Comparison
HelpHQ vs Gorgias
Gorgias is the established helpdesk in the Shopify ecosystem and a genuinely good product. This page is about which stores it suits, and which are better served by something smaller.
| HelpHQ | Gorgias | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $0, then $19/mo | $10/mo (50 tickets) |
| Typical small-store plan | $19/mo unlimited | $60/mo (300 tickets) |
| Going over your limit | Nothing changes | $0.32–$0.40 per extra ticket |
| Where you work | Inside your Shopify admin | A separate application |
| Order context | Yes | Yes |
| Email and forms | Yes | Yes |
| Social and SMS | No | Yes |
| AI agent | No | Yes, ~$1 per resolution |
| Built for | Tens to hundreds of tickets a month | Support teams handling thousands |
Gorgias list prices on monthly billing, checked against their pricing page in 2026. Annual billing is roughly 16% cheaper.
The short version
If you have a support team, thousands of tickets a month, and you want automation across social channels and SMS, Gorgias does more than we do. That is not false modesty \u2014 it has years of engineering behind it.
If you are one to three people answering a few hundred messages a month, HelpHQ is designed for you and Gorgias is not. You will pay less, set up faster, and stop paying for capability you do not use.
The pricing difference that actually matters
It is not the headline number, it is the shape. Gorgias prices by ticket volume, so exceeding your tier costs $0.32 to $0.40 per extra ticket depending on plan.
Consider a store doing 400 tickets in a month. On Gorgias that means the $60 Basic plan plus roughly 100 tickets of overage \u2014 about $100 for a month that was not especially unusual. And the months you exceed your tier are rarely random: a delayed shipment, a bad batch, a post that went further than expected. The support bill rises exactly when something has gone wrong.
HelpHQ charges a flat monthly fee with no per-ticket component. A bad month costs what a good month costs.
On living inside Shopify
HelpHQ runs in your Shopify admin rather than its own application. For a small team that is a real advantage: it is where you already are, there is no second login, and order information is a query away rather than a sync away.
At larger scale the trade-off reverses. A dedicated application gives agents a denser, faster interface than an embedded app can. If you have people answering tickets full time, that matters more than convenience.
What we do not have
Being straight about this is more useful than a feature table implying parity. HelpHQ does not currently offer Instagram or Facebook messaging, SMS, voice, AI-drafted replies, or automation rules. Some are planned. None exist today.
If any of them is essential to how you work, Gorgias is the better choice and we would rather you knew now.
Who should pick HelpHQ
- Stores where one or two people handle support alongside other work
- Anyone tired of a support bill that scales with bad news
- Merchants who want order context beside a conversation without managing a second application
Try it on your own tickets
The free plan covers 50 tickets a month and does not expire. Usually enough to know whether it fits.
See pricing