Intercom vs Gorgias: The 2025 showdown for customer service

Choosing a customer communication platform can feel like a massive, high-stakes decision. If you pick the right one, your team is flying, and your customers are happy. But if you get it wrong, you’re suddenly stuck with clunky software, a team that’s constantly frustrated, and a monthly bill that makes you wince. It’s a choice that really shapes how people see your brand.

Two of the biggest names you’ll come across are Intercom and Gorgias. At a glance, they might seem similar, but they’re built on completely different ideas. Intercom has been around the block, a long-time favorite for SaaS and tech companies focusing on conversational customer engagement. Gorgias, on the other hand, is the specialist, a helpdesk built from the ground up for the wild world of e-commerce, especially for brands using Shopify.

This guide is a straight-up, head-to-head comparison of their features, AI, pricing, and who they’re actually for. By the end, you’ll have a much clearer picture of which one fits your business. I’ll also let you in on a third option, a more flexible way of thinking about it that might mean you don’t have to choose at all.

What is Intercom vs Gorgias?

While both tools want to make customer support better, they tackle the problem from totally different angles. Getting a handle on who they are is the first step to figuring out which one makes sense for you.

What is Intercom?

Intercom calls itself a "Conversational Relationship Platform," which is actually a pretty good way to put it. It’s designed to help you build relationships with customers through messenger chats that cover their entire journey, not just support tickets. Think marketing, sales, and support all happening in the same chat window.

Its real strength is in starting the conversation. You can use it for things like:

• Proactive live chat: Pop up and engage with visitors on your site or users in your app before they even think to ask a question.

• Fin, its advanced AI chatbot: This is an AI agent built to handle genuinely complex questions and sort things out on its own.

• User onboarding: Features like Product Tours can walk new users through your software, which helps them get the hang of it faster and cuts down on those early-stage support tickets.

Because of this approach, Intercom is a big hit with SaaS and tech companies who need to manage everything from getting a new customer to keeping them happy for the long haul.

What is Gorgias?

Gorgias, meanwhile, is a helpdesk laser-focused on one thing: e-commerce. Its whole world revolves around online stores, particularly those on platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento.

Its main job is to pull all your customer conversations and e-commerce data into one place so your support team can work ridiculously fast. Its killer features are:

• Deep e-commerce integrations: This is its superpower. Agents can see a customer’s entire order history and shipping details right next to the support ticket.

• Actions inside the helpdesk: Your team can process refunds, edit orders, and cancel shipments without ever leaving the Gorgias dashboard. No more flipping between ten different tabs.

• A focus on making money: Gorgias is built to help you turn support chats into sales by making it easy to recommend products and see exactly how much revenue your support team is bringing in.

If you run an online store, Gorgias is meant to feel like it was tailor-made for you.

Feature comparison: Intercom vs Gorgias

The best platform for you usually comes down to the small stuff. How smart is the AI, really? How well does it play with the tools you already rely on? Let’s get into the weeds of where Intercom and Gorgias really deliver, and where they don’t.

AI and automation capabilities

When it comes to AI, Intercom and Gorgias have very different philosophies.

• Intercom’s approach: Intercom’s AI is centered around Fin, a deep-learning model that can understand context and navigate some pretty complex conversations. They also have a "Copilot" feature that works alongside your human agents, suggesting replies to help them move faster. It’s powerful stuff and can feel like a glimpse into the future. The catch? It can feel like a "black box." You don’t get a lot of fine-tuned control over how it behaves. Worse, the pay-per-resolution pricing model, at $0.99 for every single issue Fin solves, can lead to unpredictable and frankly terrifying costs, especially when you’re busy.

• Gorgias’s approach: Gorgias’s automation is more direct and rules-based. It relies on macros, intent detection, and automated rules to deal with common, repetitive e-commerce questions. It’s fantastic for deflecting tickets like "Where is my order?" or "What’s your return policy?" But its AI isn’t as conversational or adaptive as Intercom’s. If a problem is a bit more unusual or falls outside the standard e-commerce playbook, the AI tends to get stuck, meaning your team still has to jump in and handle it manually.

• A more flexible way: This is where a tool like eesel AI offers a really interesting middle ground. It gives you the powerful, learning-based AI you see in Intercom but with the granular control of a rules-based system. eesel AI can train on your team’s past conversations to automatically learn your brand’s voice and figure out how to solve your unique, complex issues. But unlike a "black box," you have complete control to decide exactly which tickets get automated and which ones get passed to a human. The best part is the ability to simulate its performance on thousands of your real, historical tickets before you ever turn it on. This takes all the guesswork out of the equation and shows you exactly what your automation rate and cost savings will be.

eesel AI’s simulation feature lets you see exactly how the AI will perform on your real tickets before you go live.

E-commerce focus and platform integrations

This is a big one, and there’s a clear winner for e-commerce brands.

• Gorgias: For native e-commerce features, Gorgias is in a league of its own. The ability for agents to edit orders, issue refunds, and check on shipments without leaving the helpdesk is a huge time-saver. It’s designed to make e-commerce support as smooth as possible.

• Intercom: Intercom does have an integration with platforms like Shopify, but it’s pretty basic. It mostly just syncs customer data and lets you see order information. Your agents can’t actually do anything with that information from within Intercom, which means they’re still stuck juggling tabs to handle simple requests.

• The integrator advantage: This is another area where a tool like eesel AI thinks differently. It’s not a whole new helpdesk; it’s an AI layer that plugs into the tools you’re already using, whether that’s Intercom, Gorgias, Zendesk, or something else. It connects to all your knowledge sources, from your help center and internal docs to your Shopify store data. This gives you the power of deep e-commerce actions and knowledge right inside the helpdesk your team already knows how to use.

Feature	Intercom	Gorgias
Primary Use Case	SaaS & Customer Engagement	E-commerce Customer Support
AI Type	Deep Learning (Fin)	Rules-Based & Intent Detection
E-commerce Actions	Basic (View Data)	Advanced (Edit/Refund Orders)
Best For	Proactive user onboarding	High-volume Shopify stores

Core use cases: Who are they really for?

A platform can have all the shiny features in the world, but they don’t mean a thing if they don’t actually fit your business. Let’s break down who the ideal customer is for each of these platforms.

When to choose Intercom

Intercom is probably the right call if you’re a:

• SaaS company that needs to guide users through a complicated onboarding process and proactively keep them from churning.

• Business that sends out a lot of targeted messages for marketing and sales campaigns.

• Larger company with a healthy budget that wants a single (though often complicated) platform to handle the entire customer journey.

When to choose Gorgias

Gorgias is the obvious choice for:

• Direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands that run on Shopify, BigCommerce, or Magento.

• Support teams dealing with a ton of transactional questions about orders, shipping, and returns.

• Businesses that want to see a direct line between their customer support efforts and the money they bring in.

Pro Tip: This whole decision often forces you into a specific box. The market seems to assume you’re either a SaaS company or an e-commerce store, with no in-between. But what if you’re a mix of both? Or what if you just want great AI without being locked into one platform’s way of doing things? It’s a common frustration that leads a lot of teams to look for more flexible AI tools that adapt to them, not the other way around.

Pricing comparison: A frustrating deep dive

Alright, let’s get into the part everyone dreads: the price tag. With both Intercom and Gorgias, the sticker price is almost never what you actually end up paying, which can be a huge headache.

Intercom pricing explained

Intercom’s pricing is based on a per-seat, per-month model, but the real cost is buried in all the add-ons.

• Structure: You pay for each agent using the platform.

• Plans:

  • Essential: Starts at $39/seat/mo.

  • Advanced: Starts at $99/seat/mo.

  • Expert: Starts at $139/seat/mo.

• Hidden Costs: Those base plans are just the starting point. To get the features most businesses actually need, you have to open your wallet again.

  • Fin AI Agent: This is an extra $0.99 every time it resolves an issue.

  • Fin AI Copilot: Tack on another $35 per month.

  • Proactive Support Plus: Need product tours? That’s another $99 per month.

• The bottom line: Intercom’s pricing is complicated and hard to predict. The usage-based fees for its AI mean your bill can explode without warning, making it nearly impossible to budget with any confidence.

Gorgias pricing explained

Gorgias ties your costs directly to your support volume with a ticket-based model.

• Structure: You pay based on how many tickets you get each month.

• Plans (monthly billing):

  • Starter: $10/mo for 50 tickets.

  • Basic: $60/mo for 300 tickets.

  • Pro: $360/mo for 2,000 tickets.

  • Advanced: $900/mo for 5,000 tickets.

• Hidden Costs: The overage fees can be brutal. On the Basic plan, for example, you’ll get hit with an extra $40 for every 100 tickets you go over your limit. Key features like automation and channels like Voice or SMS often cost extra, too.

• The bottom line: This model can feel like you’re being punished for growing. A successful sale or a busy holiday season can result in a bill that’s way higher than you expected.

The smarter alternative: Predictable and transparent pricing

If you’re fed up with confusing pricing models, eesel AI’s pricing is designed to be straightforward and simple.

• The biggest difference: There are no per-resolution fees. Ever. You’ll never get a surprise bill just because your AI had a productive month.

• Structure: Our pricing is based on simple, feature-based tiers (Team and Business) that scale on a metric you can actually predict: the number of monthly AI interactions. You know exactly what you’re paying for.

• Flexibility: We offer monthly plans you can cancel at any time. This lets you get started and prove the value without any risk, unlike platforms that push you into long-term annual contracts right from the start.

Why you might not need to choose at all

Here’s the real problem with the whole "Intercom vs Gorgias" debate: they are both massive, all-in-one platforms. When you choose one, you’re committing to their entire ecosystem and their way of doing things. It usually means a full "rip and replace" of your current tools, forcing your team to learn a brand-new system and messing up the workflows you’ve spent months getting just right.

eesel AI offers a more modern, lightweight solution. Instead of making you switch platforms, it works as an intelligent AI layer on top of the tools you already have.

This approach has some huge advantages:

• Go live in minutes, not months. You can connect eesel AI to your helpdesk with a single click. There’s no painful, multi-month migration project to worry about.

• Unify all your knowledge. You can train your AI on everything, your public help center, internal wikis in Confluence or Google Docs, and most importantly, all the expertise hidden in your team’s past support conversations. This ensures your AI gives answers that are actually accurate and relevant.

• Simulate with confidence. You can test your entire setup and prove the ROI before a single customer ever talks to the AI.

• Keep your helpdesk. There’s no need to retrain your team or throw away the processes that are already working. eesel AI slots right into your existing workflow.

Making the right choice for your team

So, what’s the final call on Intercom vs Gorgias?

• Intercom is the powerhouse for well-funded SaaS companies that need a sophisticated tool for engaging customers across their entire journey.

• Gorgias is the champion for e-commerce brands, especially those on Shopify, that need an efficient helpdesk with deep store integrations.

But both of them ask you to make big sacrifices when it comes to flexibility, predictable costs, and being locked into one vendor. They make you adapt to their world.

eesel AI represents a more strategic choice. It’s for teams that want powerful, customized AI without having to overhaul their entire tech stack. It’s the solution that adapts to you, not the other way around.

This video provides a side-by-side comparison of Intercom and Gorgias to see which platform delivers a higher return on investment.

Tired of being forced to choose between rigid platforms and unpredictable pricing? See how eesel AI can automate up to 70% of your support queries without making you switch helpdesks. Get started for free or book a demo to see our powerful simulation in action.