Help Scout and Gorgias both get pitched as the helpdesk for growing ecommerce brands, but they are built around fundamentally different jobs. Help Scout is a general-purpose shared inbox that feels like email, built for any small team regardless of industry. Gorgias is purpose-built for Shopify and other ecommerce platforms, letting agents edit orders and issue refunds directly inside the ticket without switching tabs.
I have set up both platforms for ecommerce clients. Here is the honest breakdown of where each one wins, with real pricing and the tradeoffs that matter for a store owner deciding between them. If you are still narrowing down your high-ticket niche, this decision can wait, but if you are actively comparing helpdesks, this is the full picture.
| Factor | Help Scout | Gorgias |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per user/month | Per billable ticket/month |
| Starting price | Free (5 users), then $25/user/month | $10/month (50 tickets) |
| Mid-tier price | $45/user/month (Plus) | $60/month (300 tickets) |
| Order editing in-ticket | No native order editing | Full order edit, refund, and history access |
| Interface style | Email-like shared inbox | Ticketing dashboard built for ecommerce |
| Best for | Small, email-first teams, any industry | Order-heavy ecommerce support teams |
Want Support That Feels Like Email, Not a Ticket Queue?
Help Scout’s shared inbox gets a small team fully onboarded in an afternoon.
What Help Scout Does Best
Help Scout’s strongest feature is how quickly a small team can get onboarded, since the shared inbox looks and behaves like regular email rather than a ticketing dashboard full of statuses and priority fields. Collision detection prevents two agents from replying to the same conversation, and Docs, the knowledge base product, gets a genuinely useful help center live within a day or two.
The Beacon widget surfaces help articles contextually on your storefront, reducing repetitive pre-sale questions before they ever reach your inbox. For a boutique or premium brand where support should feel personal, Help Scout’s interface choice is a real advantage over a heavier ticketing system. I cover the full feature and pricing breakdown in my Help Scout review.
What Gorgias Does Best
Gorgias’s core advantage is that it is not a general-purpose helpdesk retrofitted for ecommerce, it was built for ecommerce from the ground up. Agents can view a customer’s full order history, edit an order, process a refund, or apply a discount code directly inside the conversation view, without switching to Shopify admin at all.
According to Gorgias’s own Shopify App Store listing, this order-editing depth is consistently the most cited reason ecommerce merchants choose it over a general helpdesk. For a store where refund requests and address changes make up a meaningful share of ticket volume, that time savings compounds fast across hundreds of tickets a month.
Pricing Compared in Real Numbers
Help Scout prices per user: Free for up to 5 users, then Standard at $25/user/month, Plus at $45/user/month, and Pro at $75/user/month. Gorgias prices per billable ticket instead: Starter at $10/month for 50 tickets, Basic at $60/month for 300 tickets, Pro at $360/month for 2,000 tickets, and Advanced at $900/month for 5,000 tickets, with per-ticket overage fees beyond your plan’s allowance.
Which is cheaper depends entirely on your ticket volume relative to team size. A 3-person team handling 250 tickets a month pays roughly $75/month on Help Scout Standard, while the same volume on Gorgias Basic runs $60/month. But a 3-person team handling 1,800 tickets a month would need Gorgias Pro at $360/month, while Help Scout’s per-user pricing stays flat at $75/month regardless of ticket volume, since Help Scout does not charge by ticket count at all.
Order Editing and Ecommerce-Specific Features
This is where the two platforms diverge most sharply. Gorgias’s in-ticket order editing, refund processing, and subscription management (on supported platforms) genuinely eliminates the tab-switching that slows down agents on a general helpdesk. Help Scout has no native equivalent, relying instead on its Shopify integration to surface order context as read-only information inside the conversation view.
If your team’s ticket volume is dominated by order-related requests, refunds, address changes, subscription pauses, Gorgias’s structural advantage is significant. This kind of order volume often traces back to fulfillment issues upstream, so it is worth revisiting your supplier relationships if refund tickets feel disproportionate to your order volume. If your ticket volume is mostly pre-sale product questions or general support that does not require order manipulation, Gorgias’s advantage matters much less.
AI Features Compared
Both platforms now offer AI-assisted resolution, but the pricing models differ. Help Scout’s AI Answers charges $0.75 per resolved conversation with a 3-month free trial. Gorgias’s AI Agent charges $1.00 per resolution on monthly billing or $0.90 annually, and importantly, a ticket resolved by Gorgias’s AI Agent still counts against your ticket allowance in addition to the AI fee, meaning you can be charged twice for a single AI-resolved conversation.
Budget carefully if you plan to lean heavily on either platform’s AI resolution feature, since usage-based AI costs can scale unpredictably as your support volume grows.
Ease of Use and Onboarding
Help Scout wins clearly here. A 2 to 5 person team can be fully trained and answering real emails within an afternoon, since the interface requires no ticketing-system-specific concepts unless you choose to use them. Gorgias’s ecommerce-specific features mean a slightly steeper initial learning curve, though most teams get comfortable with the core ticket-and-order workflow within a few days.
For a founder setting up support solo before hiring help, that difference in ramp-up time is worth factoring in alongside the feature comparison. G2’s Help Scout reviews and Capterra’s Help Scout listing both consistently rank ease of use as Help Scout’s top strength relative to ecommerce-specific competitors.
Who Should Choose Help Scout
Choose Help Scout if your support volume is mostly general questions rather than order manipulation, and you want the fastest onboarding curve in the category. It is also the better fit if you run a service business alongside your store, since Help Scout is not ecommerce-exclusive the way Gorgias is.
Who Should Choose Gorgias
Choose Gorgias if order edits, refunds, and address changes make up a meaningful share of your ticket volume, and you want agents resolving those requests without ever leaving the ticket interface. The ticket-based pricing also rewards a small team handling high volume relative to headcount.
Migration Considerations
Switching between the two means rebuilding your automation rules and reconfiguring your Shopify integration from scratch, since order-editing permissions and workflow logic do not map directly between platforms. Export your historical ticket data and confirm your current provider’s cancellation terms before committing to a switch date.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Gorgias better than Help Scout for Shopify stores?
It depends on your ticket mix. If order edits and refunds dominate your volume, Gorgias’s in-ticket order editing gives it a real structural advantage. If your tickets are mostly general questions, Help Scout’s simpler interface and per-user pricing may be the better fit.
Which platform is cheaper?
It depends entirely on your ticket volume relative to team size. Low ticket volume with a small team often favors Help Scout’s flat per-user pricing, while low headcount with moderate ticket volume can favor Gorgias’s lower entry tiers.
Does Help Scout have order editing like Gorgias?
No. Help Scout’s Shopify integration surfaces order context as read-only information, but agents cannot edit orders or process refunds directly inside a Help Scout conversation the way they can in Gorgias.
Which platform is easier to learn?
Help Scout, generally. Its email-like interface requires no ticketing-system-specific training, while Gorgias’s ecommerce-specific workflow takes a few extra days to fully ramp up on.
Can I switch from Help Scout to Gorgias without losing data?
You can export your historical ticket data, but automation rules, tags, and Shopify integration settings need to be rebuilt manually since they do not transfer directly between platforms.
The Bottom Line
Help Scout and Gorgias solve different problems dressed up as the same category. Help Scout wins on simplicity and per-user pricing predictability for a small, email-first team. Gorgias wins on ecommerce-specific order editing for a team where refunds and order changes dominate ticket volume. Read my full Help Scout review and Help Scout alternatives roundup for more context before deciding, and count your actual ticket mix before committing to either platform’s annual plan.
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Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.
