A complete guide to Gorgias SMS integration in 2025

Let's be honest, we all check our texts way more often than our emails. For e-commerce brands, that's not just a fun fact, it's a huge opportunity. SMS messages have a wild 98% open rate, while email often struggles to hit 20%. If you're not meeting customers where they are (on their phones), you're leaving money on the table.

This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about setting up a Gorgias SMS integration. We'll cover Gorgias's built-in features, look at a few popular third-party apps, and then dive into how AI agents are completely changing the way SMS support gets done.

What is a Gorgias SMS integration?

Simply put, a Gorgias SMS integration connects your business's text messaging directly to your helpdesk. It lets your support team see, manage, and reply to SMS messages right from the Gorgias dashboard, just like they would with an email or a live chat.

The main win here is having everything in one place. Your agents get a single, unified view of every conversation with a customer, so they don't have to juggle a separate phone or app. This means quicker replies and a much clearer picture of who they're talking to.

You generally have two ways to go about this:

1. Use the native SMS feature that comes with Gorgias.

2. Connect a third-party app, which is often used for bigger SMS marketing campaigns.

Which one is right for you? It really boils down to your goals. Are you just trying to open up a new support channel, or are you planning to send out thousands of marketing texts? Let’s break down both options.

How the native Gorgias SMS integration works

Gorgias makes it pretty straightforward to get started with SMS. The platform's built-in tool lets you grab a new phone number (or bring your own) and start having two-way text conversations with customers.

You can get it all set up right in your Gorgias settings under the "Channels" section. Just add the SMS integration, connect a phone number, and you’re good to go. Most teams can get a basic SMS channel running in no time without needing to pull in a developer.

A screenshot of the Gorgias settings page where users can manage their channels, including setting up a Gorgias SMS integration.

Key features and benefits of the native integration

Here's what you can expect from the standard Gorgias SMS setup:

• One shared inbox: Text messages show up as tickets right alongside your emails and chats. This gives your agents all the context needed without having to switch between different tools.

• Simple automation: You can use Gorgias Rules to handle some basic, repetitive tasks. For example, you can set up an auto-reply to confirm you got a customer's text, automatically tag SMS tickets to keep things organized, or route them to a specific agent or team.

• Available on all plans: The ability to add an SMS channel is included in every Gorgias plan, which makes it easy to dip your toes in the water and see if text-based support is a good fit for you.

Pricing considerations for the native integration

While the feature is part of your plan, it isn't exactly free. Gorgias's pricing revolves around "billable tickets," and every SMS conversation counts as one.

You might also hit some extra costs depending on your plan and how many texts you're handling. On their pricing page, SMS is listed as an "add-on," which can mean extra fees for the phone number or for sending a high volume of messages. It’s definitely something to keep in mind when you're planning your budget.

Here’s a quick look at their standard plans:

Plan	Monthly Price	Billable Tickets Included	AI Agent Interactions
Starter	from $10/mo	50/mo	0
Basic	from $50/mo	300/mo	60
Pro	from $300/mo	2,000/mo	600
Advanced	from $750/mo	5,000/mo	2,500
Enterprise	Custom	Custom	Custom

Source: Gorgias Pricing Page. Note: SMS may be an additional add-on cost depending on the selected ticket volume.

Limitations of the native integration

The built-in SMS feature is a solid starting point, but you'll probably feel its limitations as you start to grow.

• It’s not very smart: Gorgias Rules are triggered by simple things, like keywords. They can send a canned response like, "We've received your message," but they can't figure out what a customer actually wants. If someone texts, "Can I change the shipping address on my last order?" a simple rule-based system can't do much to help.

• It’s still a lot of manual work: Because the automation is so basic, a human agent has to jump in for almost every real question. This means you can't really scale your SMS support without hiring more people, which gets expensive.

• It can't take action elsewhere: The native tools are stuck inside Gorgias. They can't, for instance, look up an order status in Shopify and use that info to give the customer a personalized update. The whole process hits a dead end.

Using third-party apps for SMS

Many teams figure out pretty quickly that they need more power than the native feature offers, especially if they want to mix SMS support with their marketing efforts. This is where third-party apps usually enter the picture.

Tools like Klaviyo, Attentive, and Postscript are SMS marketing powerhouses that can connect with Gorgias. They're built for sending out promotional campaigns, abandoned cart reminders, and other marketing messages to large audiences.

How third-party app integrations work

The process is fairly simple. A tool like Klaviyo sends out a marketing text, and if a customer replies with a question, the integration creates a new support ticket in Gorgias.

This is helpful because it keeps all your support conversations under one roof. Your support team doesn't have to log into a separate marketing platform to answer questions, which helps prevent customer replies from getting lost.

Hidden costs and complexities of third-party integrations

This setup sounds good on paper, but it often brings a new set of headaches and costs.

• Fragmented workflows: This is a big one. Even with the ticket in Gorgias, the conversation is still split across two different systems. As Klaviyo's own documentation mentions, any replies sent from inside the Klaviyo platform do not show up in Gorgias. This is a recipe for disaster, as it can lead to agents sending confusing, out-of-sync responses because they don't have the full story.

• Multiple subscriptions: With this approach, you're paying for your Gorgias plan plus a separate subscription for your SMS marketing tool, which can get pricey. Your monthly software bill goes up, and your team has to learn and manage yet another piece of software.

• It's still not real automation: At the end of the day, this setup doesn't actually reduce your team's workload. It just moves the manual work into a different inbox. A human agent still has to read every single text, figure out what the customer needs, and type out a reply. It doesn't solve the core problem of how to handle more support volume without hiring more people.

Using an AI agent for your Gorgias SMS integration

So, if native SMS is too basic and marketing app integrations are clunky and still manual, what's left? How can you offer SMS support that's actually automated, intelligent, and fully connected to your helpdesk?

This is the perfect job for an AI-powered platform like eesel AI. Instead of just forwarding messages or sending templated replies, an AI agent acts like a digital team member that works right inside Gorgias.

The big difference is that eesel AI's AI Agent connects to your Gorgias account and all your company knowledge, allowing it to resolve customer issues over SMS all by itself.

A Gorgias ticket showing an AI agent automatically resolving a customer's SMS query about their order status.

How eesel AI delivers smarter automation

A true AI agent does a lot more than the simple automation offered by other tools.

• It actually knows your business: The biggest weakness of other tools is that they rely on pre-written responses. eesel AI is different. It learns from your past Gorgias tickets, your help center, and knowledge from other places like Confluence or Google Docs. It can even connect to your Shopify product catalog. This means it can answer detailed, specific questions over SMS using information from all corners of your business.

• You can get started today: While a lot of AI platforms lock you into lengthy sales calls and onboarding processes, you can connect eesel AI to Gorgias in just a few clicks. It's completely self-serve, so you can have an AI agent up and running the same day you sign up.

• It does more than just talk: This is where it gets really interesting. An AI agent from eesel AI can do more than just send a message. You can set it up to perform specific tasks, like:

  • Looking up live order information in Shopify.

  • Triaging an SMS ticket and adding the right tags in Gorgias.

  • Escalating the conversation to a human agent (with a full summary) if a question is too complex.

This changes your SMS channel from a manual time-sink into an efficient, automated workflow.

Testing your SMS integration before going live

One of the biggest anxieties with AI is wondering how it will actually perform with real customers. eesel AI has a clever solution for this: a simulation mode that really sets it apart.

Before you flip the switch and let the AI agent handle live SMS conversations, you can test it against thousands of your past support tickets. This gives you a clear, data-backed forecast of how many SMS inquiries it can resolve on its own. It also lets you review its responses and make tweaks, so you can be confident you're delivering a great customer experience from the start. You just can't get that kind of peace of mind with other tools.

eesel AI's simulation mode, which tests the AI agent's performance on past tickets for a Gorgias SMS integration.

Choose the right Gorgias SMS integration for you

When it comes to managing SMS in Gorgias, you really have three options, each with its own pros and cons.

1. Gorgias Native SMS: A simple way to get your foot in the door and open up a new channel. It's a good start, but it's very manual and won't help you scale.

2. Third-Party Marketing Apps: Great for handling replies to marketing campaigns, but this approach leads to messy workflows and doesn't do anything to reduce your support team's workload.

3. AI-Powered Integration (eesel AI): The only option truly built for scaling high-quality SMS support. It cuts down on manual work, brings all your company knowledge together, and provides genuinely automated resolutions.

For any business that's serious about offering instant, accurate, and scalable support over SMS, an AI agent is the way to go.

Ready to automate your Gorgias SMS integration?

Stop copy-pasting answers and watching SMS tickets pile up. See how eesel AI can turn your Gorgias SMS integration into an efficient, automated machine.

Book a demo or start your free trial today.