A Shopify brand with a support team writes all day. Every return, late parcel, sizing question and damaged item becomes a Gorgias ticket, answered by an agent who often starts from a macro and edits it, with an internal note when the case needs a decision. On the Shopify side, order notes, timeline comments and Shopify Inbox chats record the same customers from the store's point of view. Put together, that is years of real customer service in writing, tied to what was actually ordered and refunded.
Merchants already search whether Shopify sells their data. The sharper question for a brand thinking about licensing is what Shopify and Gorgias say about the brand's own records, and how much of them each tool lets you take out.
Mercor names retail and e-commerce among the industries it buys from, and Polyshares buys support tickets. This page covers what the two tools hold, how each export works and where it stops, the lines in Shopify's and Gorgias's published terms quoted with dates, and the questions to ask a buyer.
Worth
What a brand's data may be worth
Pre-set for a typical brand: 25 staff and 5 years of records. No buyer publishes pricing by industry, so industry does not move the band. Our estimate, not a buyer quote.
Buyers
Which buyers want this data
Each reason is the buyer's own published statement about the tools, data or industries it takes, matched to how Shopify brands work.
Featured partners
Polyshares
Names retail and buys support tickets, email and CRM records, the core of a Gorgias account.12,13
- $100K to $2M+, Polyshares says10
- None, Polyshares says14
- An offer in 1 to 2 weeks, then paid in 30 to 60 days15
Watch out for: Exclusive by default, and every deal it lists is exclusive with no end date.16,17
Everyone else we reviewed
By score, with full reviews. We have no referral agreement with these companies, so we do not link out to them.
Buyer demand
How buyers' own tools rate Shopify brands
No buyer publishes a price list by industry. These are settings inside buyers' and brokers' own estimators and intake forms, read from their public pages on 2026-10-14. They show how each company sorts industries, not what any brand was paid. The category shown is the one a brand would most likely pick; that match is ours.
| Company | Its category | How it rates the industry |
|---|---|---|
| Troveo | Retail or e-commerce | Tier 3 of 4: "Standard buyer demand for your industry." Price factor 1.0 in its estimator.25 |
| Polyshares | Retail and ecommerce | Not marked premium (9 of its 45 industries are)26 |
Size rules buyers publish
Checked against 25 staff, the typical brand size this page's calculator is set to. Ask each buyer whether contractors and part-time staff count.
Polyshares
No headcount rule; the length and texture of the record matter more27
Mercor
None stated28
Troveo
No minimum stated; its estimator starts at 2029
Nyne
20+ US W-2 employees and 3+ years30
Handshake AI
20+ full-time employees and 3+ years31
micro1
Pewter
20+ staff and 3+ years34
Endless
Roughly 30+ employees35
Ventra
30+ US employees and 3+ years of records36
Supersoniq
50+ employees and 5+ years37
What buyers value
What in a brand's records buyers value
The column on the right is not legal advice: it lists what to raise with the buyer before anything is exported.
| Data | Where it lives | Why a buyer values it | Raise with the buyer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resolved support tickets | Gorgias tickets across email, chat and SMS | A customer problem, the agent's answer and the outcome, thousands of times over, the clearest service record a brand has. | Customer names, emails, addresses and order numbers in every thread. |
| Macros and how agents edit them | Gorgias macros | The brand's approved answers, plus the variations agents write when a stock reply does not fit. | Nothing specific |
| Internal notes on tickets | Gorgias internal notes | The reasoning behind refunds, exceptions and escalations that customers never see. | Internal notes are left out of the self-serve export; ask support for a custom export. |
| Order notes and timeline comments | Shopify order Notes column and Timeline | Staff comments on specific orders, linked to what was bought, shipped and refunded. | Timeline comments: Shopify's help page does not describe exporting them. |
| Shopify Inbox conversations | Shopify Inbox | Pre-purchase questions and answers, the sales side of the same customers. | No export described in Shopify's Inbox help pages. |
| Order and customer records | Shopify orders and customers CSV exports | The outcome data that turns a ticket into a labelled example: what was ordered, returned or refunded. | Payment and address fields. |
A week of records
A week of data at a brand
- Monday: a weekend sale leaves two hundred Gorgias tickets, mostly where is my order, answered from a tracking macro.
- Tuesday: an agent leaves an internal note approving a refund outside the return window for a repeat customer.
- Wednesday: Shopify Inbox fills with sizing questions on a new product drop.
- Thursday: a damaged-in-transit batch from one carrier produces a run of tickets and timeline comments on the affected orders.
- Friday: the support lead rewrites two macros after reading the week's escalations.
Process
How it works with each buyer
In each buyer's own published words. Where a buyer publishes nothing, we say so rather than guess.
Polyshares
Selling or closing
Selling or closing your brand? License its data first
Brands change hands often, and a store's support history can outlast the store. Gorgias says that on request it makes Customer Data available for 45 days after termination, while Shopify's merchant terms say only that the account closes. Take any export a buyer needs before either subscription ends, not after.3,4
FAQ
Shopify and Gorgias data: questions, answered
Shopify's Terms of Service say it does not take ownership of the Materials a merchant provides but requires a license to them, which it may use to operate, improve and promote its services. They contain no AI clause for merchants. We quote the terms; we do not interpret them.4
Shopify's API terms, last updated 2026-10-07, say developers may not use merchant data, including anonymous or aggregate forms, to train or improve AI or machine learning systems, except with Shopify's prior written consent or, for one store's data, that merchant's consent. The rule took effect 2026-02-27.1,2
Gorgias's self-serve export with message content covers the most recent 30 days, up to 100,000 tickets, and leaves out internal notes. View exports reach 1 million tickets but without message text. Full custom exports, including customer notes and macros, go through Gorgias support.5
The Master Subscription Agreement says Customer Data remains owned by the customer. Gorgias may use it to improve its own internal AI models but says it will not use it to train third-party providers' models. Customers may not use Gorgias Output to train their own models.41
Mercor names retail and e-commerce among its industries, and Polyshares names retail and buys support tickets, email and CRM records. Neither names Shopify or Gorgias. Most buyers pay within 2-8 weeks of signing: Mercor wires in 2-4 weeks, Polyshares and Ventra pay on net 30 or 60 terms, and Cognor Labs cites 3-6 weeks.18,12,13,22,15,43,44
Shopify stores have no Census code of their own. In 2022, US online and mail-order retailers numbered 7,206 with 10+ employees and 2,549 with 30+. Most buyers want 20 to 30 or more: micro1 and Return My Time look for 30+, while Nyne, Cognor Labs and Goldmined.ai start at about 20. Mercor, Troveo and Jottings AI state no minimum.7,32,45,30,46,47,48,29,49
We do not answer legal questions. Ask the licensing company: their team reviews this with you before anything is signed.
We do not answer legal questions. Ask the licensing company: their team reviews this with you before anything is signed.
Before you sign
Legal questions go to the licensing company
We do not answer legal questions. Ask the licensing company before you sign: their team reviews these with you.
Questions for this kind of business
- Will you collect data through a Shopify or Gorgias app, through our own exports, or through Gorgias support?
- How are customer names, emails, addresses and order numbers removed from tickets before transfer?
- Are payment details and card fragments excluded from every file?
- How do CCPA, GDPR, UK GDPR and state privacy laws apply, and is de-identified data still personal information?
- Do customer, vendor or platform contracts, NDAs or API terms restrict this?
Questions for any buyer
- Is the license exclusive, and for how long?
- Can you sublicense the data, and to whom?
- Which AI labs will receive it, and will you tell us?
- How long do you keep it, and how is it deleted?
- What is your liability cap, and who indemnifies whom?
- Will the contract ban re-identification of people in the data?
- Who removes personal data, by what method, and do we approve it first?