The best help desk for Ecommerce
Gorgias vs Zendesk: Choose the Tool Built for Ecommerce
Stop tab-shuffling and copy-pasting. Gorgias connects your customer orders, conversations, information, and apps in one view — saving you time and delighting your customers.
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Set up in minutes, see results in weeks
New users complain that Zendesk is "a nightmare to set up and maintain" and that setting up a new account is "nothing less than disastrous." Onboarding support also costs thousands on top of the base price of Zendesk.
Gorgias offers onboarding support at no extra cost. On average, our merchants are fully operational within 2 weeks and score our onboarding at 94% satisfaction (45% higher than the industry average). Once you’re up and running, our team is there to help you support, sell, and grow.
Our old system was complex and we couldn’t get ahold of anyone. Gorgias's integration was easy to set up. We saw a 72% increase in revenue by focusing on growth.

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Get an answer from Gorgias in minutes, 24/7
Users say Zendesk customer service is slow and impersonal. One review compares it to the DMV, another says support is “no longer very responsive or helpful”, and another reports Zendesk support agents send links to generic blog posts instead of giving personalized responses.
Gorgias’s 24/7 customer service team keeps responses under 9 minutes (for chat) and 12 hours (for email). And with our ecommerce customer service focus, the Gorgias team has seen (and solved) your biggest problems with hundreds of other brands.
The support team is phenomenal. Any question you have, any issue that needs addressing, they get on it and give you a resolution as quickly as possible. And every person I have dealt with from demos of the product to training and support has been amazing to work with.


Become 30% more efficient
Zendesk is designed for non-ecommerce enterprises like airlines and hospitals. One ex-Zendesk user struggled with its limited integration with Shopify and had to resort to "more manual copy and paste work."
Gorgias is designed exclusively for ecommerce. Everything online stores need is centralized in one intuitive view — including auto-filled Shopify data, discount codes, creating new orders, and linking Shopify products in tickets. This helps your team move much faster.
Ecommerce agents resolve tickets 30% faster on Gorgias than Zendesk, according to a 2022 study from a customer support agency.
Gorgias is the best support platform for businesses running on Shopify. The deep Shopify integrations are an invaluable part of our support process and save us countless hours a month.


Gorgias vs Zendesk video: See the platforms in action
Gorgias’ customer support software is exclusively for ecommerce brands. Other industries should not use it.
The product is built around Shopify and needs of ecommerce merchants, including order management, returns, shipping issues, upselling, product recommendations, and more.
Every feature on our product roadmap helps online stores answer customer queries quickly, build better relationships with customers, and get more sales.
Zendesk is used by companies across all industries, so daily ecommerce tasks (like order management and social media interactions) are inefficient.
Zendesk is built for enormous non-ecommerce enterprises. It's built for airlines, hospitals, and SaaS companies, with features to choose seats on an airplane and manage B2B sales.
You pay for (and sift through) all those features even if you don’t use them, and features for brands like yours are deprioritized.

How Gorgias helps you boost revenue from customer experience
Spend less time switching tabs to find customer information and more time offering personalized support, thanks to:
- Customer info from all your apps centralized in one view
- Templates that automatically fill in customer info and update orders
- Auto ticket tagging, assigning, and prioritizing (so you can focus on delighting customers)
Gorgias helps us satisfy our customers. It has become like a storefront for us. It's where we centralize all customer conversation, greet our customers, answer their questions, fix problems, and get insights to inform our future. We would recommend Gorgias to other ecommerce businesses, as it makes your life easier, and it's an absolute breeze to set up!
Merchants who take full advantage of the Automation Add-on deflect up to 40% of tickets, saving time for sensitive, complex, and high-impact questions. The add-on includes:
- Automated FAQs and workflows
- Self-service order tracking and refund requests in chat
- Customizable autoresponders (that can also trigger order actions through the Shopify integration)
Automating low-stakes, high-volume tickets lets my team focus on meaningful, personalized conversations and boosted our CSAT to 4.77
Gorgias can automatically identify, tag, and assign tickets based on several factors:
- Past orders: Prioritize customers who you know are big spenders at your store
- Channel: Respond to shoppers actively awaiting a response on live chat or SMS
- Pre-sales questions: Flag tickets from customers considering a purchase
- Escalations: Help angry customers before they post negative reviews or social posts
Being able to filter and sort tickets in Gorgias to highlight urgent requests, or segment VIP customers with high lifetime value, is really important to us. It enables our customer service agents to quickly identify who to help first.
Chat campaigns help you reach out to customers based on their browsing behavior:
- Ask if they need help
- Highlight new products or promotions
- Provide the information and incentives they need to click “Place order”
- Automatically engage VIP customers and encourage repeat purchases
Customer service shouldn't just be reactive, putting out fires. We want to be proactive. And that’s what Gorgias helps you do. You go talk to customers, make sure they're having a great experience. You don't use it just to solve problems, but to create new relationships and sales.
Get detailed analytics about the revenue your team earns for your Shopify store and the types of support (and automated interactions) that lead to sales.
These insights help support teams make a strong impact on the company and prove ROI to company leaders.
Customer support teams using Gorgias generated over $1 billion in 2021.
In Gorgias, you can see what kind of ticket actually generated each piece of revenue. You can see what conversation you had with the customer that made them want to purchase.
Gorgias vs Zendesk pricing:
seats vs tickets
Gorgias's pricing is based on tickets, not users. We don’t charge per seat, so your whole team can obsess over CX. (Don’t worry: Spam messages do not count as billable tickets.)
Zendesk’s pricing model makes you pay per user seat. This siloes your CX team from the rest of the company and limits its growth.
We made this decision based on feedback from ecommerce business-owners who want to:
- Invite Marketing, Product, and Website teams to get insights and feedback directly from customers to improve the product and CX
- Add new agents (and outsource agents) at no extra charge, during busy seasons and periods of growth
- Tag technical support or other non-CX team members directly in Gorgias instead of chasing them down on another tool and copy/pasting their answer
How much you’ll save (real-life scenarios)
Depending on the number of agents and tickets you have, switching from Zendesk’s per-agent model to Gorgias’s could save you tens-of-thousands per year.
One enterprise brand with 42 agents paid $150 per agent per month for Zendesk, totaling $75,600 per year ($6,300/month). With Gorgias, they pay $24,000 per year (or $2,400 per month), or 68% of the cost of Zendesk.
Another brand with 40 agents paid $45,000 per year for Zendesk, and now pays $22,000 with Gorgias. 51% of the cost of Zendesk.
Frequently asked questions
“We've been using Gorgias for almost a year (after migrating from Zendesk) and it has made our lives considerably easier. Handling tickets is super easy, the tagging system is intuitive, and we have integrated Gorgias with all the apps and systems we use, which saves us a lot of time.”
— Prestat Chocolates, Shopify App Store
We’re (obviously) biased, but reviews don’t lie.
Zendesk is a great software for plenty of businesses outside of online retail. But Zendesk’s multi-industry approach means the app will never have all the features ecommerce stores need — and will always be cluttered with irrelevant features you won't use.
Ecommerce brands of all sizes deserve tools to offer fast, personalized customer experiences. We started Gorgias for this reason, and it’s why we build updates and features based on what ecommerce merchants ask for. This dedication to ecommerce is why Gorgias is the best choice for online stores.
Zendesk is one of the oldest cloud-based customer service software tools, used by businesses of all sizes and industries. Many businesses assume Zendesk is the best solution for their customer service needs because it's well-known.
However, newer companies have built products similar to Zendesk but for more specific types of users. For example, Gorgias is a customer service platform for ecommerce companies of all sizes. These tools are more tailored to their target user’s needs, and are often a better solution than Zendesk’s catch-all software.
Gorgias is better for small ecommerce businesses, while Zendesk is better for small businesses in other industries.
Gorgias offers ecommerce-specific support tools, features, and integrations that help small online stores offer fast, personalized service. Gorgias also offers a Starter plan at $10/month for emerging ecommerce brands.
Zendesk’s base plan starts at $49/agent/month and is more expensive for small stores.
Plus, Zendesk’s software is full of features for a variety of industries, including airlines, hotels, and banks, which small online stores shouldn’t have to pay for or sift through.
Yes, you can receive and reply to WhatsApp messages within Gorgias. You can use all your favorite Macros (templates), Rules (automation), and integrations in WhatsApp, just like any other channel.
Gorgias is continually expanding on its WhatsApp integration to offer even more features, like business-initiated conversations.
Zendesk is used by massive enterprises in every industry:
- Manufacturing: Stanley Black & Decker and Ingersoll Rand
- Medical: One Medical and National Health Service
- Transportation: LATAM and Ryanair
- Government: ACLU and Tennessee State Government
- Telecommunications: Vodaphone and Republic Wireless
- Financial Services: Siemens and LendingClub
- Education: University of Louisville and Udemy
- Software/SaaS: Mailchimp and Squarespace
If your online store has a lot in common with these juggernauts, Zendesk might be the right solution for you. If not, an ecommerce-focused customer service platform might be a better fit.
By contrast, Gorgias is used daily by over 12,000 ecommerce brands of all sizes, including Steve Madden, Marine Layer, Dollar Shave Club, OLIPOP, Campus Protein, Topicals, Linus Tech Tips, Parade, Jaxxon, and more.
Yes, Gorgias supports custom fields with a feature called Ticket Fields. You can create custom fields unique to your business to track and report on support tickets related to certain products, query types, promotions, and more. You can activate Ticket Fields in Settings.
For more updates, keep an eye on our product roadmap.