Your helpdesk fails at the worst possible moment by definition: ticket volume spikes exactly when something else is broken. Over the 180 days ending July 2026, Zendesk ran clean (100%, A+, zero major incidents), Gorgias posted 99.89% (B+) with 2 incidents totaling 180 minutes, and Intercom was the weakest at 99.39% (B) with 4 separate major incidents totaling 1,028 minutes, roughly 17 hours.
The numbers, side by side
| Metric (180 days ending July 2026) | Gorgias | Zendesk | Intercom |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uptime (major/critical incidents) | 99.89% | 100% | 99.39% |
| StatusBird reliability grade | B+ | A+ | B |
| Major or critical incidents | 2 | 0 | 4 |
| Total downtime | 180 minutes | 0 minutes | 1,028 minutes |
How these numbers are measured: StatusBird checks each service's status every 2 minutes, around the clock. Uptime counts major and critical incidents over the 180 days ending July 2026; brief degraded periods are excluded so chronically noisy status pages do not distort the comparison. Full details on the methodology page.
How reliable is Gorgias?
Two incidents totaling three hours in six months is a decent record for an e-commerce-focused helpdesk. History: Gorgias reliability page and is Gorgias reliable.
How reliable is Zendesk?
Zero major incidents in the window. See the Zendesk reliability page and is Zendesk reliable.
How reliable is Intercom?
Four major incidents is the most in the support category this window. If your chat widget is also a sales channel, those are direct revenue interruptions, not just support gaps. Details: Intercom reliability page and is Intercom reliable.
Why helpdesk uptime compounds with everything else
The nightmare scenario is a double outage: your store or payment provider goes down, tickets flood in, and the helpdesk is degraded at the same time. Monitoring your support tool alongside your revenue stack means you learn about the compound failure immediately and can switch to a backup channel (a status page, social, or plain email) before the queue melts down.
Start monitoring your stack free with StatusBird: 3 services, no credit card required. Pro is $29/month for all 84 services with SMS, email, Slack, Teams, and Discord alerts within 2 minutes of a status change.