Gorgias alternative for Shopify, without the two meters on your bill.
Two meters on one bill. Arbyn charges $0, $59 or $99, flat.
Gorgias is the Shopify support standard, and it is honest about how it charges: you pay one bundled Helpdesk + AI Agent price that steps up with your ticket volume, and you pay again when AI Agent resolves more than your plan's included allowance.
The real bill
What you’d actually pay.
Three real scenarios at three real volumes, using Gorgias's published 2026 pricing and the automation rate their own team recommends. Arbyn's side is a flat monthly price you pick in advance, with nothing metered on top of it.
Early direct-to-consumer brand, one owner answering support between other tasks. 500 tickets crosses out of the Basic tier into the Pro bundle, $550/mo for Helpdesk + AI Agent together. Assumes AI Agent fully resolves 30% of tickets, same assumption the calculator uses. At 500 conversations a month, Arbyn lands on the $59 Growth plan, not the $99 Agent plan.
A $1M to $5M apparel brand with two part-time agents. Still inside the Pro bundle's 2,000-ticket cap, $550/mo, but AI Agent's assumed resolutions now clear the 190 included in that tier. Assumes AI Agent fully resolves 30% of tickets, same assumption the calculator uses.
Established brand or seasonal spike, three to four agents. 5,000 tickets crosses into the Advanced bundle, $1,430/mo for Helpdesk + AI Agent together. Assumes AI Agent fully resolves 30% of tickets, same assumption the calculator uses.
Re-verified August 2026. Gorgias now headlines a bundled "Helpdesk + AI Agent" price on gorgias.com/pricing: $40, $90, $550 and $1,430 a month at their 50, 300, 2,000 and 5,000-ticket tiers, at the automation rate their page loads with; their signup links carry an automationRate= param this read could not exercise, so a store on a different automation setting will see a different figure on their side. Automated-interaction allowances (30 / 30 / 190 / 530) and the $1.50 per automated interaction fee past that allowance are unchanged and still theirs. The old helpdesk-only list prices ($10/$60/$360/$900) and ticket overage ($0.40 on Starter and Basic, $0.36 on Pro and Advanced) still apply if a store stays on a lower tier instead of upgrading, and are not part of the bundled figure above. On double-billing: Gorgias' own billing documentation (docs.gorgias.com, "What counts as a billable ticket or automated interaction") states one conversation can count toward both meters, but only when AI Agent resolves it without handing over to a human, and not at all for accounts created before May 28, 2025, which are on legacy pricing. Scenario cards assume AI Agent fully resolves 30% of tickets, the same assumption the /pricing calculator uses; that assumption is ours, every rate in them is theirs. Plan pricing verified against gorgias.com/pricing.
Pricing model decoded
Five tiers. Two meters on one bill.
Gorgias pricing reads like a normal pricing table until you notice it is metering two different things at once. You pay for the tickets your helpdesk replies to, and you pay a second, separate fee each time AI Agent resolves a conversation past your included allowance. Voice and SMS are metered on top of both.
One conversation, two meters. Gorgias' billing documentation: "one ticket can count toward your usage for both helpdesk tickets and automated interactions." It applies when AI Agent resolves the conversation without handing over to a human. If a human steps in, it is the ticket fee only. Accounts created before May 28, 2025 are on legacy pricing, where a conversation counts toward one meter or the other, never both.
Overage on every ticket past your allowance. $0.40 per ticket on Starter and Basic, $0.36 on Pro and Advanced, charged past your included allowance. Black Friday, a viral product, a shipping delay: any volume spike puts that meter on autopilot.
Phone and SMS are metered separately. Voice starts at $25/mo and SMS at $17/mo, on top of your plan and on top of your AI fee. Gorgias' billing documentation confirms one conversation can be "1 billable helpdesk ticket, 1 billable Voice ticket, and 1 billable SMS ticket" at the same time. The per-ticket rates for Voice and SMS are not published.
Every reply to a Meta ad comment counts. Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are billable helpdesk ticket channels when at least one message is sent from Gorgias. Reply directly on Instagram instead and it does not count, but reply from your helpdesk, where your team actually works, and it does. High ad spend can mean a high ticket count regardless of real support volume.
Side by side
Feature for feature. Honestly.
Where Gorgias and Arbyn actually differ. Not marketing checkboxes, just real features that work today, as of 2026.
| Capability | Arbyn$0, $59 or $99 flat | Gorgias |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat, $0/$59/$99 per mo | Per ticket, plus a separate AI fee |
| Cost predictability | Fully flat | Two meters, both climb with volume |
| Unlimited conversations | Yes | No |
| Unlimited AI resolutions | Yes | No |
| Email + chat + IG + FB | Email + chat, IG/FB soon | Yes |
| Acts inside Shopify | Yes, in-thread | AI Agent Actions on paid tiers, unavailable on Starter |
| Replies in your voice | Voice Fingerprint | Brand voice on paid tiers, unavailable on Starter |
| Free plan | Yes, 150/mo | No. The helpdesk-only ladder starts at $10/mo, and AI Agent bills on top. |
| Setup time | In minutes | Not published |
The honest part
Where Gorgias actually wins.
A page that only says “we win” is a sales pitch, not a comparison. So here are three things Gorgias genuinely does better than Arbyn today, no hedging. Take them seriously if they matter to your store. Most Shopify store owners weigh them against $0, $59 or $99 a month, flat, and an agent that can act on the order, and switch anyway.
Where Gorgias is genuinely ahead, stated plainly.
Gorgias has been building for Shopify stores since 2015, and it shows. Their integration library, their voice and SMS infrastructure, and their enterprise tooling are genuinely more mature than ours. Their pricing page is also unusually candid about what it meters, which is more than most of this category manages.
If your stack already leans on Gorgias-native integrations you would have to rebuild, or if you need phone support today, moving to Arbyn means giving up things you currently have. We are not going to pretend otherwise.
Switch to Arbyn anyway when: a predictable bill matters more than integration breadth, you want your AI resolutions to stop being a line item that grows, and you can live without voice for now.
- 01Integration breadth: 250+ apps in their library on every tier, far more than Arbyn today.
- 02Voice and SMS as first-class channels. Arbyn does not do voice at all, and SMS is on our roadmap, not live.
- 03A decade inside the Shopify ecosystem, with the enterprise tooling and track record that comes with it: 4.2 stars from roughly 616 Shopify App Store reviews.
Where Arbyn wins
Three reasons store owners actually switch.
One price, no meters
$99/mo flat for unlimited conversations and unlimited AI resolutions, or $59/mo for 500 a month, or start on the $0 Starter plan with 150 AI conversations per calendar month. Every plan gets every feature. December costs what June costs. There is no invoice waiting for you the morning after BFCM.
Gorgias meters helpdesk tickets and bills a separate $1.50 fee per automated interaction past your included allowance. Their own billing documentation confirms a single conversation can count toward both meters, but only when AI Agent resolves it with no human handover. Accounts created before May 28, 2025 sit on legacy pricing where it counts toward one meter or the other, not both.
Takes the action, in the conversation
Arbyn updates the shipping address on its own, and issues refunds and starts returns with your approval, natively inside the customer conversation, and writes every action to the Shopify order timeline so you can audit it. On every plan, including the $0 one.
Gorgias sells AI Agent Actions (cancel, discount, apply) on its paid tiers and marks them unavailable on Starter, so the cheapest way in is the one without them.
Live in minutes
Install from the Shopify App Store. Arbyn reads your orders, catalog, policies, and shipping zones automatically, and answers in your store's voice from the first conversation. No knowledge base to build, no services contract, no engineer.
Gorgias' Starter tier is capped at 3 user seats, is monthly-billing only, and marks brand voice, guardrails and AI Agent Actions as unavailable. The features most stores are shopping for start one tier up.
Arbyn vs Gorgias: common questions
Arbyn has three flat plans, $0, $59 or $99 a month, with no per-ticket, no per-resolution and no per-seat fee on any of them. Gorgias is priced bundled helpdesk + ai agent, plus overage on both meters, so their bill moves with how much your store gets used and the gap widens as you grow. This page shows the maths at three real volumes. Arbyn's free plan includes 150 AI conversations a month, $59 buys 500, and $99 is unlimited.
Done comparing?
Skip the pricing math. Try Arbyn today.
Free plan, then $59 or $99 flat. Install from Shopify in a few minutes. Cancel anytime from your Shopify admin.
Free plan included. Cancel anytime from Shopify.