How to Set Up an Auto-Responder in Gorgias

What a Gorgias auto-responder actually is

There is no single "auto-responder" toggle in modern Gorgias. Instead, you assemble one from a Rule — and a Rule, per Gorgias' own Automate your work with Rules documentation, is an if-this-then-that instruction made of three parts. The WHEN is the trigger — the event that wakes the rule up, such as a ticket being created. The IF is a set of optional conditions that narrow when it should apply, like "outside business hours." And the THEN is the action it takes — in our case, Reply to customer, which sends a message back on the same channel the ticket arrived on. If Rules are new to you, our Gorgias Rules explained primer covers the full mechanism, and what Gorgias is sets the wider context.

Two facts up front, because they shape everything else. First, Rules are available on all Helpdesk plans with no add-on — but only account Owners, Admins, and Leads can edit them, and you can have up to 70 rules at once. Second, the Reply to customer action makes the ticket billable: you're charged a ticket fee per your subscription. Gorgias does spare you the worst of it — the action does not trigger on spam tickets, precisely to prevent runaway overages — but it's the reason the auto-reply best-practices banner in the rule builder exists, and the reason loop prevention (Step 3) matters so much.

Step 1: Set your business hours first

An out-of-office auto-reply is only as good as the calendar it reads from. Gorgias lets you define universal business hours that apply across all your support channels, and the system uses them as the reference point to decide whether a message arrived "in" or "out" of office time.

1. Open Settings (the gear icon, bottom-left).
2. Find Business hours and define your working days, hours, and time zone — for example, 9 AM to 5 PM ET, Monday to Friday.
3. Save. This is the calendar the OOO condition will check against, so get it right before you build the rule.

Skip this and your "outside business hours" condition has nothing to measure against — the rule will behave unpredictably.

Step 2: Build the out-of-office rule

Now the rule itself. Gorgias documents this exact pattern in its auto-reply common Rule templates.

1. Go to Settings → Ticket management → Rules and click Create rule (or start from the auto-reply template).
2. Set the trigger: WHEN a ticket is created.
3. Add the condition: IF the ticket's created date is outside business hours. This is what makes it an after-hours responder rather than an always-on one.
4. Add the action: THEN → Reply to customer, and type your acknowledgement in the reply body. Keep it warm and specific about timing:

> "Thanks for reaching out! Our team is offline right now, but we're back at 9 AM ET on weekdays. We've got your message and will reply as soon as we're in — usually within one business hour."

1. Activate the rule.

If you sell on Shopify, this is also where you can personalise: the reply body accepts variables, so you can greet the customer by first name or, for a WISMO acknowledgement, drop in their most recent order number so the auto-reply already feels like progress rather than a placeholder.

Step 3: Prevent auto-reply loops

This is the step people skip and regret. An auto-reply that fires on every message in a ticket can end up replying to its own replies, or to your agents, or to another system's autoresponder — a ping-pong that burns billable tickets and irritates customers. Gorgias' auto-reply Rule best practices documentation is blunt about tightening the conditions. Layer these in:

• Only reply to the customer's first message. Constrain the rule so it fires on ticket creation, not on every new message — an OOO greeting should land once, not on every follow-up that night.
• Don't reply to your own team. If you build a variant that triggers on new messages, add IF message from agent is false so the rule never answers an agent's reply.
• Exclude the un-repliable. Auto-reply rules can't be applied to ChannelReply (marketplace) tickets or to tickets that contain only an internal note — so don't expect them there, and scope your conditions to real customer email/chat messages.
• Go easy on social. Gorgias specifically advises against outside-business-hours auto-replies on Facebook/Instagram comments, because they can get flagged as spam.

Because Gorgias runs all applicable rules in order (by trigger-type priority, then top-to-bottom on the page) rather than stopping at the first match, a sloppy condition here can compound with your other rules. Tight conditions are your loop prevention.

Step 4: Add a first-response acknowledgement (during hours)

The OOO rule covers nights and weekends. A lighter first-response acknowledgement can cover the gap during busy hours, when a reply is coming but not instantly. Duplicate the rule from Step 2, invert the timing, and soften the promise:

1. WHEN a ticket is created.
2. IF created date is inside business hours (and, optionally, only for email so live chat isn't double-messaged).
3. THEN → Reply to customer with a shorter note: "Got it — a member of our team will be with you shortly."

Keep the two rules mutually exclusive (one inside hours, one outside) so a single ticket never trips both. If you'd rather reuse the same acknowledgement wording across rules and macros, save it as a macro and reference it consistently.

The honest limits — and where an AI layer picks up

Gorgias' auto-responder is genuinely useful and genuinely native — no add-on, works on every plan, and deterministic once your conditions are tight. But be clear about what it is: a canned message on a timer. It acknowledges; it does not answer. It can tell a customer "we've got your message," but it can't read that message, understand that they're asking where order #4471 is, look the order up, and resolve it. Every real reply still waits for a human to arrive.

It's also blind to content. The same OOO greeting goes to "how do I return this?", "cancel my subscription", and "my package says delivered but it's not here" — three questions with three very different answers, none of which the rule can give. And because every Reply to customer action is billable, an over-eager auto-responder is a line item, not a free win.

This is the seam where an AI agent layer fits — and it's worth weighing the build-versus-buy tradeoff before you reach for one. The broader category of AI agents for customer service exists precisely to do the reasoning an auto-reply can't. Macha is one such layer: it runs on top of the Gorgias you already use as a native connector — see the Macha–Gorgias integration — so it does not replace your help desk or your Rules. It reads and writes the same tickets your auto-responder greets: drafting or sending grounded first replies (so a real answer beats the acknowledgement), triaging by intent so a WISMO, a return, and a subscription cancel each get the right handling, and looking up live order or account status through a custom tool that turns your REST API into something the agent can call.

One honest contrast on cost. Gorgias' own AI Agent is billed per resolution — you pay when it closes a conversation. Macha's pricing is built on credits consumed per AI action, not per resolution, so you're paying for the work the agent does rather than a per-outcome toll. Keep Gorgias Rules as the source of truth for acknowledging every ticket instantly, and layer an agent on top for the part a canned reply can't do: actually answering. If you want to see that in practice, our Gorgias AI Agent explained piece walks through where each approach shines.

FAQ

Where do I set up an auto-responder in Gorgias? There's no single toggle — you build it from a Rule at Settings → Ticket management → Rules. Create a rule with a "ticket created" trigger, a business-hours condition, and a "Reply to customer" action. Rules are available on all Helpdesk plans with no add-on, though only Owners, Admins, and Leads can edit them.

How do I make the auto-reply only fire outside business hours? First define your universal business hours in Settings, then add the condition IF created date of ticket is outside business hours to the rule. Gorgias uses those hours as the reference for whether a message arrived in or out of office time.

How do I stop the auto-reply from looping? Scope it to the customer's first message (trigger on ticket creation, not every new message), and if you build a message-level variant add IF message from agent is false so it never answers your own team. Note that auto-reply rules also can't apply to ChannelReply tickets or internal-note-only tickets.

Does the auto-reply cost me anything? Yes — the Reply to customer action makes the ticket billable and incurs a ticket fee per your subscription. Gorgias does not fire the action on spam tickets, which prevents the worst of the overage risk, but tight conditions still matter.

Can I add AI to Gorgias without replacing it? Yes. Macha connects to Gorgias as a native connector and runs on top of your existing help desk and Rules — it doesn't replace them. It helps answer tickets (not just acknowledge them) by drafting or sending grounded replies and triaging by intent, while Gorgias stays the system of record and keeps sending the instant acknowledgement.

Ready to turn "we got your message" into an actual answer? Start a free trial of Macha and connect it to your Gorgias in minutes.