This comparison in 30 seconds.

• Gorgias is the deepest Shopify-native helpdesk. Strongest order and returns automation across email, chat, and SMS. The catch is the bill: a $360 Pro plan can land near $960 once the AI agent starts resolving tickets at $0.90 each on top of the ticket fee.
• DelightChat is the WhatsApp-first inbox. Cheaper at volume ($299 for 6,000 tickets vs Gorgias's $900 base), zero markup on Meta message rates, and the best native WhatsApp experience for a Shopify brand. Lighter on Shopify depth and autonomous AI.
• Built for founders, COOs, and Heads of CX at $10M-$100M Shopify brands. One thing both lists skip: neither tool's AI answers your inbound phone. That channel stays open after you pick either one.

You're choosing between two good tools that solve the same half of the problem. Gorgias and DelightChat both organize your text support: email, live chat, social, WhatsApp. One does it with the deepest Shopify integration on the market. The other does it WhatsApp-first and cheaper. That's a real decision, and below I'll give you the honest version of it.

Most "Gorgias vs DelightChat" posts stop there. But whichever one you pick, your phone line is still ringing. And neither tool's AI picks it up.

If you run a $10M-$100M Shopify brand and your support team is drowning in the same questions over and over, the helpdesk you choose only routes the typing. We've launched AI phone agents for 50+ Shopify brands to handle the channel a helpdesk can't, and a 30-min call is the fastest way to see what your phone is leaving on the table after-hours.

Gorgias vs DelightChat at a glance

The short version before the deep dives: both are strong, and they're built for slightly different brands.

The table makes the real trade-off obvious: Gorgias goes deeper on Shopify, DelightChat goes cheaper on WhatsApp, and the phone row is empty for both. We'll come back to that last column. First, the two tools you're actually here to compare.

How I compared Gorgias and DelightChat

I'm Ruben, co-founder of Ringly. We run AI phone support for 50+ Shopify brands, which means I evaluate helpdesk tools constantly, not as a critic, as a buyer who has to integrate with them.

Over two weeks I set up production accounts on both Gorgias and DelightChat and ran the same five-task workflow through each:

• WISMO lookup. I pushed a "where's my order" ticket through each tool and timed how fast an agent could pull the order, the tracking, and the customer history without leaving the inbox.
• Return and exchange. I ran a refund and an exchange to see how much the tool could do natively against Shopify versus how much needed a tab-switch.
• Product question. I asked a pre-purchase question to see how each one's AI handled a knowledge-base answer.
• Channel coverage. I tested WhatsApp on both, then email, chat, and social, to see where each one is actually strong.
• The after-hours phone test. I dialed each tool's own support line and noted what happened on the phone, because that's the channel a Shopify brand's customers still use at 9 p.m.

The differences below come from running those workflows, not from reading marketing pages. WashCo, a Shopify brand we launched, recovered $22,664 in its first 7 days on the phone, so the phone-line test isn't an academic one for me.

Gorgias: the Shopify-native helpdesk

1. Gorgias

Best for: $10M-$100M Shopify brands that want the deepest Shopify integration and the strongest automation across email, chat, and SMS.

Gorgias is the most-installed helpdesk built specifically for ecommerce, and the Shopify integration is the reason. Order data, customer history, refunds, and cancellations live inside the ticket, so a rep answering "where's my order" doesn't tab-hop into Shopify to do it. For a brand running real volume, that depth is the whole point.

Pricing

The AI agent is billed separately: $0.90 per fully resolved conversation on Pro and up ($1.00 on Starter), with overage at $1.50 per interaction. When the AI resolves a ticket, you pay both a helpdesk ticket fee and the automation fee. According to Lindy's 2026 pricing breakdown, a Pro plan handling 2,000 tickets at 50% AI automation lands around $960/mo, not the $360 sticker. Worth modeling before you commit.

What works

• Deepest Shopify integration of any helpdesk. Order lookups, refunds, and subscription actions happen in-ticket. This is where Gorgias earns its price.
• Strong rules and macros. The automation engine is mature, and the 2026 AI agent handles order-status questions noticeably better than the 2024 version.
• Big ecosystem. Integrations for almost everything in the Shopify stack, plus a deep set of native Shopify features.

What doesn't

• The bill climbs. Per-resolution AI pricing plus ticket double-billing means your effective cost can be 2-3x the base. The per-resolution model is the most-cited complaint.
• AI accuracy you babysit. Reviewers note the AI agent still needs supervision on anything beyond routine tickets.
• WhatsApp is not its strength. It's there, but DelightChat does WhatsApp better.

Why it's the pick for Shopify depth

If your support runs on email, chat, and SMS and you want the deepest Shopify-native helpdesk available, Gorgias is the strongest tool here. Rated 4.6/5 on G2 across 800+ reviews and 4.7/5 on Capterra. Just model the AI bill before you sign. If the per-resolution math scares you, it's worth scanning the Gorgias alternatives and the full Gorgias pricing breakdown first.

DelightChat: the WhatsApp-first inbox

2. DelightChat

Best for: SMB-to-mid ecommerce brands where WhatsApp is the primary support channel, and brands that want cheaper omnichannel text support.

DelightChat is a shared inbox built around WhatsApp. One view pulls WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, email, and live chat together, and on top of support it does WhatsApp broadcasts, abandoned-cart recovery, and order notifications. It's popular with Shopify sellers in markets where WhatsApp is how customers actually talk to brands, India, Brazil, Southeast Asia.

Pricing

DelightChat charges zero markup on WhatsApp message rates, so Meta's per-conversation cost passes straight through instead of getting marked up. There's a 14-day free trial with no card. According to DelightChat's pricing page, 6,000 tickets runs $299/mo, versus Gorgias's $900 Advanced base for the same volume. At scale, that gap is real.

What works

• Best native WhatsApp experience for Shopify. If WhatsApp is your main channel, nothing in this comparison handles it better.
• Cheaper at volume. The per-ticket math beats Gorgias once you're past a couple thousand tickets a month.
• Zero markup on Meta rates plus responsive support. They pass Meta's costs through and run a WhatsApp group for customer questions, which reviewers consistently praise.

What doesn't

• Lighter Shopify depth. It integrates with Shopify, but the in-ticket order/refund depth isn't at Gorgias's level.
• AI is assistive, not autonomous. The GPT-powered assistant drafts and rewrites replies. It doesn't resolve tickets on its own the way Gorgias's agent attempts to, and the chatbot builder is basic.
• Slower roadmap. Reviewers cite a slower pace of new features, and there's no dedicated mobile agent app.

Why it's the pick for WhatsApp

If your customers live on WhatsApp and you want a cleaner, cheaper inbox than Gorgias, DelightChat is the better fit. Rated 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.8/5 on the Shopify App Store. Just know you're trading some Shopify depth and autonomous AI for the WhatsApp strength and the lower bill.

Pricing compared

Same volume, different shape. Here's the honest side-by-side at a representative 6,000 tickets a month.

On raw cost, DelightChat wins at volume; on Shopify-native depth and automation, Gorgias wins. Neither is "cheaper" in a vacuum. The right answer depends on whether you're paying for Shopify integration depth or for a lean WhatsApp inbox.

How to choose between Gorgias and DelightChat

The decision comes down to two questions: how deep do you need the Shopify integration, and is WhatsApp a primary channel or a side one?

Choose Gorgias if:

• You're a $10M-$100M Shopify brand and the depth of the Shopify integration matters more than the monthly bill.
• Email, chat, and SMS are your main channels, not WhatsApp.
• You want the most mature automation and the biggest integration ecosystem, and you'll model the per-resolution AI cost before you commit.

Choose DelightChat if:

• WhatsApp is where your customers actually reach you.
• You want a cleaner, cheaper inbox and you're fine trading some Shopify depth for it.
• You care about zero-markup Meta message rates at volume.

If you want to see how Gorgias stacks up against other helpdesks before you decide, the Gorgias vs Richpanel and Intercom vs Gorgias breakdowns are worth a read.

Where each one actually wins, and where both fall short

Most comparison posts stop at the pricing table. The more useful question for an operator is where each tool earns its keep day to day, and where you'll hit a wall no matter which you pick.

Gorgias wins on Shopify-native muscle. When a rep opens a "where's my order" ticket, the order, the tracking, the customer's full purchase history, and the refund button are all right there. No tab-hopping, no copy-pasting an order number into Shopify admin. For a brand pushing real ticket volume, that depth compounds into hours saved every week. The 2026 AI agent also closed a lot of the order-status gap reviewers flagged in 2024, so routine WISMO automation is genuinely better than it was.

DelightChat wins on WhatsApp and on a flatter bill. If a real share of your customers message you on WhatsApp, DelightChat treats it as a first-class channel instead of a bolt-on, and the broadcast plus abandoned-cart tools sit in the same inbox. The zero-markup Meta rates matter once you're sending thousands of conversations a month, and the team's hands-on support (they literally run a WhatsApp group for customers) shows up in the reviews. For a lean brand that doesn't need Gorgias's full ecosystem, it's the cheaper, calmer choice.

Where both fall short is the same place. Both tools are excellent at organizing the channels people type into. Neither one's AI handles the channel people talk into. Your phone backlog, the after-hours voicemails you never return, the caller who dialed three times on Saturday, none of that gets resolved by a helpdesk AI. You can route it, you can log it, you can assign it to a rep on Monday. You can't make it get answered at 9 p.m. when nobody's at the desk. That's not a flaw in either product. It's just outside what a text helpdesk does.

The channel neither one answers: your phone

Here's the column we skipped. Both Gorgias and DelightChat are text-channel tools. Gorgias's AI runs on email, chat, and SMS. DelightChat's assistant drafts replies across WhatsApp and the other text channels. Useful work. But a real chunk of your support never types a word. It calls.

And for a $10M-$100M Shopify brand, the phone is where the expensive volume lives: high-intent buyers, after-hours callers, the older demographic that won't fill out a form. WISMO calls alone are 30-40% of tickets and 50%+ at peak, according to Salesforce, and a meaningful slice of that hits your phone, not your inbox. Neither helpdesk's AI picks it up. That's not a knock on either tool. Phone is just a different problem.

3. Ringly.io: AI phone support for Shopify brands

Ringly is AI phone support for Shopify brands. It's not a helpdesk, and it doesn't replace Gorgias or DelightChat. It sits in front of whichever one you pick and handles the channel they can't: the inbound phone line.

The AI answers inbound calls 24/7. It finds orders in your Shopify store, processes returns and exchanges, answers product questions from your knowledge base, and rescues abandoned carts with outbound follow-up. Across 50+ brands, the AI resolves 73% of calls autonomously at roughly $0.42 per resolved call, versus $7-$16 per call for human BPO. Calls that need a person escalate cleanly to Gorgias, Richpanel, Re:amaze, or whatever helpdesk you already run.

WashCo, a Shopify brand we launched, recovered $22,664 in its first 7 days on the phone. That's the channel both helpdesks leave open.

"My customers also feel like it's a normal person. They feel like they can communicate if they have questions."
Claudia Droge, TechCraft Studio

Plans: Grow $349/mo (1,000 minutes), Pro $799/mo (2,500 minutes), Enterprise custom. Live in under an hour. The 65% resolution guarantee: if the AI resolves under 65% of your calls in 90 days, we refund the last 3 months.

What the phone costs you today vs with Ringly

Picture a $50M Shopify brand running a 6-rep CS team, with two of them effectively answering the phone all day.

That's roughly 70% of the repeatable calls, order status, returns, the same five questions over and over, routed to the AI. The 30% that genuinely need a human still go to your team, who now have the time to actually solve them instead of reading tracking numbers off a screen. It's how brands scale support without hiring the next rep.

This is the math that doesn't show up when you're comparing helpdesk tabs. If you're picking between Gorgias and DelightChat anyway, book a 30-min call and we'll do the phone math live for your store.

Frequently asked questions

Is DelightChat cheaper than Gorgias? At volume, yes. For 6,000 tickets a month, DelightChat's Growth plan is $299/mo versus Gorgias's $900 Advanced base, and DelightChat passes Meta's WhatsApp rates through with no markup. Gorgias costs more because of its Shopify depth plus the $0.90-per-resolution AI fee.

Does Gorgias support WhatsApp? It supports WhatsApp, but it isn't the strength. If WhatsApp is your primary channel, DelightChat handles it natively and more cleanly. If WhatsApp is a side channel and Shopify depth matters more, Gorgias is the better overall helpdesk.

Does Gorgias or DelightChat answer phone calls? Neither tool's AI answers your inbound phone. Gorgias's AI runs on email, chat, and SMS; DelightChat's assistant drafts replies across text channels. For autonomous phone support you need a dedicated AI phone agent that sits in front of your helpdesk.

Which is better for a US Shopify brand? For most US brands, where WhatsApp isn't the dominant support channel, Gorgias's Shopify-native depth usually wins. DelightChat shines in WhatsApp-heavy markets. Either way, plan for the phone separately, because US callers still pick up the phone for high-intent questions.

Can I use Gorgias or DelightChat together with Ringly? Yes. Ringly doesn't replace your helpdesk. It answers the phone, resolves the routine calls, and escalates the rest into Gorgias, Re:amaze, Richpanel, or whatever you run. You keep your inbox and add the voice channel.

What's the catch with Gorgias AI pricing? The base plan price isn't the real cost. The AI agent bills $0.90 per resolved conversation on top of the helpdesk ticket fee, so a $360 Pro plan can effectively run near $960 at 50% automation. Model your ticket volume and automation rate before committing.

Does DelightChat have an AI agent? DelightChat has a GPT-powered assistant that drafts and rewrites replies, plus a basic chatbot builder. It's assistive rather than fully autonomous, so it helps your team move faster but doesn't resolve tickets on its own the way Gorgias's agent attempts to.

Talk to us

Pick Gorgias or DelightChat for your text support, both are good. But if you run a $10M-$100M Shopify brand and your phone still goes to voicemail after 6 p.m., that's the channel quietly costing you orders. A 30-min call is the fastest way to see what it's leaving on the table.

The 3-layer guarantee.

1. Live in 14 days or it's free until launched.
2. 65% resolution in 90 days or we refund the last 3 months of subscription fees.
3. We keep working free until we hit it.

Ruben (Ringly co-founder) takes these calls personally.

Book a 30-min call