LeodeskLeodesk vs Gorgias.
Gorgias is built for Shopify stores and it goes deep there. Teams look at Leodesk when the store isn’t the whole business, or when a volume spike turned into a bill nobody forecast.
The short version
Gorgias is built for direct-to-consumer e-commerce and is unapologetic about it. Its Shopify integration goes deep — agents act on the order from inside the conversation, not just read it — and around that sits a large app ecosystem covering the rest of the DTC stack: returns, subscriptions, loyalty, reviews. It also attributes revenue to support conversations. At the time of writing it is best known for pricing built around ticket volume rather than seats; the specifics move, so check gorgias.com rather than us.
Leodesk is a general support workspace that happens to work well for stores. Email, live chat, a customer portal and web forms land in one queue, and a Shopify integration pulls the customer’s recent orders into the ticket sidebar. It is priced flat per agent, and that price does not move when your ticket count does. Teams look at us when the store is not the whole business, or when a seasonal spike became a bill nobody forecast. If your queue is Shopify and only Shopify, Gorgias is the deeper tool.
- You want agents to act on orders from the ticket — refunds, cancellations, edits — not just read them.
- You want support conversations attributed to revenue.
- You depend on the DTC app ecosystem: returns, subscriptions, loyalty, reviews.
- You need social messaging or SMS channels.
- You have many part-time agents but a modest ticket count, where paying by volume beats paying by seat.
- You want a flat per-agent price — a Black Friday week costs the same as a quiet February.
- Email is your main channel and you want replies signed as your own domain.
- The store is not the whole business, and tickets need to reach Jira, Linear or GitHub.
- You want to start free — 3 agents, one mailbox — before anyone signs anything.
- You need the agent UI in Spanish, French, German, Japanese or Italian.
Side by side.
Where a capability sits behind a Leodesk plan, the plan is named. The Gorgias column describes general positioning rather than a tier — check gorgias.com for what is current.
| Feature | Leodesk | Gorgias |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat per agent. Free up to 3 agents; Pro $15/agent/mo billed annually | Tiers built around ticket volume at the time of writing; check current terms |
| Channels | Email, live chat widget, customer portal, web forms | A broader DTC channel set, including social messaging and SMS |
| Shopify depth | Read-only sidebar enrichment — recent orders, totals, payment and fulfilment status | Two-way order actions and revenue attribution |
| Automation & SLAs | Unlimited rules on Pro (3 on Free), 17 action kinds, round-robin. SLA deadlines with at-risk and breached states | Rules and macros tuned for e-commerce |
| Email deliverability | BYODKIM on Pro — signed as your own domain, via your own AWS SES | Supported; setup and plan availability vary |
| AI | Included on Pro. Opt-in per workspace, off by default, admin-gated | Capable, with automated resolution; check how it is metered |
| Integrations | Slack, Jira, Linear, GitHub, Shopify and HMAC-signed webhooks (Zapier/Make) on Pro | A large app ecosystem for the DTC stack |
| Roles & permissions | RBAC with server-enforced assigned-only scope; custom roles on Scale | Varies by tier |
| Audit log | Scale | Varies by tier |
| Agent UI languages | Six — English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Italian | Check current coverage |
| Reporting | CSAT, SLA and volume dashboards; advanced reports on Pro | Reporting plus revenue attribution |
| Migration path | Historical email over IMAP. No vendor-specific importer | Export tooling from the vendor |
If your support queue is your storefront, Gorgias wins on depth. Acting on an order from the conversation, attributing revenue to a reply, and a DTC app ecosystem we do not have are real advantages, and no amount of flat pricing substitutes for them.
Pricing: per agent, or per ticket
This is the structural difference, and it deserves more attention than any feature row. At the time of writing Gorgias is widely known for tiering around ticket volume. We will not quote a current figure — list pricing changes and a stale number is worse than none — so read gorgias.com for what applies to you.
Ours, in full:
- Free — $0 for up to 3 agents, 1 mailbox, 3 automation rules, 100 outbound emails/24h.
- Pro — $15 per agent per month billed annually ($19 monthly). Unlimited agents, mailboxes and automation rules, plus AI assist, integrations, BYODKIM, a custom portal domain, advanced reports, custom ticket fields and chat attachments.
- Scale — $35 per agent per month billed annually ($45 monthly). Adds custom roles and an audit log.
- Enterprise — custom.
Neither model is universally cheaper. Volume pricing suits a team with many occasional agents and a steady, modest ticket count. Per-agent pricing suits a small team absorbing a lot of volume.
What happens when volume spikes
The failure mode worth planning for is the month you did not forecast. A shipping delay, a product recall, or simply Black Friday: ticket count triples in a fortnight while headcount does not move. Under volume-based pricing that is the month you climb a tier or pay the overage, exactly when the team is least able to think about billing. Under per-agent pricing the invoice matches February’s, because it counts the people answering rather than the customers writing in.
Check one thing carefully whichever way you go: how automated responses are counted. Models differ by vendor and over time, and “the bot handled it” can mean free, discounted, or billed like any other ticket. On our side there is no per-ticket fee, no per-resolution fee, and no charge for AI assist beyond the Pro seat price. Run your seat count through the calculator on the pricing page.
What our Shopify integration actually does
Precision matters here more than anywhere else on this page, because “Shopify integration” does a lot of work in most marketing copy.
The Leodesk Shopify integration is read-only order enrichment. Connect the store, and the ticket sidebar shows the customer’s recent orders: totals, payment status and fulfilment status, right next to the message. That is the whole feature. It exists so an agent answering “where is my order” does not have to leave the ticket for the Shopify admin and come back in a different tab.
What it does not do, stated plainly so nobody discovers it in week two: it does not issue refunds, cancel or edit orders, or compute lifetime value. It is not two-way — nothing an agent does in Leodesk writes back to Shopify. If your refund workflow has to happen inside the help desk, that is a Gorgias capability and not one of ours.
For many stores read-only context is most of the value, because order tickets are usually answered with information rather than actions. For stores issuing refunds all day it is not enough. More detail: the e-commerce page and integrations page.
What migrating actually involves
The honest version, because the alternative gets found out fast. There is no vendor-specific Gorgias importer. No button clones a Gorgias account into Leodesk, and we would be sceptical of anyone claiming a perfect one.
What we do have is a historical email import over IMAP that works against any provider. Point it at the mailbox, choose a date range and folders, and it pulls the mail in — de-duplicating as it goes and preserving threading, including forwarded chains, which is what migrations break most often.
Tags and macros are recreated during onboarding, not imported. Often an improvement, since most macro libraries are part stale — but it is work done with a person rather than a script, so budget for it.
The sequence we recommend is boring and it holds up. Get live mail flowing into Leodesk first; backfill history second. Publish DNS and DKIM changes before the flip. Connect Shopify and confirm the sidebar shows the right orders against real tickets. Then run both systems in parallel, the old tool read-only, and flip forwarding fully only after a couple of clean days. If you are mid-season, wait — nobody should migrate a support queue in November.
What Leodesk deliberately doesn’t do
A comparison page that wins every row is not a comparison page. The gaps we would want to know about:
- No order actions. Shopify enrichment is read-only — no refunds, no cancellations, no lifetime value, no write-back. This is the biggest single difference between us and Gorgias.
- No social or SMS channels. If a meaningful share of your queue arrives by Instagram DM, we are the wrong tool.
- No revenue attribution. We report CSAT, SLA and volume, not what a conversation was worth.
- A smaller integration catalog. Available today: Slack, Jira, Linear, GitHub, Shopify and outbound webhooks that work with Zapier and Make. Salesforce, Stripe, HubSpot, Segment and Zoom are in progress — and “in progress” is not “available”.
- SLAs are wall-clock. First-response and resolution deadlines count continuously, with at-risk and breached states, and do not pause outside business hours.
- Governance sits on higher plans. Custom roles and the audit log are Scale.
- The free plan has real caps. Three agents, one mailbox, three automation rules, 100 outbound emails per 24 hours.
If none of those are dealbreakers, run both tools on your own tickets for two weeks and see which queue your agents reach for.