When it comes to customer support, Zendesk and Gorgias are two leading options.
However, each platform has its challenges. Zendesk can be complex to set up and costly to scale, while Gorgias, though perfect for ecommerce brands, lacks the advanced automation and reporting tools needed for larger businesses.
If you’re deciding between the two, you’ll need to consider whether scalability, automation, or ecommerce-specific support is your top priority.
In this article, we’ll compare Zendesk vs. Gorgias in terms of features, pricing, and ease of use. We’ll also introduce an AI-powered customer support alternative platform that delivers real-time responses, deep integrations, and cost-effective automation.
What Is Zendesk?
Zendesk is customer service software that allows companies to manage and provide multi-channel support across platforms.
Image Source: zendesk.com
It offers an extensive suite of features covering the entire support workflow. Its ticketing system logs and tracks customer requests from various channels in a single dashboard.
The platform is omnichannel and natively supports email and web ticket forms. The Zendesk Suite also includes live chat, a call center for phone support (Zendesk Talk), and integrations for social media messages.
Another pillar of Zendesk’s feature set is its self-service and knowledge base capabilities. Zendesk Guide lets you create an online help center with FAQs, how-to articles, and even community forums for user discussions.
What Is Gorgias?
Gorgias is a customer support helpdesk platform designed specifically for ecommerce businesses.
Image Source: gorgias.com
In contrast to generalist help desks like Zendesk, Gorgias’s mission is to centralize all customer communications for online stores in one place. It lets customer service teams not just resolve issues but also drive sales.
Gorgias is the tool that many modern D2C (direct-to-consumer) and ecommerce brands use to handle customer inquiries from email, live chat, and social media.
It offers omnichannel ticketing, similar to Zendesk, but with an ecommerce twist. All incoming customer messages will funnel into Gorgias’s unified dashboard.
What Is Denser.ai?
Denser.ai is an AI-powered chatbot platform designed to help automate customer interactions, improve response times, and reduce support costs.
Unlike traditional help desks that rely on manual ticketing and scripted responses, Denser.ai uses advanced AI, natural language processing (NLP), and deep semantic search.
Denser.ai allows you to train AI models based on your own data to make sure that responses align with company policies, product knowledge, and industry standards.
Sign up for a free trial or schedule a demo today!
Features Comparison: Zendesk vs. Gorgias vs. Denser.ai
Zendesk and Gorgias are both popular customer support platforms, but each has different strengths and limitations.
Zendesk is a traditional help desk solution designed for businesses across multiple industries, while Gorgias is tailored for ecommerce brands, focusing on order management and social media support.
However, Denser.ai offers a smarter, AI-driven alternative, leveraging advanced semantic AI and automation to improve efficiency, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness in customer support.
Below, we compare how each platform handles key support features and where Denser.ai stands out.
Ticketing System & Help Desk
Both Zendesk and Gorgias provide a ticketing system that brings customer inquiries from multiple channels into one place.
Zendesk
Zendesk uses a traditional ticketing approach: every customer issue becomes a ticket with a unique ID, which can be assigned, prioritized, and tracked through its lifecycle.
It’s designed to support classic customer service operations across any industry. Agents can view the entire conversation thread and any internal notes in one view.
Zendesk’s ticketing system supports features like ticket forms, conditional fields, and the ability to have multiple ticket statuses.
Gorgias
Gorgias, on the other hand, also centralizes inquiries, but it was built with a slightly different mindset due to its ecommerce focus. The central concept is still often called a “conversation,” but it feels very much like an email thread or a chat thread with the customer.
Gorgias pulls in emails, contact form submissions, live chats, plus social media messages and comments into a single shared inbox for the support team.
Its ticketing is omnichannel by default. In practical terms, an agent in Gorgias can see a list of open tickets. Agents can apply tags, assign tickets to themselves or others, or snooze tickets for later.
Denser.ai
Denser.ai eliminates the need for traditional ticketing by using AI-powered chatbots and real-time automation to handle customer queries instantly.
Instead of converting interactions into tickets, Denser’s AI pulls relevant information from company data, FAQs, and documents to provide immediate, accurate responses.
Live Chat and Messaging
Live chat and instant messaging have become essential channels. Zendesk and Gorgias both recognize this and include real-time messaging capabilities but with some differences in execution and integration.
Zendesk
Zendesk offers live chat primarily through its Zendesk Chat widget and through a newer unified messaging framework.
With Zendesk, you can embed a chat widget on your website or in the mobile app, allowing customers to initiate live chats with support agents.
Agents can handle multiple chats concurrently, transfer chats to other agents, and use features like typing indicators and canned responses. Zendesk Chat also has a feature called Chat Trigger that automates live chat interactions when certain conditions are met.
Gorgias
Gorgias provides a live chat widget for websites that is easy to install (especially on Shopify, where it’s a one-click integration). This chat widget is customizable to fit your site’s branding. It can also be configured to either start as a real-time chat or function as a contact form when agents are offline.
Gorgias emphasizes using chat for conversion: you can set up automated chat campaigns and even configure them to send automated messages based on customer behavior.
Both platforms offer real-time chat options, but some reviews note that Zendesk’s interface can be a bit heavy at times. Gorgias’s interface is built for quick responses.
Denser.ai
Denser.ai takes live chat a step further by offering AI-powered, real-time messaging with deep contextual understanding.
Compared to Zendesk and Gorgias, which rely on pre-set responses or scripts, Denser.ai’s AI can analyze past interactions, customer intent, and company knowledge bases. It helps generate more natural, human-like responses without the need for live agents.
Automation and AI-Powered Support
Zendesk has a longer history of generic support automation and recently beefed up its AI capabilities. Meanwhile, Gorgias leans on automation to handle repetitive e-commerce questions and routes and has begun adding AI features specialized to its domain.
Zendesk
Zendesk includes an automation engine that allows support teams to create triggers and automation. Triggers in Zendesk are rules that run when certain conditions are met on a ticket.
On the AI side, one of Zendesk’s flagship AI features is the Answer Bot. It uses machine learning to try to answer customer questions by suggesting relevant knowledge-based articles. It initially worked over email/web-form tickets and in-web widgets, but now it can also function in messaging channels.
Gorgias
Gorgias was built with the idea of automating the most common ecommerce questions. It provides a Rules system that is analogous to Zendesk’s triggers, where you can also perform actions on tickets based on custom triggers.
Gorgias’s approach to AI has been pragmatic. They use machine learning to detect intent and sentiment. The intents are specifically trained on e-commerce support conversations.
As noted, Gorgias can identify intents like “Where is my order,” “Return request,” “Exchange request,” and “Product availability inquiry,”
These detected intents can trigger specific automation. Gorgias also recently launched PerfectBot, which works in the Gorgias app as one of the agents. It can handle complex questions and reassign complicated requests to your human support team.
Denser.ai
Denser.ai’s automation goes beyond simple triggers and scripted responses. It uses advanced semantic AI to understand context and provide accurate, AI-driven answers. It pulls directly from internal documents, FAQs, and business data.
You don't need to pre-write answers or configure rules, as Denserbots learn from your content and respond accordingly. It handles up to 80% of customer inquiries automatically and escalates only complex queries to live agents.
Knowledge Base & Self-Service
Helping customers help themselves is a key part of modern support. Zendesk has a full-fledged knowledge base product for self-service, while Gorgias has very limited native self-service options.
Zendesk
Zendesk includes Zendesk Guide, a robust knowledge base system that lets companies create an online Help Center. This typically includes FAQ articles, how-to guides, troubleshooting steps, and any other documentation that customers might search for.
Also, the Zendesk Guide allows internal knowledge bases for agents as well, which can be useful for internal processes or an agent knowledge repository.
When it comes to user-friendliness, Zendesk’s knowledge base is quite user-friendly for end-users as it has search functionality and is mobile-responsive.
Gorgias
Gorgias notably does not have a native public knowledge base for customers. Unlike Zendesk, it doesn’t provide a portal where you can publish FAQs or guides that customers can browse at their leisure.
Gorgias provides a standalone self-service portal. Automation add-on users can create self-service order management flows without needing a chat integration or a full help center.
Denser.ai
Denser.ai removes the need for a static knowledge base by offering AI-powered semantic search.
Instead of customers searching for articles, it dynamically retrieves relevant information from company data, uploaded documents, and past inquiries. The platform provides instant, self-service responses without requiring customers to navigate a help center.
Reporting & Analytics
Both Zendesk and Gorgias offer reporting and analytics tools. However, Zendesk’s analytics are more advanced and customizable, whereas Gorgias provides the essentials with a couple of unique e-commerce twists.
Zendesk
Zendesk’s primary analytics tool is called Zendesk Explore. This is a comprehensive reporting module that comes with pre-built dashboards and also allows custom report building.
Out of the box, Zendesk provides dashboards for things like ticket volume, agent performance, efficiency metrics, and customer satisfaction. These dashboards can usually be filtered by date, by channel, or by group.
One thing to note: some users find Zendesk’s Explore interface a bit complex at first (especially for custom reports) because it uses a lot of terminology.
Gorgias
Gorgias, being newer, has a simpler reporting module. It provides the core metrics that an ecommerce support team would care about.
In terms of customization, Gorgias now allows users to create custom dashboards to track key performance metrics, apply filters, and visualize data within the platform.
If you’re a support lead at a small business, Gorgias’s analytics will be easy to read at a glance on one screen with key metrics. If you’re a data analyst or at a big company, Zendesk’s analytics will give you way more to dig into with other business metrics.
Denser.ai
Every chat or question answered by Denser’s AI is logged and analyzed to spot trends in customer inquiries. Managers can effortlessly discover what issues are most common or which information customers struggle to find.
Denser.ai’s reporting provides continuous learning analytics. The AI interacts with customers and continuously refines what it reports back to you.
Integrations & Third-Party Apps
Zendesk is well-known for its vast array of integrations and a mature app marketplace. Gorgias focuses on integrating tools that matter to e-commerce and has a growing but smaller app store.
Zendesk
Zendesk has been around longer and has a large user base, which has attracted many third-party developers to create Zendesk apps.
Also, Zendesk provides APIs that allow developers to build custom integrations. So, larger companies often connect Zendesk to their data warehouse. They also build custom widgets in the Zendesk interface that pull in internal system data.
Gorgias
Gorgias, true to its nature, emphasizes high-quality integrations with ecommerce tools. The most important integration is with Shopify (or other ecommerce platforms like Magento, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce).
This integration pulls in order info and allows actions like refunds from Gorgias. It also has standard integrations like Slack and Zapier.
Denser.ai
Denser.ai is designed to fit into your existing tech stack. It may not boast a giant app marketplace, but it makes up for it by being flexible and API-driven.
Denser.ai provides integrations with popular platforms like Slack and WordPress. More powerfully, it offers a robust REST API and supports Zapier, so you can connect it to virtually any third-party app.
Pricing Plans: Zendesk vs. Gorgias vs. Denser.ai
Pricing is often a decisive factor when choosing customer support software. Zendesk and Gorgias have very different pricing models: one charges per agent seat, and the other charges by support ticket volume.
The most cost-effective option will depend on the size of your team and the number of customer inquiries you handle.
Zendesk Pricing
Zendesk’s pricing can be a bit complex because it offers various products and tiers.
Support Team is the basic plan at $25 per agent per month. This includes email and social media tickets (Facebook and X or Twitter) and a unified agent workspace.
Suite Team is around $69 per agent per month and adds things like a custom internal knowledge base, AI agents, and live chat capabilities.
Suite Professional ($149/agent/month) adds more features such as live custom analytics, business hours, customer satisfaction ratings, and SLA (service level agreement.)
At the high end, Suite Enterprise goes beyond $150+/agent with advanced capabilities (like sandbox environments, custom roles, dedicated support from Zendesk, etc.).
The cost for small vs. Enterprise in Zendesk thus scales primarily with the number of agents. A small business with one agent could pay as little as ~$25-$69/month (depending on the plan).
Whereas a large enterprise with, say, 200 agents could be looking at hundreds of thousands per year. Zendesk does offer some volume discounts and even a legacy “unlimited” tier for huge customers, but it’s still fundamentally per-seat licensing.
Gorgias Pricing
Gorgias uses a ticket-based pricing model. They have several plans that include a certain number of “billable tickets” per month, and you can have unlimited agent seats on those plans.
At the low end, the Starter plan is $10 per month and includes 50 helpdesk tickets/month. The price goes up to $40 per month if you want 25 automated tickets.
The Basic plan is $60/month and includes 300 helpdesk tickets, or $203 per month if you want to include 150 automated tickets. This is a popular plan for small stores, and you can have as many team members as you want answering them.
If you go over 300, the overage is charged (for Basic, it’s $40 per extra 100 tickets, i.e., $0.40 each).
After that, the Pro plan ranges between $360/month (2,000 helpdesk tickets) and $1,260/month (2,000 helpdesk and 1,000 automated tickets). The Advanced Plan is $900/month for 5,000 tickets (overage at $36 per 100, so $0.36 each), while the same plan with 2,500 automated tickets costs $3,000/month.
Above that is the Enterprise plan, which is custom-priced for high volume (10,000 helpdesk tickets).
Each higher plan also tends to include a higher tier of features. Some integrations or the voice/SMS add-ons are optional add-ons.
If you have a low ticket volume, Gorgias can be extremely affordable, and you’re not penalized for adding more agents. However, you must consider overage charges with this platform.
Gorgias plans to encourage you to pick a tier that covers your typical volume, but if you have a seasonal surge, you might pay overage for those extra tickets (like $0.40 each on Basic).
Denser.ai Pricing
Zendesk’s per-agent pricing model means costs rise with each additional support rep. This can quickly become expensive for businesses that receive high volumes of customer inquiries.
Gorgias also charges based on ticket volume, which can lead to unpredictable costs, especially during peak seasons or unexpected support spikes.
Denser.ai offers usage-based pricing, so you only pay for AI-driven customer interactions, not the number of agents on your team.
- Free plan: 1 Denserbot, 20 queries per month, which supports up to 100 documents or 50 MB storage
- Starter plan ($19 per month): 2 DenserBots and 1,500 queries per month, with each bot having up to 100 documents, API access, and 30-day log retention.
- Standard plan ($89 per month): 4 DenserBots and 7,500 queries per month, which increases the limit to 2,000 documents and adds advanced features like removing the “powered by denser.ai” label.
- Business plan ($399/month): 8 Denserbots, with each bot indexing up to 10,000 documents or 5 GB of data. It includes all Standard features plus dedicated accuracy support and extended 360-day log retention.
- Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing for organizations requiring a tailored solution beyond the standard tiers.
If your business deals with thousands of customer inquiries each month, Denser’s model is far more cost-effective than hiring additional agents or paying for excessive ticket-based fees.
Zendesk and Gorgias both have their place. But if your business requires scalable, intelligent, and industry-specific support, Denser.ai is the better choice.
If you’re tired of juggling high support costs, inefficient workflows, and outdated automation, it’s time to upgrade to an AI-driven support platform that works for your business.
Why Denser.ai Is the Smartest Alternative
If you're looking for a modern, AI-driven approach to customer support, Denser.ai is a smarter, more cost-effective alternative. It transforms customer service into a proactive, intelligent experience without the high costs and complexity of traditional platforms.
Denser.ai is a next-generation AI-powered customer support platform designed to offer the best of both worlds. It provides enterprise-level automation and scalability like Zendesk, combined with deep ecommerce integrations and affordability like Gorgias.
Here's why you should consider Denser.ai:
Smarter AI That Works for Your Business
Zendesk and Gorgias use AI primarily to provide help articles or automate basic responses. But that’s not enough if your business deals with complex customer interactions.
Denser.ai’s AI understands context and provides accurate, relevant answers based on your company’s knowledge base. It uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to understand complex questions and provide precise answers with citations.
Automation That Goes Beyond Basic Ticketing
Zendesk’s automation tools are useful but may require manual setup where you have to configure macros, triggers, and workflows to simplify responses.
Gorgias is good at automating ecommerce-specific tasks, like pulling order details, but this doesn’t help if your business isn’t in retail.
Denser automates up to 80% of customer inquiries without requiring complex setup. It learns from your existing documents, product catalogs, and company policies and provides customers with relevant answers instantly.
Tailored for Key Industries
Every industry has unique customer support challenges, and a one-size-fits-all solution often falls short. While Zendesk and Gorgias offer traditional help desk functionalities, neither is specifically built to handle regulated industries or real-time data retrieval.
Denser.ai stands out by providing AI-powered automation that understands complex inquiries, retrieves precise information, and integrates with industry-specific workflows.
Healthcare (Clinical Assistant Chatbot)
If your business operates in healthcare, you know how essential accuracy and compliance are. Traditional helpdesks like Zendesk can log patient inquiries but require human agents to manually provide responses. Gorgias isn’t even designed for healthcare.
If you operate in healthcare, Denser can instantly retrieve patient history, lab results, and relevant medical literature, helping doctors make informed decisions.
This healthcare AI assistant provides clinical decision support by cross-referencing patient data with medical guidelines and research.
A hospital using Zendesk might need multiple support staff to handle appointment scheduling and FAQs. Denser automates these processes while still allowing for human escalation when necessary.
B2B Customer Support (Enterprise Chatbot)
In B2B environments, customer questions are often technical or product-specific. Instead of having agents search through documentation, Denser’s AI pulls the latest information automatically from your knowledge base.
Denser.ai specializes in AI chat with custom data (docs, websites) and deep semantic search, making it great for creating a self-service Q&A chatbot with your own content.
Zendesk’s AI, by contrast, relies on your knowledge base articles but may require more setup and training to cover company-specific documents. Also, it provides answers with source citations out of the box, a feature not natively highlighted in Zendesk’s Answer Bot.
This enterprise chatbot can integrate with CRM and business systems, so it fits into existing workflows and supports multi-channel deployment.
Financial Services (Fintech Chatbots)
If you’re in financial services, Denser fintech chatbots can automate routine banking inquiries and even assist with complex tasks like loan applications or investment advice.
The platform’s semantic AI handles tasks from balance checks to personalized financial tips, analyzing spending patterns to suggest budgeting or investments. It securely integrates with banking systems and can pull account info or process transactions with appropriate safeguards.
Cost-Effective and Scalable AI
Denser.ai offers a refreshingly different pricing model that can be very attractive to growing businesses. Instead of charging per agent or per ticket, Denser.ai’s plans are generally subscription-based and tied to AI usage limits rather than human seats.
Denser’s Starter plan is around $19 per month, which already includes a generous allowance of AI-driven support sessions. Even if you have a small team or no dedicated support agents, you’re still empowering an AI that can handle many customer questions.
As your business and support volume grow, you might upgrade to higher plans like the Standard for $89/month. But these jumps are predictable fees, not multiplied by each new agent or each hundred tickets.
Smarter Support, Lower Costs—See How Denser.ai Transforms Your Help Desk!
If Zendesk feels too complex and costly or Gorgias doesn’t offer enough advanced automation, Denser.ai gives you the best of both worlds.
Unlike traditional help desks, Denser.ai uses advanced AI and advanced semantic search to pull precise information from your business’s documents, FAQs, and policies.
It integrates with your CRM, sales, and support channels to manage support effortlessly while scaling your business. No need for complex configurations or per-agent pricing—just smart automation that works for you.
If you’re ready to upgrade your customer support with AI-driven efficiency and lower costs, Denser.ai is the AI chatbot solution you’ve been looking for.
Sign up for a free trial or schedule a demo today!
FAQs About Zendesk vs Gorgias
Are Gorgias and Zendesk the same?
Zendesk and Gorgias serve different business needs. Zendesk is a general customer support platform designed for various industries, offering omnichannel support, advanced automation, and ticket management.
Gorgias, on the other hand, is built specifically for the ecommerce industry, focusing on order management, social media messaging, and Shopify integration to help online stores manage support and customer queries efficiently.
Who is Zendesk's main competitor?
Zendesk competes with different platforms depending on the industry:
- Salesforce Service Cloud – Ideal for enterprise customer support with CRM integration.
- Freshdesk & Help Scout – Popular among SMBs looking for a user-friendly interface and cost-effective support solutions.
- Gorgias – The go-to platform for ecommerce businesses that need deep Shopify and BigCommerce integrations.
- Denser.ai – The best choice for businesses that need AI-powered customer support, automation, and real-time responses while ensuring excellent customer support and cost-effective scalability.
If your business’s growth depends on scalable automation and AI-driven customer support, Denser.ai provides a smarter, more efficient alternative.
What is the weakness of Zendesk?
Zendesk’s main weaknesses include:
- Expensive to scale – Charges per agent, making it costly for large teams
- Complex setup – Requires time and resources to customize workflows
- Limited AI capabilities – Mainly automated ticket routing, not real-time answers
- Not ideal for e-commerce – Lacks deep Shopify integration compared to Gorgias
Denser.ai offers a more intelligent, cost-effective alternative that scales with your business’s growth.