Gladly Sidekick vs Zowie (2026)
Comparing Gladly Sidekick and Zowie? Both are AI Agents & Chatbots and E-commerce Support tools in the directory, which is why buyers put them on the same shortlist. Below is a side-by-side look at pricing and an estimated monthly bill, channels, compliance claims, and integrations, plus when each is the better fit, so you can pick on the facts rather than either vendor's own sales page.
At a glance
| Attribute |
 Gladly Sidekick
|
 Zowie
|
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Gladly's AI-powered Customer Service Platform centers on people, not tickets, leading to delightful experiences and revenue growth while cutting costs. | AI customer service agent for e-commerce, focused on resolving tickets and driving revenue. |
| Pricing | Paid · ~$180/seat/mo | Per resolution · Custom |
| Est. monthly cost | $1,800/mo $180 per seat/mo; Approximate, reported figure | No published price to estimate |
| Founded | 2014 | 2019 |
| Categories | AI Agents & Chatbots E-commerce Support Help Desk & Ticketing | AI Agents & Chatbots E-commerce Support |
| Channels | ||
| Chat | ✓ | ✓ |
| ✓ | ✓ | |
| Voice | ✓ | ✓ |
| SMS | ✓ | — |
| Social | ✓ | — |
| Compliance (vendor-claimed) | ||
| SOC 2 | ✓ | ✓ |
| HIPAA | ✓ | ✓ |
| GDPR | ✓ | ✓ |
| PCI DSS | ✓ | — |
| EU AI Act | — | ✓ |
| Data residency | Not verified | US, EEA |
| Languages | Most ISO 639-1 languages | 70+ languages |
| What the AI can do | ||
| Takes actions | ✓ | ✓ |
| Hands off to a human | ✓ | ✓ |
| Choice of LLM | Not verified | ✓ |
| Buying | ||
| Free trial | Not verified | Not verified |
| How you buy | Not verified | Not verified |
| Minimum commitment | — | — |
| Company | Independent, venture-backed | Independent, venture-backed |
| Works with | Shopify Salesforce Zendesk Twilio Amazon Connect Slack | Shopify Zendesk Salesforce Gorgias Klaviyo Instagram |
| Key features |
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| Next step |
Full listing Visit site → |
Full listing Visit site → |
Estimates assume 5,000 conversations a month, 60% handled by AI and 10 agent seats, at each vendor's published list price (the cost calculator's model); treat them as a floor, not a quote. Compliance rows are what vendors publicly claim, and “Not verified” means we have not confirmed that fact yet, not that the tool lacks it.
Choose Gladly Sidekick or Zowie?
Choose Gladly Sidekick if
Best for: Consumer brands that treat support as a loyalty channel and want one lifelong customer thread across voice, chat, SMS, email and social, with an AI agent that tracks orders, starts returns and hands off with full context, with SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR and PCI DSS coverage.
- you need a full help desk and ticketing suite
- you need SMS and Social coverage
- you need a vendor that publicly claims PCI DSS
- you prefer a flat subscription to usage-based billing
Look elsewhere if you are a small team or price-sensitive: Gladly is enterprise-priced at roughly $180 a seat with seat minimums, Sidekick is billed on top per conversation, and there is no free trial or self-serve start.
Choose Zowie if
Best for: Online retailers that want an AI agent that resolves order, return and availability questions across chat, email and voice and also sells, running product recommendations and checkout inside the conversation, with their own choice of LLM, 70+ languages and SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR and EU AI Act coverage, on Shopify, Zendesk, Salesforce or Gorgias.
- you need a vendor that publicly claims EU AI Act
- you would rather pay per resolved ticket than per seat
Look elsewhere if you are outside e-commerce or want to see a price: Zowie is per-resolution by quote with no trial or self-serve start, and its verified facts do not include a stated data residency.
About Gladly Sidekick
Gladly organizes support around people instead of tickets, and that one decision changes everything about how it feels. Every customer gets a single lifelong conversation thread that follows them across voice, chat, SMS, email, and social, so they never have to repeat themselves and your agents always see the full story. Sidekick, its AI agent, lives inside that thread, resolving requests using real customer context and taking genuine actions like tracking an order, starting a return, or making a change, then handing off to a human with everything already in view.
A recent standout is Sidekick on Voice, which Gladly bills as the industry's only AI voice agent powered by that lifelong, multichannel history, so a phone conversation picks up right where a chat left off. The company has kept expanding the family with Sidekick Sales for product recommendations, Sidekick Email, and versions that extend the agent onto Zendesk and Salesforce, so teams on other platforms can borrow its brain.
Gladly was founded in 2014 by Joseph Ansanelli and his co-founders, and it has leaned cheerfully into its theme, naming its pricing tiers Hero and Superhero. It is very much an enterprise product, sold largely by quote with seat minimums, and its Sidekick AI is billed per conversation or resolution on top. That positioning fits its customer base of consumer brands that treat support as a loyalty channel, including Crate and Barrel, Ulta Beauty, and Breeze Airways.
The through-line here is emotional as much as it is technical: Gladly wants every interaction to feel like talking to a company that genuinely remembers you and your history. If you sell to consumers who expect a personal, continuous relationship rather than a cold, fresh ticket every single time they reach out, Gladly and its Sidekick agent are built from top to bottom around exactly that promise.
Read the full Gladly Sidekick listing → · See Gladly Sidekick alternatives →
About Zowie
Zowie is an AI agent built for online retail, and it is unusually comfortable wearing two hats at once. On the support side it resolves high-volume questions like order status, returns, and product availability across chat, email, and voice, claiming to automate a large majority of tasks in as many as 175 languages without wandering off into hallucination. On the sales side it goes where few support tools dare, running sales playbooks, recommending products, and guiding shoppers all the way to checkout inside the same conversation. An AI Copilot backs up human agents, and the whole thing plugs into Shopify, Magento, and Klaviyo.
The company's journey is a good one. It was founded in 2018 by Maja Schaefer and Maciej Ciolek, began life in Poland under a different name, and has since planted its headquarters in New York with backing from Tiger Global and Gradient Ventures, among others. That treating-support-as-a-revenue-channel angle is Zowie's signature move, and it is what separates the product from the many tools that only ever think about deflection.
Zowie deploys either on top of your existing help desk or as a standalone, and it recently landed on the Google Cloud Marketplace, a sign of its push toward larger, more demanding customers. Pricing is annual and outcome-based, structured around the work the agents actually deliver rather than a per-seat sticker, so expect a tailored quote rather than a public price list.
Brands like InPost, Decathlon, and GetYourGuide have put it to work across both support and commerce. If you run an e-commerce operation and want an AI agent that not only clears the ticket queue but also quietly nudges revenue upward while it is at it, Zowie's unusual dual focus on both resolving problems and selling products makes it a genuinely distinctive option that is well worth testing.
Read the full Zowie listing → · See Zowie alternatives →
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