A practical guide to the Gorgias SDK: What it is and how it works

So, you're using Gorgias for customer support and starting to wonder what else it can do. Maybe you want to tweak a few things or get it to play nicer with your other tools. That’s where you’ll stumble upon the Gorgias SDK and API, which open up a whole world of custom integrations and tailored workflows. For anyone managing a support team, this could mean anything from building a unique chat widget for your mobile app to dreaming up complex automation rules.

But let's be real, building custom solutions, especially with AI, is rarely a walk in the park. It usually means tying up your developers, dealing with ongoing maintenance, and a fair bit of guesswork. This guide will walk you through what the Gorgias SDK is, what you can actually build with it, and then show you a more direct path to powerful AI automation that doesn’t require a whole dev team.

What is the Gorgias SDK?

First off, what even is an SDK? An SDK, or Software Development Kit, is basically a toolbox for developers. It’s a collection of tools, code libraries, and documentation that helps them build applications for a specific platform. Think of it as a pre-packaged kit that saves them from having to start from scratch.

The Gorgias SDK, along with its REST API, gives developers the building blocks to:

• Create custom apps that plug right into Gorgias. These can be private tools just for your team or public apps you can list on the Gorgias App Store.

• Embed Gorgias features, like the chat widget, into your own website or mobile app.

• Automate workflows by writing code to read, create, and update tickets, customers, and other info inside Gorgias.

Basically, if you want Gorgias to do something it doesn't do out of the box, the SDK and API are where you’d start. This is perfect for teams that have developers on hand and need some very specific, custom functionality.

Key capabilities: What can you build with the Gorgias SDK?

The Gorgias developer tools are pretty flexible, so you can tackle a range of projects. Let's look at a few things teams commonly build.

Custom chat widgets and mobile integrations

One of the most popular uses for the SDK is customizing the chat experience your customers see. The "@frontend-sdk/gorgias" package on npm, for instance, gives developers the controls to integrate the Gorgias chat widget into custom web applications.

This is super handy if you want to:

• Put the Gorgias chat into a native iOS or Android mobile app.

• Make the chat pop up based on what a user is doing on your site.

• Feed custom data, like what’s in a customer’s shopping cart, directly into the chat so agents have context right away.

It's powerful stuff, but you'll need someone with front-end or mobile development skills to get it right.

Building custom sidebar widgets

Another common project is creating widgets that show up in the sidebar of the Gorgias agent view. These widgets can pull information from just about any external system that has an API. For example, you could build a widget that shows:

• Detailed order and shipping info from a custom e-commerce system.

• A customer's subscription status from a tool like Recharge.

• Loyalty points or rewards from your marketing platform.

This gives agents a full picture of the customer without needing to jump between a dozen tabs. But again, each widget is a mini-project that needs to be built and looked after by a developer.

A screenshot of a custom sidebar widget in Gorgias showing a customer's Shopify order history, built using the Gorgias SDK.

Basic workflow automation

Using the REST API, developers can also write scripts to handle simple, repetitive tasks. You could have a script that automatically:

• Adds tags to tickets based on certain keywords in the message.

• Closes out-of-office auto-replies that don't need a human to look at them.

• Keeps customer info in sync between Gorgias and an external CRM.

These automations are definite time-savers, but they tend to be a bit rigid. If you want to change the logic, you have to call a developer.

The challenge of building custom AI

While the Gorgias SDK is great for the tasks above, things get a lot trickier when you start thinking about advanced AI. Building a truly autonomous AI support agent is a whole different ballgame than just connecting to an API.

The hidden costs: Developer time and maintenance

The biggest headache isn't building the thing in the first place; it's keeping it running. A custom AI integration is not a "set it and forget it" project. You'll need to set aside engineering time to:

• Manage the AI models: Whether you use OpenAI or something else, you have to handle API keys, keep an eye on usage, and update things when models change.

• Tweak the logic: The prompts and rules you set up on day one will almost certainly need to be adjusted as customers come up with new and creative problems.

• Fix things when they break: When the integration goes down or the AI says something weird, it's your team's job to figure out why and fix it.

Suddenly, what looked like a one-off project becomes an ongoing expense that can pull your developers away from working on your actual product.

Limitations for true ticket resolution

The SDK gives you access to ticket data, but it doesn't provide the brain. Building a system that can understand what a customer actually wants, search through different knowledge sources, and give a safe, on-brand answer is a huge project. You’d be on the hook for building and managing:

• A knowledge pipeline: How do you get your help center articles, internal docs, and past tickets into a format the AI can actually use?

• Prompt engineering: Writing the perfect instructions to guide an AI’s tone and decision-making is its own specialized skill.

• Safety nets: How do you stop the AI from giving out wrong information or trying to handle sensitive issues it shouldn't touch?

Honestly, for most support teams, building all of this from the ground up just isn't realistic. That’s why ready-made AI platforms are often a much saner option.

A smarter alternative to the Gorgias SDK for AI automation

Instead of pouring months into building a custom AI solution with the Gorgias SDK, you can get better results in a tiny fraction of the time with a platform built specifically for customer support.

Go live in minutes with eesel AI's one-click Gorgias integration

This is where the classic "build vs. buy" debate gets pretty simple. A custom SDK project can drag on for months, but you can connect eesel AI to your Gorgias account with one click and have a working AI agent up and running in minutes. No sales calls, no messing with APIs, and no developers required. You can sign up and set everything up yourself from a simple dashboard.

Train on your data instantly and deploy with confidence

eesel AI gets up to speed by automatically learning from all your company knowledge, including:

• Your past Gorgias tickets: It looks at thousands of your old conversations to get a feel for your brand’s voice and how you solve common problems.

• Your help center and other docs: You can connect it to Confluence, Google Docs, Notion, and other sources to give the AI a complete picture.

The best part? eesel AI comes with a simulation mode. You can test your AI agent on thousands of your past tickets to see exactly how it would have replied. This gives you a clear forecast of its performance before it ever talks to a real customer. That’s a level of risk-free testing you just don’t get when you’re building from scratch.

A view of eesel AI's simulation mode, which tests the AI agent on past tickets to forecast its performance with the Gorgias SDK integration.

Gorgias pricing explained

When you're looking at any tool, you have to understand how you'll be charged. Gorgias's pricing is mostly based on the number of "billable tickets" your team handles. A billable ticket is any conversation that gets a reply from a human agent, a rule, or their AI Agent.

Here’s a quick look at their plans (billed monthly):

Plan	Price/Month	Billable Tickets Included	AI Agent Interactions
Starter	from $10	50	0 (Pay-as-you-go at $1.00/interaction)
Basic	from $50	300	60 ($0.90 per additional interaction)
Pro	from $300	2,000	600 ($0.90 per additional interaction)
Advanced	from $750	5,000	2,500 ($0.90 per additional interaction)
Enterprise	Custom	Custom	Custom

It’s worth noting that Gorgias's AI Agent interactions are an add-on, and they charge you for each conversation it resolves. This can make your costs hard to predict, especially during busy times. This is different from platforms like eesel AI, which have straightforward plans based on a set number of total AI interactions (replies or actions), so you don’t get hit with surprise fees.

Build with the Gorgias SDK or integrate? Making the right choice

The Gorgias SDK is a fantastic tool if you have developers ready to build custom sidebar widgets or unique chat setups. It gives you a solid foundation for making Gorgias fit your exact needs.

But when it comes to using AI to actually automate and resolve tickets, the "build it yourself" route gets complicated, expensive, and slow. The ongoing maintenance alone can be a serious drain on your engineering team.

For teams that want to use AI to deflect tickets, help out agents, and boost efficiency right now, a dedicated, fully-managed platform is the clear winner. With its one-click integration and powerful simulation feature, eesel AI lets you deploy a smart, context-aware AI agent in Gorgias in a matter of minutes, not months.

Ready to see how much time you could get back? Get started with eesel AI for free.