Tidio: What It Is, Pricing and How to Use It (2026 Guide)

What is Tidio?

Tidio is customer service software built around a website chat widget, a shared inbox and an AI agent called Lyro. Visitors chat on your site, message you on Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp or email, and everything lands in one Help Desk inbox. Lyro answers the repetitive questions from your own content, Flows handle scripted moments such as abandoned carts, and your team takes the rest.

The product is made by Tidio, a company serving more than 300,000 businesses at the time of writing, with its deepest integrations in ecommerce (Shopify, WooCommerce) and customers in SaaS, services, education, finance and travel. Lyro is powered by Claude from Anthropic together with Tidio’s own models, and Tidio reports an average 75% resolution rate across customers, a vendor figure rather than an independent one.

The problem it solves is the gap between “we should answer chats faster” and “we cannot hire more agents”. Lyro takes the order-status and shipping-policy questions, Flows catch visitors at the right moment, and the inbox stops support from living in five tabs.

Who it is for

• Shopify and WooCommerce stores that get the same questions about orders, shipping and returns all day.
• Small support teams of one to ten agents who want chat, email and social in one inbox without a Zendesk-sized bill.
• SaaS and service businesses that want a chatbot on the pricing page and lead capture after hours.
• Agencies setting up support for clients, using templates and the Multiproject feature on Plus.

Tidio is not the right choice if you need enterprise ticketing with SLAs, complex routing and reporting across hundreds of agents, or if your support runs mainly on phone. It is also the wrong tool if your main channel is Instagram comments and DMs marketing rather than support; Manychat fits that better.

Key features

• Live Chat widget. Customisable chat window with multiple languages, a branded avatar, a Do-Not-Disturb schedule with automatic away messages, live visitors list and typing preview (Growth), installed by plugin or one JavaScript snippet.
• Lyro AI Agent. Learns from website URLs you add, uploaded question-and-answer pairs and, for Shopify and WooCommerce, your product catalogue. Answers only from that content, asks clarifying questions, reads images, and hands off to agents or creates tickets when it cannot help. Lyro Guidance sets tone and rules, Procedures handle multi-step scenarios, and Lyro Actions and Smart Actions perform tasks such as order lookups via API or MCP.
• Flows. No-code visual builder with 40+ templates (Recover carts, Cross sell, Collect data, Appointment booking, FAQ for Online Store, Instagram Story reply). Every Flow starts from a trigger and is metered by unique visitors reached.
• Help Desk. Shared inbox for chat, email, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp with tickets, tags, priorities, custom fields filled by AI, automatic chat assignment (Growth), macros (Growth), departments and ticketing automations (Plus).
• Copilot. AI reply assistant inside the inbox that summarises conversations and suggests replies; the advanced version is a Premium feature.
• Product Cards. Recommend products inside the chat using live store data.
• Analytics. Basic analytics on Free and Starter, advanced analytics on Growth, AI insights and CSAT on Premium.
• Apps and integrations. Desktop app, iOS and Android apps, Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress, email, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and an OpenAPI on Plus for custom data.

Pricing

Tidio has three meters that matter, and the plans sell them in different combinations. Billable conversations are conversations a human agent replies to or starts. Lyro AI conversations are customer interactions handled by Lyro, counted once per conversation. Flows visitors reached are unique visitors who trigger a Flow in a month.

Prices below are as displayed on the pricing page at the time of writing, which shows the annual rate with a “2 months free” toggle; monthly billing is higher. Check tidio.com/pricing for the monthly rate.

Plan	Price	Billable conversations	Seats	What it adds
Free	$0	50 per month	10	Live chat, ticketing, email and social channels, Flows builder and templates, first 50 Lyro conversations (lifetime), 100 Flows visitors per month, desktop and mobile apps
Starter	$24.17 per month (annual)	100 per month	10	Live visitors list, operating hours, basic analytics, 50 Lyro conversations (one-off), 100 Flows visitors; 7-day free trial
Growth	From $49.17 per month (annual)	From 250 per month, scaling to 2,000	10	Advanced analytics, user permissions, automatic chat assignment, automatic reply, live typing preview, viewed pages history, macros
Plus	From $300 per month plus usage	Custom	Custom	Premium support, dedicated success manager, discounted usage rates, departments, Multiproject, custom branding, ticketing automations, OpenAPI, larger attachments
Premium	Contact sales	Custom	Custom	From 3,000 Lyro conversations, guaranteed 50% Lyro resolution rate with pay-per-resolution billing, Lyro as a managed service, mobile SDK, AI insights and CSAT, SSO, advanced Copilot

Two standalone products sit alongside the seat plans:

• Lyro AI Agent starts at $32.50 per month for 50 conversations, with tiers at 100, 150, 200, 300, 500, 750 and 1,000 conversations per month and custom pricing above that. Only this plan refreshes your Lyro allowance monthly.
• Flows starts at $24.17 per month for 2,000 visitors reached, with options from 100 up to 100,000 visitors per month.

A store that wants humans on Growth, Lyro answering 300 chats a month and Flows reaching 5,000 visitors is therefore buying three things. Model your volumes before you pick.

How to use Tidio: step-by-step

1. Create an account and install the widget

1. Go to tidio.com, click Get Started and create an account. The onboarding tour ends with your installation code.
2. On Shopify, install the Tidio app from the Shopify App Store; on WordPress, install the Tidio plugin. Both connect in a few clicks.
3. On any other site, go to Settings > Live Chat > Installation, open the Manual install tab, click Copy to clipboard and paste the snippet just above the closing </body> tag of your template. Save and reload your site to see the widget.
4. Install the desktop app and the mobile app so notifications reach your team.

2. Customise the chat widget

1. In Settings > Live Chat, set the widget colour, position and avatar, and add greetings in each language you support.
2. Set a Do-Not-Disturb schedule so visitors see an away message and can leave their email outside working hours.
3. Decide which channels appear in the inbox: connect Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and your support email from the channels section of Settings.

3. Set up the Lyro AI Agent

1. Open Lyro AI Agent in the sidebar. The Setup page walks you through the recommended steps.
2. In Knowledge > Data sources, click Add knowledge and paste the URLs of your FAQ, shipping, returns and pricing pages. Add question-and-answer pairs for anything not on the site. Turn on automatic website synchronisation if your pages change often.
3. On Shopify or WooCommerce, connect Products so Lyro can recommend items and answer availability questions.
4. Give Lyro a name and a company description, set the tone of voice and decide whether it uses emojis.
5. In Behavior > Handoff, choose what happens when Lyro cannot answer: transfer to an online agent, create a ticket, or collect an email. Edit the handoff messages. Use Guidance to add rules such as “never promise delivery dates” and Procedures for multi-step cases like returns.
6. Open the Playground and ask twenty real customer questions. Fix wrong answers by editing the data source or adding a Q&A pair.
7. In Channels, decide whether Lyro is always first in line or only when agents are offline, and which channels it covers. Then activate it. Note that enabling Lyro disables any “Visitor says” Flows; re-enable them if you still need them.

4. Add a Flow

1. Go to Flows and open the template library. Start with Recover carts for a store or Collect data for a service business.
2. Each Flow begins with a trigger node (for example a visitor returning to the cart page). Edit the messages, buttons and conditions in the drag-and-drop builder.
3. Activate the Flow and check the visitors-reached counter after a week against your 100-visitor free allowance.

5. Run the inbox

1. In the Inbox, conversations from all channels appear together. Answer, assign to a teammate, add tags and set priority.
2. Save macros (Growth) for repeat answers and enable automatic chat assignment so new chats rotate across online agents.
3. Convert any chat or email into a ticket, add custom fields and let AI fill them.
4. Use Copilot to summarise long threads and draft replies, then edit before sending.

6. Measure and tune

1. Check Lyro Analytics and the Hub for resolution rate, unanswered questions and recommendations. Add knowledge for every recurring gap.
2. Review Analytics for response times and volumes per channel; on Growth, use advanced analytics for per-agent reporting.
3. Watch the three meters under your subscription page before each renewal and adjust the Lyro and Flows tiers to the volumes you actually see.

Tips to get better results

• Write a real FAQ page before training Lyro. It reads page text, not images or PDFs embedded on the page, so put policies in plain text.
• Add Q&A pairs for edge cases. Lyro refuses to invent answers, which is good; give it the answers to the ten questions that generate tickets.
• Use Guidance for tone and boundaries. Short rules such as “Use British spelling” and “Do not quote discounts” prevent most embarrassing replies.
• Set handoff to a ticket outside hours. Visitors get a response and your team gets a queue, and the conversation is not billed until an agent replies.
• Keep Flows narrow. One trigger, one goal. A cart-recovery Flow that also asks for newsletter sign-up performs worse at both.
• Test on mobile. Most store chats start on phones; check the widget does not cover your checkout button.
• Prompt Copilot like a colleague. Ask it to “summarise the issue and list what we promised” rather than “help”. Our guide on how to write better prompts covers the pattern.
• Let the Hub guide you. It lists unresolved questions; fixing the top five each week lifts the resolution rate more than any setting.

Limitations and common problems

• Cost predictability. Separate meters for human conversations, Lyro conversations and Flows visitors mean a busy month can trigger several upgrades. Set expectations with finance before launch.
• Lyro allowance on Starter is one-off, not monthly. Ongoing AI use needs the Lyro AI Agent plan.
• Content quality drives the AI. Thin or outdated pages produce thin answers; the AI is only as good as the FAQ you maintain.
• Growth features gate the team workflow. Permissions, automatic assignment and macros are not on Free or Starter.
• Deeper help-desk integrations are Premium. Connecting Lyro to Zendesk, Intercom or Salesforce via Lyro Connect requires the Premium tier.
• Flows and Lyro can conflict. Enabling Lyro turns off “Visitor says” Flows; plan which tool owns which intent.
• Phone support is not a channel. Tidio does not include voice; pair it with a phone system if you need calls.

Alternatives

• LiveChat - polished live chat for sales and support with a separate ChatBot product; stronger reporting, higher per-agent price. See our support and messaging tools.
• Gorgias - ecommerce help desk built for Shopify with its own AI agent; better for larger stores with many order-related tickets.
• Intercom - more capable AI agent (Fin) and product messaging for SaaS, at a much higher price.
• Manychat - if your conversations happen in Instagram and WhatsApp marketing rather than on your site. See our Manychat guide.
• Crisp or Chatwoot - cheaper or open-source shared inboxes for teams that need fewer AI features.

For teams that also sell by phone and text, see our phone and communication tools.

Verdict

Sign up for Tidio if you run a small store or service business, want an AI agent handling most first-line chats within a day of setup, and can live with usage-based pricing. Start on the free plan, train Lyro on your FAQ page, test it in the Playground, and measure how many of your real chats it closes before buying a Lyro tier. Skip it if you need enterprise ticketing, voice support, or a single predictable per-seat price.