Gorgias vs Zoho Desk: Which help desk is right for you in 2025?

Picking a new help desk feels like a massive commitment, doesn’t it? If you choose well, your support team becomes a well-oiled machine, keeping customers happy and workflows smooth. But if you get it wrong, you’re looking at messy processes, stressed-out agents, and a budget that just doesn’t make sense.

Two names that pop up all the time are Gorgias, the darling of the e-commerce world, and Zoho Desk, the versatile all-rounder. Both promise to make your support life easier, but they come at it from completely different angles. This guide is a straightforward Gorgias vs Zoho Desk comparison, breaking down their key features, how they use AI, and what their pricing really means for your bottom line.

We’ll also look at a different way forward: what if you could add a powerful AI brain to the help desk you already use, without having to switch platforms at all? Let’s dive in.

What is Gorgias?

Think of Gorgias as the help desk that was born and raised in the world of e-commerce. It’s built specifically for brands on platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, or Magento. The whole idea behind Gorgias is to flip the script on customer service, turning it from a necessary expense into a way to actually make more money.

It pulls every customer message, whether it’s from email, chat, SMS, or social media, into one clean timeline. But the real game-changer is how deeply it connects to your online store’s backend. When an agent gets a message, they don’t just see the question; they see the customer’s complete order history, shipping status, and every past conversation right there on the screen. This context is gold, allowing agents to give fast, personal answers without having to jump between five different tabs.

Gorgias is also loaded with automation tools, like rules and macros, that are designed to instantly answer the most common questions e-commerce stores get all day long. Things like "Where’s my order?" or "How do I make a return?" can be handled automatically. If you’re a direct-to-consumer brand, Gorgias is built to feel like a natural part of your store.

What is Zoho Desk?

On the other side of the ring, you have Zoho Desk. It’s the jack-of-all-trades in the massive Zoho universe of business apps. While Gorgias is laser-focused on one thing, Zoho Desk is built to be flexible, serving all kinds of businesses, from tiny startups to huge enterprises, across pretty much any industry you can think of.

Its biggest selling point is just how much you can customize it and how broad its features are. It handles all the usual channels like email, social, and chat, but also brings phone support into the mix. At its heart is Zia, Zoho’s own AI assistant, who helps with things like figuring out a customer’s mood (sentiment analysis), automatically tagging tickets, and pulling up helpful knowledge base articles for your agents.

Because Zoho Desk plays so nicely with other Zoho products like their CRM, it can become the central hub for managing your entire relationship with a customer. If your company is already using other Zoho apps, or if you just need an affordable help desk that you can bend and shape to your will, Zoho Desk has a lot to offer.

A detailed comparison of Gorgias vs Zoho Desk

Alright, we’ve met the contenders. Now, let’s put them head-to-head and see how they stack up in the areas that really matter: AI and automation, integrations, and pricing.

AI and automation capabilities

Both platforms talk a big game about AI, but how they use it to make your team’s life easier is quite different.

Gorgias’s Approach:

Gorgias is all about practical, rule-based automation that solves real e-commerce problems. You set up simple "if this, then that" rules that can fire off automatic replies. For instance, if a message contains the words "order status," Gorgias can automatically pull the tracking info from Shopify and send it to the customer without an agent ever touching the ticket. Its AI can also detect intent and sentiment, meaning it can spot an angry customer or a potential sales lead and bump their ticket to the top of the queue.

The Limitation: This is fantastic for straightforward, repetitive questions, but the system can feel a bit rigid. You’re working within the rules you’ve built, and complex issues still need a human touch. More importantly, there’s a catch with the pricing. You’re often charged for these "automated resolutions." So, the better your automation works and the more tickets it handles for you, the higher your bill can climb. It’s an odd model that can feel like you’re being penalized for becoming more efficient, leading to some nasty surprises on your monthly invoice.

Zoho Desk’s Approach:

Zoho Desk gives you Zia, a more generalized AI assistant that does a bit of everything. Zia can read an incoming ticket and automatically tag it based on the topic, analyze the customer’s tone to flag anyone who seems upset, and whisper suggestions from your knowledge base to your agents as they type. It’s designed to be a helpful co-pilot for your support team.

The Limitation: Zia is at its most powerful when it’s living in the Zoho world. Getting it to learn from knowledge that lives outside of Zoho’s own apps can be tricky. All of its intelligence is tied directly to the Zoho Desk platform. This means if you ever decide to switch help desks down the line, you can’t take that AI brain with you. You’re starting from scratch.

Feature	Gorgias	Zoho Desk
Primary AI Focus	Rule-based e-commerce automation	General-purpose AI assistant (Zia)
Key AI Features	Intent detection, auto-replies	Sentiment analysis, predictive analytics
Knowledge Sources	Help center, macros	Knowledge base, community forums
Setup Complexity	Moderate, requires rule configuration	Can be complex to customize fully
Pricing Model	Often based on automated resolutions	Included in per-agent subscription

A more flexible approach: It feels like you’re forced to choose between one locked-in system or another. But what if you didn’t have to? An alternative is to use an AI layer that just plugs into the help desk you already have. For example, a tool like eesel AI connects directly to platforms like Gorgias in minutes. It gets to work learning from all your past tickets, macros, and, crucially, your external knowledge sources like Google Docs or Confluence. This gives you a custom-trained AI without getting stuck in one help desk’s ecosystem or dealing with weird, resolution-based pricing.

Integrations and ecosystem

No help desk is an island. It has to connect to the other tools you rely on to run your business.

Gorgias’s Ecosystem:

The Gorgias app library is deep but very focused. Its crown jewel is the seamless, native integration with e-commerce giants like Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento. It also has a solid network of connections to other popular e-commerce apps for things like customer reviews, loyalty programs, and shipping logistics.

The Limitation: This is where Gorgias hits a wall. If your company’s important knowledge isn’t directly related to e-commerce operations, Gorgias doesn’t have an easy way to access it. For example, what if your detailed product specs, internal policies, or troubleshooting guides are all documented in a wiki like Notion or Confluence? Your agents are left in the dark, and your automation can’t pull answers from those sources, creating huge knowledge gaps.

Zoho Desk’s Ecosystem:

Zoho’s ecosystem is the complete opposite; it’s incredibly wide-ranging, especially when you go all-in on the Zoho suite. It connects perfectly with Zoho CRM, Zoho Analytics, and dozens of other family members. It also has a marketplace with plenty of integrations for third-party apps like Slack and Salesforce.

The Limitation: The trade-off? Zoho Desk really wants you to stay within its "walled garden." Sure, it can connect to other apps, but the best, most seamless integrations are with other Zoho products. If your company’s brain is scattered across different platforms, pulling all that information into your support workflow isn’t what Zoho Desk does best. You’re gently (and sometimes not so gently) pushed to bring everything under the Zoho umbrella.

Unifying your knowledge: Instead of letting your help desk dictate where your knowledge has to live, a tool like eesel AI acts as a bridge. It connects to over 100 different sources, letting you train a single AI agent on everything from your Confluence spaces to your internal Google Docs and all your past support tickets. That unified knowledge can then power your support automation, no matter which help desk you use.

Pricing and scalability

This is where the rubber meets the road. A great platform is useless if its pricing model is going to break your budget as you grow.

Gorgias’s Pricing Model:

Gorgias charges you based on the number of "billable tickets" your team handles each month. This can include tickets answered by your human agents and your automations.

• Full Pricing Breakdown (Billed Monthly):

• Starter: $10/month (50 tickets)

• Basic: $60/month (300 tickets)

• Pro: $360/month (2,000 tickets)

• Advanced: $900/month (5,000 tickets)

• Enterprise: Custom

The Scalability Issue: This pricing model can cause some serious financial whiplash. Imagine you run a promotion that goes viral, or you hit your busy season. Your ticket volume could easily double overnight, bumping you into a much more expensive plan or hitting you with painful overage fees. The fact that the automations you set up to save you time could actually increase your bill is a tough pill to swallow.

This overview compares some of the best help desk software options available, including both Gorgias and Zoho Desk.

Zoho Desk’s Approach:

Zoho Desk keeps things much more traditional with a simple per-agent, per-month subscription. They also have a pretty generous free plan for teams of up to three people.

• Full Pricing Breakdown (Billed Annually):

• Standard: $14/agent/month

• Professional: $23/agent/month

• Enterprise: $40/agent/month

The Scalability Issue: The costs here are predictable, but they scale in a straight line with your headcount. Hire more agents, and your bill goes up by a fixed amount. The bigger issue is that if you want to unlock Zia’s most powerful AI features, you have to upgrade your entire team to the more expensive Enterprise plan. That can be a huge jump in cost, especially if only a few people on your team really need those advanced tools.

A more transparent alternative: The big problem with a lot of built-in AI tools is the pricing. Charging per resolution makes budgeting a nightmare. eesel AI offers a clear, predictable price based on a flat monthly fee for a certain number of AI interactions. There are no per-resolution fees to worry about. You can start on a monthly plan and cancel anytime, giving you the freedom to scale your AI automation without getting hit with surprise charges.

Making the right choice for your team

So, in the Gorgias vs Zoho Desk showdown, who wins? The honest answer is: it depends entirely on your business.

Gorgias is the undisputed champ for e-commerce brands, especially those running on Shopify, that want to use their support team to drive sales. Zoho Desk is a fantastic, budget-friendly, and flexible choice for almost any other business that needs an all-purpose help desk, particularly if they’re already in the Zoho ecosystem.

But both platforms require you to play by their rules and accept their limitations. If you’re generally happy with the help desk you have now and just want to bolt on some powerful, flexible AI, you don’t need to go through the pain of switching your entire system.

eesel AI offers a smarter way to upgrade. It works with the tools you already love, pulling together all your scattered company knowledge to automate support with a pricing model that actually makes sense. You can get it up and running in minutes, not months, and even use a simulation mode to test it out before it ever talks to a real customer.

Ready to see how you can automate your frontline support without the headache of switching platforms? Start your free eesel AI trial today.