GACS AI is a Gorgias alternative for businesses that want an AI agent across web chat, WhatsApp, email and phone without paying a ticket fee and a resolution fee for the same conversation. Gorgias is the better product for Shopify stores that need the agent to issue refunds and edit orders. GACS AI cannot do that. This page is specific about both.
Gorgias made a genuinely good decision years ago. Support pricing should not punish you for hiring. Their own wording is that the "Helpdesk scales from 50 to 5,000 tickets a month, never priced per agent." For a growing DTC brand that was the right call.
The published monthly tiers are Starter at $10 for 50 tickets a month, Basic at $60 for 300, Pro at $360 for 2,000, Advanced at $900 for 5,000, and Enterprise on request. Those come from Gorgias's own blog post on plans, updated 14 May 2026, because the pricing page renders in JavaScript.
AI Agent is on every plan and is billed separately, per resolved conversation. Gorgias's own comparison page states a range of $0.50 to $1 per resolution. A third party reports $1.00 on Starter and $0.90 on Basic and above, though Gorgias publishes no per-tier breakdown.
Here is the mechanic that brings people to this page. When AI Agent resolves a ticket, that ticket consumes a unit of your plan allowance and also incurs a resolution fee. You are billed twice for a conversation no human touched. The better your automation performs, the faster you burn the allowance you already paid for.
Work it through. Five agents and 1,000 conversations a month puts you on Pro at $360 for a 2,000 ticket allowance. Let AI Agent resolve 30 percent of them at $0.90 and you are at roughly $630 a month. The AI did the work and the plan fee did not move.
Three things are not published: annual prices, ticket overage rates, and the trial length. Overage matters most, because a ticket allowance with an unpublished overage rate is a ceiling you cannot price.
The G2 reviews are blunt about the shape of it:
"The main frustration with Gorgias is the pricing model, which is based on ticket volume rather than a flat monthly fee."
That complaint is about predictability, not value. Plenty of merchants run Gorgias happily and would not move.
| Gorgias | GACS AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per ticket volume, explicitly not per agent seat, plus a separate AI resolution fee | Per conversation volume and connected channels, no seat charge, no separate resolution fee |
| Entry price | $10/month Starter for 50 tickets. $60 Basic for 300 | $149/month Starter for 500 chats, plus a $299 one-time setup. Growth $399, Scale $899, Enterprise from $2,000 |
| AI pricing | $0.50 to $1 per resolved conversation per Gorgias's own comparison page. An AI-resolved ticket also consumes a plan ticket | Included in every plan, no separate AI meter. Starter 500 chats, Growth 1,500 chats + 200 call minutes, Scale 4,000 chats + 600 call minutes. Extra chats $0.25, extra call minutes $0.40 |
| Cost, 5 agents and 1,000 conversations | $360/month on Pro with no AI. Around $630/month if AI resolves 30% at $0.90 | $274/month on Starter (500 chats included, 500 extra at $0.25 each), plus the $299 one-time setup. Growth at $399 covers 1,500 chats and adds 200 call minutes. No seat charge, so 5 agents cost the same as 1 |
| Channels | Email, chat, SMS, voice, social, with deep ecommerce platform hooks | Website widget, WhatsApp on your own number, email, inbound and outbound voice |
| Languages | Multilingual support | 50+, including Arabic and English inside one conversation |
| Setup time | Longer if you connect the store actions properly, which is the point of the product | Widget is one snippet. WhatsApp connects from the dashboard through Meta's official Cloud API flow |
| Live agent handoff | Yes, inside a full ecommerce helpdesk with customer order context | Yes, with the full transcript and AI reply suggestions for the agent |
| Ecommerce actions | Yes, and this is the strongest thing about it. Refund, cancel, edit address, re-ship and apply a discount from inside the ticket, across Shopify, Recharge and Loop | Not available. The agent answers questions and cannot act on an order |
| Published benchmarks | Gorgias publishes automation and revenue attribution material | None. We have not published any and will not quote a number we cannot support |
| Free trial | Trial exists. Length not published. Annual pricing and overage rates also not published | No free trial. Book a 20-minute demo, then a $299 one-time setup. No self-service signup |
Competitor pricing verified September 2026. Check the vendor's own page before deciding.
The ecommerce actions row is not a close call. Gorgias wins it outright and it is the row most likely to decide your choice.
Stay if you sell on Shopify and your support volume is mostly order problems. When a customer says the address is wrong, Gorgias lets the agent fix it. GACS AI can state your policy and then hand the conversation to a person who opens Shopify. That is a real difference in handling time.
Stay if you run Recharge subscriptions or Loop returns. Those connections are native and maintained, and rebuilding that workflow around a knowledge-base agent would cost more than the pricing difference saves.
Stay if you sit in the 300 to 5,000 tickets a month range and the ticket model matches your season. Stay if you report on revenue attributed to support conversations, because Gorgias does that and we do not. Stay if you are on BigCommerce, since we have no native connector there either.
If your support team's day is refunds, cancellations, exchanges and address edits, switching to GACS AI would make their day harder. We would rather you stayed.
One conversation is one charge. Pricing runs on conversation volume and the channels you connect, with no separate AI resolution fee stacked on top of a ticket allowance. Automation working well does not increase what you pay per conversation handled.
Four channels from one agent. The website widget, WhatsApp on your own business number, email and phone calls all answer from the same knowledge base. WhatsApp connects through Meta's official Cloud API signup flow from the dashboard, with no developer.
The knowledge base maintains itself. Import your site by URL, upload PDFs, write entries by hand, or connect Google Drive and Notion, which stay in sync. Your team edits the returns policy where they already edit it and the answers change with it.
Arabic and English work inside the same conversation, including when a customer switches language mid-message. 50+ languages are supported. For a store selling into the Gulf alongside English-speaking markets, that is the practical difference.
The agent shows products. Connect a catalog and it renders dynamic cards inside the chat, captures leads, and hands off with the full transcript when it should not answer. More on the features page and the ecommerce page.
This section matters more here than on any other comparison we publish, so read it before you book anything.
No order actions. The agent cannot process a refund, cancel an order, edit a shipping address, re-ship an item or apply a discount code. It answers and it escalates. That is the whole gap between us and Gorgias, stated plainly.
Shopify order tracking is live: customers can ask where their order is and get the answer from Shopify. Full catalog sync and live stock answers are still in build, along with Calendly, WhatsApp bulk campaigns and streaming voice. BigCommerce and Magento are not planned as native connectors.
No live inventory lookup yet. No Recharge connector, no Loop connector, and no revenue attribution reporting for support conversations.
No published benchmarks. No resolution rate, no accuracy figure, no deflection percentage. We have not measured and published one, so there is nothing to quote.
No public case studies or customer logos yet, and no self-service signup.
Nothing gets switched off on day one.
Knowledge import comes first. Your help center, shipping and returns policies, sizing guides, PDFs and whatever lives in Drive or Notion get pulled in and reviewed. That is usually a day or two rather than a rebuild.
The widget goes live on your store from one snippet, with handoff set to trigger early. WhatsApp connects to your existing business number through Meta's flow. Email routing comes next if you want it.
You run both systems in parallel and watch what happens to your question mix. Most DTC stores find a clean split. Policy and product questions, shipping timelines, sizing and store hours are handled without a human. Order-specific problems go to a person who still has Gorgias open.
That split is where the decision gets made honestly. If the non-order half of your volume is large, moving it off a ticket allowance and away from a per-resolution fee is worth real money. If almost everything is order-specific, the numbers will not support a switch and we will say so.
Ticket history stays in Gorgias. We do not migrate it, and you should keep the export either way.
The plan fee plus a resolution fee, because an AI-resolved ticket consumes a plan ticket as well. Pro is $360 a month for 2,000 tickets. If AI Agent resolves 30 percent of 1,000 conversations at $0.90 each, that is roughly $630 a month total. Gorgias's own comparison page gives the range as $0.50 to $1 per resolution.
Annual prices, ticket overage rates and the trial length. The per-tier AI resolution rate is also not broken out by Gorgias itself, only given as a range.
GACS AI charges on conversation volume and the channels you connect, with no separate per-resolution fee and no seat charge. Plans start at $149 a month for 500 chats (Starter), then $399 for 1,500 chats and 200 call minutes (Growth) and $899 for 4,000 chats and 600 call minutes (Scale), each with a $299 one-time setup. Extra chats are $0.25 and extra call minutes $0.40. See the pricing page. Whether it is cheaper depends on how much of your volume is order actions you would still be doing by hand.
No. Not through Shopify, not through Recharge, not through Loop, and not on any other platform. The agent answers questions and hands the conversation to a person. If that is the core of your support workload, stay where you are.
Knowledge import is usually a day or two. Both systems run in parallel for two to four weeks while you see which questions the agent handles cleanly. Ticket history stays in Gorgias. You decide what to do with your plan once you can see the real split in your own analytics.
Send us your ticket mix. If most of it is order actions, we will tell you to stay on Gorgias. If most of it is questions your policies already answer, the math is worth looking at.
Comparing more than two? The best AI customer service agents roundup covers the wider market, and you can contact us directly.
