Gorgias AI Agent vs a managed AI teammate: the honest comparison
These are two different products that both live inside your helpdesk. Gorgias AI Agent is a tool you buy and operate. A managed AI teammate is labor you hire. The comparison that matters is not which AI is smarter. It is who writes the policies, who does the tuning, and who answers when the machine tells a customer the wrong thing.
We sell the managed side, so read everything below with that in mind. The numbers are the published ones, dated, and the case for Gorgias is stated as fairly as we can state it. If you finish this page thinking the Gorgias add-on is the right call for your store, this page has done its job.
What each one is
Gorgias AI Agent is the AI add-on to the Gorgias helpdesk, built for Shopify stores. You, or someone you pay, configure intents, write the macros and policies it answers from, review what it did, and tune it. It bills $0.90 per resolved conversation on annual plans, $1.00 monthly, with AI overage around $1.50. It requires a Gorgias helpdesk plan, which runs $10 to $900 a month by ticket volume.
A managed AI teammate is a service, not a settings screen. One monthly price for a stated case volume; the provider builds the agent, writes the policies, trains it on your store, tunes it every month, and owns the outcome. Loqum’s version starts at $500 a month for up to 350 cases, which divides to $1.43 a case. Siena and Yuma sell managed-style variants too, from $750 to $850 a month at entry.
The full per-vendor rate table, with sources for every number, is in our cost-of-AI-support breakdown. Here we only need the two sides being compared.
The comparison in one table
Verified September 7, 2026, against vendor pricing pages.
| Gorgias AI Agent | Managed teammate (Loqum) | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Usage: $0.90–$1.00 per resolved conversation, on top of a helpdesk plan | Fixed: $500/mo up to 350 cases, everything included |
| All-in floor | Helpdesk plan plus conversation volume; heavy AI use pushes you into a higher helpdesk tier, because AI resolutions also count as billable tickets | $500 a month |
| November math | The bill scales with volume; overage runs to $1.50 a conversation | Same invoice as March |
| Who sets it up | You | We do |
| Who tunes it monthly | You | We do, on a monthly call with a named engineer |
| Who owns a wrong answer | You; if a human joins the conversation within 72 hours, it is rebilled as a regular ticket | We do; it is on the monthly review |
| Time to first answer | Same day, if you write the macros tonight | A few days; we train on your policies before it goes live |
Where Gorgias wins
- Entry price. $10 a month plus usage beats every managed floor on the market at low volume. Nothing managed starts under $500.
- You already run Gorgias. The add-on is already in your admin. No migration, no new vendor, no procurement conversation.
- Speed. An AI can be answering WISMO tonight if you configure it tonight. Managed takes days because training on your policies is the point.
- Control. Some owners want to own every rule the AI follows. With the add-on, you do. That is a real preference, and at some volumes it is the right one.
- You employ someone to run support tooling. Most stores past a few agents do. If tuning the helpdesk is a paid person’s Tuesday, the tool is cheaper than the labor. That is the honest break-even: managed labor pays for itself when the alternative is your evenings, not when it is a staffed Tuesday.
Where managed wins
- Fixed cost in the months that decide your year. Peak season is when usage billing does its damage: more conversations, more overage, a higher tier. A fixed case price has no second meter running.
- Your time, priced honestly. The DIY column bills $0 for setup, policy writing, edge cases and monthly tuning, and all of that work lands on somebody’s calendar. If you are the support team, an hour in AI settings is an hour not spent selling or packing.
- Accountability. When the agent quotes the wrong return window, someone has to catch it, fix the rule, and answer for it. With a tool, that someone is you. With managed, it is us, and the monthly review is where it shows up.
- No double billing. Gorgias AI resolutions count toward your helpdesk ticket allowance, so the AI’s success raises the plan price. The fixed fee has no clause like that, because there is nothing to meter.
What neither does
Both sides handle the repetitive pile: where is my order, how returns work, order edits, sizing questions before they become returns. Neither should be trusted with angry VIPs, negotiated exceptions, or anything your written policies do not cover. If a vendor of either kind says their AI handles judgment, ask to see the transcripts.
That habit of asking is worth keeping for the metrics too. “Automation rate” is quoted by everyone and defined by no one; we wrote a separate piece on how that number gets inflated, and it applies to tool and labor alike, including ours.
The decision, in four lines
- Under about 150 cases a month: neither. Saved replies, a real FAQ page, and a tracking link in every dispatch email will carry you.
- You already pay someone to run support tooling: buy the Gorgias add-on. It is good software at a fair rate.
- You are the support team: hire the labor. The question is your evenings, not the per-conversation rate.
- Past 350 cases a month: run the usage math at your own numbers, with November’s volume, against the fixed tiers. The bigger the store, the more the fixed fee has to defend itself.
Gorgias will sell you their AI honestly, and it does what the pricing page says. So do we. The difference is who does the work. If you want to run the tool, run it. If you want the queue handled end to end, with a named engineer showing you every month what it answered and what it missed, that is what we build. That conversation starts with Anna.
Sources: Gorgias pricing pages and Shopify listings, verified September 7, 2026; Siena and Yuma published floors cross-checked the same day; per-case division of Loqum’s published plans. Rates change without notice; verify before deciding.