Choosing the Right Help Desk: Freshdesk vs Gorgias Unpacked and Compared

Posted by
Tetiana Belevska

Updated September 5, 2024

In the ever-evolving landscape of customer support software, two formidable contenders stand at the forefront: Freshdesk vs Gorgias.

As businesses across industries strive to deliver impeccable customer experiences, the selection of the right help desk solution becomes paramount. But in a marketplace flooded with options, navigating the nuances between Freshdesk and Gorgias can feel akin to a high-stakes chess match.

Centralizing support interactions is critical for businesses dealing with customer queries daily. A unified ticketing solution will provide visibility into everything happening in your customer service workflow, preventing requests from slipping through the cracks. It will also automate redundant processes, freeing your agents’ focus for complex requests and speeding up response times.

However, selecting the right help desk solution amidst numerous options can be daunting. Fortunately, our series of comparison articles aims to simplify this decision-making process.

But before we dive deeper into the Freshdesk vs Gorgias comparison, let’s get started with a brief introduction.

What is Freshdesk?

Freshdesk is a help desk developed by Freshworks — a provider of many other customer management products, including Freshservice, Freshcaller, Freshchat, Freshsales, Freshmarketer, and beyond.

Freshdesk is a comprehensive solution designed to streamline customer support workflows. It comes with omnichannel ticket management, a knowledge base, AI chatbots, extensive reporting and analytics, and an extensive library of integrations.

With over 60,000 business clients, Freshdesk stands as one of the most widely adopted help desk systems in the market.

What is Gorgias?

Gorgias is a help desk platform designed specifically for eCommerce businesses. Centered around Shopify, it seamlessly integrates with various shopping platforms catering to the needs of online retailers globally.

Like Freshdesk, Gorgias is packed with help desk management essentials, like ticketing, self-service, analytics, and more. However, it distinguishes itself by placing a stronger emphasis on driving sales and enhancing customer engagement.

Since its inception, Gorgias has grown rapidly and gained popularity among eCommerce businesses. As of 2024, around 12,000 business clients rely on this versatile customer service tool.

Now that you have a basic understanding of both customer service systems, let’s proceed to a more detailed Gorgias and Freshdesk comparison.

Ticket management smackdown: Freshdesk vs Gorgias

Freshdesk and Gorgias create a ticket once a customer reaches out to your support team through any available channel. There’s also an option to create a ticket manually. Both customer service solutions enable you to assign, forward, merge, prioritize, snooze, and collaborate on tickets. There are also collision detection features and canned responses on each of the help desk platforms.

Source: Freshdesk

At the same time, Gorgias doesn’t offer automated follow-up messages and emails, unlike Freshdesk. The number of ticket status options (Open and Closed) in Gorgias is also more limited than in Freshdesk, which offers custom ticket statuses. While Freshdesk comes with round-robin and skilled-based automated ticket routing, Gorgias limits itself to auto-assignment of tickets based on agent availability.

Source: Gorgias

Gorgias vs Freshdesk: Decoding multichannel communication

These help desk platforms offer omnichannel customer support.

Aside from inbound and outbound calls that can be unlocked with Freshcaller, Freshdesk supports email, live chat, WhatsApp, Facebook, X, Apple Business Chat, and Line. Meanwhile, Gorgias handles customer queries coming from email, live chat, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp, as well as Voice and SMS, unlocked with Voice and SMS add-ons respectively.

Source: Freshdesk

Gorgias can also combine the entire history of messages from a single customer across channels into a single ticket. Freshdesk doesn’t have this feature so far.

Source: Gorgias

Freshdesk vs Gorgias: Automation capabilities

These customer service systems offer diverse automation capabilities.

Aside from rule-based automation for ticket routing, Freshdesk can send follow-up messages, escalate tickets, and perform many other actions using triggering events. Canned responses and AI chatbot capabilities are available as well. On top of that, Freddy Copilot — Freshdesk’s AI assistant for agents — can summarize ticket details, analyze a customer request, help agents formulate replies, and generate solution articles based on resolved requests.

Source: Freshdesk

Gorgias’ automation capabilities, too, go beyond ticket routing. The support service platform can assist agents with pre-made responses and actions on tickets or integrated eCommerce platforms (macros). Besides, the help desk tools can also use rule-based automation to perform actions on tickets and assist customers with answers, guides, and article recommendations across channels.

Source: Gorgias

In addition, the help desk software uses machine learning to detect customer intent and sentiment in requests, thus streamlining the ticket management process.

Freshdesk vs Gorgias: Integration options

These help desk systems connect with third-party apps. Still, the integration options are different. While Freshdesk Marketplace unlocks over 1000 integration options, Gorgias’ app store avails of about 100 offerings only, many of which require custom APIs. The latter doesn’t also list user ratings, making it more difficult to make an informed decision.

Source: Freshdesk

At the same time, the focuses of Freshdesk and Gorgias’ integrations are different, too, While Gorgias prioritizes integrations with eCommerce apps (like Klaviyo, Recharge, Bold BI, Recart, and Attentive), Freshdesk offers more universal solutions like Salesforce and Jira.

Source: Gorgias

Gorgias vs Freshdesk: Reporting and analytics

Those two customer service platforms allow you to gain insights into ticket volume, query resolution times and other agent performance metrics, self-service statistics, and customer satisfaction levels. However, there are some differences.

Freshdesk boasts a broader array of report types, including the option to create custom reports—an advantage not found on Gorgias. Additionally, its cutting-edge add-on, Freddy Insights, currently in beta, employs AI to discern insights, patterns, outliers, and anomalies within your data, elevating your help desk decision-making to new heights.

Source: Freshdesk

On the other hand, Gorgias Analytics prioritizes sales-centric data. For instance, it provides valuable insights into which customer conversations lead to sales and your customer support team's contribution to the company’s ROI. Furthermore, it offers detailed automation statistics, empowering you to optimize your workflows for enhanced efficiency.

Source: Gorgias

Freshdesk vs Gorgias: Knowledge base

Freshdesk empowers customers to discover solutions through community forums and an extensive knowledge base of informative articles. Creating and managing the knowledge base is streamlined with Freshdesk, offering features like bulk article actions, version tracking, efficient article approval workflows, and the option to convert agent replies into articles.

Source: Source: Freshdesk

While Gorgias also facilitates the creation of a help center featuring answers to common questions from customers, its knowledge management capability lags behind that of Freshdesk. At the same time, Gorgias’ version of a knowledge base feature shines in combination with the Gorgias Automate add-on, enabling customers to track and make changes in their orders, update their shipping address, and beyond. On the other hand, Gorgias lacks community forums.

Source: Gorgias

Gorgias vs Freshdesk: Customer support and training

Those two help desk systems prioritize customer success by offering comprehensive support and onboarding services.

Freshdesk provides four onboarding plans for an additional fee, along with opportunities for training through Freshworks Academy. Additionally, users can access round-the-clock support via phone and chat on weekdays, and via email 24/7.

Source: Freshworks

Gorgias integrates onboarding services into its subscription plans, with the top two tiers offering access to a dedicated success manager. Users can also enhance their skills through Gorgias Academy and reach out to customer support via email or live chat. Furthermore, custom onboarding services are available at the highest pricing tier.

Source: Gorgias

Freshdesk vs Gorgias: What about pricing plans?

Freshdesk charges on an agent basis and offers four subscription plans:

• Free ($0 agent/month with ten agent seats)
• Growth ($15 agent/month billed annually)
• Pro ($49 agent/month billed annually)
• Enterprise ($79 agent/month billed annually)

For an extra charge, you can also enhance the built-in capabilities of the help desk platform with add-ons, including Freshbots (AI chatbots), Freddy Copilot (an AI agent assistant), Freddy Insights (AI analytics), Day Passes (one-day user seats), and Freshcaller (call center software).

Source: Freshdesk

Gorgias’ pricing model relies more on the number of tickets than seats, setting it apart from Freshdesk and many other customer support tools that ground their prices on the number of agent seats only. The customer service software doesn’t offer a free plan and is available in five paid editions:

• Starter ($10 monthly for 50 tickets and three user seats)
• Basic ($60 monthly for 300 tickets and 500 user seats)
• Pro ($360 monthly for 2,000 tickets and 500 user seats)
• Advanced ($900 monthly for 5,000 tickets and 500 user seats)
• Enterprise (custom)

In addition, to unlock automation, onsite marketing, voice, or SMS capabilities, you need to purchase the Automate, Convert, Voice, or SMS add-on respectively along with the chosen pricing plan.

Source: Gorgias

When it comes to deciding which help desk platform offers more value for its cost, there’s no single answer. At first glance, while Freshdesk seems to be more suitable for small customer service teams handling large amounts of tickets, Gorgias seems to work better in the opposite situation. But on the other hand, in most cases, you don’t need an extensive support department to handle a small bunch of requests.

So, we recommend you to consider your business type, current stack, and feature needs. To help you out, we’ve rounded up some of the top differences between Gorgias and Freshdesk to guide your choice.

The top differences between Freshdesk and Gorgias

The Gorgias vs Freshdesk dilemma can feel akin to choosing between peaches and nectarines. They both offer help desk management essentials like storing customer information and the history of customer interactions, ticket management, self-service capabilities, and more.

Still, there are capabilities found on one support service system and lacking on the other. Here are the key ones.

eCommerce viability

Unlike Freshdesk which is targeted at all kinds of businesses, Gorgias is specifically tailored to eCommerce business needs—this is one of the key differences between Gorgias and Freshdesk.

Built atop Shopify, Gorgias is deeply integrated with eCommerce platforms. For example, reps can effortlessly manage orders directly from the ticket interface. Besides this, the Gorgias Convert add-on allows you to launch targeted onsite campaigns, effectively converting website visitors into active shoppers: for example, you can interact with your online store visitors based on their browsing behavior.

Automated follow-ups

While Gorgias offers an array of automation capabilities for customer interactions, it’s currently unable to automate follow-up messages or emails.

In contrast, Freshdesk includes this feature, allowing users to effortlessly schedule automatic follow-up emails. With Freshdesk, you can customize them to suit your specific requirements beyond the exact timeframe for sending the message.

AI assistance

While Gorgias can identify sentiment and intent in customer requests, Freshdesk is head and shoulders above it in terms of AI capabilities.

The help desk software offers AI-backed chatbots to handle customer conversations (Freshbots), an AI-powered assistant for agents (Freddy Copilot), and an AI-based analytics tool (Freddy Insights).

Smart autoresponders

The absence of chatbot capabilities in Gorgias is partially compensated for with the smart autoresponders. The feature identifies intent and sentiment in a customer request to return the most appropriate response.

Based on the customer’s intent, smart autoresponders can reply with relevant knowledge base article recommendations, an order tracking link, or a link to the return portal. They can also close tickets that don’t require a reply.

Gamified dashboard

When it comes to keeping agents engaged, Freshdesk shines. The customer service platform turns your customer support workflow into a game.

Agents earn points, level up, and win prizes for good performance. You can allocate points to reps for a certain number of resolved tickets within a specified timeframe, publishing solutions on your knowledge base, and actively assisting customers on your forums.

SLA management

While you can set automated flows to cater to customer expectations in Gorgias, the support service system doesn’t have a feature dedicated to SLA management.

But Freshdesk does. The help desk tool enables users to configure SLA policies based on various parameters like priority levels, channels, agent groups, products, and problem types, providing comprehensive flexibility in service level management. It also sends automated reminders to agents whose SLAs are close to expiration and triggers escalation rules upon an SLA breach.

The top similarities between Freshdesk and Gorgias

Aside from similarities in ticket management, self-service, and so on, Gorgias and Freshdesk also share other features. Here are a few important ones.

Team collaboration features

Both support service platforms boast robust collaboration capabilities.

In each solution, reps can forward customer conversations, add private notes in tickets, share reports, and communicate with each other in Slack. While Gorgias allows for an unlimited number of agents, Freshdesk allows you to add up to 5000 external collaborators atop billable agent seats.

Automated ticket categorization

Freshdesk and Gorgias can automatically bring order into your tickets.

Freshdesk allows you to tag, prioritize, and assign tickets based on the request type, the customer’s account tier, health score, and beyond. Gorgias essentially does the same. The only difference is some of its ticket categorization criteria concern customer shopping behavior, such as past orders and the likelihood of making a purchase.

Follow-up reminders

In customer support, there are instances when you need to reach out to the customer again. For example, you might need to follow up with customers to ensure an issue has been successfully resolved. Or a customer might request a callback or specify a preferred time for contact when they're available.

In these and other instances, Either Freshdesk or Gorgias will cater to your reps’ needs with the ability to set reminders.

Mobile application

These support service tools offer mobile apps, allowing reps to access the help desk functionality on the go.

Available for iOS and Android users, the apps unlock some of the most essential features of respective platforms, such as viewing all tickets, creating email tickets, receiving push notifications, and beyond.

Canned responses

Frequently, customers contact support teams with recurring requests, leading to repetitive interactions. One of the ways to spare agents from redundant typing is having pre-made response templates in place.

Freshdesk and Gorgias offer their versions of such templates: 'canned responses' in Freshdesk and 'macros' in Gorgias.

Agent collision detection

To prevent two or more agents from handling the same ticket, Gorgias and Freshdesk have an agent collision detection feature.

In Gorgias, tickets taken by other agents are marked with an orange indicator. Freshdesk employs similar capabilities, which seamlessly integrate with features like Auto-refresh, providing real-time updates on ticket activity by other agents or customers, and Traffic Cop, ensuring that changes to a ticket are halted until an agent reviews all updates.

Key Differences Between Gorgias and Freshdesk

While Gorgias and Freshdesk share numerous similarities in their functionality and features, there are several key differences that set them apart:

eCommerce focus

Gorgias is specifically tailored for eCommerce businesses, deeply integrating with platforms like Shopify. On the other hand, Freshdesk caters to a broader range of businesses, offering solutions suitable for various industries beyond eCommerce.

Automated follow-ups

Freshdesk provides automated follow-up messages and emails, allowing users to schedule and customize communications based on specific requirements. This feature is currently unavailable in Gorgias, limiting its ability to automate post-interaction communications.

AI capabilities

Freshdesk boasts advanced AI capabilities, including AI chatbots (Freshbots), an AI-powered assistant for agents (Freddy Copilot), and AI-based analytics (Freddy Insights). While Gorgias can identify sentiment and intent in customer requests, its AI functionality does not reach the same level of sophistication as Freshdesk.

Smart autoresponders

Gorgias offers smart autoresponders that analyze customer requests to deliver appropriate responses, such as knowledge base article recommendations or order tracking links. This feature compensates for the absence of chatbot capabilities in Gorgias but is not as comprehensive as Freshdesk's AI-powered chatbots.

Gamified dashboard

Freshdesk gamifies the customer support workflow, incentivizing agents with points, levels, and prizes for performance. This feature aims to keep agents engaged and motivated, enhancing productivity and job satisfaction. Gorgias lacks a similar gamification feature.

SLA management

Freshdesk includes a dedicated feature for Service Level Agreement (SLA) management, allowing users to configure policies based on various parameters and receive automated reminders for SLA deadlines. Gorgias does not offer a built-in SLA management feature, potentially limiting its suitability for businesses with stringent service level requirements.

These differences highlight the unique strengths and capabilities of each platform, enabling businesses to choose the solution that best aligns with their specific needs and priorities.

TLDR; A brief comparison of Gorgias vs Freshdesk

Conclusion: Which is your next help desk?

eCommerce viability is one of the key differences between Gorgias and Freshdesk. This means that there’s no point in using Gorgias if you aren’t running an eCommerce business. Still, you can use Freshdesk if you are—and this is where you need to look at other differences between the help desk systems. Hopefully, our comparison between Freshdesk vs Gorgias has brought the needed clarity.

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