Tidio Chatbot Flows: Build a Rule-Based Bot Step by Step

Tidio Flows is the rule-based half of Tidio's chatbot: a drag-and-drop builder where every bot starts with a trigger, branches on conditions and ends in actions such as a chat message, a coupon or a handoff to a person. The builder, the templates and an unlimited number of flows come with every plan, including Free^[1]. What you pay for is reach. The Free plan covers 100 unique visitors a month per project, and paid Flows tiers start at $29 a month billed monthly, or $24.17 a month billed annually, for 2,000 visitors. Replies from a flow never count as billable conversations. Build with Flows when the questions are predictable, and leave open-ended questions to Lyro, Tidio's AI agent.

Step 1: start from a template and a trigger

Open the Flows section and you can build from scratch in a visual editor or start from ready templates, which Tidio groups as Sales, Leads and Support flows. Tidio says there are 40+ templates, free on every account. You can filter them by channel (live chat, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp), and some ask you to connect a Shopify store first. A Strategies tab suggests bundles of three flows based on the industry you named at sign-up. The FAQ template shows the basic pattern: a trigger, a Decision node with quick replies, and a chat message answering each choice.

Every flow starts with a trigger, and choosing it is the real design decision. Visitor-action triggers include first visit, returning visitor, a specific page, scroll depth, days and times, a form abandoned and the mouse leaving the window, which fires after the pointer stays outside for more than 5 seconds. Shopify stores also get an add-to-cart trigger once tracking is on. Custom events sent with tidioChatApi.track become New Event triggers, so a developer can start a flow on any site action. Agent triggers cover a conversation no agent takes, or an agent starting a flow by hand.

Visitor Says is the odd one out. It reads what a visitor types, using natural language processing in eight languages: English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish and Greek, one language per trigger. Tidio suggests at least three trigger phrases per trigger and ships predefined phrase sets for order status, discount codes and shipping details. It only works in conversations not yet assigned to an agent. Other languages fall back to exact keyword matching, which catches far less.

The editor autosaves a draft, and the Activate button saves and switches the flow on. The Test it out option opens the widget with the flow already triggered, which beats waiting for a real visitor. One trap: several active flows with the same trigger all fire at once and can stack messages on one visitor. Give each trigger one owner. Repetitive triggers can be limited per person, and a custom contact property checked by a condition lets a flow send a message only once.

Step 2: branch with conditions, then act

Conditions sort visitors before anything is said. The editor checks variables, URL, chat status, channel, browser, operating system, mobile, returning visitor, day, language, mailing-list status, department status and Shopify cart value, and most return a simple yes or no. Two carry strings. Department status needs Departments, a Plus feature, and cart value needs a Shopify store. The language condition is how one flow serves several languages: it reads the browser language and branches per language, with an else path for everyone else.

Tidio lists over 20 actions^[2]. Messages, questions, decisions, delays, tags and contact properties do the talking and sorting; the delay built into a chat message caps at 15 seconds, so longer pauses need a separate Delay action. Decision quick replies take up to eleven answers, buttons up to three, and card messages up to ten cards with three buttons each. The rest of the toolbox is where flows earn money or save agents time:

• API call sends GET, POST, PATCH, PUT or DELETE requests to your own systems, with API key, bearer or basic authentication. Tidio helps configure it only on Plus, and warns against returning order details looked up by predictable order numbers.
• Coupon Code creates a percentage discount on the whole order, never a fixed amount, with a name up to 16 characters; with Shopify connected, the coupon lands in Shopify Discounts.
• Recommend products (Shopify) uses the last product the visitor added to the cart, and Tidio keeps that product ID for one hour only.
• Send a form collects data and up to 10 files of 10 MB each, in the website widget only.
• Assign to an agent ends the flow; with round-robin assignment, a Growth feature, the chat goes straight to an agent.
• Send to Zapier passes on data the flow collected, one way.

The other Shopify nodes, Check Order Status (orders from the last 60 days), Product Availability and Shipping Zones, answer the questions stores get most; our ecommerce guide goes deeper. A loop must pass back through a Decision node to work. Portals hand a visitor from one flow to another, on live chat only. Built flows travel too: export one as JSON and import it into another project.

Flows on Instagram and WhatsApp

Flows run beyond the widget, but with fewer parts. Instagram flows support five triggers: Visitor Says, story reply, agent starts the flow, agent does not take the conversation and agent solves the conversation. Actions cover messages, questions, quick replies, buttons, cards, email, Zapier, tags and contact properties, and Instagram shows these flows on mobile only. WhatsApp is narrower still: three triggers work (Visitor Says, agent does not take the conversation, agent starts the flow), and quick replies show just the first three buttons^[3]. Send a form works on neither channel, nor on Messenger.

Two channel rules catch people out. A multichannel trigger such as Visitor Says is live on every connected channel and cannot be limited to one. And every WhatsApp number gets 1,000 free outgoing messages a month, with flow replies counted alongside agent and Lyro replies. Past that, paid plans pay Meta's rates, billed by Tidio at month end. Free and trial projects simply stop at 1,000. Design WhatsApp flows short.

The Flows quota and what counts as billable

Flows are metered by unique visitors reached. One visitor who runs at least one flow uses one unit of the month's quota, however many flows or runs follow. The quota refreshes every 30 days, from the payment date on paid plans and from account creation on Free, and at once when you buy a bigger package. When it runs out, flows stop for new visitors until the reset. Live chat with agents keeps working.

Intermediate tiers fill the gaps: 3,000 visitors at $39, 15,000 at $85, 20,000 at $99, 30,000 at $119, 40,000 at $139 and 75,000 at $239, each a month billed monthly. Size by visitors who meet a flow, not by flows built. A greeting on the first-visit trigger reaches nearly every new visitor, so its quota tracks traffic. By our arithmetic, the 10,000 tier costs $828 a year billed monthly against $690 a year billed annually, and the price per visitor falls from about 1.5 cents at 2,000 to 0.3 cents at 100,000.

The billing rule is why flows pay off. Replies from a flow do not count as agent replies, so a conversation a flow handles alone is not a billable conversation^[1]. It costs one Flows visitor and nothing against the plan's conversation quota. Once an agent replies, typically after Assign to an agent, the conversation becomes billable, and it counts once. Monthly self-serve Flows packages on new projects upgrade automatically by default: an alert at 80% and a move to the next level at 95%, unless you switch it off. Plan prices and the other two meters are in our pricing guide.

Flows and Lyro: who answers first

Flows follow the paths you draw, while Lyro answers from your support content and is not limited to predefined questions. They share one queue. In general a visitor meets flows first, then Lyro, then agents, though triggers, channels and handoff settings change the order^[4]. Flows can start before the visitor writes, so a proactive flow takes priority, and Lyro takes a conversation only if no flow has already taken it. Lyro's proactive roles, which open conversations on page views or cart events, spend the Flows quota.

The split that works is simple. Flows handle anything with a fixed answer or a business action: quote forms, coupons, order lookups, consent, routing. Lyro handles the long tail of free-text questions, on its own separate quota; only 50 Lyro conversations come free, once per project, and our AI playbook covers the rest. Tidio's case studies show what flows alone can carry. Tidio's case study says Pastreez, a French Shopify store, reached a 70% conversion rate on chat inquiries using Flows only. Monster Tires says it built a Request a Quote flow in 15 minutes and that about one-third of visitors use it instead of phoning.

The bottom line

Flows is the cheapest automation layer in Tidio, and the most predictable. Every plan gets the builder, the templates and unlimited flows; you pay only for reach, starting with 100 free visitors a month, and conversations a flow handles alone never touch the billable quota. Start from a template, give each trigger one owner, test before activating, and size the quota by the visitors your triggers actually meet. Keep WhatsApp and Instagram flows simple. Then let Lyro take what the rules cannot.