Before committing to either Gorgias AI or HubSpot Breeze, here are the costs and catches that won't be obvious from their pricing pages.
Gorgias AI โ what to watch for
- As your AI resolution rate improves, your per-resolution costs increase โ creating a perverse incentive
- Base Gorgias helpdesk subscription required on top of per-resolution AI costs
- Monthly vs annual pricing gap ($1.00 vs $0.90 per resolution) incentivizes annual lock-in
- Primarily designed for ecommerce/Shopify โ limited utility for SaaS or non-ecommerce use cases
HubSpot Breeze โ what to watch for
- Costs rise as your AI resolution rate climbs โ at $0.50/resolution, 5k resolutions/month works out to ~$2.5k just for AI
- Like other per-resolution models, you're billed even when the AI's answer didn't fully resolve the issue
- Requires an active HubSpot Service Hub subscription (~$90/month starter) โ Breeze is never standalone
- Breeze AI capabilities are relatively new and less mature than Intercom Fin or Zendesk AI
The cost nobody talks about: what happens when the AI can't answer?
Gorgias AI uses per-resolution pricing while HubSpot Breeze uses per-resolution pricing. This means they handle the 'AI can't answer' scenario very differently.
Gorgias AI: Gorgias charges per automated resolution โ $0.90 (annual) or $1.00 (monthly) each time the AI resolves a ticket without human intervention. If the conversation is escalated to a human agent, it shouldn't count as an automated resolution, but the definition of 'resolved' is determined by Gorgias.
HubSpot Breeze: HubSpot Breeze charges $0.50 per AI resolution, so you're only billed when Breeze handles a conversation without escalating to a human. As with other per-resolution models, HubSpot decides what counts as a resolution, and you can be charged even if the answer wasn't fully helpful โ as long as the customer didn't escalate.
This is why comparing headline per-automated resolution vs per-resolution costs is misleading. The metric that matters isn't how much each billable event costs โ it's what each platform counts as a billable event in the first place, and whether you're paying for outcomes (successful resolutions) or activity (any AI interaction).