Shopify Helpdesk Comparison: What You Pay Each Month

A Shopify helpdesk comparison on price comes down to the unit each tool bills: tickets (Gorgias), agent seats (Zendesk, Richpanel, Re:amaze, Help Scout), conversations (Tidio), AI resolutions, or a flat plan (Fyncall Pro at $34 a month). For a two-person team handling 500 to 2,000 conversations a month, the billing unit moves the total more than the headline price does.

This page is for Shopify store owners and support leads building a shortlist. It is not a ranking: it shows how each helpdesk charges, works out monthly bills with every assumption visible, and gives you a method to run the same sums on your own numbers. For a review of each app, see our best Shopify helpdesk app guide.

Fyncall wrote this comparison, so weigh it accordingly. Claims about other helpdesks link to each vendor’s own pages, and prices were checked on 8 November 2026. Plans change often, so confirm on each vendor’s site before you decide.

How do Shopify helpdesks compare on price?

Shopify helpdesks compare on price through two numbers: the base fee for people or volume, and the AI fee for conversations the AI handles. Most tools now charge both. A helpdesk that looks cheap per seat can cost more than a ticket-priced one once AI resolutions are added, and the reverse is also true.

So compare the whole monthly bill at your own volume, not the price on the plan card. The sections below do that for three volumes. To compare helpdesk pricing with your own inputs straight away, our savings calculator compares a flat plan with a per-resolution fee, and the How we compare page explains the method behind our price table.

What are the four ways helpdesks charge?

Helpdesks charge per ticket, per seat, per conversation or a flat monthly fee, and most add a separate AI fee on top. Our guide to AI helpdesks for ecommerce explains how those AI fees are structured. The per ticket vs per seat pricing question matters most: per ticket pricing grows with volume, per seat pricing grows with team size.

Per resolution or per outcome AI fees sit inside most of these rows. They are the part of a helpdesk pricing comparison that grows fastest, because they rise with every conversation the AI closes.

What would you pay at 500, 1,000 and 2,000 conversations?

At 500 conversations a month with two agents and half handled by AI, the worked bills below range from $54 to $618. At 2,000 conversations they range from $159 to $2,118. Every figure is computed from the list prices above, monthly billing and the assumptions in this section.

Assumptions (change any of them and the order can change):

• 2 agents, monthly billing, no annual discounts.
• Half of all conversations are resolved by AI; the other half go to a person.
• The AI replies in every conversation: 3 replies in one it resolves, 1 reply before it hands one over. This only affects tools that bill AI replies (Fyncall) or every AI-touched conversation (Richpanel, Tidio).
• Every conversation counts as a ticket at Gorgias, because Gorgias charges a ticket fee as well as an automation fee when AI Agent resolves a ticket.

Formulas used:

• Fyncall: $34 Pro, plus the cheapest mix of AI message packs (100 for $5, 500 for $20, 1,000 for $35, 5,000 for $150) for AI replies above the 500 included. Packs are one-time purchases, so this assumes you buy them each month.
• Gorgias: cheapest plan plus extra tickets, plus $1.00 per AI resolution above the plan’s included AI interactions (30 on Basic, 190 on Pro, 530 on Advanced).
• Zendesk: 2 × $69, plus $2.00 per AI resolution above 10 (5 per agent).
• Richpanel: 2 × $119, plus $0.20 per AI-touched conversation, with $200 as the minimum.
• Re:amaze: 2 × $29, plus $0.85 per AI resolution above 10.
• Help Scout: 2 × $30, plus $0.75 per AI resolution (after the free first 3 months).
• Tidio: Growth at $59 for 250 conversations a person answers, or $129 for 600, plus Lyro at about $0.70 per AI conversation.

Three caveats. Zendesk moved new accounts to resolution tiers in May 2026 and does not publish the tier prices, so its row uses the last published rate and is an estimate. The Gorgias pricing page also lists $1.50 per interaction as an overage rate, so a real Gorgias bill can be higher than these figures. Tidio’s pricing page lists Lyro add-on quotas only up to 1,000 conversations a month, so 2,000 needs a quote.

The pattern matters more than any single cell. Seat-priced tools rise with AI resolutions, ticket-priced tools rise with every conversation, and a flat plan rises only when AI replies pass the included allowance. If your AI resolves fewer conversations than the 50% assumed here, the per-resolution tools get cheaper. For the same sums at 100 to 600 conversations, see our Gorgias vs Tidio vs Fyncall comparison.

How do the helpdesks compare on features?

Shopify helpdesk features differ most on channels, on whether AI and order actions reach those channels, and on phone support. This table covers the features buyers ask about most. “Not stated” means the vendor pages we checked did not say, not that the feature is missing.

Re:amaze is left out of this table because its pricing page does not name WhatsApp or Instagram. Fyncall’s limits are worth stating plainly: there is no phone, SMS or Facebook Messenger, it works with Shopify stores only, and its AI checks refund eligibility and status but does not issue refunds. Our channel page explains how WhatsApp works in Fyncall, including the 24-hour service window.

On plans: Fyncall’s Free plan includes guardrails (including switching individual AI tools off), handover settings, Draft & Review, saved views, saved replies and collision detection. AI Copilot and ticketing with SLAs are on Pro.

What costs do the price pages leave out?

The costs most helpdesk price pages leave out are messaging fees, AI billed as a separate line, add-ons per agent and contract terms. Check each before you sign.

• Meta WhatsApp fees. Meta charges per delivered message by category and country. Each business number gets 1,000 free service messages a month, and from 1 October 2026 service messages after that are charged. In Fyncall, Meta or Twilio bills these fees directly, not Fyncall. Zendesk’s pricing page also notes extra WhatsApp usage fees. Gorgias works differently: it says you will never see a bill from Meta, because WhatsApp tickets are billed as helpdesk tickets. Our guide to WhatsApp helpdesk costs on Shopify goes through these fees in more detail.
• AI billed separately. Tidio’s Lyro, Help Scout’s AI Answers and Richpanel’s AI all sit outside the seat or plan price. Budget them as their own line.
• AI resolutions counted as tickets. At Gorgias, a ticket AI Agent resolves on its own is charged a ticket fee plus an automation fee, so AI resolutions also use up your ticket allowance.
• Copilot per agent. Zendesk lists its Copilot add-on at $50 per agent a month, billed annually, for Suite Professional and above. On that plan, two agents add $100 a month before any AI resolutions.
• Contract terms. Richpanel’s terms of service say terms auto-renew unless notice is given 30 days before the end, do not allow early termination for convenience, and raise fees 6% a year on renewal unless the order form says otherwise.
• Yearly prices shown first. Several plan cards show yearly prices by default. The bills above use monthly prices so they compare like with like.

How do you run your own comparison?

To run your own Shopify helpdesk comparison, measure three numbers from your store and price every shortlisted tool against them in a spreadsheet.

1. Export your volume. Pull last month’s conversations from your current inbox, across email, web chat, WhatsApp and Instagram. Use the count of conversations, not messages.
2. Count your agents. Include part-timers and anyone who answers once a week. Seat-priced tools charge for each of them.
3. Estimate the AI-answerable share. Take a sample of 100 past tickets and mark the ones an AI could answer from your Shopify data and policies: order status, tracking, product and stock questions, address changes before shipping. Our guide to reducing Shopify tickets shows how to tag a sample like this.
4. Count replies per AI conversation. If a tool bills AI replies rather than resolutions, check how many replies a typical resolved conversation needs in your sample.
5. Price each tool. Use the formulas from the worked bills, with your numbers and the vendor’s current page.
6. Add hidden costs. Add WhatsApp fees, AI add-ons, per-agent add-ons such as Copilot and any contract minimums.

When is each helpdesk the better choice?

Each helpdesk suits a particular kind of store, and several are a better fit than Fyncall in specific cases. Our comparison pages go deeper on each.

Common questions

Is per ticket or per seat pricing cheaper for a Shopify store?

It depends on team size and volume. Per seat pricing favours a small team with high volume, and per ticket pricing favours a larger team with lower volume. In the worked bills, which include AI fees, two agents at 2,000 conversations came to $1,170 at Gorgias, $810 at Help Scout and $2,118 at Zendesk, so the AI fee often decides the gap.

Does Gorgias or Zendesk cost more?

At our assumptions, Zendesk Suite Team cost more at every volume: $618 against $360 at 500 conversations. Gorgias vs Zendesk pricing also depends on your seat count. Zendesk adds $69 per extra agent on monthly billing, while Gorgias says its helpdesk is never priced per agent, though the number of seats depends on the plan.

Do AI messages in Fyncall include replies from my team?

No. An AI message is one reply the AI sends to a customer, on any channel. Human replies, system messages and notifications never count, so your team can reply as much as it needs.

Do yearly plans change the comparison?

They lower most bills but rarely change the order. Yearly prices on the pages we checked: Zendesk Suite Team $55 per agent instead of $69, Richpanel $99 per seat instead of $119, Help Scout $25 per user instead of $30, Gorgias AI Agent $0.90 per automated interaction instead of $1.00, and Fyncall Pro $370 a year (about $31 a month) instead of $34 monthly. Check whether a yearly contract can be cancelled before you commit.