Most comparisons of these three tools sort stores into revenue bands. Revenue is a poor guide: a £30,000-a-month store selling made-to-order furniture can have a heavier support load than a £300,000-a-month store selling phone cases. What decides the right tool is how many conversations you handle, through which channels, how many people answer them, and how often an answer needs an action in Shopify.
An earlier version of this page got three things wrong, all corrected below: it said Tidio cannot act on Shopify orders, that Zendesk’s Shopify integration is third-party, and that Gorgias’s AI needs its Pro tier.
How each one is built
Tidio is chat-first. Its centre is a live chat widget and Lyro, an AI agent that answers from a knowledge base you write. Tidio has a free plan.
Gorgias is a ticket helpdesk built for ecommerce. Email, chat and social messages land in one queue, with the customer’s Shopify orders alongside each ticket. It is priced by tickets per month, not per agent.
Zendesk is a general-purpose helpdesk used well beyond ecommerce, with deep routing and reporting. It is priced per agent.
What each charges for
| Tidio | Gorgias | Zendesk | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing unit | Conversations, with Lyro AI conversations as a separate allowance | Tickets per month | Agents (seats) |
| Free plan | Yes | No | No |
| AI | Lyro, with a small free allowance, then paid | AI Agent on every plan, charged per resolution | Available; check your plan |
| Entry price | Starter $24.17/mo on tidio.com | Starter $10/mo helpdesk (50 tickets), $40/mo with AI Agent bundle | From $55/mo per its Shopify listing |
Sources: Tidio pricing, read 15 October 2026 (free plan: 50 billable conversations a month and the first 50 Lyro conversations in total, not monthly). Gorgias pricing, plan figures read 25 September 2026; on 15 October its page also stated “AI Agent on every plan, pay only when it resolves a conversation” and that the helpdesk scales from 50 to 5,000 tickets a month. Zendesk: Shopify App Store listing, read 15 October 2026.
Tidio’s prices on its Shopify App Store listing are presented differently from tidio.com (for example, separate Customer Service, Flows and Lyro plans), so compare like with like and check which billing period a figure belongs to.
What the pricing units mean in practice
- Per ticket (Gorgias): cost follows your volume. Adding a second agent costs nothing extra, but a spike in tickets from a delivery problem or a sale raises the bill. Gorgias’s plans have a ticket allowance with a per-ticket charge above it.
- Per agent (Zendesk): cost follows headcount. Volume spikes cost nothing extra; every new team member does.
- Per conversation (Tidio): cost follows chat volume, with AI conversations counted separately. The free plan’s Lyro allowance is a one-off trial, not a monthly quota.
What each can do with Shopify orders
| Tidio | Gorgias | Zendesk | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who builds the Shopify app | Tidio | Gorgias | Zendesk |
| See customer orders beside the conversation | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Refunds and cancellations | Listing says Lyro can act on refunds, cancellations and order edits within your rules | Yes, from the ticket | Listing says refunds and cancellations from the sidebar |
| Send products and discounts in chat | Yes, per its listing | Yes | Check your setup |
All three can now take some Shopify actions without switching to the Shopify admin. What differs is how much of the workflow is designed around it: Gorgias is built so that a human agent’s whole day happens in its ticket view; Tidio is built so that AI answers first and a person takes over; Zendesk is built for routing work across a larger team.
Which workload suits which tool
Tidio fits when:
- most questions arrive through chat on your store;
- the same questions recur (delivery times, returns, sizing, order status), so a knowledge base can answer many of them;
- one or two people answer messages part-time.
Start on the free plan to test whether chat and Lyro reduce your inbox. The Tidio setup guide covers writing the knowledge base Lyro answers from.
Gorgias fits when:
- messages arrive by email, chat, Instagram and Facebook, and you want them in one queue;
- one or more people spend a large part of their day on support;
- answers often involve an order action: a refund, an address change, a replacement.
Price it on your ticket count, including your busiest month, not your average. The Gorgias review covers choosing a tier.
Zendesk fits when:
- several agents work in shifts or teams, and tickets need routing by skill, language or priority;
- support covers more than the Shopify store, such as wholesale or a separate service business;
- you need reporting across teams.
Because it is priced per agent, its cost is easiest to predict for a stable team size.
How to decide in an afternoon
- Count last month’s customer messages by channel: chat, email, social, phone.
- Tag a sample of 50 by type. If more than half are the same handful of questions, an AI agent with a good knowledge base will remove real work.
- Count how many needed a Shopify action (refund, cancellation, edit). If it is a large share, weight order actions heavily.
- Count the people who answer messages and the hours they spend.
- Price each tool on those numbers, using your busiest month for ticket- or conversation-priced tools.
Then trial the strongest candidate on real messages for two weeks. Every option here offers either a free plan or a free trial.
Both the Tidio and Gorgias links on this site are affiliate links, so Stack Architect may earn a commission whichever you choose. The workload test above decides the recommendation, not which one pays. Try Tidio free or start a Gorgias trial.
