A deep dive into the Gorgias web widget (2025 Guide)

If you're running an e-commerce store, you know that little chat bubble on your website is a big deal. It's not just for support anymore; it’s where sales are made and where customers decide if they’ll come back. People expect fast answers, and a chat window that says "we'll be back in a few hours" doesn't really work these days. This is where the Gorgias web widget steps in, offering a mix of live support, self-service options, and AI automation.

But is it the right tool for you? This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about the Gorgias web widget. We'll cover its features, how to set it up, what its AI can (and can't) do, and what it'll actually cost you. We’ll also get into its limitations and explore how you can give it a serious upgrade with more powerful, flexible AI.

What is the Gorgias web widget?

Let's get straight to it. The Gorgias web widget is more than just a button that opens a chat. It's an interactive hub on your site that juggles a few key jobs.

It’s designed to:

• Offer live chat, connecting customers with your support team for real-time help.

• Let customers help themselves by tracking orders, starting returns, or finding answers in your help center without waiting for an agent.

• Use AI to automate answers to common questions, giving customers instant resolutions, day or night.

• Proactively start conversations with pop-up messages, like offering a discount to a shopper who looks like they might be leaving their cart.

The whole thing is built specifically for e-commerce, so it integrates deeply with platforms like Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce. This lets it pull customer and order info right into the chat, which is a nice touch.

Core features and capabilities

So, what do you actually get with the Gorgias web widget? Let's look at the main features.

Real-time conversations with live chat

At its core, the widget is a solid live chat tool. When a customer opens a chat, your agents see more than just a message. They get a full picture: what page the person is on, what’s in their cart, and their past conversation and purchase history. With all this context, your agents can provide faster, more personal support without making the customer repeat their life story.

Offline and after-hours support

Your team has to sleep, but your website is always open. Gorgias handles this with its offline capture feature. When you're outside of business hours, the chat widget flips into a simple contact form. Customers can leave their info and question, which then pops up as an email ticket in your helpdesk. It makes sure you don't miss anything, but it's worth remembering that this turns a live chat into a much slower email exchange.

Proactive engagement with chat campaigns

Instead of just waiting for customers to come to you, you can use chat campaigns to kick things off. You can set up rules that trigger messages based on what a visitor is doing. For example, if someone has been staring at a product page for 30 seconds, a chat can pop up asking if they need help with sizing. Or if they're hesitating on the checkout page, you could offer a small discount to seal the deal.

Basic customization and branding

You can also make the widget look like it belongs on your site. This means you can change the colors, use your own logo instead of the default icon, and write your own welcome text. Gorgias also supports multiple languages and can automatically detect a visitor's browser language to show the widget in their native tongue, which is a great feature for international brands.

The setup and installation process

Getting the Gorgias web widget on your site is usually pretty simple, especially if you're on Shopify. You've got two main options.

For Shopify stores, the Quick Installation is basically a one-click affair. You connect your Shopify account, flip a switch, and the widget is live on every page. This is a huge win for anyone who wants to get going quickly without digging into code.

For other platforms like BigCommerce and Magento, or if you need more control, there's a Manual Installation. This means copying a little snippet of Javascript and pasting it into your website's theme files. It's a standard process for tools like this and gives you the freedom to choose exactly where the widget appears, like only on product pages and your contact page.

While the basic setup is fast, configuring the AI and automation flows to work exactly how you want them takes a bit more tinkering and a solid understanding of how Gorgias works.

The Gorgias AI agent: Automation, limitations, and pricing

Now for the interesting part. Gorgias talks a lot about its AI Agent and its ability to automate support. Let’s take an honest look at what it does, where it struggles, and how much it costs.

What can the Gorgias AI agent automate?

The Gorgias AI Agent is built to handle the simple, repetitive questions that e-commerce stores get all the time. Its main jobs are:

• Order Management: It can link to your Shopify store to let customers track, return, or cancel an order right from the chat widget. This frees up a ton of agent time.

• Answering FAQs: The AI pulls answers from your Gorgias help center articles to handle common questions before and after a purchase.

• Flows: You can build simple, menu-based conversations (called Flows) that guide customers to answers or actions without needing an agent.

• Article Recommendations: If a customer asks a question, the AI can suggest relevant articles from your help center, pointing them toward a self-service answer.

Key limitations to consider

While the AI Agent is handy for basic stuff, it has some real drawbacks if you're aiming for more sophisticated automation.

• Siloed Knowledge: The AI mostly learns from your Gorgias help center and Shopify data. It can't tap into information from other places your company knowledge is stored, like internal wikis in Confluence, project plans in Google Docs, or technical specs saved in a PDF. If the answer isn’t in a Gorgias article, the AI is usually stuck.

• Limited Customization: You can set up pre-defined flows, but the AI's core logic is pretty much a black box. You don't have much control over its personality, tone, or the specific actions it can perform. Trying to connect it to your other systems to pull unique data is often difficult and usually requires a developer.

• An "All-or-Nothing" Approach: To get the most out of the AI, you have to commit completely to the Gorgias platform. The AI Agent is tightly bound to the Gorgias helpdesk and help center. It’s not designed to be a flexible layer that works with your existing tools if you happen to use a different helpdesk or knowledge base.

Understanding the Gorgias pricing model

Gorgias's pricing structure can be a bit confusing. You pay for a Helpdesk plan based on a certain number of "billable tickets" per month, and then you pay for the AI Agent as a separate add-on, which is based on the number of "automated interactions."

Let's use their popular "Pro" plan as an example to see how this plays out.

Feature	Gorgias "Pro" Plan (Monthly Billing)
Baseline Helpdesk Price	$360/month
Included Helpdesk Tickets	2,000
Overage Ticket Cost	+$36 / 100 tickets
AI Agent Cost	$0.90 per resolved conversation (billed separately)
Example AI Cost	600 AI interactions = $540/month
Total Estimated Cost	$900/month (for helpdesk + AI)

The main thing to notice here is the pay-per-resolution model for the AI Agent. This can make your costs unpredictable and cause them to climb quickly. If you have a busy month and your AI successfully handles thousands of customer questions, your bill is going to be much higher. It's a model that can feel like it's penalizing you for automating effectively.

A more powerful alternative: Enhancing your Gorgias web widget with eesel AI

What if you like your Gorgias helpdesk but want a smarter, more flexible, and more affordable AI to run the show? Instead of ripping out your entire setup, you can add an AI layer like eesel AI on top. It integrates directly with your existing Gorgias helpdesk, so you can keep the tools you know while getting a much more capable engine.

Here’s what makes it different:

• Get started on your own time: Forget about sitting through mandatory demos or waiting on sales calls. With eesel AI, you can get everything set up yourself. You can even simulate the AI on thousands of your past Gorgias tickets before you ever show it to a customer. This gives you a clear, risk-free picture of your potential automation rate and how much you'll save.

A screenshot of the eesel AI simulation feature, which provides a safe testing environment to see how the AI would have handled past tickets, a key differentiator for the Gorgias web widget alternative.

• Bring all your knowledge together: This is where it gets really powerful. eesel AI doesn't just read your help center. It connects to all your knowledge sources in minutes, including Confluence, Google Docs, Notion, and even the context from old support tickets. This means the AI can give complete answers based on your entire company's knowledge, not just what's in one help center.

An infographic illustrating how eesel AI connects to multiple knowledge sources, overcoming the limitations of the Gorgias web widget AI.

• You're in the driver's seat: eesel AI gives you a fully customizable workflow engine. You decide exactly which questions the AI should handle and how it responds. You can easily create custom actions to do things like look up complex order details in Shopify or check inventory in a separate database, giving you way more flexibility than pre-built options.

A screenshot of the customization and action workflow screen in eesel AI, showing the flexibility available compared to the standard Gorgias web widget.

• Transparent and predictable pricing: eesel AI plans are based on a flat number of AI interactions per month, with no extra fees for each resolution. Your bill is always predictable, and you aren't charged more for successfully scaling your automation. What you see is what you pay, plain and simple.

A visual of the eesel AI pricing page, which contrasts with the Gorgias web widget's pay-per-resolution model by showing clear, public-facing costs.

Is the Gorgias web widget the right tool for the job?

The Gorgias web widget is a good option for e-commerce stores that need a dependable live chat and self-service tool that works seamlessly with their helpdesk. It's well-designed, easy to use, and a great place to start.

However, if you're looking for advanced, flexible, and fairly priced AI automation, its features and pricing model can be limiting. Being stuck with a single knowledge source and a pay-per-resolution model can hold back your growth and lead to some eye-watering bills.

For businesses that want to tap into their full automation potential by using all their company knowledge and keeping total control over their AI, adding a specialized tool like eesel AI to your Gorgias setup is the more scalable way to go.

Ready to see what your support automation could actually do? Start your free eesel AI trial and simulate its performance on your own Gorgias tickets in just a few minutes.