Gorgias vs Intercom
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
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The short answer
Both sides assessedGorgias compared with Intercom
Both now sell an AI agent metered per resolution, so the comparison comes down to what surrounds it. Intercom charges per seat on top of Fin's per-resolution fee and is built for B2B SaaS with product tours, outbound messaging, and a mature developer platform. Gorgias charges by ticket with 500 seats from Basic upward and is built around Shopify order actions. A software company should take Intercom; a store should take Gorgias, because Fin cannot cancel an order and Intercom's seat model punishes a seasonal rota.
Intercom compared with Gorgias
Gorgias bills by ticket volume with 500 seats on every plan above Starter and charges $0.85 to $1.00 per AI interaction beyond a bundled allowance, so it runs two meters at once but barely charges for headcount. Intercom bills per seat and per resolution. For a Shopify store with seasonal part-time agents, Gorgias is structurally cheaper because seats are free and the Shopify order actions inside the ticket are a genuine differentiator. For a SaaS company with a small permanent team and an in-app messenger, Intercom is the better fit.
Choose Gorgias if
Direct-to-consumer Shopify stores doing between a few hundred and a few thousand support conversations a month, especially ones with seasonal volume spikes and a part-time or agency support rota, where most tickets are order-status, returns, and exchanges and where the fastest fix is an agent acting on the order from inside the ticket.
Choose Intercom if
Product-led SaaS companies with an in-app user base, a decent help center, and enough repetitive question volume that a competent AI agent can absorb a large share of it. Intercom rewards teams whose support is high volume and reasonably well documented, and whose customers are already inside a web or mobile product where the Messenger can live.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Gorgias | Intercom |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Support | Support |
| Starting price | $10 per month for the help desk alone (Starter, 50 tickets, 3 seats), or $40 with AI Agent included (7 days trial) | $29 per seat per month (Essential), plus $0.99 per Fin resolution (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Volume-based subscription metered by billable tickets rather than agent seats, now quoted as a combined price for the help desk plus AI Agent. The pricing page splits each plan into a Helpdesk component and an AI Agent component, bundles a number of automated interactions into each tier, and meters anything beyond the allowance per ticket or per interaction. Voice and SMS are separate usage-based add-ons. | Per-seat subscription across three published tiers, plus outcome-based billing for the Fin AI agent at a flat rate per outcome, plus per-seat and per-month add-ons for Copilot, proactive messaging, and analysis, plus pay as you go channel charges. |
| Free plan | No | No free plan. An Early Stage programme offers qualifying startups up to 93 percent off plus one year of Fin at no charge. |
| Free trial | 7 days, capped at 10 email ticket messages | 14 days, no credit card required |
| Best for | Direct-to-consumer Shopify stores doing between a few hundred and a few thousand support conversations a month, especially ones with seasonal volume spikes and a part-time or agency support rota, where most tickets are order-status, returns, and exchanges and where the fastest fix is an agent acting on the order from inside the ticket. | Product-led SaaS companies with an in-app user base, a decent help center, and enough repetitive question volume that a competent AI agent can absorb a large share of it. Intercom rewards teams whose support is high volume and reasonably well documented, and whose customers are already inside a web or mobile product where the Messenger can live. |
| Setup time | Half a day to be answering tickets, one to two weeks to be answering them well. Connecting the store and forwarding the support address is quick; building the macro library, the rules, and the help center content that actually reduces handle time is the part teams underestimate. | A day for the basics: install the Messenger snippet, forward your support address, invite the team, and import or write help center articles. Getting Fin to a trustworthy answer rate takes longer, usually two to four weeks of watching its answers and fixing the underlying documentation. |
| Learning curve | Low for agents, who mostly need to learn that the order actions are in the sidebar. Moderate for the person who owns the account, because Rules, Macros, Views, and AI Guidance interact, and a badly written auto-reply Rule can make otherwise free tickets billable. | Moderate for agents, who mostly need an hour. Meaningful for the admin: Workflows, ticket types, custom attributes, and Fin content sources are a real configuration surface, and Intercom rewards someone owning it rather than nobody owning it. |
| Platforms | Web app, iOS, Android, Embeddable chat widget, Shopify app, BigCommerce app, Adobe Commerce module | Web app, iOS and Android agent apps, Web Messenger, iOS and Android Messenger SDKs, Browser extensions |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II (report available on request via the trust center), HIPAA capability documented in the trust center, GDPR | SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, HIPAA support on the Expert tier, ISO 27001 |
| Founded | 2015 | 2011 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | San Francisco, California, United States, with a large office in Dublin, Ireland |
| Ownership | Venture-backed, independent | Venture-backed and privately held; corporate entity renamed Fin in May 2026 with Intercom retained as the platform brand, and a definitive agreement for Salesforce to acquire the company for approximately $3.6 billion signed in June 2026 and not yet closed as of this review |
Strengths and limitations
Gorgias
Strengths
- The only mainstream help desk that does not price by seat above the entry tiers, which is a structural advantage for stores with seasonal, part-time, or agency support staffing.
- Shopify actions inside the ticket are the real product. Refunding, cancelling, and editing orders without leaving the conversation removes the tab-switching that is most of the actual work in ecommerce support.
- Revenue statistics attribute sales back to support conversations, which is the single most useful reporting feature in this category and is not offered by Help Scout, Freshdesk, or Front.
- Honest AI billing boundary: you are charged for a conversation the AI resolves or for the human ticket it becomes, not for both.
Limitations
- The AI Agent requires Shopify. BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce, and WooCommerce merchants get the 2022 help desk while paying for a company whose entire current positioning is the AI.
- Two meters running at once makes the bill hard to forecast, and voice and SMS add two more. Budgeting for Gorgias is a modelling exercise, not a line item.
- The three-seat cap on Starter quietly undermines the marketing claim of never charging per agent, and the fourth seat means moving to Basic. Gorgias lifted Basic to 500 seats in 2026, so the old $60 to $360 jump for a fourth agent has gone.
- Nothing here fits non-commerce businesses. Strip out the order object and you have an ordinary shared inbox priced against a commerce feature set you cannot use.
Intercom
Strengths
- Fin is the most mature AI support agent on the market and the per-resolution model only charges when it actually resolves, which is a fairer meter than charging per AI reply.
- The Messenger carries real product context into the conversation, so agents see plan, usage, and event history without asking the customer to identify themselves.
- The help center is good, supports a custom domain and multiple languages, and doubles as the knowledge source Fin reads, so investment in docs pays off twice.
- The Workflows builder is a genuinely capable visual automation canvas rather than a list of if-then rules.
Limitations
- The real cost is unpredictable by design. Support spend now tracks customer growth and deflection success rather than headcount, which breaks most small-business budgeting habits.
- Essential is a deliberately hollow tier. No workflow automation, no round robin, no multiple inboxes, no SLAs, and no Lite seats means the honest entry price for a functioning help desk is $85 a seat, not $29.
- SLA policies sit on the Expert tier at $132 a seat, which is an absurd height for a feature that Zoho Desk includes at $23 and Freshdesk at $55.
- Copilot costs another $29 per agent per month after a token free allowance, so agent-facing AI is a third meter.
Pricing compared
Gorgias
Volume-based subscription metered by billable tickets rather than agent seats, now quoted as a combined price for the help desk plus AI Agent. The pricing page splits each plan into a Helpdesk component and an AI Agent component, bundles a number of automated interactions into each tier, and meters anything beyond the allowance per ticket or per interaction. Voice and SMS are separate usage-based add-ons.
- Starter$40
- Basic$90
- Pro$550
- Advanced$1,430
- CustomCustom
For a Shopify store doing 1,000 to 3,000 tickets a month with a fluctuating agent count, Gorgias remains the best-priced serious help desk on the market: the help desk component of Pro is $360 a month with 500 seats, which beats six or eight Help Scout seats plus a Shopify connector, and the order actions save real minutes per ticket. Two things changed in 2026 and both matter to the arithmetic. The AI Agent is now part of the headline price rather than a separate purchase, which makes Gorgias look more expensive at a glance and is genuinely cheaper for anyone who was going to buy it anyway: $30 a month on Basic replaces what used to be quoted as a commitment of a few hundred. And the Pro and Advanced overage rate is $36 per 100 tickets rather than $0.25 a ticket, so the penalty for outgrowing an allowance is 44 percent steeper than our previous figure. Below about 300 tickets a month the whole calculation still inverts, because you are paying a platform fee to answer a volume that a shared inbox handles for nothing.
Intercom
Per-seat subscription across three published tiers, plus outcome-based billing for the Fin AI agent at a flat rate per outcome, plus per-seat and per-month add-ons for Copilot, proactive messaging, and analysis, plus pay as you go channel charges.
- Essential$29
- Advanced$85
- Expert$132
Intercom is expensive and, for the right buyer, worth it. Fin is the best-known AI support agent in the category and the $0.99 outcome-based charge is honest in a way that per-message billing is not, because you pay for results rather than attempts. The problem is that the seat tiers are structured to make Essential look affordable while withholding workflow automation, round robin, multiple inboxes, SLAs, and Lite seats until $85 a seat. A four-person team that actually needs those things is at $340 a month in seats before Fin, before Copilot, and before proactive messaging. If your volume is high and your documentation is good, the AI economics work and Intercom is defensible. If your volume is low, you are paying a premium for a Messenger, and Zoho Desk or Freshdesk will give you more help desk for a fraction of the money.
Editorial verdict on each
Gorgias
Gorgias is the right answer for Shopify stores and close to the wrong answer for everyone else. The ticket meter and the 500 seats on every plan above Starter genuinely suit a support team whose headcount moves with the season, the order actions inside the ticket save minutes on every conversation that a general help desk cannot, and revenue attribution is the only reporting feature in this bracket that lets a support lead argue in the language finance speaks. What has to be modelled before you buy is the second meter: at $0.85 to $1.00 a resolution beyond a small bundled allowance, the AI Agent can cost more than the help desk itself, and it does not run on BigCommerce or Magento at all, which makes the 2026 marketing story inapplicable to a meaningful chunk of the addressable market. Buy it if you are on Shopify, doing more than a few hundred tickets a month, and willing to judge the AI component on its own business case even though it now arrives bundled in the plan price. Skip it if your customers do not have order numbers, if your volume is small enough that a shared Gmail still works, or if a variable invoice is something your finance team will not tolerate.
Read the full Gorgias profileIntercom
InnovationIntercom is the clearest illustration of what has happened to customer support pricing, and the company renaming itself after its AI agent removes any doubt about where its attention sits. Fin is very good, and $0.99 to make a ticket disappear is cheap measured against a support hour. But the per-seat tiers are engineered so that Essential at $29 looks affordable while withholding automation, routing, multiple inboxes, SLAs, and Lite seats until $85, and every meaningful capability beyond the inbox is a separate meter: Copilot, proactive messaging, analytics, and every channel that is not email. Buy Intercom if you are a product-led SaaS company with high volume, good documentation, and a genuine deflection opportunity, and build the resolution spreadsheet before the trial ends. If your volume is modest or your budget needs to be predictable, Freshdesk, Zoho Desk, or Help Scout will serve you better for a fraction of the money.
Read the full Intercom profileGorgias profile last reviewed 2026-10-01; Intercom last reviewed 2026-10-01. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.
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Frequently asked questions
6 questionsWhat is the difference between Gorgias and Intercom?
Both now sell an AI agent metered per resolution, so the comparison comes down to what surrounds it. Intercom charges per seat on top of Fin's per-resolution fee and is built for B2B SaaS with product tours, outbound messaging, and a mature developer platform. Gorgias charges by ticket with 500 seats from Basic upward and is built around Shopify order actions. A software company should take Intercom; a store should take Gorgias, because Fin cannot cancel an order and Intercom's seat model punishes a seasonal rota.
Is Gorgias or Intercom cheaper?
Gorgias starts at $10 per month for the help desk alone (Starter, 50 tickets, 3 seats), or $40 with AI Agent included (7 days trial). Intercom starts at $29 per seat per month (Essential), plus $0.99 per Fin resolution (free plan available). The billing models differ, so the entry price is rarely the whole cost. Gorgias pricing model: Volume-based subscription metered by billable tickets rather than agent seats, now quoted as a combined price for the help desk plus AI Agent. Intercom pricing model: Per-seat subscription across three published tiers, plus outcome-based billing for the Fin AI agent at a flat rate per outcome, plus per-seat and per-month add-ons for Copilot, proactive messaging, and analysis, plus pay as you go channel charges.
Does Gorgias or Intercom have a free plan?
Gorgias has no free plan. Trial terms: 7 days, capped at 10 email ticket messages. Intercom has a free plan. No free plan. An Early Stage programme offers qualifying startups up to 93 percent off plus one year of Fin at no charge. Trial terms: 14 days, no credit card required.
Who should choose Gorgias?
Direct-to-consumer Shopify stores doing between a few hundred and a few thousand support conversations a month, especially ones with seasonal volume spikes and a part-time or agency support rota, where most tickets are order-status, returns, and exchanges and where the fastest fix is an agent acting on the order from inside the ticket.
Who should choose Intercom?
Product-led SaaS companies with an in-app user base, a decent help center, and enough repetitive question volume that a competent AI agent can absorb a large share of it. Intercom rewards teams whose support is high volume and reasonably well documented, and whose customers are already inside a web or mobile product where the Messenger can live.
What are the best alternatives to Gorgias and Intercom?
SaaSTracker profiles 27 products in Customer Support Platforms. The Summer 2026 awards in the category went to Help Scout (Category Leader), tawk.to (Best Value), Plain (Momentum). Every profile is compiled from primary sources, so a shortlist can be built from pricing, limitations, and fit rather than from star ratings.
