Tidio for Ecommerce: Shopify Orders, Lyro and Flows Costs

Tidio suits a small online store well, as long as you budget for three meters instead of one. The Free plan already installs on Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce, syncs chat contacts into the store and runs Flows with five Shopify-only nodes. The money features sit higher. Order actions inside the inbox (cancel, refund, edit the shipping address) start on Growth, from $59 a month billed monthly or $49.17 a month billed annually for 250 billable conversations, for the whole project ^[1]. AI product recommendations need a paid Lyro quota on top. Our verdict: a strong fit for Shopify stores under 2,000 human-answered conversations a month. WooCommerce stores get less.

Getting Tidio into Shopify, WooCommerce or BigCommerce

On Shopify, you install the Tidio app from the Shopify App Store, create the account, then switch the widget on under Online Store > Themes > Customize > App embeds. That switch must be flipped again after every theme change. Stores miss this constantly. A store with an existing Tidio account can paste the snippet into theme.liquid instead, with billing then direct with Tidio. Pick one method, never both. Stores still on the old separate Tidio Shopify Bot app must re-integrate through the main app, because that app is being removed.

WooCommerce runs through the WordPress plugin: click Integrate Now, grant read access to products, and active products sync on their own. On both platforms a product appears only with a SKU and Active status. BigCommerce installs from the BigCommerce Marketplace. Once connected, Shopify receives the email, name and phone collected in chats in its Customers tab, tagged as imported from Tidio. Every platform's path is in our Tidio install guide.

Orders, refunds and addresses without leaving the chat

This is where Shopify stores gain most. During a chat, agents see the shopper's cart preview and order history beside the conversation. On Growth, they can act on it: cancel an unfulfilled order with options to refund, restock and notify the customer, submit a refund, or edit the shipping address ^[2]. Refunds go only to the payment methods the shopper used and cannot exceed what was paid. Tidio's case study says Procosmet agents cancel, modify or refund orders from the conversation panel on Plus.

Order-status questions need no agent at all. The Check Order Status node in Flows looks up orders placed within the last 60 days. Lyro also has a Shopify order-status Action template that asks for the email and order ID, adds a zip-code check by default and returns a tracking link. Every Plus and Premium subscriber gets that template; among paid-Lyro subscribers, only selected ones do. Agents can also send catalog product cards over live chat and Messenger, only to shoppers who are online.

Product recommendations: what Lyro needs before it sells

Lyro recommends products only with a paid Lyro quota or during the 7-day trial, whatever the plan. On Shopify it also needs the Tidio app, Lyro switched on and a valid store schema ^[3]. WooCommerce works through the plugin. Other stores, BigCommerce included, use the OpenAPI product endpoints (paid Lyro plus a developer) or an XML feed in Google Merchant Center format, which is Plus only. Lyro shows cards with picture, name and price, with Add to cart on Shopify and WooCommerce. It knows stock and reads the cart to suggest complementary products.

Product data decides the result. Recommendations may not show when descriptions are under 10 characters or come from a third-party app, because Lyro reads Shopify's API data, not the rendered page. The quota is its own meter: Lyro starts at $39 a month billed monthly, or $32.50 a month billed annually, for 50 Lyro conversations a month. Each conversation Lyro joins counts once, whether or not anything sells. Tidio's case study says NSI Australia ran the AI agent alone at a 62% resolution rate, with 400+ orders assisted in 30 days.

Recommendations also work on Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and email threads, all included on every plan. WhatsApp gives each number 1,000 free outgoing messages a month, counting agent, Lyro and Flows replies; above that, paid plans pay Meta's local rates, billed by Tidio at month end with no markup, while Free and trial projects stop at 1,000. Tidio cannot start a WhatsApp conversation, so cart recovery there is off the table. Instagram needs a Business account linked to a Facebook Page.

Abandoned carts, coupons and sales Flows

Flows are the free sales engine. On Shopify, cart, checkout and purchase tracking is on by default; other platforms need a developer to add a tracking call after the chat script. Five nodes are Shopify-only: Check Order Status, Product Availability, Shipping Zones, Coupon Code and Recommend products, plus a visitor-adds-to-cart trigger. Tidio says it has 40+ templates and that they can stop up to 60% of shoppers from leaving without buying. Our Flows tutorial walks through the builder.

The Coupon Code node has firm limits. It creates only percentage discounts on the whole order, with a code name of up to 16 characters. On Shopify the coupon lands in Shopify Discounts, but editing the value in Tidio later does not update the store. For attribution, Tidio credits a sale completed within 7 days of a chat, ticket or sales flow; a flow sale counts only when the shopper used the flow's coupon. Free covers 100 Flows visitors a month, and at that limit Flows stop for new visitors while live chat keeps working. Paid Flows start at $29 a month billed monthly, or $24.17 a month billed annually, for 2,000 visitors a month.

Peak season: what a sale week does to the bill

Volume is the real ecommerce risk. Tidio bills a conversation only when a human agent replies or starts it, once however many messages follow; conversations Lyro or Flows handle alone are not billable. At 100% of the quota, agents cannot see or answer new conversations until an upgrade or the monthly reset. Tidio's case study says Burker's Lyro handled 10,000 conversations at about 80% resolution in April, when it hit the plan's conversation limit during a website sale.

Automatic upgrades change the picture on monthly plans ^[4]. For new projects on monthly self-serve Starter, Growth, Lyro and Flows packages, they are on by default. An alert comes at 80%, and at 95% the package moves up a level, for example from Growth 250 at $59 a month to Growth 400 at $89 a month, both billed monthly. Annual plans, Free and the trial never upgrade themselves. The Terms separately let Tidio upgrade an over-limit account and suspend service if you refuse.

So choose by billing term. On monthly billing, auto-upgrade trades a higher tier for never going dark mid-sale; switch it off only if a missed chat costs less than the next tier. On annual billing nothing moves on its own, so raise the tier before the rush. Lyro threads close after 15 minutes of inactivity, and a shopper who returns later opens a newly counted Lyro conversation. The Terms owe no refunds (discretionary ones are capped at three months).

Tidio or Gorgias for a store

Both price per account by volume, not per agent. They count differently, though. Gorgias counts tickets, including Rule auto-replies and AI Agent interactions; Tidio counts only conversations a human answers, with 10 seats included. Gorgias puts its Shopify order tools on every plan, while Tidio holds them for Growth. Gorgias's AI Agent works with Shopify only, and Voice and SMS are Gorgias add-ons. Tidio has no native SMS or phone channel. Gorgias has no free plan; both offer a 7-day trial without a card.

At about 300 conversations a month, Gorgias Basic costs $60 a month billed monthly or $50 billed annually for 300 tickets, while Tidio needs Growth 400 at $89 billed monthly or $74.17 billed annually, or Growth 250 at $59 or $49.17 if humans answer 250 or fewer. Near 2,000 the two converge: Gorgias Pro is $360 a month billed monthly or $300 billed annually, Tidio Growth 2,000 is $349 or $290.83. With about 200 AI conversations added, Gorgias Pro plus AI Agent comes to $550 a month billed monthly or $471 billed annually for 190 interactions, while Tidio Growth 2,000 plus a 200-conversation Lyro quota comes to $489 billed monthly or $407.50 billed annually, by our arithmetic.

Above 2,000, Tidio needs Plus, from $300 a month plus usage through sales, while Gorgias Advanced is $900 a month billed monthly or $750 billed annually for 5,000 tickets. Units differ, so no single cheaper verdict holds. Gorgias fees are non-refundable under its agreement except where the law requires or at its discretion. Tidio's case study says Your KAYA moved over from Gorgias in under 14 days, and that Lyro now handles 75% of its tickets. Our Gorgias review covers the other side.

The bottom line

Tidio gives a Shopify store a lot for free: chat, contact sync, cart tracking and five store-aware Flow nodes. Pay only for what moves revenue. Growth unlocks order actions in the inbox, a paid Lyro quota unlocks product recommendations, and a Flows package lifts the 100-visitor cap. WooCommerce stores get product cards through the official plugin and Lyro recommendations, while BigCommerce stores get Lyro recommendations only through the OpenAPI product endpoints or the Plus product feed; neither gets native order actions. Watch the conversation meter before any sale, decide on automatic upgrades deliberately, and compare against Gorgias at your real ticket volume.