Automate Basics

Gorgias vs Zendesk vs Help Scout

Pick up to 4 tools and see their free plans, entry prices, platforms and limits in one table. Every fact comes from each vendor's own pages, checked 7 November 2026.

Compared on
Gorgias

Free trial · from $10/mo

Zendesk

Free trial · from $19/agent/mo

Help Scout

Free plan

What it isHelp desk and AI agent for ecommerce stores, priced by tickets a month rather than by seatCustomer service software with ticketing, messaging, voice and AI agentsShared inbox and help desk for customer support teams, with an AI chatbot billed per resolution
Free planNoNoUp to 5 users, 1 inbox, 1 Docs site and 100 contacts a month; 10 saved replies, tags and articles each
Cheapest paid plan$10/mo (Starter)Gorgias pricing$19/agent/mo billed annually (Support Team)Zendesk pricingNot publishedHelp Scout pricing
What it covers50 tickets a month included, monthly billing only; priced by tickets, not seats.Cheapest self-serve plan; email-based support. AI agent usage is billed per automated resolution.Not stated
Free trial7-day free trial with all features, no payment details needed14-day free trial of Suite Professional (Copilot included in the trial)15-day free trial of Standard and Plus, no credit card needed; Pro is not offered as a trial
PlatformsWebWebWeb
Integrations (vendor's figure)300+ integrations1,800+ apps, partners, and integrations100+ tools
Open sourceNoNoNo
Good for
  • Online stores that handle order questions by ticket
  • Teams with several agents but modest ticket volume, since seats are not the unit
  • Handling customer emails as tracked tickets in a small support team
  • Combining chat, messaging and phone support in one queue
  • Resolving common questions with an AI agent that is billed only for requests it resolves without a human
  • Small and mid-sized teams that want a shared inbox rather than a heavy ticketing system
  • Teams that want a free starting plan for up to five people
Watch out for
  • Costs scale with ticket volume; overage is $0.36 to $0.40 per extra ticket
  • AI Agent is billed per interaction ($1.00 on monthly contracts, $1.50 above the plan allowance) and each also counts as a ticket
  • Voice and SMS are add-ons with volume-based pricing not shown on the page
  • No free plan; the 14-day trial runs on Suite Professional
  • Support Team is email-focused; messaging, live chat and telephony need a Suite plan
  • Copilot costs extra ($50/agent/month paid yearly) except on Suite Enterprise + Copilot
  • Envoy chatbot resolutions are billed on top of the plan at $0.75 each
  • Additional inboxes cost extra ($10 a month paid annually, $12 monthly)
  • Plan limits on inboxes and users are stated differently in different parts of the pricing page
Made byGorgiasZendeskHelp Scout

Entry prices are the cheapest paid plan, as each vendor publishes it; “What it covers” says what that price is per (a user, a channel, a brand, a number of contacts). The sources are listed on each tool's page.

Every tool in AI customer support tools is on its category page, with the written head-to-heads on Compare.