Zendesk vs Gorgias: Which helpdesk is right for you in 2025?

Picking a new helpdesk is a pretty big deal for any support team. No pressure, right?

It’s the one tool that dictates your team’s entire workflow, decides whether your agents have a good day or a frustrating one, and pretty much shapes the entire customer experience. If you nail the choice, your team feels empowered. If you get it wrong, you’re looking at months, or even years, of friction and headaches.

Two of the biggest names you’ll bump into are Zendesk and Gorgias. In one corner, you have Zendesk, the established giant that does a bit of everything for businesses of all shapes and sizes. In the other, you have Gorgias, the super-focused tool built specifically for e-commerce brands.

This guide will walk you through a detailed Zendesk vs Gorgias comparison, breaking down their features, AI smarts, pricing, and who they’re really for. We’ll also look at a more modern way to think about this, one that lets you upgrade the tools you already have without forcing you into a corner.

What is Zendesk?

You’ve almost certainly heard of Zendesk. It’s a beast in the customer service world, known for its ability to scale with just about anyone, from tiny startups to massive companies like Uber and Tesco. The core of Zendesk is a powerful ticketing system that pulls in conversations from dozens of places, email, phone, live chat, social media, you name it, and organizes them into one clean queue.

But it doesn’t stop at ticketing. Zendesk has a whole family of products, including a knowledge base builder (Zendesk Guide), community forums where customers can help each other out, and some serious reporting and analytics tools to track how your team is doing. Its main appeal is its Swiss Army knife approach. It’s a solid, all-in-one platform you can customize to handle just about any support scenario you can throw at it. If you need a tool that can do a little of everything, that’s Zendesk.

What is Gorgias?

Gorgias, on the other hand, isn’t trying to be everything to everyone. It was built from the ground up with one person in mind: the e-commerce merchant. Its entire design is fine-tuned for online stores, and its killer feature is its deep, native integration with platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento.

This tight connection is a huge deal for e-commerce support. It means an agent can see a customer’s complete order history and actually do things, like edit an order, issue a refund, or apply a discount, right from the helpdesk. No more switching back and forth to the Shopify admin panel. Gorgias pulls in customer chats from email, live chat, SMS, and even comments on your social media ads. It’s built to help teams solve problems and drive sales by turning simple support questions into buying opportunities.

A detailed comparison of Zendesk vs Gorgias

Even though both platforms help you talk to customers, they come at it from completely different angles. Let’s break down how they compare in the areas that really matter.

Zendesk vs Gorgias: E-commerce focus and integrations

This is where the two platforms really show their different colors.

Gorgias is in its natural habitat here. Its native Shopify integration is truly top-notch. When a customer gets in touch, your agent immediately sees their entire order history, shipping status, and past conversations right next to the ticket. They can then take action, cancel an order, or even create a new one without ever leaving the Gorgias screen. Its app marketplace is smaller than Zendesk’s, but it’s full of the tools e-commerce brands actually use, like ReCharge for subscriptions or Loop for returns.

Zendesk does have a Shopify integration, but it feels more like a bolt-on feature than a core part of the product. It can show you basic order info, but it doesn’t have the same "get stuff done" power as Gorgias. If an agent needs to change an order or handle a tricky return, they usually have to leave Zendesk and log into Shopify. That little bit of friction adds up, slowing down agents and making for a clunky workflow.

But migrating your whole helpdesk just for this feels like overkill. A different way to think about this is to add a specialized AI layer on top of what you already use. For example, eesel AI can plug directly into helpdesks like Zendesk and connect to your Shopify store. This gives your AI the ability to look up order information and even take action on your behalf. You get powerful e-commerce automation without the massive headache of switching tools.

Zendesk vs Gorgias: Automation and AI capabilities

Both tools talk a big game about AI, but how they actually use it tells you a lot.

Zendesk has put a lot of money into AI, with features like intelligent triage that automatically sorts incoming tickets based on what the customer is asking about. Its "AI agents" can try to answer common questions by pointing people to articles in your help center. The problem is, setting it up can be a headache, and the AI is only as smart as the articles you’ve written. If the answer isn’t in your Zendesk Guide, the AI has no idea what to do.

Gorgias focuses more on rules-based automation and macros to handle the flood of repetitive e-commerce questions like "Where is my order?" It uses machine learning to figure out what a customer wants and then fires off a pre-written response. This works well for the top 10 most common questions, but the system is pretty rigid. You have to think of every possible question ahead of time and build a rule for it, which gets out of hand quickly as your store grows.

But what if your best answers aren’t in a help article? What if they’re buried in past conversations your best agents have had? A more powerful approach to AI is one that learns from all of your company’s knowledge. Tools like eesel AI connect not just to your helpdesk but also to the places where your team’s real knowledge is stored, like internal wikis in Confluence or Google Docs. It learns from your team’s best-ever responses to provide answers that are way more accurate and nuanced than a simple rule or help center article. Even better, you can run it in a simulation mode on thousands of your past tickets to see exactly how it would perform before you turn it on for customers.

Zendesk vs Gorgias: Scalability and business model

Let’s be real, how you pay for a tool can make or break its usefulness as you grow.

Zendesk uses the classic per-agent, per-month pricing. This makes your budget predictable, but it can get really expensive as you hire more support agents. Every new person you bring on adds another monthly bill, forcing you to constantly weigh the cost of a new seat against the need for better support.

Gorgias uses a ticket-based model. You pay for a certain number of "billable tickets" every month. For small teams or stores with just a trickle of support requests, this can be cheap. The problem is that it creates unpredictable costs and punishes you for growing. A successful sale, a busy holiday season, or a small product bug can make your ticket volume shoot up, hitting you with expensive overage fees. You’re basically getting penalized for having more customers who want to talk to you. Weird, right?

A better pricing model for AI and automation shouldn’t be tied to how many people you have or how many tickets you get. For instance, eesel AI offers transparent, predictable pricing based on the features you need, not how many resolutions it provides. This lets you handle more customer questions without watching your bill spiral out of control just because you’re successful.

Zendesk vs Gorgias: A full pricing comparison

Let’s talk money, because that’s a huge piece of the Zendesk vs Gorgias puzzle. Zendesk’s cost per person adds up as your team expands, while Gorgias’s ticket-based plans can lead to surprise bills when you get busy.

Zendesk pricing

Zendesk’s plans are priced per agent, and you get more features as you go up the ladder. These prices are for annual billing.

Plan	Price (per agent/month)	Key Features
Support Team	$19	Basic email, Facebook, and X (formerly Twitter) support.
Suite Team	$55	Includes essential AI agents, a knowledge base, messaging, and voice support.
Suite Professional	$115	Adds CSAT surveys, advanced reporting, SLA management, and more integrations.
Suite Enterprise	$169	Adds custom agent roles, a sandbox environment for testing, and advanced workflows.

Gorgias pricing

Gorgias’s pricing is all about the number of monthly "billable tickets." A huge plus is that all plans (except the tiny Starter plan) come with unlimited user seats.

Plan	Price (monthly)	Included Tickets	Key Features
Starter	$10	50 / month	Designed for brand-new stores with limited integrations.
Basic	$50	300 / month	Core helpdesk features and the essential Shopify integration.
Pro	$300	2,000 / month	Adds phone support (voice) and access to more integrations.
Advanced	$750	5,000 / month	Includes more advanced reporting and analytics features.
Enterprise	Custom	Custom	Offers dedicated support, onboarding, and custom terms.

Pro Tip: See the problem? One model makes it expensive to hire people, and the other makes it expensive when your customers need help. This is why adding an AI automation tool like eesel AI on top of your existing helpdesk is so effective. It helps you handle a bigger workload without your costs growing at the same rate.

Zendesk vs Gorgias: Don’t just switch, upgrade

So, who’s the winner in the Zendesk vs Gorgias showdown? Honestly, it depends entirely on your business.

• Zendesk is the go-to choice for large, complex companies that need a versatile tool that can handle anything. Its biggest downsides are the lack of deep e-commerce features out of the box and the high per-agent cost that makes growing your team a pricey affair.

• Gorgias is the clear favorite for e-commerce brands that live and breathe Shopify and need fast, context-rich support that also drives sales. But its ticket-based pricing can turn into a problem as you grow, punishing you for your own success.

But maybe that’s the wrong question. What if you didn’t have to pick between these two imperfect options? The real challenge in customer support isn’t just about choosing the right helpdesk; it’s about breaking free from the limits of whatever helpdesk you already have. Moving everything to a new platform is painful, expensive, and full of risks.

This video provides a helpful visual breakdown of the Zendesk vs Gorgias comparison to aid in your decision.

The smarter move is to upgrade your current setup. eesel AI integrates with the helpdesk you’re already using in just a few minutes, connecting all your scattered knowledge sources to deliver smart, accurate, and completely customizable AI automation. You get the specialized e-commerce features you’re missing, advanced AI that learns from your entire business, and pricing that actually makes sense, all without the pain of a full migration.

Ready to see what a truly smart AI layer can do?

Stop getting bogged down in the debate over which platform to switch to, and start upgrading what you already have. See how eesel AI can automate your frontline support, help draft replies for your agents, and give you the best of both worlds.

Start a free trial or Book a demo to see it for yourself.