Gorgias Automate & Convert Add-Ons Explained

The two add-ons, in one breath

Gorgias splits its product into a core help desk and a set of add-ons you layer on top. The help desk — tickets, macros, rules, agent seats — is the thing most people mean when they say "Gorgias," and we cover it in what is Gorgias. Automate and Convert sit alongside it as separately-billed products.

Automate is the self-service and AI side of the house. Its headline feature is AI Agent, the assistant that reads incoming conversations and resolves them end-to-end without a human — answering WISMO ("where is my order") questions, processing simple returns, explaining a subscription. Convert is the opposite end of the customer lifecycle: instead of resolving support tickets, it runs proactive on-site campaigns — product recommendations, email-capture forms, and promotional messages that surface in the storefront to turn a browsing shopper into a buyer.

The short version: Automate handles the customer who has a problem; Convert works on the customer who hasn't bought yet. Both cost extra, and both lean on Shopify in ways worth understanding before you commit.

What Automate (AI Agent) does — and how it's billed

Automate's centerpiece is AI Agent. It ingests your Help Center articles, store website, uploaded documents, and — where connected — your Shopify order data, then answers customer conversations across email, chat, and SMS. It supports tone-of-voice customization, multi-language replies, and "Actions" that let it do things like look up an order or trigger a return rather than just talk. We go deeper on its mechanics in Gorgias AI Agent explained.

The billing is where Automate gets its own personality. Per Gorgias' how you're billed documentation, AI Agent uses outcome-based billing: you pay an automation fee only when the AI resolves a ticket without handing it to a human. Gorgias defines that resolution precisely — an interaction "is considered automated if the customer does not require the involvement of a human agent within 72 hours." Most plans charge roughly $0.90 per resolved interaction, with Starter starting around $1, and plans bundle anywhere from 90 to 2,500+ automated interactions a month before overages (which run roughly $0.83 to $2.00 each depending on tier). The Gorgias AI Agent pricing blog lays out the per-resolution logic.

Here's the subtlety that catches people. When AI Agent fully resolves a ticket, you're charged twice — once for the helpdesk ticket itself (against your base plan's ticket bundle) and once for the automation. If the AI hands off to a human instead, you pay only the ticket fee. So an automated ticket quietly consumes the same ticket allowance your human-handled tickets do, plus the per-resolution charge on top. That double count is the single most misunderstood line in Gorgias' model, and it's worth modelling against your real volume — the full plan structure is in Gorgias pricing explained.

As the screen above shows, AI Agent on a fresh trial won't even switch on until a store is connected, and the notice is blunt: "AI Agent is currently available only with Shopify." If your storefront runs on BigCommerce, WooCommerce, or a headless setup, that's a hard stop for the flagship Automate feature today — one to verify against your own account before you plan around it.

What Convert does — and how it's billed

Convert is Gorgias' answer to the pre-purchase side of the funnel. Per the Convert overview, it lets ecommerce brands "launch onsite campaigns to increase website conversion rates" — messages that appear inside the Gorgias chat widget on your storefront. In practice that means:

1. Product recommendations for upsell and cross-sell.
2. Email-capture forms to grow your marketing list.
3. Promotional messages with unique, trackable discount codes.
4. A/B split tests on campaign copy, plus frequency management so a shopper isn't hit by five pop-ups at once.

Because Convert lives inside the chat widget, it depends on Gorgias Chat being installed — the same widget covered in Gorgias Chat explained — and it integrates with Shopify for product data and discount-code generation. You enable it via Convert → your Chat integration → Installation.

Convert's meter is entirely different from Automate's. It's a separate product subscription billed by clicks — "every time your customer interacts with a Convert campaign, we'll count it as one click," capped at a maximum of 3 clicks per browser session. Per Gorgias' Convert pricing docs, there are six tiers:

One behavior to flag: auto-upgrade is on by default. If you hit your click ceiling mid-cycle, Convert automatically bumps you to the next tier (pro-rated) so campaigns keep running — then the toggle switches itself off to stop a cascade. Convert is also distinct from Gorgias' older, free Light Campaigns product, so don't assume the two are the same line item.

Automate vs Convert: a quick decision table

The honest limits — and where an AI layer fits

Both add-ons are capable at what they're built for. AI Agent's per-resolution billing is genuinely fair in one sense — you don't pay for automation that didn't work, and a deflected WISMO ticket is real value. Convert's click-based model is transparent, and the in-widget campaigns are a clean way to reuse a tool you've already installed for support.

But the edges are real, and worth naming. Automate's Shopify gate is the big one: the flagship AI Agent is, per the enablement screen, "currently available only with Shopify," which excludes a large slice of the ecommerce world today. Its double billing — a helpdesk ticket and an automation charge on every AI-resolved conversation — means the effective cost per deflection is higher than the headline $0.90 suggests. And the 72-hour resolution definition means a customer who replies again on day four can retroactively change whether an interaction counted. On the Convert side, everything hinges on the chat widget being installed and on Shopify for the good parts (product recs, discount codes), and auto-upgrade can quietly move you up a pricing tier if a campaign goes viral.

There's also a category question Automate doesn't answer: what happens when the "resolution" isn't a canned answer but a multi-step action against your own systems — checking a 3PL's shipping API, applying store credit in an ERP, updating a subscription in a billing tool? That's the seam where a dedicated AI agent layer earns its place, and it's worth understanding the build-versus-buy tradeoff and the broader field of AI agents for customer service before assuming one add-on covers it.

This is exactly where Macha sits — on top of the Gorgias you already run, never as a replacement for it. The Macha–Gorgias connector is live: Macha reads and writes the same Gorgias tickets your agents and AI Agent already touch, drafting or posting grounded replies and — crucially — calling your own back-end systems through a custom tool that turns any REST API into an action the agent can take. Two contrasts matter. Macha is platform-agnostic about your storefront — it doesn't gate the AI on Shopify — and its credits are consumed per AI action, not per resolution, so you're not paying a fixed toll each time a conversation is deemed "resolved" (the model is on the pricing page). The clean division of labor: let Gorgias Automate and Convert do what they do well, and layer Macha on for the reasoning-and-action work that a per-resolution meter can't price.

FAQ

What's the difference between Gorgias Automate and Convert? Automate is the AI/self-service add-on built around AI Agent, which resolves support conversations across email, chat, and SMS. Convert is a separate add-on that runs proactive on-site campaigns — product recommendations, email capture, and promotional messages inside the chat widget — to lift storefront conversion. Different jobs, different meters, both paid.

How much does Gorgias Convert cost? Convert is billed as a separate subscription by clicks, capped at 3 clicks per browser session. Per Gorgias' docs there are six tiers from $30/month for 50 clicks up to $2,000/month for 4,000 clicks (roughly $0.60 down to $0.50 per click). Auto-upgrade is enabled by default and bumps you to the next tier if you run out mid-cycle.

How is Gorgias AI Agent (Automate) billed? Outcome-based: you pay an automation fee — around $0.90 per resolved interaction on most plans, ~$1 on Starter — only when AI Agent resolves a ticket without a human. Note that a fully-automated ticket also counts as a helpdesk ticket against your base plan, so you're charged for both. An interaction counts as automated if no human is involved within 72 hours.

Does Gorgias Automate require Shopify? On current trials, yes for the flagship feature — the AI Agent enablement screen states "AI Agent is currently available only with Shopify," and it won't activate until a Shopify store is connected. Convert also leans on Shopify for product recommendations and discount codes. Always confirm the current gating against your own account.

Can I add AI to Gorgias without paying per resolution? Yes. Macha runs as an AI agent layer on top of Gorgias via a live connector — it doesn't replace your help desk or its add-ons. It drafts grounded replies and calls your own APIs through custom tools, and its credits are consumed per AI action rather than per resolution, which is a different cost shape than Gorgias' outcome-based AI Agent billing.

Want AI on your Gorgias tickets without the per-resolution toll or a Shopify gate? Start a free trial of Macha and connect it to your Gorgias in minutes.