Gorgias vs Tidio vs Re:amaze (2026): Real Support Costs
Most Shopify founders I talk to hit the same wall somewhere between order 50 and order 500 a day. The inbox stops being a place you check and starts being a place that checks you. Pre-sale questions pile up next to “where is my order” tickets. You answer the same twelve things forty times a week, and the twelfth time you answer it, you get it slightly wrong and a customer opens a chargeback.
So you go shopping for a helpdesk. That is where it gets annoying, because the three tools everyone recommends bill in three completely different currencies: Gorgias bills ticket volume, Tidio bills conversations plus AI resolutions, and Re:amaze bills seats. If you compare the sticker prices side by side, you will pick the wrong one. I want to show you what each one actually costs at your size.
How I Evaluated These Three
Worth being straight with you about method. I’m a solo operator who runs a WordPress storefront and a few small digital products, not a Shopify store doing 2,000 tickets a month. I did not run a paid trial of all three against live customer data. What I did was pull the current pricing pages for Gorgias, Tidio, and Re:amaze on October 28, 2026, and then work the math the way a store owner would: take a realistic monthly ticket volume, apply an assumption about how much of it an AI agent resolves, and see which bill arrives.
I also read the public comparison write-ups, G2 and Capterra reviews, and the Shopify App Store listings, and I weighed what people complained about more heavily than what people praised. Support complaints on a pricing page tend to be accurate. Praise tends to be a launch-day gift card.
The Real Cost of Each, at Three Sizes
Here’s the table that matters. Three store sizes, a 60% AI resolution rate on the portion of tickets that are repetitive (order status, shipping times, basic returns), and monthly billing. Annual billing knocks roughly 10 to 17 percent off depending on vendor.
| Store size | Gorgias | Tidio | Re:amaze |
|---|---|---|---|
| ~100 tickets/mo (new store) | $12 basic + overage. Starter at $10 covers 50 tickets, then $0.40 each | ~$24 to $50 depending on plan and AI conversations used | ~$40 to $89 depending on team size and AI resolutions |
| ~500 tickets/mo (growing) | $60 Basic monthly (300 tickets included) plus overage, or $310 for Pro monthly (2,000 tickets) | Growth tier plus Lyro AI add-on; AI billed per conversation | Per-seat: $29 to $69 per member, then $0.85 per AI resolution past the small allowance |
| ~2,000 tickets/mo (scaling) | $360 Pro monthly, 2,000 tickets included, 190 AI interactions baked in | Plus at $300/mo plus usage at discounted rates | Seats add up fast; AI overage is the wildcard |
Gorgias plans as of October 2026: Starter $10 (50 tickets, $0.40 overage), Basic $50 annual or $60 monthly (300 tickets, 30 automated AI interactions), Pro $300 annual or $360 monthly (2,000 tickets, $0.36 overage, 190 AI interactions), Advanced $750 monthly (5,000 tickets, 530 AI interactions). Gorgias says it never charges per agent, and its AI Agent is on every plan with billing only when it resolves a conversation.
Tidio’s calculator is the most honest of the three in one way and the most confusing in another. Starter runs about $24.17 a month for 100 billable conversations, Growth starts around $49.17 for 250, Plus is $300 a month plus usage, and the Lyro AI agent is a separate meter starting around $32.50 for 50 AI conversations. You can buy Lyro standalone and bolt it onto Zendesk or Salesforce if you want the AI without the helpdesk.
Re:amaze is the old-school model. Basic $29 per member ($26.10 annual), Pro $49 ($44.10), Plus $69 ($62.10), and a flat $59 Starter for unlimited team members capped at 500 responded conversations. Each seat includes 5, 10, or 20 AI resolutions a month depending on plan, then it’s $0.85 per resolution. The AI Agent is still labeled beta on their site.
Where the Pricing Models Bite You
Per-ticket billing, Gorgias’ model, punishes exactly the thing you want more of: conversations. A launch, a restock announcement, a shipping delay from a carrier you don’t control, and all of that spikes your bill in the same month your revenue spikes. The upside is predictability per ticket and no penalty for hiring a seasonal support person, because seats are free. If you plan to add two VAs for Q4, that math works in Gorgias’ favor hard.
Conversation billing on Tidio feels similar but the AI meter is separate, which means you can’t easily forecast. You’ll know your human conversation number after the first month. You won’t know your Lyro number until you see whether the bot actually resolves things or just escalates politely. Tidio claims customers average a 75% resolution rate. Treat that as a vendor claim, not a benchmark. The G2 and Capterra reviews are where you find out whether anyone outside the vendor’s case studies agrees.
Per-seat billing on Re:amaze is cheap if you’re one person and quietly brutal if you’re five. Three people on Pro is $147 a month before the AI does anything. But the 500-conversation flat plan is a genuinely interesting option for a small store with a part-time helper, because it removes the seat trap entirely.
What surprised me when I set up a comparison sheet was how much the AI line item dwarfs the subscription at low volume. At 100 tickets a month, a $0.85 per-resolution overage on Re:amaze can be larger than the seat cost. Everyone is now selling AI as the product and the helpdesk as the delivery vehicle.
Features That Actually Differ for a Solo Founder
All three do email, live chat, macros, and Shopify order lookup. The differences show up in the boring places.
- Gorgias is the deepest on ecommerce context. Order data, customer purchase history, and revenue attribution sit inside the ticket, so an agent can answer “did my order ship” without opening Shopify. It also has a Shopping Assistant aimed at pre-sales, which is closer to a revenue tool than a support tool.
- Tidio leans toward the chat and conversion side. Flows (automated chat paths triggered by visitor behavior) are the real product for a lot of users, and Lyro works standalone. If most of your volume is pre-sale questions rather than post-purchase problems, this is the better-shaped tool.
- Re:amaze is the multi-brand, multi-channel one. Unlimited email inboxes, SMS and voice on higher plans, and a flat unlimited-seat tier. It feels like software built by people who ran support teams, not by people who ran growth loops.
One thing I’d flag: none of the three has great native handling of refund and chargeback disputes. You end up with a Stripe tab open next to the helpdesk tab, which is fine until month-end when you can’t reconcile why ticket volume doubled.
Which One Should You Actually Pick
If you’re on Shopify, selling physical product, and you plan to hire even one person this year, go with Gorgias. The per-ticket model costs more than it looks at high volume, but it costs nothing at all for adding staff, and the order context inside the ticket is the difference between a support team that resolves things and one that forwards screenshots.
If you’re a solo founder whose “support” is mostly “does this work for my use case” before anyone buys, Tidio is the cheaper entry and the Flows side earns its keep. Just budget for the AI meter, because the low sticker price assumes you resolve almost nothing with it.
If you run two or three small brands and one inbox would be a nightmare, or if you want a flat unlimited-seat price for a seasonal team, Re:amaze Starter is the sleeper pick. Read the 500-conversation cap carefully before you commit, though. It’s a ceiling, not a hint.
And if you’re doing under 50 tickets a month? Honestly, use the free Shopify Inbox and spend the money on a decent product photo instead. You’ll get more revenue per dollar out of the photo.
Key Takeaways
- Gorgias bills tickets (50 to 5,000 a month), never seats. Cheapest for small teams that need to add people, most expensive at high ticket volume with no AI deflection.
- Tidio bills conversations plus a separate Lyro AI meter. Strongest for pre-sales chat and conversion flows; hardest to forecast month one.
- Re:amaze bills seats, with a flat unlimited-seat Starter capped at 500 conversations. Best fit for multi-brand shops and very small teams.
- At under 100 tickets a month, the AI overage usually costs more than the base subscription on all three.
- Nobody in this category has solved refunds and disputes. You’ll still be juggling your payment processor.
- Prices move. Check the vendor pricing pages before you commit — the numbers here are from October 28, 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Gorgias worth it for a brand new store? Probably not yet. The Starter plan at $10 covers 50 tickets, which is enough to find out whether you have a support problem, but the real value is order context on volume you don’t have yet.
Can I use Tidio’s AI without the Tidio helpdesk? Yes. Lyro is sold standalone starting around $32.50 a month for 50 AI conversations, and it plugs into Zendesk, Salesforce, and other desks.
Does Re:amaze really have unlimited free seats? The $59 Starter plan is flat priced for unlimited team members but stops at 500 responded conversations a month. Whether it’s a good deal depends entirely on whether your volume fits under that line.
Which one is cheapest at 2,000 tickets a month? On advertised plan prices, Gorgias Pro at $360 monthly includes 2,000 tickets and 190 AI interactions. Tidio Plus starts at $300 plus usage. Re:amaze depends too heavily on seat count to give one number.
Do I need an AI agent at all? If more than half your tickets are order status and shipping updates, then yes. That is the highest-deflection content there is. If your tickets are mostly genuine product questions, a good macro library will do more for less.
I write these comparisons for founders who are going to make the call this week, not assemble a committee. If you’re still torn, start on the free or cheapest tier, track your actual ticket volume for thirty days, and then re-run the math above with your real numbers. Every one of these bills looks different the moment it has your store’s data in it.
