How Per-Ticket and Per-Resolution Pricing Burns E-Commerce Margins
Gorgias bills every automated reply. Fin bills $0.99 per resolution. See how per-ticket and per-resolution pricing taxes your margins, and what a flat plan costs instead.
Gorgias charges for every ticket your helpdesk touches and every conversation its AI agent resolves. Intercom's Fin charges for every outcome it claims. Both meters move in the same direction as your automation succeeds. This page prices all of it with each vendor's own published rates, checked 25 September 2026, against one flat plan.
Why "cheap to start" becomes the most expensive line on your P&L
Every tool in this category looks affordable on the pricing page you screenshot for your budget. The trouble is what the meter does in month six, when ticket volume doubles or the AI starts resolving more conversations than you planned for. A price that scales with your success is a price that punishes it.
There are only three billing models in this market. Pay for the people who use the software. Pay for every ticket, interaction or outcome the software touches. Or pay a flat monthly amount for the messages the assistant sends, whatever it accomplishes with them. The first one stops you staffing up, the second stops you automating, and the third has no opinion about how your month goes.
This page prices all three at the same workload: 10,000 customer conversations a month.
Gorgias: when your automation succeeds, your invoice grows
Gorgias is the support desk most Shopify stores meet first, and the product is good at what it does. The billing is where the argument is. Gorgias sells two products: a Helpdesk and an AI Agent, and its pricing page bills them as separate lines with separate meters. Tickets past the plan allowance cost $0.40 each on Starter and Basic, $0.36 on Pro and Advanced. Automated conversations past the AI allowance cost $1.50 each. Both figures are on Gorgias's own pricing page, checked 25 September 2026.
“We were paying thousands every month because every automated reply counts as an extra billable ticket. It looks cheap upfront until you get hit with surprise invoices.” A Gorgias customer, in a public one-star review
Read the pricing page next to that review and both describe the same thing from two sides. The vendor calls it usage, the customer calls it a surprise invoice, and both are watching the same number rise whenever the automation does its job.
Where Gorgias is the better choice. If your store's support volume is low and steady, the tickets included in a Gorgias plan may cover you completely, and its Shopify integration is genuinely deep. This page is about what happens after your volume stops being low and steady.
Fin: who decides a conversation was "resolved"?
Intercom's Fin now bills per outcome rather than per resolution, at $0.99 each with a 50-outcome monthly minimum, and it runs on helpdesks other than Intercom's, including Salesforce, Freshdesk and HubSpot. Those details are on fin.ai's own pricing page, checked 25 September 2026. The word changed and the mechanism did not: a system decides whether a conversation counts as an outcome, and your invoice follows that decision.
“Fin charges $0.99 per resolution, which sounds fair until you realize it marks simple unhelpful answers as 'resolved' if the customer just leaves frustrated.” A Fin customer, in a public one-star review
The fair question to put to any per-outcome vendor is not whether the unit price looks low. It is who defines a resolved outcome, what happens when the customer gives up and walks away, and whether you can read that definition in writing before you sign. Naming the metric is a question about design, not an accusation about intent.
Where Fin is the better choice. Fin's answer quality is serious, it deploys quickly, and it now works on helpdesks you may already own. If you want a strong AI layer on an existing helpdesk and your volume is predictable, Fin is a defensible choice.
The maths on 10,000 conversations a month
Illustrative, based on published customer-reported pricing. The competitor rows use each vendor's own listed rates; the OctaDezx rows use the plan prices on this site. Your real bill depends on how many conversations fall inside each plan's allowance, which is exactly the point: the two models answer that question differently.
| How you are billed | At 10,000 conversations a month |
|---|---|
| Gorgias AI Agent | $1.50 per automated interaction past the included allowance (Starter includes 30, Pro 190), so the bulk of that volume is billed at the overage rate, plus the plan fee of $40 to $550 a month and any per-ticket helpdesk overage at $0.36 to $0.40 |
| Intercom Fin | $0.99 per outcome, with a 50 outcome monthly minimum, so 10,000 outcomes list at $9,900 a month before any helpdesk seats |
| OctaDezx Pro | $99 a month flat, which includes 10,000 AI messages, plus 10,000 voice minutes and every feature with no per-resolution meter and no add-on ladder |
Competitor figures verified on gorgias.com/pricing and fin.ai/pricing, 25 September 2026. OctaDezx figures from the pricing page on this site.
What a flat AI-message plan changes about the incentive
On a per-outcome meter, your bill rises when more conversations are counted as resolved. OctaDezx plans include a monthly AI-message allowance rather than a per-resolution charge. Within that allowance, improving resolution at the same message volume does not change the plan price. More messages can require a higher tier or metered Enterprise usage.
OctaDezx charges by AI-message volume on a flat plan: Starter $29 for 2,500 messages, Pro $99 for 10,000, Advanced $199 for 22,000, all with every feature included. Yearly billing takes two months off. There is no per-resolution charge, no per-contact ceiling that bites in your busiest month, and no add-on ladder for the channel you actually needed.
Does it actually do the work, or describe it?
The second complaint in the same reviews is capability, not cost. One Gorgias customer wrote that the bot is good for basic FAQs but cannot update Shopify shipping addresses or modify orders, so the manual work never went away. Billing for every automated reply is expensive; billing for automated replies that stop at a link is worse.
“Good for basic FAQs, but the bot cannot actually update our Shopify shipping addresses or modify orders. We still have to do all the manual work.” A Gorgias customer, in a public two-star review
OctaDezx can place an order, book an appointment, answer a phone call, reply to a social DM, follow up a lead and file a refund request for human review. Order prices and totals are verified server-side against your catalogue before reaching the customer. When something is not in the catalogue, it says so plainly rather than inventing a product you have never stocked.
OctaDezx pricing, in one table
| Plan | Monthly | AI messages a month | Yearly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $29 | 2,500 | $290 a year, two months free |
| Pro | $99 | 10,000 | $990 a year, two months free |
| Advanced | $199 | 22,000 | $1,990 a year, two months free |
Every plan includes every feature: all channels, phone calls, image recognition, the agentic actions, the REST API and the MCP server. 3-day free trial with full access and no credit card.
Frequently asked
- Is Gorgias really more expensive than a flat plan? At low volumes with a big included allowance, the difference can be small. Gorgias bills $1.50 per automated interaction past the included allowance and $0.36 to $0.40 per helpdesk ticket past its allowance. OctaDezx Pro includes 10,000 AI messages for $99 a month, without a separate per-resolution charge; more messages can require a higher tier.
- How does Fin charge for its AI? Fin bills $0.99 per outcome with a 50 outcome monthly minimum, on its own published pricing page as of 25 September 2026. Outcomes are conversations Fin counts as resolved, and the definition of resolved is set by the product, which is the part worth reading closely before you commit.
- Can I move off Gorgias without losing my helpdesk? Yes. When connected, OctaDezx can open escalations in Zendesk, Freshdesk, Intercom or HubSpot with the customer, reason and latest exchange. The full conversation remains available in the OctaDezx dashboard. Check the integrations directory for each connection's current limits.
- What counts as a message on OctaDezx? One answer the AI sends, on any channel. Starter includes 2,500 a month, Pro 10,000 and Advanced 22,000, and every feature is on every plan. The plan price does not change when the automation starts working.
Where to go next
- Compare plans and pricing
- Check integration availability
- Image recognition and catalogue search
- Open the live demo, no signup
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Last verified: 25 September 2026.
- 25 September 2026: first published. Gorgias and Fin rates re-checked against gorgias.com/pricing and fin.ai/pricing on this date; Fin now labels the same $0.99 meter an outcome rather than a resolution.
Read more on this
- OctaDezx vs Gorgias: two very different bets on ecommerce support
Gorgias is the deepest Shopify native help desk and it does not charge per agent, which is a real advantage. It does charge per ticket. Here is where that lands well and where it does not. - OctaDezx vs Intercom: what Fin really costs when it works well
Intercom's Fin is one of the strongest AI agents on the market, and it charges 0.99 dollars every time it resolves something. Here is the maths that follows from that, and where each product genuinely wins. - What AI customer service actually costs, and how to judge the return
Pricing pages tell you the subscription and hide the real maths. Here is how to think about what AI customer service costs, what it saves, and how to tell whether it is worth it for a business your size.