Tidio

Live chat and an AI agent for SMBs, priced by the conversation rather than the seat

Tidio is a customer service platform for small and mid-sized businesses, especially ecommerce, that combines a live chat widget, a help desk and ticketing system, a no-code automation builder called Flows, and Lyro, an AI agent that answers customer questions from your own content. Its defining commercial trait is that plans are priced by billable conversation volume rather than per agent, with Lyro AI conversations metered separately at roughly $0.5 each.

Visit website

Overview

Tidio built its business on the widget. It is one of the easiest live chat tools to install on Shopify, WordPress, or WooCommerce, it has a free plan, and it has spent a decade optimising the path from 'add script tag' to 'answer a customer'. The company reports 300,000-plus customers, agents, and brands, with Under Armour, The Body Shop, and Stanley among the named logos.

The product now has four parts: Live Chat, Help Desk for ticketing and assignment, Flows for no-code automation with 40-plus ecommerce templates covering abandoned carts and lead capture, and Lyro, the AI agent. Tidio claims Lyro eliminates up to 90% of low-level support questions and cites a 67% average automation rate, which it describes as the highest resolution rate on the market. Channels cover live chat, email, Instagram DMs and comments, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp, with 120-plus integrations and Shopify order and cart context built in.

The pricing needs care. Seats are not the meter; billable conversations are, and the plans are tight at the bottom (50 on Free, 100 on Starter, up to 2,000 on Growth). Lyro is a separate add-on starting around $32.50 a month, billed per AI conversation at roughly $0.5, where a conversation is any interaction with at least one AI reply regardless of how many messages follow. That is cheaper per unit than Help Scout's $0.75 per resolution, but the billing trigger is broader: Tidio charges when the AI replies, not only when it succeeds. The top Premium tier does offer pay-per-resolution billing with a guaranteed 50% Lyro resolution rate, but it is quote-only and starts well above startup scale.

Best for

Small and mid-sized ecommerce businesses, especially Shopify and WooCommerce stores, that want a live chat widget running today, AI handling order-status and shipping questions, and no per-seat charge for a rota of part-time agents.

Not the right fit for

B2B software companies with technical customers; Tidio's channel mix and Flows templates are built for retail, and there is no Slack, Teams, or Discord support model. Plain is the right shape there.
Teams whose support is mostly long-form email with complex, high-touch threads; the product is chat-first and its email handling is thinner than Help Scout's.
Anyone whose volume is high but whose budget is fixed; conversation-based pricing plus per-AI-conversation Lyro billing means both meters move with success, and the cheapest plans cap out fast.
Buyers who need self-hosting, data residency guarantees, or source-code control; Tidio is proprietary SaaS. Chatwoot is the alternative.
Teams that need voice or telephony; there is no phone channel.

How it works

1
You install the widget, usually through the Shopify, WordPress, or WooCommerce app, and connect the other channels: an email address, Instagram DMs and comments, Messenger, and WhatsApp. Everything arrives in one panel with typing previews, macros, and AI-suggested replies, and on Shopify stores the agent sees cart contents, order history, and product recommendations alongside the conversation.
2
Help Desk adds the ticket layer: managing, assigning, prioritising, and replying, with automated routing and workflows on the higher tiers. Growth adds automatic assignment, macros, permissions, and advanced analytics, which is where the product stops being a chat widget and starts being a support system.
3
Flows is the no-code automation builder, and it is more commerce-oriented than most: 40-plus ecommerce templates for abandoned cart recovery, lead generation, discount offers, and engagement, triggered by visitor behaviour. Flows is metered by visitors reached rather than conversations, and it is sold as its own add-on starting around $24.17 a month from 2,000 visitors.
4
Lyro is the AI agent. It scrapes your support content automatically to build a knowledge base and answers only from what you supply, with guardrails intended to prevent invention. It handles order status, shipping, and availability questions, qualifies leads through Smart Actions, recommends products, escalates to humans under configurable handoff rules, and can call external systems for real-time actions. It is billed at roughly $0.5 per AI conversation, defined as any interaction containing at least one AI reply.

Feature breakdown

25 features in 5 modules

Live chat

The original product, and still the fastest widget in this set to get running.

Lightweight chat widget: Customisable branding, positioning, and multilingual support, installed through native apps for Shopify, WordPress, and WooCommerce or a script tag.
Typing previews: Agents see what a visitor is composing before it is sent, which shortens response time on high-volume chat but is a privacy posture some teams decline.
Macros and canned replies: Reusable multi-step responses available from the Growth tier, which is where repetitive commerce questions stop consuming agent time.
AI reply suggestions: Draft responses offered to human agents inside the conversation, distinct from Lyro handling the customer directly.
Visitor context: Page history, session data, and, on Shopify stores, live cart contents and order history attached to the conversation.

Lyro AI agent

The centre of Tidio's 2026 positioning, and the line item to model carefully.

Automatic knowledge ingestion: Lyro scrapes your existing support content to build its knowledge base rather than requiring you to author a bot script from scratch.
Grounded answers only: The vendor states Lyro answers solely from content you supply, with guardrails intended to prevent fabrication, and that it learns from human agents' replies over time.
Commerce question handling: Order status, shipping, and product availability are the questions Lyro is explicitly built for, which is why it fits DTC stores better than B2B support.
Smart Actions: Lead qualification and product recommendation flows executed by the AI, plus integration with external systems for real-time actions.
Configurable handoff: Real-time conversation monitoring with flexible rules for escalating to a human, so the bot does not trap a frustrated customer.
Per-conversation billing: Roughly $0.5 per AI conversation, where a conversation is any interaction with at least one AI reply regardless of follow-up volume. Note this is per reply-bearing interaction, not per successful resolution.
Resolution-rate claims: Tidio cites a 67% average automation rate and states Lyro can eliminate up to 90% of low-level questions; the Premium tier goes further with a guaranteed 50% resolution rate and pay-per-resolution billing.

Help desk and ticketing

The operational layer that turns a chat widget into support software.

Ticket management: Manage, assign, prioritise, and reply to customer requests in one place, with automated workflows and routing.
Automatic assignment: Distribution of conversations across the team without manual triage, available from the Growth tier.
Permissions: Role controls on Growth and above; Plus adds departments and multiproject support for businesses running several brands or stores.
Analytics: Sales contribution, conversation volume, operator performance, and satisfaction rates, with advanced analytics arriving on Growth.
Multichannel inbox: Live chat, email, Instagram DMs and comments, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp in one panel; Instagram comment handling in particular is a genuine commerce advantage.

Flows automation

A no-code builder that is unusually commerce-specific, and separately metered.

40+ ecommerce templates: Prebuilt flows for abandoned cart recovery, lead generation, discount delivery, and engagement, which is a meaningfully faster start than a blank canvas.
Behaviour triggers: Flows fire on page, time on site, cart state, and visitor behaviour rather than only on an inbound message.
Visitors-reached metering: Flows is billed by visitors reached (100 on Free and Starter, 2,000 on Growth) and sold as an add-on from around $24.17 a month for 2,000 visitors, which is a separate meter from conversations and from Lyro.
Shopify order actions: Cart preview, order history, and product recommendations surfaced inside flows and conversations for Shopify stores.

Platform and integrations

Broad connector coverage aimed at the SMB commerce stack.

120+ integrations: Shopify, WordPress, WooCommerce, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Google Analytics, Zendesk, and Zapier are among the named connectors.
Apps across every platform: Mobile apps for iOS and Android plus desktop apps for Windows and Mac, which suits owner-operators answering chat from a phone.
OpenAPI access: Programmatic access is positioned on the Plus tier rather than being available to smaller customers, which limits what a small team can build.
Custom branding: Removing Tidio branding from the widget is a Plus-tier feature, starting from $300 a month.

Use cases

4 documented

Shopify store owner doing support alone

Where-is-my-order messages arrive through chat, Instagram DMs, and email all day, and there is no budget for support software or a support hire.

The free plan covers 50 billable conversations and 50 one-time Lyro conversations with a 10-seat allowance, and the Shopify app surfaces order and cart context in the chat, so the most common question gets answered without opening the admin.

DTC brand heading into Black Friday

Volume will quadruple for six weeks, hiring seasonal agents is impractical, and the goal is to keep response times under a minute without a bigger team.

Growth handles up to 2,000 billable conversations, Flows recovers abandoned carts automatically, and Lyro absorbs order-status volume at roughly $0.5 per AI conversation. Budget for the spike: 3,000 AI conversations is about $1,500 on top of the plan.

Small team with a rota of part-time agents

Six people cover chat across evenings and weekends, but no one works full time, and per-seat pricing charges full price for a quarter of a shift.

Tidio's meter is conversations, not seats (the free plan alone includes 10), so a large rota of part-time agents costs nothing extra and the bill reflects actual volume rather than headcount.

Multi-brand retailer consolidating tools

Two stores each run a separate chat tool, agents switch tabs constantly, and neither has real analytics or branded widgets.

Plus, from $300 a month plus usage, adds departments, multiproject support, custom branding, OpenAPI access, discounted usage rates, and a dedicated success manager, which is the tier where consolidation actually works.

Pricing

from $24.17/mo (Starter, as published on the pricing page)

Volume-based subscription metered by billable conversations rather than by agent, with Lyro AI conversations and Flows visitors sold as separate add-on meters. Annual billing offers two months free; the top Premium tier is quote-only and uses pay-per-resolution AI billing.

Plan	Price	Includes
Free	$0 per month	50 billable conversations 50 Lyro AI conversations (one-time, not monthly) 100 Flows visitors reached 10 seats Unusually generous on seats and unusually tight on volume. The 50-conversation ceiling is the binding constraint, and the Lyro allowance is a one-off trial rather than a recurring allowance.
Starter	$24.17 per month, as published	100 billable conversations 50 Lyro AI Agent conversations 100 Flows visitors reached Live chat, ticketing, basic analytics
Growth	From $49.17 per month	Up to 2,000 billable conversations Custom Lyro AI conversation volume Advanced analytics, automatic assignment Macros and permissions Marked Popular by the vendor, and the first tier with the operational features a real support team needs.
Plus	From $300 per month plus usage fees	Custom billable conversation volume Discounted usage rates Departments, multiproject, custom branding, OpenAPI Dedicated success manager and premium support
Premium	Custom quoted	From 3,000 Lyro AI conversations Guaranteed 50% Lyro AI resolution rate Pay-per-resolution billing Managed service with Slack support The only tier that bills AI on resolutions rather than conversations, and the only one with a resolution-rate guarantee. It is quote-only and priced well beyond startup scale.

Add-ons

Lyro AI Agent (From $32.50/mo for 50 conversations (roughly $0.5 per AI conversation)): A conversation is any interaction containing at least one AI reply, regardless of how many follow-up messages occur. This bills on AI participation, not on successful resolution.
Flows (From $24.17/mo for 2,000 visitors reached): Metered by visitors reached, a separate meter from both billable conversations and Lyro conversations.

Billing notes

The meter is billable conversations, not agents. That is genuinely good for teams with a large part-time rota (the free plan alone includes 10 seats) and genuinely bad for teams whose volume grows faster than their headcount.
There are three separate meters to track: billable conversations on the plan, Lyro AI conversations, and Flows visitors reached. Each is sold and consumed independently, which makes the effective monthly bill harder to predict than a flat per-seat price.
Lyro bills at roughly $0.5 per AI conversation, defined as any interaction with at least one AI reply. Compare carefully with per-resolution models: Help Scout's $0.75 is higher per unit but only charged when the AI actually resolves the session, while Tidio charges whenever the AI participates.
The free plan's 50 Lyro conversations are a one-time allowance rather than a monthly reset, so it functions as an AI trial rather than an ongoing free tier.
Annual billing offers two months free; monthly and annual commitments are both available.
Published prices such as $24.17 and $49.17 appear to be monthly equivalents of annualised amounts; confirm the exact monthly and annual figures in checkout before budgeting.
Custom branding and OpenAPI access are gated to the Plus tier starting from $300 a month plus usage, which is a steep gate for two features small teams often expect.
The published $24.17 and $49.17 rates are annual-equivalents. The pricing page opens on an Annually toggle advertising two months free, which puts the monthly rates one fifth higher, around $29 and $59, though Tidio does not render the monthly figures without the toggle.
Prices are as of October 2026 and are quoted in USD.

Value assessment: For a small ecommerce team, Tidio is easy to justify at the bottom: a free plan with 10 seats, a same-day Shopify install, and a genuinely competent widget. The economics get harder as you grow, because three meters move at once and none of them is headcount. A store handling 2,000 conversations a month with 1,000 of them going through Lyro is looking at the Growth plan plus roughly $500 of AI on top, and the discounted usage rates that fix this arrive at the $300 Plus tier. Compared with Crisp's flat $95 workspace with bundled AI credits, Tidio is more expensive at moderate volume and better at very low volume. Buy Tidio for the widget, the Shopify depth, and the free tier; watch the Lyro meter closely from the first month, because it bills on AI participation rather than on AI success.

Entry price history

Entry price first recorded on 1 October 2026. It will be re-checked when this category next comes round the rotation.

Checked	Entry price	What happened
1 October 2026	$24.17	First recorded

Dates are when SaaSTracker checked the vendor’s published pricing, not when the vendor changed it. See the price changes log for movements across the whole database.

Strengths & limitations

Strengths

The fastest path from nothing to a working chat widget in this category, with native Shopify, WordPress, and WooCommerce apps and 120-plus integrations.
Conversation-based rather than seat-based pricing, which is genuinely better for teams running a large rota of part-time agents; even the free plan includes 10 seats.
Lyro is well suited to its actual job: order status, shipping, and availability questions grounded in your own content, with configurable handoff and Smart Actions for lead qualification.
A free plan that is a real product, not a demo, including the widget, the help desk, and a one-time Lyro allowance.
Genuine commerce depth: Shopify cart preview and order history in the conversation, Instagram comment handling, and 40-plus ecommerce Flows templates for abandoned carts and lead capture.
Apps for iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac plus a fast support operation of its own (24/5 email and chat with a claimed one-minute average response), which matters to owner-operators.
The largest and best-resourced company among the startup-friendly options here: roughly 180 employees across San Francisco, Warsaw, and Szczecin, with about $26.8M raised.

Limitations

Three separate meters (billable conversations, Lyro AI conversations, Flows visitors) make the real monthly cost genuinely hard to forecast, and all three move with success.
Lyro bills per AI conversation rather than per resolution on every self-serve tier, so you pay when the AI participates even if it fails and a human finishes the job. Pay-per-resolution is reserved for the quote-only Premium tier.
Conversation caps on the lower tiers are tight: 50 on Free and 100 on Starter, which a modest store will exceed in a week.
The free plan's 50 Lyro conversations are one-time, not monthly, which is easy to misread as an ongoing allowance.
Custom branding and OpenAPI access sit behind the $300 Plus tier, which is a large jump for two features small teams reasonably expect earlier.
Weak fit outside retail: no Slack, Teams, or Discord support model, thinner long-form email handling than Help Scout, and no telephony at all.
Proprietary SaaS with no self-hosting and no published data-residency options, which rules it out for sovereignty-constrained buyers.

Head-to-head comparisons

7 alternatives

Tidio vs Crisp

from $45/mo flat (Mini, 4 seats included)

Both are chat-led SMB platforms, but the meters differ fundamentally: Crisp charges a flat workspace fee ($95 for 10 seats on Essentials) with AI credits bundled, while Tidio charges by conversation volume with Lyro billed separately at roughly $0.5 per AI conversation. Tidio wins on Shopify depth, Flows commerce templates, and the free tier; Crisp wins decisively on predictability and total cost once volume climbs. Start on Tidio, and run the Crisp comparison the month your Lyro bill first surprises you.

Full Tidio vs Crisp comparison

Tidio vs Help Scout

from $21/user/mo (Standard, billed annually; $25 monthly)

Help Scout is the email-first, B2B-leaning product with better long-form conversation handling, SOC 2 and HIPAA, and per-seat pricing plus $0.75 per AI resolution. Tidio is the chat-first, ecommerce-leaning product with conversation-based pricing and $0.5 per AI conversation. The AI comparison is subtler than the unit prices suggest: Help Scout charges only when its agent resolves the session, Tidio charges whenever its agent replies, so at low success rates Tidio can cost more per resolved problem despite the lower headline number.

Full Tidio vs Help Scout comparison

Tidio vs Chatwoot

from $0 (Community Edition self-hosted, or cloud Hacker tier); $19 per agent per month for cloud Startups

Chatwoot's cloud Startups tier at $19 per agent includes WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, and a help centre with 300 Captain AI credits, and the self-hosted Community Edition costs nothing at all. Tidio is more polished, far easier to install on Shopify, and stronger on commerce automation, but every meter moves with your growth. Choose Tidio if you want it working this afternoon on a store; choose Chatwoot if you have engineering capacity and want the cost curve and the data under your control.

Full Tidio vs Chatwoot comparison

Tidio vs LiveChat

from $19 per person per month billed annually ($25 monthly) on the Starter plan, limited to one user

LiveChat is the older, more corporate sibling: a mature agent workspace with routing, work scheduling, and staffing prediction, sold per person from $19 a month with no free plan and a 14-day trial. Tidio is cheaper to start, has a genuine free tier, installs on Shopify in minutes, and bundles Lyro as a metered add-on rather than a separate subscription. LiveChat's autonomous AI agent lives on Text's separate platform, so a buyer comparing the two pricing pages is not comparing like with like. Pick LiveChat when several agents share shifts and supervision matters; pick Tidio when a small store wants chat and automation working the same afternoon.

Full Tidio vs LiveChat comparison

Tidio vs Zendesk

from $19 per agent per month (Support Team, billed annually); $55 per agent per month for Suite Team

Zendesk is what you buy when support becomes an operation: custom ticket fields and forms, SLA policies with business-hours calendars, skills-based routing, and a multi-brand help center with custom domains, all feeding one omnichannel queue. The published $55 Suite Team seat is a fraction of the real price once Copilot at $50 a seat and resolutions at $1.50 to $2.00 stack on top, and side conversations and custom reporting need the $115 Professional tier. Tidio costs a fraction of that, prices by conversation instead of seat, and reads Shopify order history natively. Stores under a few thousand conversations a month should stay on Tidio; teams with contractual SLAs should move to Zendesk.

Full Tidio vs Zendesk comparison

Tidio vs Re:amaze

from $29 per team member per month (Basic, $26.10 billed annually), or $59 a month flat for unlimited team members on Starter

Re:amaze is the inbox-first alternative for stores whose support has spread beyond chat. It is priced per seat from $29, or $59 flat for unlimited users under 500 conversations, with email, social, WhatsApp, and on Pro SMS, voice and multi-brand in one queue, and an AI agent that includes resolutions per seat before $0.85 each. Tidio is cheaper and stronger on AI for a chat-led store with modest volume; Re:amaze fits once email, social and several brands matter as much as the widget.

Full Tidio vs Re:amaze comparison

Tidio vs Olark

from $29 per agent per month for human live chat; $400 a month billed annually for the AI Website Agent with one seat

Olark starts higher and prices AI in the opposite way: human chat at $29 per agent, and an AI website agent at $400 a month on an annual contract with unlimited conversations and no overage. Tidio's free plan and conversation bundles are the better deal for a small store with modest traffic. A B2B or services site with steady traffic that it wants qualified rather than just answered gets a predictable bill and a lead-qualification agent from Olark.

Full Tidio vs Olark comparison

Pairs well with

7 categories

Tidio is a support tool, and a team running it still has 7 neighbouring categories to staff. The pick in each is Scribe for product onboarding & PLG, Stunning for retention & churn prevention, TrustPulse for testimonials & social proof, Patreon for community platforms, Courier for notification infrastructure, Heap for product analytics & session replay and Gumroad for subscription billing, each the leading tool in that category on published criteria.

ScribeProduct Onboarding & PLG · Ease of Use
Because
Tidio is built for support, not onboarding. Scribe adds widest compliance surface of any documentation tool here.
Benefit
New users reach the thing the product is for without a call, and the drop-off shows up in the data.
StunningRetention & Churn Prevention · Ease of Use
Because
Tidio is built for support, not retention. Stunning adds payment update pages.
Benefit
Accounts at risk surface while there is still time to call, rather than at renewal.
TrustPulseTestimonials & Social Proof · Ease of Use
Because
Tidio is built for support, not social proof. TrustPulse adds genuine targeting controls including page-level from the entry plan and mobile device.
Benefit
Real customer proof sits on the pages where people decide, not only on a review site.
PatreonCommunity Platforms · Ease of Use
Because
Tidio is built for support, not community. Patreon adds thirteen years old.
Benefit
Customers answer each other in a space the company owns, rather than in a chat nobody can search.
CourierNotification Infrastructure · Ease of Use
Because
Tidio is built for support, not notifications. Courier adds simplest pricing in the category.
Benefit
Product events reach people on the channel they actually read, without building a sender for each one.
HeapProduct Analytics & Session Replay · Ease of Use
Because
Tidio lists custom branding and OpenAPI access sit behind the $300 Plus tier among its limits. Heap adds a free plan with 10,000 monthly sessions.
Benefit
Feature usage and drop-off are measurable, so a roadmap argument can end with evidence.
GumroadSubscription Billing · Ease of Use
Because
Tidio is built for support, not billing. Gumroad adds built-in audience and email layer.
Benefit
Recurring revenue bills, retries and reconciles itself, including the tax nobody wants to calculate.

Pairings follow the methodology: the leading tool in each complementary category, chosen on published criteria. Placement cannot be purchased.

Full Tidio stack

Implementation & onboarding

Setup time: Under thirty minutes for a live widget through the Shopify or WordPress app. Connecting Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, building Flows from templates, and training Lyro on your content is realistically one to two weeks, most of it spent making the knowledge content good enough for the AI.
Learning curve: Low throughout. The interface is designed for non-technical owner-operators, Flows starts from templates rather than a blank canvas, and Lyro ingests content automatically rather than requiring a scripted bot. The genuinely hard part is not the software: it is tuning Lyro's handoff rules and monitoring the three meters so the bill does not surprise you.
Onboarding: Self-serve on all published tiers with a 7-day free trial and no credit card. Plus adds a dedicated success manager and premium support; Premium is a managed service with Slack support. Tidio's own support runs 24/5 on email and chat with a claimed one-minute average response.
Migration notes: Importing from another chat tool is straightforward for contacts but rarely clean for conversation history, and Tidio's own Zendesk integration suggests coexistence is a common pattern rather than a full cutover. The larger effort is rebuilding automations, since Flows templates do not map to another vendor's bot logic, and Lyro must reingest your content and be re-tuned regardless of what the previous AI had learned.

Platform, API & security

Platforms: Web appiOS and Android appsWindows and Mac desktop appsChat widgetOpenAPI access (Plus tier)
API: OpenAPI access is positioned on the Plus tier from $300 a month rather than being generally available; 120-plus integrations plus Zapier cover the connector needs of smaller customers.
Compliance: GDPR handling as a company operating from Poland under EU lawDetailed certification evidence is not published on the main marketing pages
Data residency: Not published on public pages; the company operates from Poland with a San Francisco presence.
SSO: Not published as a standard self-serve feature; enquire on the Plus or Premium tiers.
Security notes: Tidio's public pages carry limited formal security disclosure relative to competitors such as Help Scout (SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA) and Chatwoot (SOC 2 Type II). Buyers with a vendor-security process should request documentation directly. The EU operating base may be advantageous for GDPR posture.

Support & resources

Channels: Live chat and email support 24/5 with a claimed one-minute average responseHelp centreDedicated success manager on PlusManaged service with Slack support on Premium
Documentation: Help centre and product documentation aimed at non-technical operators, thorough on installation and Flows, lighter on developer-facing material given API access is a top-tier feature.
Community: No large official user forum; the company runs a substantial content and comparison marketing programme instead.

Company

Founded: 2013
Headquarters: Szczecin, Poland, with offices in Warsaw and San Francisco
Ownership: Venture-backed
Founders: Tytus Golas (CEO), Marcin Wiktor
Employees: 180+ (company statements, 2026)
Funding: Approximately $26.8M raised, including a $25M Series B in May 2022 led by PeakSpan Capital with Inovo Venture Partners and angel participation; earlier investors include bValue Fund.

Funding history

Round	Amount	Year	Notes
Seed	~700,000 euro	2018	Early financing to build chatbot automation for customer service.
Series B	$25M	2022	Led by PeakSpan Capital with Inovo Venture Partners participating.

Timeline

2013Founded in Szczecin, Poland by Tytus Golas and Marcin Wiktor as a live chat widget aimed at small online businesses.
2018Raises roughly 700,000 euro in seed financing to build chatbot automation on top of the chat product.
2022Raises a $25M Series B led by PeakSpan Capital, bringing total funding to roughly $26.8M, and expands to Warsaw and San Francisco.
2023Launches Lyro, the AI agent that answers customer questions from ingested support content, and repositions the company around AI for SMBs.
2025Adds Smart Actions, external-system integration, and configurable handoff rules to Lyro; claims a 67% average automation rate.
2026Reports 300,000-plus customers, agents, and brands across 120-plus integrations, and introduces a quote-only Premium tier with pay-per-resolution AI billing and a guaranteed 50% Lyro resolution rate.

Integrations

Shopify
WordPress and WooCommerce
WhatsApp
Instagram DMs and comments
Facebook Messenger
HubSpot
Mailchimp
Google Analytics
Zendesk
Zapier
OpenAPI (Plus tier)
120+ integrations (vendor count)

Frequently asked questions

13 questions

What is Tidio?

Tidio is a customer service platform for small and mid-sized businesses combining a live chat widget, a help desk and ticketing system, a no-code automation builder called Flows, and an AI agent called Lyro. It is heavily oriented toward ecommerce, with native Shopify, WordPress, and WooCommerce apps and 40-plus commerce automation templates.

How much does Tidio cost?

There is a free plan with 50 billable conversations and 10 seats, then Starter at $24.17 a month, Growth from $49.17, Plus from $300 a month plus usage, and a quote-only Premium tier. Lyro AI is a separate add-on from $32.50 a month, and Flows is another add-on from $24.17. Annual billing offers two months free and there is a 7-day free trial.

How does Tidio's AI pricing work?

Lyro is billed at roughly $0.5 per AI conversation, where a conversation is any interaction containing at least one AI reply regardless of how many follow-up messages occur. Importantly, this bills on AI participation rather than on successful resolution, so you pay even if the AI fails and a human finishes the job. Pay-per-resolution billing exists only on the quote-only Premium tier, which also carries a guaranteed 50% resolution rate.

What is a billable conversation in Tidio?

Billable conversations are the primary meter on Tidio's plans, replacing the per-agent pricing most competitors use. Allowances are 50 on Free, 100 on Starter, up to 2,000 on Growth, and custom on Plus and Premium. Because seats are not metered (the free plan includes 10), Tidio is unusually good value for teams with many part-time agents and poor value for teams whose volume grows faster than their headcount.

Is the Tidio free plan any good?

For a very small store, yes. It includes the live chat widget, the help desk, 10 seats, 50 billable conversations, and 100 Flows visitors. The caveat worth knowing is that the 50 Lyro AI conversations are a one-time allowance rather than a monthly reset, so the free plan is a real chat tool but only a trial of the AI.

How accurate is Lyro and can it make things up?

Tidio states that Lyro answers only from content you supply, with guardrails intended to prevent fabrication, and that it learns from human agents' replies over time. The company cites a 67% average automation rate and claims Lyro can eliminate up to 90% of low-level questions. Treat those as vendor figures: measure your own resolution rate during the trial, because at $0.5 per AI conversation the accuracy rate directly determines your effective cost per resolved problem.

Does Tidio work with Shopify?

Yes, and it is the strongest reason to choose it. There is a native Shopify app, and the integration surfaces cart preview, order history, and product recommendations inside the conversation, so an agent or Lyro can answer an order-status question without opening the store admin. WooCommerce and WordPress have equivalent native apps.

Does Tidio support WhatsApp and Instagram?

Yes. Channels cover live chat, email, Instagram DMs and comments, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp in a single panel. Instagram comment handling in particular is genuinely useful for consumer brands, since it captures the public questions most help desks ignore.

How is Tidio different from Intercom or Zendesk?

Both of those are larger platforms that have moved upmarket, priced per seat with enterprise features and procurement to match. Tidio stays deliberately in the SMB and ecommerce lane: a free plan, a same-day Shopify install, conversation-based rather than seat-based pricing, and an AI agent aimed at order-status questions. It does far less in B2B, long-form email, and enterprise workflow, and it has no telephony.

Who is Tidio best for?

Small and mid-sized ecommerce businesses, especially Shopify and WooCommerce stores, that want chat running today, need order-status questions handled automatically, and have a rota of part-time agents that per-seat pricing would punish. It is a poor fit for B2B software companies, email-heavy high-touch support, and any buyer with data-residency or telephony requirements.

What should I pair Tidio with?

What do I pair with Tidio for Product Onboarding & PLG?

Scribe. Tidio is built for support, not onboarding. Scribe adds widest compliance surface of any documentation tool here.

Is Tidio enough on its own?

For support, yes. Tidio does not cover retention & churn prevention, testimonials & social proof and community platforms, and its own profile says so; Stunning, TrustPulse and Patreon are the tools that fill those gaps.

Editorial verdict

Tidio is the most commercially polished SMB chat product in this set and the easiest to put live on a store, and its conversation-based pricing is a genuine kindness to teams with many part-time agents. Lyro is a competent agent aimed at exactly the right questions for its audience. What holds it back is the metering: three independent meters, all moving with your success, and an AI that bills on participation rather than on resolution everywhere except the quote-only Premium tier. That is the least buyer-friendly structure among the AI models in this category, even though the $0.5 unit price looks cheaper than Help Scout's $0.75. Choose Tidio for the widget, the Shopify depth, and the free tier, measure your real Lyro resolution rate during the trial, and compare the resulting number against Crisp's flat workspace fee before you commit at volume.

Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.