Comparison
Airclou Helpdesk vs Gorgias
Gorgias is the e-commerce helpdesk, priced by the ticket and wired deep into Shopify. Airclou is order-aware support at a flat per-agent price — grounded in Stripe and your own APIs, with every refund waiting at an approval gate.
Free 14-day trial · No credit card required
The honest verdict
Per agent or per ticket — pick what your bill tracks
Both products understand a store’s queue. They disagree about what you should pay for — people, or volume — and about how much the AI may do unsupervised.
Your bill tracks your team, not your volume
Gorgias bills per ticket, charges overages in busy months, and adds $0.90–$1.00 every time the AI resolves one — success has a meter on it. Airclou is per agent: a sale weekend costs the same as a quiet one.
Order-aware without the platform lock
Gorgias reads Shopify natively. Airclou grounds in Stripe and your own APIs — the store, the subscription system, the warehouse — and parks every refund at an approval gate with the verified order in front of you.
Where Gorgias is ahead
The deepest Shopify integration in the category, Instagram / Facebook / TikTok Shop channels, SMS and voice add-ons, and revenue attribution built for merchants. A pure-Shopify brand living in social DMs should pick Gorgias — honestly.
Side by side
Feature by feature
| Feature | Airclou Helpdesk | Gorgias |
|---|---|---|
| Helpdesk core | ||
| Email, live chat & help center in one inbox | Included | Included |
| Pricing model | Per agent — volume never moves the bill | Per ticket, with overage fees |
| Voice / phone channel | — | Add-on |
| Instagram, Facebook & TikTok channels | — | Included |
| Commerce integration | Stripe + your own APIs — any stack | Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento |
| AI | ||
| AI-drafted replies, grounded in your knowledgebase | Every paid plan | AI Agent, billed per resolution |
| Drafts cite their sources (articles, account data) | Included | — |
| AI executes real work (refunds, order actions) | Growth plan and up | Shopify order actions |
| Human approval gates on AI actions | Included | — |
| Full audit trail of every AI action, approver included | Included | — |
| Pricing | ||
| Starting price | $19 per agent / month | $10 / month for 50 tickets |
| AI pricing | Included in the plan | $0.90–$1.00 per AI resolution, on top of the ticket fee |
| A busy month costs | The same | More — $0.32–$0.40 per extra ticket |
| Free plan | 1 agent, no AI | — |
| Free trial | 14 days, no credit card | Included |
Gorgias features and pricing are from their public pages at the time of writing and can change — check gorgias.com for current details.
The difference, shown
What gated refunds look like on a real ticket
Drafts that arrive with receipts
Before an agent opens the ticket, a reply is waiting — written from your knowledgebase and the customer’s actual order data, with the sources attached. Verify in a glance, not a re-research.
- Grounded in your articles, policies, and live order data
- One click to send, or edit in place
- Low-confidence drafts are flagged, never auto-sent
Refunds that wait for your approval
The AI can verify a duplicate charge and prepare the refund — but anything irreversible parks at a gate you configured. Your team stays in charge of the money; the AI does the legwork.
- Approval envelopes by action, amount, or customer segment
- Idempotent execution — a retry can never double-refund
- Every action logged with who approved it and why
Switching
Questions store teams ask when weighing the two
Per-ticket vs per-agent — which is actually cheaper?
It depends on your volume, and that’s the point: with Gorgias you’re forecasting ticket counts, watching overages ($0.32–$0.40 per extra ticket), and paying again — $0.90–$1.00 — each time the AI resolves one, since an AI resolution bills as both a ticket and a resolution. With Airclou you count the people on your team and multiply. A sale weekend or a shipping delay doesn’t change the number.
Gorgias is built for Shopify. We’re on Shopify — why look elsewhere?
If your whole world is Shopify plus social DMs, Gorgias earns its place — honestly. Teams look at Airclou when the bill scales with success, when they run custom systems next to the store (subscriptions, a warehouse API, an app backend), or when they want AI actions behind explicit approval gates with an audit trail rather than automation rules.
Can Airclou actually do refunds and order actions?
Yes — through Stripe and your own APIs. The AI verifies the charge or order against the live record, prepares the action, and parks it at an approval gate you configured. Approved actions run idempotently and land on the audit trail with who approved them.
We answer customers in Instagram DMs. Does Airclou cover that?
Not today — Airclou covers email, live chat, and your customer portal. Social-commerce channels (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok Shop) are a genuine Gorgias strength. If most of your queue lives in DMs right now, Gorgias is the safer choice until we ship those channels.
Can we run Airclou next to Gorgias during the trial?
Yes, and we recommend it. Forward a portion of your support address to Airclou, connect Stripe in read-only terms you control, and compare the drafts against your real queue for two weeks — no cutover, no risk to your current setup.
Are we locked into a contract?
No. Airclou bills monthly per agent and you can cancel anytime. Annual billing exists for the discount, not as a lock-in — and your data is exportable either way.
Make the switch
Try a bill that ignores your busiest month
Forward part of your support address, connect Stripe read-only, and judge the drafts on your own orders — while Gorgias keeps running.
Free 14-day trial · No credit card · Cancel anytime