Sleekplan
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A side-by-side editorial comparison of Formbricks and Gorgias — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Formbricks spends a whole RC train on making enterprise SSO stop breaking.
The 5.4 branch is deep in RC hardening and the subject is authentication. Three release candidates landed on 28 August, each a cumulative restatement of the last: Microsoft multi-tenant authorities failing on both native SSO and generic OIDC, local auth factors surviving an SSO recovery, OAuth state rejections no longer paging on-call, and MCP OAuth resource seeding made recoverable. The one piece of new capability is observability — every SSO callback outcome is now recorded.
From helpdesk-with-AI to AI-native helpdesk — Gorgias collapses its product story around the AI Agent.
Gorgias is publishing in dense bursts across three streams at once: AI-native product surfaces (MCP for Claude and ChatGPT, AI Agent pricing transparency, Helpdesk 2.0), original benchmark content (Ecom Lab, 2026 Conversational Commerce Report), and a steady ecommerce-support how-to library. The AI Agent is now the centerpiece; older helpdesk fundamentals get repositioned around it.
The 5.4 branch is deep in RC hardening and the subject is authentication. Three release candidates landed on 28 August, each a cumulative restatement of the last: Microsoft multi-tenant authorities failing on both native SSO and generic OIDC, local auth factors surviving an SSO recovery, OAuth state rejections no longer paging on-call, and MCP OAuth resource seeding made recoverable. The one piece of new capability is observability — every SSO callback outcome is now recorded.
The substance of 5.4 shipped in 5.4.0-rc.1 — metered workflow runs, Hub feedback filters, the unify-feedback surface — and everything since is the cost of that release meeting real identity providers. Nearly all of it is backported by a single engineer, which suggests a branch being nursed to a final rather than a team still building. Notably the MCP OAuth path is now being maintained alongside human SSO, so agent access is carrying the same auth burden as user access.
The pattern points at a 5.4.1 final once the multi-tenant fixes stop arriving, with the new SSO callback telemetry the most likely source of the next round of fixes. Substantive product work should resume on the Hub and the metered workflow_runs price rather than on this branch.
Gorgias is publishing in dense bursts across three streams at once: AI-native product surfaces (MCP for Claude and ChatGPT, AI Agent pricing transparency, Helpdesk 2.0), original benchmark content (Ecom Lab, 2026 Conversational Commerce Report), and a steady ecommerce-support how-to library. The AI Agent is now the centerpiece; older helpdesk fundamentals get repositioned around it.
The arc is from helpdesk-with-AI to AI-native helpdesk. MCP plus LLM-query workflows push Gorgias into agentic infrastructure territory; the Ecom Lab launch reads as a play for benchmark-authority as a moat; Gaia for Zendesk is a thinly veiled competitor-displacement tactic. Expect the product story to keep collapsing around the AI Agent.
Expect tighter packaging of AI Agent capability with benchmark data — plausibly a public Ecom Lab dashboard surfacing 'where you stand versus the Gorgias customer set' — and more free utilities aimed at users of competing helpdesks.
Other Support products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Formbricks or Gorgias.
Sleekplan is making the public feedback board safe to run with real customers on it
ServiceDesk Plus moved upstream of the ticket, then spent the week tidying the sidebar
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ManageEngine's cloud service desk drips small fixes; its AI arrives data center by data center
Asset management is the real build; the feed is mostly an interview series.
Hatz pulls its training platform off TalentLMS and runs it inside the tenant.
See all Formbricks alternatives → · See all Gorgias alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Gorgias is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 7.5 vs 5.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Gorgias is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 7.5 vs 5.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Support products to evaluate alongside.
Top Formbricks alternatives in Support are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Formbricks alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/formbricks for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top Gorgias alternatives in Support are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Gorgias alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/gorgias for the full list with editorial commentary on each.