How can I track customer emails sent from my admin area on Shopify?

Topic summary

  • Main issue: No centralized way in Shopify admin to track which emails were sent to which customers; viewing requires opening each individual order.
  • Workflow pain: Users rely on templates with Shopify variables (e.g., {{customer.first_name}}) for personalization, but external email clients (e.g., Thunderbird) don’t support these variables, leading to manual replies.
  • Community input: Another participant reported similar needs, reinforcing the gap.
  • Update/solution: A “Helpdesk” app is suggested as the fix. Recommendation: Gorgias (Shopify App Store link provided). Zendesk was criticized for customer service and fee practices by the poster.
  • Outcome/status: No native Shopify feature identified; third-party helpdesk tools are the proposed approach. Discussion effectively resolved with this recommendation.
Summarized with AI on January 18. AI used: gpt-5.

Since years, I’m missing quite an importnt feature on shopify, that could improve customer contact with email a lot. Maybe someone knows a solution, an app or whatever could help.

When I’m sending an email to a customer, most of the time I go in the order inside ahopify admin. I click on the contact email address, put in text, or often I use templates that I created. These templates use shopify variables like {{customer.first_name}} and many more. After sending the mail, there is actually no possibility to check from my admin area, which customer I sent which email. I need to open the order again. Why is there no collected access to all customer mails, similar what MS Outlook or Thunderbird is doing. Just within the shopify admin ares (like an app) where I can use my templates with the variables.

When customers send me an email, I receive those emails with my email application (Thunderbird). But while answering in Thunderbird, I can’t use shopify variables, which makes it hard to work with templates. So it’s a lot of manual writing and work.

What am I doing wrong here? I slowly think I don’t understand customer messaging on shopify, because this can’t really be the way how you guys are doing this? There must be an easier way I hope. Thank you for help!

1 Like

I need almost similar answers. I am grateful in advance to anyone who will help.

I found a solution. The magic word is called Helpdesk. The best app seems to be Gorgias:

https://apps.shopify.com/helpdesk

Zendesk seems to have a very bad customer service and fee management.