Where each one wins
The situation where I would send a buyer to each of these.
For every platform, a specific situation where it is the better choice than Richpanel. If your situation matches, take it seriously.
1. Richpanel
Richpanel is the AI-native helpdesk: you get an AI support team that resolves the repeat work end to end, and the helpdesk your humans work in, as one product. Pricing is about $0.20 per AI-resolved conversation with a $200 per month floor, plus $99 per seat for the humans, and there is no enterprise volume threshold to clear. Deployment runs as a 30-minute proof of concept built live on your data during the demo, a two-week pilot, then a four-week full deployment, and the AI agents carry a written guarantee: 50% resolution in 30 days or your money back. In production that has looked like a wellness brand where AI sends 63% of every customer message and closes routine conversations end to end with no human touch, at 4.39 out of 5 CSAT against a team-wide 4.33.[11] Ridge cut cost per ticket by 70%, about $500,000 a year, with CSAT moving from 88% to 96%. Where we are weaker than Ada: we do not host voice, we integrate with Aircall, Dialpad and JustCall, and Ada's multilingual depth, contact center handoffs and global enterprise deployment record are more established than ours. If those are your top criteria, Ada is the fair pick.
2. Intercom Fin
Fin is the most accessible agent layer in the category and the cleanest answer for a team that wants to keep its current helpdesk. Pricing is public and unusually simple: $0.99 per resolution, procedure handoff or disqualification, with a stated minimum of 50 outcomes a month, no seat fees when run standalone, no implementation or platform fees, and a 14-day trial with no card required.[5] It runs on top of Salesforce, HubSpot, Freshworks and other platforms, and Intercom states that setup takes under an hour.[5] Choose Fin over Richpanel if you are not willing to change helpdesks and you want an agent layer live this week with a published rate and a trial. The honest trade-offs: you are still paying for the helpdesk underneath, and Intercom is being acquired by Salesforce, a deal signed in June 2026 and not yet closed, which introduces roadmap uncertainty worth asking about. We cover that in what the Fin acquisition means for support teams.
3. Lorikeet
Lorikeet does the thing almost nobody else in the agent-layer tier does: it publishes its rate card. Start is $1,500 a month for $18,000 a year in credits, Scale is $4,000 a month for $48,000, chat, email and SMS resolutions run $0.95 and $0.80 respectively, voice runs $1.50 and $1.20 for resolutions up to three minutes, and there are no per-seat, implementation or platform fees. It integrates with Zendesk, Intercom, HubSpot, Front and Salesforce, carries SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001, and offers a HIPAA BAA on Scale and above.[6] Choose Lorikeet over Richpanel if your support is complex or regulated, you want to keep your existing helpdesk, and the ability to model your bill from a public page before any sales call is worth more to you than consolidating onto one platform. For a team under 5,000 monthly tickets shopping Ada, this is the most directly comparable published-price option on the list.
4. Gorgias
Gorgias is the most Shopify-native option here, with the widest ecommerce app marketplace and deep out-of-the-box integration into the Shopify order and customer model. It prices by ticket rather than by agent seat, so seats are effectively unlimited, and the AI Agent is available on every plan and billed only when it resolves a conversation.[7] Choose Gorgias over Richpanel if you are a Shopify-first brand whose top priority is the largest catalogue of pre-built ecommerce app integrations. The trade-off worth modelling: an AI resolution is billed on the AI meter and also consumes a ticket from your plan allowance, so the real per-resolution cost is higher than the AI rate alone once you are over your ticket bundle.[7] Our Gorgias alternatives comparison works through that math.
5. Zendesk AI
Zendesk is the broadest platform on this list and the safest procurement answer in most large organizations. As of July 2026, Suite Team is $55 per agent per month and Suite Professional is $115 on annual billing, AI agents are bundled into every Suite plan with automated resolutions metered above the included allowance, and Copilot is $50 per agent per month.[8] Choose Zendesk over Richpanel if you are standardizing one vendor across many functions beyond customer-facing CX, such as IT service management and internal help desks, or if a proven-platform reputation is what your leadership needs to sign off. The trade-off is cost stacking: seats, plus Copilot, plus metered resolutions above the allowance, plus Talk for voice as a separate product. Our Zendesk alternatives comparison breaks down the full stack, and the Zendesk AI agents guide covers what its agents do and do not resolve.
6. Decagon
Decagon competes directly in Ada's enterprise tier and has built serious depth in the operational layer around the agent: configuration tooling, automated QA on the agent's own output, and rapid iteration across the agent lifecycle. Its published customer results include 70% chat and voice resolution at Chime and an 80% deflection rate at Duolingo.[9] Choose Decagon over Richpanel if you are an enterprise that already has a helpdesk you will not move, you want the deepest agent configuration and QA tooling available, and a contact-sales procurement cycle is normal for you. The trade-off is the same one Ada carries: pricing is not published, so you cannot model before a sales conversation, and the helpdesk bill underneath does not go away.
7. Sierra
Sierra prices on outcomes, described on its own site as "pay for a job well done" and "only pay for the value Sierra delivers", which is the most buyer-aligned billing philosophy in the enterprise tier.[10] It deploys across chat, SMS, WhatsApp, email, voice and ChatGPT, and its Ghostwriter tooling builds a production-ready multilingual, multichannel agent from uploaded material.[10] Choose Sierra over Richpanel if you are an enterprise that wants the vendor's revenue tied to resolved outcomes and needs voice and messaging breadth in one agent. The trade-off: no figures are published, so the outcome definition and the effective rate are both negotiated, and like Ada and Decagon it is a layer rather than a replacement.