Envelopes passing a sorting station where routine ones get an automatic reply and tricky ones go to a person's desk

Set up a Gorgias auto reply with three Rules, and keep the hard cases for people

For Shopify customer service automation, start with three Gorgias Rules: an acknowledgment, an after-hours reply and an order-status reply. Leave refunds, damage and angry customers to your team. Rules are if-this-then-that automations on tickets, and they send auto replies without needing the AI Agent.

Everything below comes from Gorgias's help center, pricing page and Shopify App Store listing, plus Shopify's help center, all checked on October 13, 2026 (sources at the end). Your next step is to try the three Rules during Gorgias's 7-day free trial (no card required) or in a demo, using your own support inbox.

If you want the tagging side, see the tags and Rules guide; for canned shipping replies, see the macros guide; for AI answers, see the AI Agent setup guide. This article stays on one job: replying automatically.

What Shopify's built-in contact form does, and what it leaves to you

Shopify's contact form delivers messages to your store's sender email address; any automatic reply to the customer has to come from somewhere else. According to Shopify's help center, a contact form sends all submissions to the store's sender email. You can't change the subject line, and messages flagged as spam arrive with "[SPAM]" in the subject. The page doesn't describe an automatic confirmation to the shopper.

That leaves a few jobs to your process:

  • Telling the customer their message arrived
  • Setting expectations when nobody is online
  • Answering "where is my order?" with tracking details
  • Deciding who handles which message

A helpdesk like Gorgias covers these through Rules and reply actions. To connect your inbox first, follow the getting started guide. To replace the form itself, see the Gorgias contact form guide.

Rules or AI Agent: which one should send the reply?

Use Rules when the answer is the same every time, and AI Agent when the answer has to be assembled from your store's knowledge. Don't point both at the same ticket, or customers get two replies.

Rules vs AI Agent for auto replies (checked October 13, 2026)
RulesAI Agent
Best forAcknowledgments, after-hours and holiday notices, standard order-status repliesIndividual questions answered from your FAQs and order data
How the reply is writtenText you write, sent when conditions matchBuilt from the information you give it
CostAvailable on all Helpdesk plans per the help center; confirm in a demo how auto replies count toward your ticket totalUSD 0.90 per automated interaction on annual billing, USD 1.00 monthly; each interaction also counts as a ticket
HandoffYou build it with tags, assignment and conditionsConfigured in the AI Agent settings; confirm the options in a demo

The Rules article says the account owner, admins and leads can create and manage rules, that Rules are available on all Helpdesk plans, and that you can have up to 70. On the pricing page, AI Agent interactions beyond a plan's included allowance cost USD 1.50 each.

Three auto replies to build first: acknowledgment, after-hours, order status

Build them in this order, simplest first. Gorgias's auto-reply template library lists an Autoresponder, Outside business hours, During a holiday, Shopify Order Status and Preorder, which map neatly to what a small store needs.

Acknowledgment reply

The acknowledgment answers every new email ticket with a short "we got it." Use the "Ticket created" trigger. A good message states that the message was received, when to expect a reply, and asks for the order number if one applies.

Sample wording (for a fictional store):

Thanks for contacting us. We've received your message and a team member will reply in the order it arrived. If this is about an order, please reply with your order number.

An acknowledgment is not an answer. Leave the ticket open so your team still sees it in their queue.

After-hours reply

Set up your business hours in Gorgias first. Gorgias's best-practices article says the outside-hours rule triggers only on email tickets that arrive outside business hours. The Rule needs a trigger of ticket creation, a condition on the created date being outside business hours, and a reply action.

For holidays, schedule the closure dates ahead of time and use the "During a holiday" template. Watch for overlap: a holiday is also outside business hours, so customers would get both replies. Gorgias's guidance is to add the condition "created date of ticket is outside holiday hours" to the after-hours Rule, selecting the same holidays.

Order-status reply

The Shopify Order Status template branches on what the order looks like. As shown in Gorgias's help center:

  • Recent order with tracking: reply with the tracking link and close the ticket
  • Recent order without tracking: say it's still being processed and tracking will follow, then close the ticket
  • Older order with no tracking: send no reply and tag the ticket as urgent / not shipped
  • No order found: ask the customer for more information

The day counts in the template are examples, so adjust them to your own handling time. Notice the third branch: a late, untracked parcel goes to a person, not to a canned message. Reply text can be shared with your shipping macros.

How to create the auto reply in Gorgias, step by step

Build each Rule as WHEN, IF, THEN, then test it from a separate email address before you switch it on. Based on Gorgias's Rules article (menu labels can change, so check the current help page):

  1. From the top-left menu, open Workflows, then Tools, then Rules, and click Create rule
  2. Install a template such as Autoresponder, or choose Create Custom Rule
  3. Set WHEN to "Ticket created"
  4. Add IF conditions, such as channel is email, created outside business hours, or the order has a tracking number
  5. Under THEN, pick the reply-to-customer action and write your message; add tags or a close action if needed
  6. Save, then email your support address from a test account and read the reply

Three behaviors to remember:

  • Rules apply across all connected stores and channels, so add a channel condition (for example, channel is email) to limit scope
  • AND and OR can't be mixed in one IF; nest another IF inside THEN instead
  • Rules with the same trigger run top to bottom in the order shown on the Rules page, and you can drag them to reorder

The Rules article doesn't cover sending a reply only once or resolving conflicts between rules, so check double replies on your own tickets.

When to hand off to a person instead of auto-replying

Refunds, cancellations, damaged goods and upset customers should skip the canned reply and land in a human queue. An auto reply works best on predictable questions; closing a judgment call automatically leaves customers frustrated.

Good handoff conditions:

  • The subject or body mentions refund, cancel, damaged or wrong item
  • The order can't be found, or a parcel is overdue with no tracking
  • The customer has already written a second time after your auto reply
  • A tag such as "needs review" is present

For these tickets, skip the auto reply and the auto close, add a tag, and show them in a View for your agents. The tags and Rules guide walks through that setup. The order-status template follows the same logic by tagging late orders instead of replying.

If you add AI Agent later, build Rules for acknowledgment and after-hours first, and let AI handle individual order and policy questions. Check how it hands chats to your team during a demo.

Four ways auto replies go wrong

Most problems come from overlapping conditions, not from the wording. The first two below are warnings in Gorgias's own documentation.

  1. Double replies on holidays. Add the "outside holiday hours" condition to the after-hours Rule, as described above
  2. Unsupported tickets. The help center says auto-reply Rules can't be applied to ChannelReply tickets or tickets with only an internal note. It also advises against setting this up for Facebook and Instagram comments, which can be flagged as spam
  3. Rule order. Rules with the same trigger run top to bottom, so check that your acknowledgment and order-status Rules don't collide
  4. Closing too eagerly. Some order-status branches close the ticket automatically. Decide what should happen when a customer replies to a closed ticket before you adopt that branch

On cost, AI Agent interactions count as tickets. How Rules-based auto replies feed into your monthly ticket count is something to confirm in a demo, along with whether your volume fits the plan.

Test the Gorgias auto reply during the free trial

Use the 7-day trial to switch on one Rule at a time and test each one from your own inbox. Per the pricing page, the trial runs 7 days with all features and no payment information. Starter is USD 10 per month (50 tickets), and the Shopify App Store listing shows 3 agents on that plan.

A simple testing order:

  1. Add your business hours and holidays
  2. Create the acknowledgment Rule and send a test email
  3. Create the after-hours Rule and email outside your hours
  4. Create the order-status Rule and test an order with tracking, one without, and an unknown email address
  5. Send a test message about a refund or damaged item and confirm it reaches your agents without an automatic answer

Request a Gorgias demo

FAQ

Does Shopify send an automatic reply to contact form messages? Shopify's help center says form submissions go to your store's sender email, and it doesn't describe an automatic reply to the customer. Build the reply in your helpdesk.

Do I need AI Agent for auto replies? No. Acknowledgments, after-hours and holiday notices and standard order-status replies can be built with Rules. Consider AI Agent for individual questions; it's billed per automated interaction.

Can I write the replies in Japanese or another language? The reply text is whatever you write, so you can use the language your customers use. Chat-widget language settings are covered in the Japanese support guide.

Does the free trial need a card? No. The Gorgias trial is 7 days with no card required.

Next step

Start a Gorgias trial or book a demo and build the acknowledgment, after-hours and order-status Rules on your own inbox. Once these run, your team's queue holds the conversations that actually need a person. For plan details, see the Gorgias pricing guide.

Pricing source ·

Official sources checked (October 13, 2026)