The Best Gorgias Alternatives for Small Shopify Stores
Gorgias is the helpdesk a lot of Shopify brands reach for first, it’s built for ecommerce and over 15,000 stores use it. But if you’re a small or one-person store, two things tend to push you to look for an alternative: it’s designed for support teams, and its pricing scales with your ticket volume. Have a big sales month and your support bill climbs right along with it. Here are the best Gorgias alternatives for a small Shopify store, and when each makes sense.
Why small stores look past Gorgias
It’s not that Gorgias is bad, it’s that it’s aimed at a different customer. The common reasons a solo seller switches:
- Per-ticket / resolution-based pricing. Your support cost spikes exactly when sales spike. As of July 2026, Gorgias plans run from $10/mo for 50 billable tickets up to $900/mo for 5,000, with overage fees of $0.36-$0.40 per extra ticket, and its AI Agent bills separately at $0.90-$1.00 per resolution on top. Predictable flat pricing is easier to plan around. (We break the model down in Gorgias pricing explained.)
- Built for teams. Agent seats, routing, and workflows are overkill when the “team” is just you.
- Setup overhead. A full helpdesk is a lot to configure for a store doing a few hundred orders a month.
If those sound familiar, here are the options worth a look.
The alternatives
Here’s the short version, with pricing from each vendor’s own pricing page as of July 2026:
| Tool | Pricing (July 2026) | Model | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gorgias | $10/mo (50 tickets) to $900/mo (5,000); AI $0.90-$1.00/resolution | Per ticket | Teams with high, steady volume |
| Help Scout | Standard $25/user/mo; AI Answers $0.75/resolution | Per seat | Email-first shared inbox |
| Re:amaze | From $29/user/mo, or $59/mo flat (500 conversations) | Per seat / flat capped | Multi-channel on a small budget |
| Freshdesk | Growth $19/agent/mo; free for 1-2 agents for 6 months | Per seat | Budget, general-purpose support |
| Tidio | Starter $29/mo, Growth from $59/mo; Lyro AI add-on from $32.50/mo | Tiered + AI meter | Storefront live chat |
| LzyReply | $29/mo flat, no meters | Flat | Solo sellers doing email support |
And the longer version:
Help Scout
A clean, email-first shared inbox that’s friendlier than a full ticketing system. Good if you mostly do email support and want something simple. Pricing is per user as of July 2026 (Standard is $25/user/mo, with a free plan capped at 100 contacts a month), and its AI Answers feature is billed separately at $0.75 per resolution, so watch both meters as your volume grows.
Re:amaze
Built for ecommerce, with Shopify integration, chat, and automation. A solid middle ground if you want more than a basic inbox but less complexity than the big enterprise tools. Plans start at $29/user/mo, with an unusual flat $59/mo Starter option capped at 500 conversations a month (as of July 2026). We looked at when it fits and when to pick a Reamaze alternative separately.
Freshdesk
Often the destination for teams leaving Gorgias over cost, with a Shopify integration that surfaces order data in tickets. Note that its old always-free tier is gone: as of July 2026 the free program covers 1-2 agents for six months, and paid plans start at $19/agent/mo (Growth). More general-purpose than ecommerce-specific.
Tidio / Gladly / Richpanel
Each leans into AI chat and ecommerce workflows in its own way. Worth a look if live chat on your storefront is your main channel rather than email. Tidio’s AI (Lyro) is metered per conversation on top of the plan price, which is why we compared it against email-first tools in our Tidio alternative rundown.
LzyReply
If your support is mostly email about specific orders and you’re a solo Shopify seller, this is the niche we built for. It reads each customer email, looks up the Shopify order, and drafts the reply in your brand voice, you approve the send. Flat price, no per-agent or per-ticket fees, and it handles the everyday WISMO and address-change work automatically. It’s not a 12-person-team helpdesk; it’s for the store owner who wants their inbox handled in a few minutes a day.
How to choose
A quick way to narrow it down:
- Mostly email, solo store, want it hands-off → an AI email tool like LzyReply.
- Want a simple shared inbox → Help Scout.
- Ecommerce features without enterprise weight → Re:amaze.
- Tight budget, don’t mind general-purpose → Freshdesk.
- Storefront live chat is your main channel → Tidio or similar.
The real question isn’t the tool, it’s the pricing model
The thing most small stores actually want to escape is pricing that punishes a good month. Whatever you pick, look hard at how the bill behaves when your orders double. A flat, predictable price means a viral product is purely good news, not a surprise support invoice.
If that’s the box you’re trying to check, start with the option whose pricing doesn’t move when your sales do, and that answers your actual channel (for most solo Shopify sellers, that’s email).
Stop typing the same replies
LzyReply reads each customer email, looks up the Shopify order, and drafts the reply in your brand voice. You glance, click send.
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