Gorgias vs Help Scout (2026)
Comparing Gorgias and Help Scout? Both are Help Desk & Ticketing 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 |
 Gorgias
|
 Help Scout
|
|---|---|---|
| What it is | The conversational AI platform for e-commerce brands, deeply integrated with Shopify. | Customer support platform known for simplicity, with AI drafts, summaries, and an answers assistant. |
| Pricing | Per resolution · $10/mo | Freemium · Free; $25/user/mo (billed annually) |
| Est. monthly cost | $10/mo $10/mo | $250/mo $25 per seat/mo; Free plan available |
| Founded | 2015 | 2011 |
| Categories | AI Agents & Chatbots E-commerce Support Help Desk & Ticketing | Help Desk & Ticketing Knowledge Base & Self-Service |
| Channels | ||
| Chat | ✓ | ✓ |
| ✓ | ✓ | |
| Voice | ✓ | ✓ |
| SMS | ✓ | ✓ |
| ✓ | — | |
| Social | ✓ | ✓ |
| Compliance (vendor-claimed) | ||
| SOC 2 | ✓ | ✓ |
| HIPAA | ✓ | ✓ |
| Data residency | EU (for EU merchants), plus other regions | US |
| Languages | 80+ languages | 50+ languages (AI Answers) |
| What the AI can do | ||
| Takes actions | ✓ | Not verified |
| Hands off to a human | ✓ | ✓ |
| Choice of LLM | Not verified | Not verified |
| Buying | ||
| Free trial | Free trial (length not stated) | Free plan; 15-day free trial on Standard and Plus |
| How you buy | Self-serve signup | Self-serve signup |
| Minimum commitment | — | 10 users minimum (Pro) |
| Company | Independent, venture-backed | Not verified |
| Works with | Shopify Klaviyo Instagram WhatsApp Slack Recharge | Shopify Slack Salesforce HubSpot Jira Mailchimp |
| Key features |
|
|
| 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 Gorgias or Help Scout?
Choose Gorgias if
Best for: Shopify, BigCommerce and Magento stores that want a help desk whose AI agent answers order, shipping and return questions from live store data and can edit orders or issue refunds, across chat, email, voice, SMS, WhatsApp and social, from $10 a month with a self-serve start.
- you need autonomous AI agents
- you need deep e-commerce and Shopify support
- you need WhatsApp coverage
- you want the lower list-price bill (about $10/mo vs $250/mo at 5,000 conversations a month)
Look elsewhere if you are not an online store: Gorgias is built for e-commerce and its value comes from the commerce integrations. Ticket-based pricing also climbs with volume, so model your busiest month.
Choose Help Scout if
Best for: Small and mid-size teams that want a simple shared inbox, Docs knowledge base and chat widget with AI Answers, drafts and summaries, starting on a free plan and moving to $25 per user with a 15-day trial, from a profitable, remote-first vendor.
- you need a knowledge base and self-service
- you want to start on a free or low-cost plan
Look elsewhere if you need voice, hosting outside the US, or an AI agent that takes actions in other systems: Help Scout's verified channels are chat and email, residency is US, and its AI answers rather than acts.
About Gorgias
Gorgias is a help desk built specifically for online stores, and it knows its lane cold. It integrates deeply with Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento, so its AI Agent can answer customer emails and chats about orders, shipping, returns, and products using live store data, then take real actions like editing an order or issuing a refund right inside the ticket. A Copilot assists human agents with drafts and summaries, and because Gorgias tracks the revenue that support conversations drive, it treats your help desk as a place that can make money, not just spend it.
The origin story is delightfully accidental. Gorgias started in Paris in 2015 as a humble Chrome extension for email templates, until the founders noticed that support agents were the ones actually using it and pivoted the whole company toward them. It shares its name with Gorgias of Leontini, the ancient Greek orator immortalized in one of Plato's dialogues, a fittingly talkative namesake for a conversation platform. Today it is a certified B Corporation and Shopify's only Premier Partner for customer experience, powering a large share of the biggest Shopify brands.
That focus has won a who's who of direct-to-consumer names, including Steve Madden, Glossier, Dr. Bronner's, and Marine Layer, with more than sixteen thousand brands on board in total. Pricing starts at just ten dollars a month and is based on ticket volume with unlimited users, so growing teams are not punished for adding people, and the AI Agent is billed per resolved conversation.
Its 2.0 release added a shopping assistant, image analysis, and cart-recovery flows in more than eighty languages, pushing Gorgias further into the world of support-driven selling. For any e-commerce brand living on Shopify that wants an AI agent tuned to the specific rhythms of online retail rather than a generic one, Gorgias is the obvious specialist pick.
Read the full Gorgias listing → · See Gorgias alternatives →
About Help Scout
Help Scout is a shared inbox, knowledge base, and chat platform built on a simple idea: great support software should be nearly invisible to the customer. It is genuinely easy to use, and its AI features lean into that human-first philosophy. AI Answers powers a customer-facing chatbot in the Beacon widget that resolves questions from your docs, AI Drafts suggests on-brand replies pulled from your past conversations, AI Assist adjusts tone, length, and translation across a dozen-plus languages, and AI Summarize condenses sprawling threads into a couple of lines so agents can catch up fast.
The company has real conviction behind it. Founded in 2011 by Nick Francis and his co-founders, Help Scout has been remote-first since long before that was fashionable and profitable since roughly its second year, which is almost unheard of in venture-backed software. That independence lets it optimize for craft and customer experience rather than growth at any cost, and beloved brands like Basecamp, Trello, and Grubhub have rewarded it with their loyalty.
Help Scout is also refreshingly honest about getting things wrong. In late 2024 it overhauled its pricing toward a per-interaction model, heard the loud unhappiness from customers, and publicly walked much of it back in 2025, a candor you rarely see in this industry. Today it charges per user across its tiers, and its AI Answers agent is billed separately per resolution, with a free trial period so you can see the value before paying for it.
The sweet spot is small and mid-size teams that want real AI leverage without enterprise complexity or a steep learning curve to climb first. If you would rather your support tool quietly make your team faster than dazzle you with a hundred settings you will never once touch, Help Scout is a thoughtful, refreshingly human choice.
Read the full Help Scout listing → · See Help Scout alternatives →
Know when Gorgias or Help Scout changes
One plain-text email at the start of each month with every verified price change, acquisition and new listing across the directory, including any change to Gorgias or Help Scout. No tracking pixels, unsubscribe in one click.