Gorgias ticket data moves cleanly via the Zendesk Ticket Import API. The hard part is replacing Shopify-native macros, revenue tracking, and e-commerce workflows. Budget 3–6 weeks.
Complete guide to migrating from Gorgias to Zendesk — Shopify integration gap, macro rewrite, API rate limits, ticket history, and timeline.
Read this first
Pair-specific gotchas that catch teams out. Each one has cost somebody a weekend.
Quick scope check
Teams that rely heavily on Gorgias's in-ticket Shopify actions (refund, cancel, edit), revenue statistics, or macro order variables should budget extra time for the integration gap analysis and agent workflow redesign. The data migration itself is well-defined — the workflow redesign is where timelines slip.
[For PMs] Include Shopify app evaluation as a named task in the migration plan with 3–5
[For PMs] Include Shopify app evaluation as a named task in the migration plan with 3–5 days of timeline. Evaluate the native Zendesk Shopify app and at least one third-party alternative (agnoStack offers order modification, advanced macros, and multi-tender refunds). Document the gap vs. Gorgias and share with the CS team before go-live. Demo the day-one workflow side by side — if Gorgias needed two clicks and Zendesk needs six, that is an adoption issue even if the data migration itself is perfect.
The runbook
Work top to bottom. Tick steps as you go — your progress is saved in this browser.
01 Discovery Establish why you are moving, what "done" means, and who signs off.
Objective A written scope with agreed success criteria, a named owner per workstream, and a budget approved by finance.
Keep these open
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Pull the real numbers out of Gorgias
Export counts for tickets (open and closed separately), contacts, organisations, attachments, macros, triggers, automations, views and SLA policies. Note the oldest ticket date — history depth drives the whole timeline. Estimating from memory is the single most common cause of a blown migration window.
Data Profiler Get real record counts instead of estimating from memory -
Decide what history actually moves
Agree a cut-off with the support lead: all history, last 24 months, or open tickets plus a read-only archive. Every extra year of closed tickets adds API time and cost without adding much agent value. Get this in writing — it is the decision people relitigate mid-cutover.
A "move everything" default is what turns a two-week migration into a two-month one.
COI & ROI Calculator Build the 36-month business case you will need for sign-off -
Confirm Zendesk can hold your support model
Walk your current workflow through Zendesk: multi-brand, business hours, SLA targets, CSAT, side conversations, public vs internal notes, and any channel you depend on (voice, chat, WhatsApp, social). List anything with no native equivalent — those are project risks, not configuration details.
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Build the business case
Model licence delta, migration effort, agent retraining, and the cost of staying put (Cost of Inaction). Executives approve a number, not a plan, and you will be asked for it again at the go/no-go.
Helpdesk Migration Planner Turn ticket volume into a dated Gorgias → Zendesk timeline -
Name owners and set the go/no-go date
One named owner each for data, configuration, integrations, and agent enablement, plus a decision-maker who can call a rollback. Put the go/no-go meeting in calendars now, 48 hours before the freeze.
Gorgias → Zendesk specifics
- Multi-department routing and B2B support
- Gorgias is built for D2C e-commerce. Teams adding SaaS product support, wholesale, or internal IT support need Zendesk's group-based routing, ticket forms per department, and custom ticket statuses (Suite Enterprise+).
- Advanced SLA management
- Zendesk supports multiple SLA policies with business-hours-aware targets, priority-based escalation, and breach notifications. Gorgias has no equivalent SLA engine.
- Zendesk Guide
- A mature knowledge base with categories, sections, custom themes, community forums, and multilingual support — far beyond Gorgias's flat FAQ widget.
- Zendesk Explore
- Custom reporting with calculated metrics, cross-dataset queries, and scheduled dashboards. Gorgias's built-in analytics are limited to pre-built views.
- Marketplace ecosystem
- Zendesk's marketplace has 1,500+ apps. Gorgias's integration library is significantly smaller.
Don't move on until
- Record counts confirmed for tickets, contacts, organisations and macros
- Success criteria signed off by the support lead
- Freeze window provisionally booked with the business
02 Data Audit Find out what is actually in the data before you try to move it.
Objective A profiled, cleaned export with every quality defect either fixed at source or explicitly accepted.
Keep these open
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Take a full Gorgias export and profile it
Export to CSV or JSON and profile every file: row counts, null rates per column, distinct values, and type consistency. Compare row counts against the API totals from Discovery — a gap here means your export is silently truncated, usually by pagination.
Data Profiler Profile the Gorgias export for nulls, outliers and type drift -
Validate file structure before anyone writes a transform
Check delimiters, quoting, encoding (expect UTF-8, watch for BOMs and Latin-1), duplicate headers, and embedded newlines in ticket bodies. Ticket descriptions with raw newlines and commas break naive CSV parsers and silently shift columns.
A single unescaped quote in one ticket body can shift every subsequent column without any error.
CSV Validator Catch broken headers and ragged rows in the raw export -
Inventory PII and set retention
Scan for emails, phone numbers, payment card fragments, national IDs and anything else regulated in ticket bodies and custom fields — support tickets are where customers paste things they should not. Decide what gets migrated, masked, or dropped, and record the legal basis.
Ticket bodies and attachments routinely contain card and ID data that never appears in a structured field.
PII & Compliance Scanner Find regulated fields before they land in a new system -
Quantify duplicates, orphans and dead references
Count duplicate contacts (same email, different casing), tickets whose requester no longer exists, organisations with no members, and attachments whose parent ticket is gone. Fix these in Gorgias where you can — migrating them just moves the mess.
Data Cleaner Strip empty rows, stray whitespace and dead columns -
Clean and normalise the export
Trim whitespace, drop empty rows and columns, normalise casing on emails and tags, and standardise every timestamp to UTC ISO 8601. Timezone drift is invisible at load time and shows up weeks later as SLA reports nobody can reconcile.
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Produce a masked copy for sandbox work
Generate a realistic but fake version of the export for testing and for any vendor who needs sample data. Loading real customer PII into a sandbox is a breach in most jurisdictions, and sandboxes are rarely covered by your DPA.
PII Masker Generate a safe copy for sandbox and vendor testing
Don't move on until
- Export parses cleanly with no ragged rows or encoding errors
- PII inventory complete and retention decisions recorded
- Duplicate and orphan records quantified and triaged
03 Field Mapping Turn two schemas into one signed-off mapping spec.
Objective A reviewed field-level mapping covering every object, with an explicit decision for every field that has no target.
Keep these open
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Generate the first-pass Gorgias → Zendesk field map
Start from an automated match on both schemas, then review every row by hand. Automated matching gets the obvious 70% right and is confidently wrong on the rest — especially anything named "type", "status" or "custom_field_1".
Schema Mapper Opens pre-loaded with the Gorgias → Zendesk field pair -
Map status, priority and channel values, not just field names
Enumerate every value in each picklist on both sides and map them explicitly. Value-level mismatches are the defect class that survives all the way to production because the field itself mapped fine — a ticket that should be "Pending" arriving as "Open" reopens SLA clocks.
Statuses with no target equivalent (on-hold, pending-customer) need a policy decision, not a best guess.
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Decide how custom fields land
Create the target custom fields first, matching type exactly (a dropdown mapped to free text can never be mapped back). Where Zendesk has no equivalent, decide between a new custom field, a tag, or a note appended to the ticket body — and record which.
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Resolve identity and threading
Decide how source IDs are preserved — most platforms will not let you set the primary key, so keep the original ID in a custom field. Without it, reconciliation becomes fuzzy matching and every future support question about an old ticket is unanswerable.
Losing the original ticket ID makes reconciliation and rollback effectively impossible.
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Plan attachments, inline images and threading order
Confirm size limits, allowed MIME types, and whether inline images survive as attachments or need rehosting. Decide the comment ordering and author attribution rules: comments loaded out of order, or all attributed to the API user, destroy the conversation history agents rely on.
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Freeze and sign off the mapping spec
Version the spec, walk the support lead through it row by row, and get explicit sign-off. Any change after this point goes through change control — mid-flight mapping edits are how partial loads happen.
Gorgias → Zendesk specifics
- Gorgias Tickets → Zendesk Tickets
- One-to-one. Gorgias has two statuses: Open and Closed. Zendesk has five: New, Open, Pending, Solved, Closed (plus custom statuses on Suite Enterprise+). Map Gorgias "Open" → Zendesk "Open." Map Gorgias "Closed" → Zendesk "Solved" for recently-closed tickets (allows the customer to reopen by replying) or "Closed" for older archived tickets. Define a cutoff date for this split (e.g., tickets closed within the last 90 days → Solved; older → Closed). If a Gorgias ticket is snoozed with a wake time in the future, map it to Zendesk "Pending" and create an automation to reopen it based on a custom da
- Gorgias Ticket Messages → Zendesk Ticket Comments
- Each message becomes a comment. Preserve the from_agent flag (agent replies → public comments from agent user; customer messages → public comments from end-user), internal notes → private comments, HTML body, and created_at timestamp. Watch Zendesk's 5,000-comment limit per ticket — tickets exceeding this cap must be split or truncated before import. (developer.zendesk.com)
- Gorgias Customers → Zendesk End Users
- Core fields (name, email, phone) map directly. E-commerce data (Shopify customer ID, LTV, order count) has no native Zendesk fields — store in custom user fields or omit if the Zendesk Shopify app will surface it dynamically. Zendesk end-users are unique by email; dedup Gorgias customers before import. (support.zendesk.com)
- Gorgias Tags → Zendesk Tags
- Both support free-form tags, but Zendesk tags must be lowercase with underscores (no spaces). Normalize all tags before import. Decide whether to preserve Gorgias's auto-generated intent/sentiment tags (prefix with gorgias_intent_ to distinguish from Zendesk Intelligent Triage tags) or discard them. (support.zendesk.com)
- Gorgias Custom Fields → Zendesk Custom Ticket Fields
- Type matching required. For dropdowns, enumerate and pre-create all values in Zendesk before importing tickets. Zendesk macros can only update ticket fields that are present on the active ticket form.
Don't move on until
- Every source field is mapped, deliberately dropped, or parked in a custom field
- Status, priority and channel value maps agreed with the support lead
- Mapping spec version-controlled and signed off
04 Test Migration Prove the pipeline on a small, representative slice.
Objective A pilot load into a Zendesk sandbox that reconciles cleanly and has been reviewed by real agents.
Keep these open
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Stand up a Zendesk sandbox that matches production config
Create the custom fields, groups, brands, business hours and SLA policies first. A pilot into a default sandbox tests nothing, because the failures you care about are all configuration mismatches.
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Pick a deliberately nasty pilot sample
Take 500-1000 records chosen for difficulty, not convenience: the longest ticket threads, tickets with the most attachments, non-Latin character sets, merged and split tickets, deleted requesters, and every status value. A clean random sample proves only that easy records are easy.
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Run the load with masked data and instrument everything
Log every API request and response with its source record ID. When 40 records fail out of 10,000 you need to know exactly which ones and why, without re-running the whole batch.
PII Masker Never load real customer PII into a sandbox -
Measure real throughput against the rate limit
Record achieved records-per-hour under Zendesk's actual rate limits, including retries and backoff. Extrapolate to the full volume: if the maths says the full load exceeds your freeze window, you fix that now, not on cutover night.
Published rate limits are ceilings, not throughput. Assume real-world rates are meaningfully lower once retries and backoff are counted.
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Reconcile the pilot and triage every failure
Diff source against target on record counts and field-level values. Every discrepancy gets a root cause and a fix — "probably fine" at pilot scale becomes thousands of broken records at full scale.
Migration Validation Tool Diff the pilot batch against source before scaling up -
Put real agents in front of the pilot data
Have two or three agents work sample tickets end to end in the sandbox. They find the things reconciliation cannot see: unreadable threading, missing context, macros that no longer make sense. Fix the mapping, then re-run.
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Test migration in sandbox (2–3 days)
Import a representative sample (1,000–5,000 tickets covering all status types, channels, and custom field values) into the Zendesk sandbox. Run full validation. Fix transformation issues. Re-run until clean.
Don't move on until
- Pilot batch reconciles to 100% on record counts
- Agents have reviewed sample tickets and confirmed they are workable
- Measured throughput extrapolates to a viable full-load window
05 Cutover Execute the switch inside a controlled, reversible window.
Objective All in-scope data live in Zendesk, agents working in the new system, and a rollback path that stayed available throughout.
Keep these open
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Pre-load history before the freeze
Load closed tickets and contacts days or weeks ahead while Gorgias stays live. Only open tickets and the final delta need to move inside the freeze — this is the single biggest lever on window length.
Helpdesk Migration Planner Size the freeze window from Zendesk's real API limits -
Publish the runbook with times, owners and abort criteria
A timed sequence: freeze start, final export, delta load, channel switch, smoke test, go/no-go, agent switch. Name who does each step and the explicit condition that triggers a rollback. Decide the abort criteria before the night, when nobody wants to be the one to call it.
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Freeze Gorgias and take the final delta
Stop new ticket creation, let agents finish in-flight replies, then export everything changed since the pre-load. Announce the freeze to the whole business, not just support — someone always tries to raise a ticket during it.
Tickets created during an unenforced freeze land in the old system and are the most common source of permanently lost data.
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Load the delta and open tickets
Run the delta load, then reconcile counts before touching any channel. Do not repoint email until the delta has verified — an inbound ticket arriving mid-load is far harder to untangle than a few extra minutes of freeze.
Migration Validation Tool Confirm the final delta landed before you reopen -
Repoint channels and verify with live traffic
Switch email forwarding and MX or connector settings, update chat widgets and web forms, and re-authorise integrations. Then send real test tickets through every channel and confirm each lands, routes and triggers the right automation.
Email forwarding changes can take up to a full DNS TTL to propagate — check the TTL days in advance and lower it if needed.
Cron Expression Builder Schedule the delta syncs that run through the freeze -
Run the go/no-go and switch the agents
Walk the exit criteria with the decision-maker, call it explicitly, then move agents over with a named person on hand for the first few hours. Keep Gorgias read-only rather than cancelled — cancelling the old contract on day one removes your only fallback.
Gorgias → Zendesk specifics
- Go-live and monitoring (1 week)
- Cut over email/chat/social channels. Monitor handling time, CSAT, and ticket backlog daily. Keep Gorgias in read-only mode for 8–12 weeks as a fallback reference archive.
Don't move on until
- Full historical load complete and counts matched
- Inbound channels repointed and verified with live test tickets
- Rollback decision point passed explicitly, not by default
06 Validation Prove the migration is complete, then close it out.
Objective Documented evidence that data, workflow and reporting all survived, and a signed acceptance.
Keep these open
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Run the full reconciliation
Compare source and target on every object: total counts, counts by status, counts by group, attachment counts, and field-level spot checks on a random sample. Produce one report you can hand to an auditor.
Migration Validation Tool Reconcile Gorgias and Zendesk record-for-record -
Verify field completeness, not just record counts
Re-profile the loaded data and compare null rates per field against the source profile. Matching record counts with a field that silently arrived empty is the failure mode counts alone will never catch.
Data Profiler Prove field completeness held up through the load -
Rebuild reporting and compare against baselines
Recreate your core dashboards — volume, first response time, resolution time, CSAT — and compare to pre-migration figures for the same period. Explain every variance; a changed SLA calculation is a real finding, not a rounding error.
SLA and first-response metrics are usually recalculated from the loaded timestamps, so they will differ if any timestamp mapping was approximate.
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Test the workflow layer end to end
Fire every trigger, automation, SLA escalation, macro and notification with a live ticket. Workflow does not migrate — it gets rebuilt — so it is untested until someone has actually watched it run.
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Confirm compliance and produce the audit trail
Re-scan the loaded data for regulated fields, confirm retention and deletion policies are configured in Zendesk, and file the evidence with your PII decisions from the audit phase.
PII & Compliance Scanner Produce the compliance evidence your auditor will ask for -
Sign off, then decommission on a schedule
Get written acceptance against the Discovery success criteria. Keep Gorgias read-only for an agreed period (30-90 days is typical), take a final archive export, and only then cancel. Diarise the decommission date so it does not quietly renew.
Gorgias → Zendesk specifics
- Validation and UAT (1 week)
- Record-count reconciliation, timestamp verification, author attribution spot checks, attachment verification, macro testing, Shopify app validation. Have 2–3 agents work in Zendesk for 1–2 days focusing on the Shopify app sidebar workflow, macro usability (especially rewritten Type B macros), and the Pending/Solved status lifecycle.
Don't move on until
- Full reconciliation report attached to the project record
- Reporting baselines match pre-migration figures within agreed tolerance
- Formal acceptance signed and archive retention scheduled
What breaks
Known failure modes. Have a recovery plan for each before you cut over.
Inline images expire
Gorgias inline images use hosted URLs that may expire after you leave the platform. Download all attachments and inline images during extraction and push them through the Zendesk Uploads API. Do not assume Gorgias image URLs will remain accessible. Verify by checking image URLs from tickets older than 12 months before starting extraction.
Duplicate customers
Zendesk requires unique email addresses for end-users. Deduplicate Gorgias customers before import and define merge rules for conflicting data (e.g., two Gorgias customer records with the same email but different phone numbers — pick the most recently updated record).
Very long tickets
Zendesk caps tickets at 5,000 comments. If any Gorgias ticket has an exceptionally long thread, it must be split or truncated before import. (developer.zendesk.com)
Old email thread behavior
Customers replying to old Gorgias email threads may create new Zendesk tickets rather than reopening the imported ticket, depending on how email headers transfer. Test this behavior in the sandbox before go-live — the preserved ticket history is documented; legacy email-thread behavior is not.
Social channels must be reconnected
Historical Gorgias social tickets can be imported as records, but live social messaging channels (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X) must be set up separately in Zendesk. This is a separate configuration task, not part of the data migration. (support.zendesk.com)
Gorgias API deprecations
The per-ticket messages endpoint may be marked deprecated in the Gorgias API reference. Verify the supported extraction path before building your pipeline. (developers.gorgias.com)
Ticket snooze mapping
Gorgias has a snooze function. If a ticket's snooze wake time is in the future, map it to Zendesk "Pending" and create an automation to reopen it based on a custom date field storing the original wake time.
API rate limits on extraction
Extracting 100K+ tickets at 2 req/s (Starter/Basic plans) requires approximately 5–6 days of continuous extraction. Plan extraction as a multi-day background job. Request a temporary rate limit increase from Gorgias support if available on your plan.
Multi-store Shopify configurations
If your Gorgias instance connects to multiple Shopify stores, each store must be configured separately in Zendesk's Shopify app. Customer dedup becomes more complex because the same customer may have different Shopify customer IDs across stores. Map customer records by email, not by Shopify ID.
Gorgias data retention post-cancellation
Gorgias does not publicly document how long data remains accessible after subscription cancellation. Confirm retention terms in writing with Gorgias support before starting migration. Complete your full data extraction before downgrading or canceling your Gorgias plan.
Tools used in this playbook
All free, all run entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
FAQ
How long does a Gorgias to Zendesk migration take?
A typical mid-size migration (20 agents, 100K tickets) takes 3–6 weeks including planning, Shopify app evaluation, macro rewrite, data migration via the Zendesk Ticket Import API, validation, and go-live monitoring. Gorgias API extraction alone can take 3–7 days due to rate limits (2 req/s on Basic, 10 req/s on Pro).
Can I preserve full Gorgias ticket history in Zendesk?
Yes. The Zendesk Ticket Import API (POST /api/v2/imports/tickets) preserves original created_at timestamps on both tickets and individual comments, along with author attribution (agent vs. customer) and public/private flags. Full conversation threading is maintained. CSV exports are useful for audits but not for full-fidelity threaded history.
What data is lost when migrating from Gorgias to Zendesk?
Revenue statistics, macro e-commerce variables (like {{last_order.name}}), Gorgias Convert data, the intent/sentiment AI model, proactive chat campaign configurations, historical first reply/resolution metrics, and CSAT historical data (for native reporting) cannot be migrated. Ticket history, customers, tags, and custom fields transfer cleanly via API.
What happens to my Shopify integration when I move to Zendesk?
Gorgias's native Shopify integration is replaced by the Zendesk Shopify marketplace app, which shows order data in a sidebar and supports refunds and cancellations for unfulfilled orders. For order editing and advanced e-commerce actions, evaluate third-party apps like agnoStack.
What happens to macros that use Shopify order data?
They break. Zendesk macros cannot natively pull Shopify data. Each macro must be audited and rewritten — either with static text, manual agent copy-paste from the sidebar, or custom field population via a Shopify webhook integration or third-party app.