Gorgias alternatives for small Shopify stores: the math at 300 tickets a month and in a Black Friday spike
One Shopify store with 2 agents and 300 tickets a month, priced on Gorgias' ticket and AI fees and on pricing per agent, in a normal month and in a Black Friday month. Then a switching checklist, since Deskwoot has no Gorgias importer.
Deskwoot Team
10 min read
Contents
Gorgias says it plainly on its pricing page: the helpdesk "scales from 50 to 5,000 tickets a month, never priced per agent." For a store where 2 people answer customers, that sounds fair. The bill follows your ticket count and your AI resolutions instead, and both climb with your orders.
November is where you feel it. Shopify merchants sold $14.6 billion over the 2025 Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend, 27% more than the year before, according to Shopify. More orders mean more "where is my parcel?" and "can I swap the size?" messages. The math below follows one small store through two months: a normal one at 300 tickets, then one where volume triples. Every Gorgias figure comes from gorgias.com and was checked on 25 October 2026.
How Gorgias bills a small store
Gorgias charges for tickets, and adds a second fee when its AI Agent resolves a conversation. These are the plans a small store compares, as listed on the pricing page:
| Starter | Basic | Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Helpdesk, billed monthly | $10 | $60 | $360 |
| Helpdesk, billed annually (per month) | monthly only | $50 | $300 |
| Tickets included per month | 50 | 300 | 2,000 |
| Extra tickets | $0.40 each | $40 per 100 | $36 per 100 |
| User seats | 3 | 500 | 500 |
| AI Agent, billed monthly | $30 for 30 automated interactions | $30 for 30 | $190 for 190 |
The rules behind those numbers sit in Gorgias' billing article, How you're billed for using Gorgias (updated September 9, 2026):
- A ticket becomes billable once one message goes out from the helpdesk, "whether the message comes from a human agent, AI Agent, or an automatic reply from a Rule." Inbound tickets that never get a reply cost nothing.
- When AI Agent resolves a ticket without handing it to a person, you pay "both a ticket fee + automation fee." When it hands over, you pay the ticket fee only. A resolution counts as automated if the customer needs no human within 72 hours.
- Above the included automated interactions, the pricing page states that overage "is billed at $1.50 per interaction."
- The pricing page FAQ adds that a reply to an existing thread "may count as a new billable ticket, but only after a defined period of inactivity."
- Accounts created before May 28, 2025 may still be on legacy pricing, so check your own Billing & usage page first.
One point in Gorgias' favor: Basic includes 500 seats, so a store with 12 occasional helpers pays the same as a store with 2. With a big team and small volume, pricing per agent loses.
A normal month: 2 agents, 300 tickets
The example store gets 300 conversations a month and answers all of them. AI answers first on half (150). It settles 75 on its own and hands the other 75 to a person. Both tools are billed monthly.
Gorgias Basic with AI Agent: $60 covers the 300 tickets. The 75 AI resolutions are inside those 300, since each one is also a ticket. The AI Agent bundle costs $30 and covers 30 automated interactions; the other 45 cost $1.50 each, so $67.50. The month comes to $157.50.
Deskwoot charges per agent, plus AI conversations above the plan's monthly allowance:
- Startup: 2 seats at $4 is $8. 50 AI conversations are included, so 100 more at $0.07 add $7. The month comes to $15.
- Business: 2 seats at $8 is $16. 100 AI conversations are included, so 50 more at $0.05 add $2.50. The month comes to $18.50.
Why 150 on Deskwoot and only 75 on Gorgias? Deskwoot counts a conversation once a month as soon as Fynn, its AI agent, or Copilot helps with it, or a voice message in it is transcribed, even when Fynn hands it to your team. Gorgias charges its automation fee only on success, and each success is also a paid ticket. The gap comes from the unit prices: $1.50 against 5 or 7 cents. For a wider look at how help desks bill AI, see the hidden costs of helpdesks.
Billed annually, Gorgias Basic drops to $50 plus $27 for the AI bundle. Deskwoot seats drop to $3.20 on Startup and $6.40 on Business.
The Black Friday month: 900 tickets
Say volume triples to 900. We found no independent figure for a small store's November rise, so use last November's number from your Gorgias usage page if you have one. The AI share stays the same: it answers first on 450 and settles 225 alone.
Gorgias Basic: $60 plus 600 extra tickets at $0.40 is $300. The AI Agent bundle of $30 plus 195 extra interactions at $1.50 is $322.50. The month comes to $622.50, about 4 times the normal month.
Moving up to Pro first barely helps. Pro with AI Agent costs $550 and includes 190 automated interactions, so the same month lands at $602.50. On the helpdesk alone, Basic with overage stays cheaper than Pro up to 1,050 tickets.
Deskwoot Startup: $8 plus 400 extra AI conversations at $0.07 is $36. Startup includes 1,000 conversations a month and counts every new conversation, answered or not (spam aside). Conversations above the limit still arrive, but they stay locked until you upgrade. 900 fits, with little room for a busy Cyber Monday.
Deskwoot Business: $16 plus 350 extra AI conversations at $0.05 is $33.50, with no conversation limit. A third person for the peak adds $8 a month, charged pro rata from the day you add them.
Business costs less than Startup in this month because its AI rate is lower. With 2 agents the crossover sits at about 325 AI conversations a month; with 3 agents, at about 525.
| Example store, billed monthly | Normal month (300) | Black Friday month (900) |
|---|---|---|
| Gorgias Basic, no AI Agent | $60 | $300 |
| Gorgias Basic with AI Agent | $157.50 | $622.50 |
| Deskwoot Startup, 2 agents | $15 | $36 |
| Deskwoot Business, 2 agents | $18.50 | $33.50 |
Timing a plan change on Deskwoot: an upgrade starts right away, and you pay the difference pro rata to the day. A downgrade takes effect at the end of the period you have paid for, and on annual billing that is the end of the paid year. If you only need Business for November and December, stay on monthly billing for that stretch.
Run it with your own numbers
You need 4 numbers, ideally for an ordinary month and for last November:
- Tickets with at least one reply. Gorgias shows them on the Billing & usage page.
- Tickets AI Agent resolved without a handover.
- Conversations AI would touch, resolved or not. Without AI today, count the questions you would let it answer first, such as order status and returns.
- People who answer customers.
- Gorgias Basic, monthly: $60, plus $0.40 for each ticket above 300, plus $30 for the AI bundle, plus $1.50 for each automated interaction above 30.
- Deskwoot Startup: $4 per agent, plus $0.07 for each AI conversation above 50.
- Deskwoot Business: $8 per agent, plus $0.05 for each AI conversation above 100.
- Deskwoot Enterprise: $12 per agent, plus $0.03 for each AI conversation above 300.
On Deskwoot, AI conversations above the allowance come out of a prepaid balance. Switch on auto recharge or top up before Black Friday, so Fynn keeps answering through the weekend. The AI conversations billing article explains the meter, and plans and pricing lists what each plan includes.
What you give up, and what you get
Gorgias covers ground Deskwoot does not. Its pricing page lists voice, social channels, TikTok Shop, and integrations for BigCommerce and Magento. Deskwoot has no phone channel, and Instagram and Facebook Messenger DMs are not available in Deskwoot today. If most customers write to you on Instagram, weigh that first.
What a small Shopify store gets in Deskwoot:
- The Shopify integration on every plan, the free one included, with your first store at no extra cost. Orders show next to the conversation, and admins can refund all or part of an order, cancel it or mark it shipped there. WooCommerce works on every plan too.
- Fynn, on the paid plans, answers "where is my order?" once the customer sends the order number and the shipping postal code. The WISMO guide covers how to cut those messages in the first place.
- Fynn can cancel an order, refund, update a shipping address or open a return. Each action stays off until you switch it on and runs only for a verified customer who confirms in writing. By default Fynn refunds at most 10 times per customer in 30 days and 100 times a day across the workspace, on orders up to 90 days old, and you can set a maximum per refund.
- On Business, the live parcel status from over 1,500 carriers through Ship24, shown in the conversation and used in Fynn's answers, with no Ship24 account needed.
- Channels: email, live chat, WhatsApp, Telegram, LINE, SMS through Twilio, X DMs and a REST API channel (Enterprise). Contacts are unlimited on every plan.
Switching checklist
Deskwoot has no Gorgias importer, so plan the move by hand.
- Export from Gorgias before you cancel. Gorgias' export article lists the options. Exporting a view gives a CSV of ticket links and metadata without the message text, and the download link works for 14 days. The export from an analytics drill-down includes the messages, but only for the last 30 days. Customer lists and help center articles need a custom export from Gorgias support, so ask early. Keep these files as your archive.
- Connect Shopify first. You create a small app in Shopify's Dev Dashboard and give Deskwoot its Client ID and Secret. Deskwoot then imports your Shopify customers as contacts, followed by their orders.
- Decide on orders older than 60 days. By default an app reads orders from the last 60 days. The read_all_orders scope extends that, and Shopify's access scopes documentation says apps made in the Dev Dashboard under a merchant organization need no Shopify approval for it: add the scope and release a new version. If the release fails with it, leave it out. Fynn can still look up an older order live when Deskwoot has not stored it.
- Bring the rest by CSV. Contacts who never bought, such as wholesale inquiries, go in a CSV with a name or email column. Open threads go in a CSV of simple conversations, where each row becomes one conversation with one message. These count toward your plan's monthly conversation limit, so bring only threads that are still open. See importing contacts; only admins can import.
- Move the channels. Forward your support address to Deskwoot (email inbox setup), and replace the Gorgias chat in your theme with the Deskwoot widget, which is one line of code.
- Train and test Fynn. Point it at your shipping, returns and size pages, then test it with real order numbers. The 7 day trial runs on Enterprise, without a card, for up to 5 seats.
- Pick the date. Black Friday 2026 falls on November 27, Cyber Monday on November 30. If you can't finish steps 1 to 6 and run both tools side by side for about 2 weeks before then, wait until January. Your team should not be learning a new inbox in the week volume triples.
Where this leaves you
If your numbers show November costing a few hundred dollars more than a normal month, run both months through pricing per agent before you renew. Deskwoot's pricing page has the plan details, and the page for online stores shows Fynn on shop questions. The 7 day trial needs no card, so you can connect Shopify and test last week's real questions before November.
Gorgias prices checked on gorgias.com on 25 October 2026. Gorgias can change them at any time; the Billing & usage page in your account is the final word for your plan.
