Best help desk for Shopify stores

Gorgias: the best help desk for Shopify, until it isn't

For most Shopify stores, Gorgias is the one to beat. Order status, shipment tracking, and purchase history load straight into every ticket, and the vendor's own numbers say it powers support for roughly 40% of Shopify brands. That's what makes it the best help desk for Shopify stores by default, though not for every store. Once your team runs support across more than chat and email, wants a flat, predictable bill instead of a ticket meter, or handles tickets that have nothing to do with ecommerce, Zendesk, Front, Help Scout, or Freshdesk each beat it for a specific reason.

Here's how to tell which one is actually you.

Why Gorgias is the default answer

Gorgias was built for ecommerce from day one. Every ticket shows the customer's order status, shipment tracking, and past purchases pulled directly from Shopify (it also supports BigCommerce, Magento, and WooCommerce). Its AI Agent can be configured with "Skills" and "Actions" to actually process a return or a cancellation instead of only answering a question about one. Agent seats are unlimited on every plan, so growing your support team doesn't raise your base bill.

The catch is how it charges. Gorgias bills by monthly "billable ticket" volume instead of seats, starting at $10/month for the Starter plan (50 tickets, $0.40 per ticket over that), up to $900/month for Advanced (5,000 tickets). The AI Agent is billed separately again, at roughly $0.90 to $1.00 per resolved conversation, and voice and SMS are per-ticket add-ons on top of all of that. If your ticket volume is steady and mostly order-status and returns questions, that math works fine. If it swings, or you lean hard on the AI Agent, the bill gets harder to predict than a flat per-seat price.

When the other four win

Zendesk: you want one platform for chat, voice, and a mature app marketplace

If your store has outgrown ecommerce-only ticketing and needs phone support, skills-based routing, or a large app marketplace to connect other business tools, Zendesk is the safer bet. It bills per seat with no overage fees: Support Team starts at $19/agent/month for ticketing only, and Suite Team ($55/agent/month) adds chat and messaging, which is closer to what Gorgias already gives you in one plan. Since May 2026, Zendesk's AI agent features ship bundled with Suite and Support plans rather than sitting behind a separate paid tier. The tradeoff against Gorgias is real: you lose the native Shopify order data inline with tickets, so agents work from Shopify in a separate tab instead of one screen.

Front: support isn't the only team working the inbox

Front makes sense when support, sales handoffs, and customer success all work out of the same shared inbox instead of a support ticket queue. Its model is built for internal comments and cross-department assignment on one thread, a different job than Gorgias's single-purpose ecommerce ticketing. Starter runs $25/seat/month but caps at 10 seats and one channel, and Professional ($65/seat/month) adds SMS and social channels plus a 50-seat cap. Watch the add-ons: Copilot, Smart QA, and Smart CSAT are unbundled extras ($10 to $20/seat/month each) on Starter and Professional, and only come free at Enterprise ($105/seat/month).

Help Scout: you're small and want support to read like email, not a ticket queue

If you're a lean team, roughly 2 to 50 agents, and the visible ticket-number feel of most help desks doesn't fit how you want to talk to customers, Help Scout is worth a look. Its shared inbox reads like a normal email thread, and it has a genuinely free plan for up to 5 users, not a time-limited trial. Standard ($25/user/month) adds live chat, Instagram and WhatsApp channels, and an AI inbox assistant. What you give up versus Gorgias is the Shopify order-data integration itself. Help Scout's own integration list includes Shopify, but it doesn't surface order status inline with a ticket the way Gorgias does.

Freshdesk: you liked Gorgias's ticketing model, just not the per-ticket bill

Freshdesk is the closest match to Gorgias if what you actually want is predictable per-seat billing on a similar ticketing workflow, not a different way of working. Growth starts at $19/agent/month for ticketing, a customer portal, and multilingual support. The Freddy AI Agent, upgraded into a full email responder in May 2026, includes 500 sessions per plan before metered overage kicks in at $49 per extra 100 sessions, an add-on structure similar to how Gorgias prices its own AI Agent. Freshdesk doesn't replace Gorgias's Shopify order-data depth either, but it's the nearest thing to a like-for-like ticketing swap at a flat, forecastable seat price.

Side-by-side: entry pricing and Shopify fit

Prices are from each vendor's pricing page, checked 2026-07-06. Confirm your own quote, since promotions and negotiated enterprise rates change.

What about Intercom?

Intercom fits a narrower case. You want the deepest AI agent on the market: Fin resolves conversations across chat, email, WhatsApp, SMS, and phone, billed at $0.99 per resolved outcome. And you're not picking primarily for Shopify order data, since Intercom has no ecommerce-specific order-in-ticket feature the way Gorgias does. Intercom is also mid-rebrand to "Fin" and being acquired by Salesforce, so factor that uncertainty in if you're choosing a support vendor for the long term.

The actual decision

Start with Gorgias if your support volume is mostly order-status, shipping, and returns questions and you want that data inline without extra setup. Move to Freshdesk if you want that same ticketing feel but a flat seat price instead of a ticket meter. Move to Zendesk if you need chat, voice, and a big app marketplace under one roof. Move to Front if support isn't the only team living in the inbox. Move to Help Scout if you're small and want support to feel like a real conversation, not a queue.

For the full ranked comparison and where each tool falls short, see our Gorgias alternatives guide, or start from Zendesk alternatives if Zendesk is your current baseline.