Intercom and Gorgias both promise to speed up ecommerce support, but they charge for it in almost opposite ways. Intercom charges per seat no matter how many tickets your team handles. Gorgias charges by monthly ticket volume, with up to 500 seats included from its Basic plan.
The Intercom vs Gorgias decision usually comes down to whether your support volume or your headcount grows faster, plus how much you need order actions built into the ticket view. Both questions are worth answering with real numbers from your own store, not a demo conversation. This guide compares both on pricing, ecommerce fit, and AI costs, using prices checked on vendor pricing pages in September 2026. See our full help desk comparison hub, or the shorter side-by-sides against ThriveDesk: Intercom and Gorgias.
What is Intercom?
Intercom is a customer messaging platform that added ticketing and a help desk layer on top of its chat and in-app messaging roots. Support, marketing, and sales teams often work inside the same workspace, and it suits a store that wants support to sit next to broader customer messaging.
Essential covers the core support setup: a shared inbox, ticketing, a help center, and Fin, Intercom’s AI agent. Advanced and Expert add workflow automation, round-robin assignment, and multilingual content for larger teams. Our Intercom alternatives guide is worth a look if that price runs past what a small ecommerce team wants to spend.
Intercom doesn’t build its pricing around any single ecommerce platform, so a store’s order data has to come in through whatever integration it connects.
Pricing starts at $29 per seat a month on annual billing, or $39 month to month, with no free plan. Intercom holds a 4.5 out of 5 rating on G2 from more than 3,000 reviews.
What is Gorgias?
Gorgias is a help desk built specifically for ecommerce, with native order actions inside the ticket view for stores on Shopify and similar platforms. Agents can look up and act on an order without leaving the conversation, which is a different starting point than a general-purpose messaging tool.
Pricing scales with monthly ticket volume rather than seats. Starter costs $10 a month for 50 tickets and 3 seats, Basic is $60 a month ($50 billed yearly) for 300 tickets, and Pro runs $360 a month ($300 yearly) for 2,000 tickets. Up to 500 seats are included from Basic upward, and overage tickets cost $0.36 to $0.40 each.
Gorgias holds a 4.6 out of 5 rating on G2, and trials run 7 days. It suits a store where order status, returns, and shipping questions make up most of the ticket volume.
Key differences for an ecommerce team
Pricing model: seats vs ticket volume
Intercom charges per seat every month, no matter how many tickets that seat handles. A two-person team on Essential pays $58 a month whether it resolves 50 tickets or 500.
Gorgias charges by monthly ticket volume instead, with up to 500 seats included from Basic upward. A team handling 300 tickets a month pays $50 on annual billing; cross 2,000 tickets and the plan jumps to Pro at $300. Match the model to whichever number grows faster for your store: ticket volume or headcount. A store staffing up for peak season should weigh that against Gorgias’ ticket tiers, not just its headcount plan.
Ecommerce order actions
Gorgias is built around order actions inside the ticket: agents can look up, edit, and act on a Shopify-style order without switching tools. That’s a meaningful time saver for a store fielding order status and return questions all day.
Intercom’s messaging platform doesn’t center on order data the same way. It’s a general support and engagement tool, so any order lookup depends on the specific integration you connect and what that integration exposes. Test the exact order actions your agents need during the trial rather than assuming a connected integration covers them.
AI costs and a quirk worth knowing
Gorgias’ AI Agent costs $1 per interaction on monthly billing, or $0.90 billed yearly, with a $1.50 overage rate. Each AI interaction also counts as a billable ticket against your plan’s allowance, so AI use eats into the same cap as human replies.
Intercom’s Fin charges $0.99 per resolved outcome with no included volume in any plan, plus $9.99 for a qualification outcome. Neither AI fee is trivial at scale, and Gorgias’ double-counted tickets are easy to miss when estimating a monthly bill. Ask for a breakdown of AI-driven tickets versus human replies before you sign up for either AI product.
Seats and admin overhead
Gorgias includes up to 500 seats from its Basic plan, so adding agents doesn’t change the bill the way it does elsewhere. The cost driver is ticket volume and overage, not headcount.
Intercom’s per-seat model means every hire has a direct line-item cost, though it also means a quiet month costs less. A support lead should model both against expected staffing changes, not just current headcount, and compare a slow month against a peak-season month for a realistic range rather than a single estimate.
Self-service and help center
Both platforms include a knowledge base for public articles. Intercom’s ships inside Essential; Gorgias offers a self-service knowledge base as part of its plans too.
Neither replaces a dedicated documentation strategy on its own. The value comes from how consistently a store keeps the content current, not which platform hosts it. A short weekly review of the most-viewed articles catches outdated policy pages before customers do.
Reporting
Gorgias reports lean toward ecommerce metrics: order volume, revenue tied to conversations, and ticket-based performance. That’s a useful lens for a store tracking support against sales.
Intercom’s reporting depth scales with plan tier, and cross-channel reporting for chat, email, and in-app messaging sits mostly on Advanced and Expert. Confirm what ships on Essential before assuming parity with Gorgias’ ecommerce-specific reports, especially if your team already tracks revenue per ticket and needs either tool to reproduce that number before switching.
Intercom vs Gorgias at a glance
| Dimension | Intercom | Gorgias |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per seat per month | By monthly ticket volume |
| Entry price | $29 per seat monthly (Essential, annual) | $10 a month (Starter, 50 tickets, 3 seats) |
| Seats included | Priced per seat | Up to 500 from Basic upward |
| Ticket allowance | Not a pricing factor | 300 to 5,000+ depending on tier |
| Overage cost | Not applicable | $0.36 to $0.40 per extra ticket |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Trial length | 14 days | 7 days |
| Order actions | Depends on connected integration | Built into the ticket view |
| AI assistant | Fin AI Agent | Gorgias AI Agent |
| AI cost | $0.99 per outcome, no included volume | $1 per interaction, also counts as a ticket |
| Knowledge base | Included in Essential | Included |
| G2 rating | 4.5 out of 5, 3,000+ reviews | 4.6 out of 5 |
Pricing and what it costs at a few ticket volumes
Gorgias bills by monthly ticket volume, with up to 500 seats included from Basic upward. Intercom bills per seat per month, regardless of how many tickets those seats resolve.
| Monthly ticket volume | Gorgias (annual billing) | Intercom (3 seats, Essential annual) |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 300 tickets | $50 a month | $87 a month |
| Up to 2,000 tickets | $300 a month | $87 a month |
| Up to 5,000 tickets | $750 a month | $87 a month |
The pattern is the point: Gorgias’ bill climbs with ticket volume no matter how many people answer them, while Intercom’s bill stays flat unless you change seat count. A high-volume, lean-staffed store often does better on Intercom’s math. A growing store with moderate, steady ticket volume often does better on Gorgias’ math instead.
Add AI on top of either estimate. Gorgias’ AI Agent costs $1 per interaction and also counts against your ticket allowance, so heavy AI use can push you into a higher tier faster than expected. Intercom’s Fin adds $0.99 per resolved outcome with no included volume. Neither of these figures includes overage charges or a seasonal spike in volume, both worth estimating separately before a busy quarter.
Run your own numbers through the help desk cost calculator before committing to either plan.
When to choose Intercom
Choose Intercom when support sits next to sales and marketing messaging, or ticket volume is high relative to headcount.
- A lean ecommerce team handles a high or unpredictable ticket volume, so a flat per-seat cost is easier to plan around.
- In-app Messenger and multilingual help content matter for a customer base beyond one store.
- The business already runs marketing or product messaging through Intercom and wants one workspace.
- Order actions can go through a separate tool or integration without slowing the team down.
- Reporting across chat, email, and in-app messaging matters enough to justify Advanced or Expert.
Model your expected ticket volume against Gorgias’ tiers before assuming Intercom is the pricier option.
When to choose Gorgias
Choose Gorgias when the store lives on Shopify or a similar platform and order actions need to happen inside the ticket.
- Ticket volume is moderate and predictable enough to plan around a fixed tier.
- Agents need to look up, edit, or act on an order without switching tools.
- Ecommerce-specific reporting, like order volume tied to conversations, matters for your team.
- You can watch ticket volume closely enough to avoid surprise overage charges.
- Up to 500 included seats matter more to your plan than a strictly per-seat price.
Confirm your expected monthly ticket count, including AI interactions, before picking a tier.
Where ThriveDesk fits
Intercom and Gorgias solve for different starting points: broad messaging on one side, deep Shopify-style order actions on the other. A small ecommerce team that mainly needs shared email, live chat, and order context, without either platform’s full feature set, may be paying for more than it uses. ThriveDesk is AI customer service software for ecommerce: an agentic omnichannel helpdesk, intelligent chatbot, modern help center and powerful reporting, plus Neo, the AI agent that answers customers around the clock.
ThriveDesk’s shared inbox and live chat cover the same daily jobs as Intercom’s Messenger and Gorgias’ ticket view, and its knowledge base matches what either competitor offers for self-service. WooCommerce and SureCart integrations put order details beside the conversation, and Shopify support currently covers order lookup rather than the in-ticket order editing Gorgias offers. Neo answers customers on every plan with no per-outcome or per-interaction charge, and Copilot drafts replies and summaries for agents.
Pricing starts at $29 a month for Basic, covering two teammates and one inbox, or $19 a month billed yearly. Standard, at $69 a month, adds a public help center, workflow automation, and the MCP server for 5 teammates and two inboxes. ThriveDesk holds a 4.9 out of 5 rating on G2. Full plan details are on the pricing page.
ThriveDesk isn’t the right fit for every case here, though. A Shopify store that needs in-ticket order editing should stay with Gorgias. A team that wants support layered into a broader sales and marketing workspace should stay with Intercom. Either is a reasonable choice; the point is to match the tool to the job your team actually does, not to the longest feature list.
If you’re moving off Intercom, our migration guide covers what to plan for before cutover, including historical conversations and any workflow rules you’ll need to rebuild.
