support automation, and it integrates smoothly with the tools you're already using, including Gorgias.

Go beyond fixed intents with a fully customizable engine

Instead of being trapped by a rigid list of intents, eesel AI lets you build your own logic. Using a straightforward prompt editor, you can define any "intent" you can think of and tell the AI exactly what to do when it sees one.

An image showing the customization rules in eesel AI, an alternative to Gorgias AI Intents.

For example, you can teach it to recognize "I want to skip my next box" and then create a custom action that calls an API to your subscription tool to handle the request automatically. This level of customization means the AI works for your business, not the other way around. You get to decide exactly which tickets the AI handles, starting small and expanding as you get more comfortable.

Unify all your knowledge, not just the helpdesk

An AI is only as good as the information it has access to. While Gorgias is limited to its own world, eesel AI connects to all of your company's knowledge. It can pull information from Confluence, Google Docs, internal wikis, and even past ticket resolutions. This gives your AI the full picture it needs to answer questions correctly, without being stuck in a silo.

An infographic showing how eesel AI integrates with various knowledge sources, which is a key advantage over Gorgias AI Intents.

Best of all, you can plug eesel AI directly into your existing helpdesk in just a few minutes. There's no painful "rip and replace" migration needed. It adds powerful AI features to the tools you already know and love.

Test with confidence and predictable pricing

Two of the biggest things that set eesel AI apart directly address the main weaknesses of other platforms:

1. Simulation Mode: Worried about letting an AI loose on your customers? eesel AI lets you test your setup on thousands of your past tickets in a safe environment. You can see exactly how it would have responded, get solid forecasts on your automation rate, and tweak its behavior before it ever talks to a real customer. This lets you go live with confidence, which is something you just can't do with most other tools.

2. Transparent Pricing: eesel AI uses a flat-fee model. You pick a monthly or annual plan based on the number of interactions you need, and that's it. No per-resolution fees, no overage charges, and no surprise bills at the end of the month. Your costs are completely predictable, so you can scale your support without scaling your anxiety.

A screenshot of the eesel AI simulation mode, a feature not available in Gorgias AI Intents.

Take control of your support automation

Gorgias AI Intents can be a decent place to start for ecommerce stores that are already all-in on its platform and just need some basic automation. It's a way to test the waters.

However, its rigid rules, unpredictable pricing, and lack of customization create real challenges for any business that wants to scale and have full control over its customer experience. You'll eventually hit a point where the tool's limitations stop you from building the workflows your business actually needs.

At the end of the day, you need a tool that adapts to you. A flexible platform that plugs into your existing tools and knowledge is a much more powerful and sustainable way forward. It gives you the control to build a support experience that's unique to your brand and ready for whatever's next.

Ready to see what truly customizable AI can do for your team? Start a free trial with eesel AI or book a demo to see how you can be up and running in minutes.