Tidio is a customer-service platform for small and midsize businesses that puts a live chat widget, a shared inbox with ticketing, the Lyro AI Agent and the Flows chatbot builder under one login. The pricing is the draw. You pay per project (one website or widget setup) per month, sized by billable conversations, with 10 seats included instead of a fee per agent. Starter costs $29 a month billed monthly, or $24.17 a month billed annually, for 100 billable conversations, and a permanent Free plan covers 50 a month.
The catch is the three meters: AI conversations and Flows visitors are priced separately. Our verdict is clear. Tidio suits small teams that answer chat, email and social messages together, and it is a weaker fit for phone support, protected health data or teams beyond 10 seats.
What Tidio is, and who stands behind it
The contracting company is Tidio LLC, a California LLC in San Francisco, with Tidio Poland Sp. z o.o. in Szczecin as joint data controller. Tidio was founded in Szczecin in 2013 and sells to businesses only. Tidio says more than 300,000 businesses use it. Every plan, Free included, covers five message types: the website chat widget, email, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. Agents can also start video calls inside the widget, and there are desktop apps for Windows and macOS plus mobile apps for iOS and Android.
The help desk side is more complete than the chat-tool reputation suggests. Every email reaching a connected mailbox becomes a ticket with a status (Open, Pending or Solved) and a priority, and agents get internal notes, mentions, merging of tickets from one sender, custom views and tags. SLA policies set internal first-reply and next-reply targets per ticket source, measured in calendar hours and never shown to customers. Growth adds macros, permissions and automatic assignment, though assignment covers live chat and social messages only. Plus includes ticketing automations and departments.
Plans and the three meters that set your bill
Prices shown are what Tidio lists for visitors in the United States, in US dollars. Your price can differ by country, currency and local taxes such as VAT.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed annually | Included each month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 50 billable conversations, 10 seats, 100 Flows visitors |
| Starter | $29 a month | $24.17 a month ($290 a year) | 100 billable conversations, 10 seats |
| Growth, entry tier | $59 a month | $49.17 a month ($590 a year) | 250 billable conversations, 10 seats |
| Growth, top tier | $349 a month | $290.83 a month ($3,490 a year) | 2,000 billable conversations, 10 seats |
| Plus | From $300 a month plus monthly usage | Through sales | Custom quotas and seats |
| Premium | Custom pricing | Through sales | Custom |
The first meter is billable conversations. A conversation counts once, however many messages it holds, and only when a human agent replies to it or starts it; replies from Lyro or Flows do not count [1]. Social conversations and tickets draw on the same quota, which resets monthly. At 100% of it, agents can no longer see or answer new conversations until the reset or an upgrade. That is a hard stop. Annual billing charges ten months for twelve, so it only pays off if you stay at least ten months.
The second meter is the Lyro AI Agent. Each project gets 50 Lyro conversations once, for its lifetime, and they never refresh. After that, Lyro starts at $39 a month billed monthly, or $32.50 a month billed annually, for 50 Lyro conversations a month, up to 1,000 for $700 billed monthly or $583.33 billed annually. Lyro counts a conversation the first time it answers, and a thread closes after 15 minutes of inactivity, so a returning visitor opens a newly counted one [2]. Billing is per conversation joined. Not per resolution.
The third meter is Flows, the rule-based chatbot layer. The free amount is 100 reached visitors a month; paid Flows quotas run from $29 a month billed monthly ($24.17 billed annually) for 2,000 up to $299 a month billed monthly ($249.17 billed annually) for the largest tier. A team answering 100 conversations by hand that adds 100 Lyro conversations pays $104 a month billed monthly, by our arithmetic ($29 plus $75). At 1,000 human conversations plus 500 Lyro conversations on annual billing, the total reaches $440.83 a month. AI quickly outgrows the plan.
Watch the upgrade switch. Automatic upgrades are on by default for new projects on monthly self-serve Customer Service, Lyro and Flows packages: Tidio alerts you at 80% of a quota and moves the package up one level at 95%, for example from 250 to 400 billable conversations [3]. They never apply on Free, during the trial, on annual plans or on Plus, and you can switch them off. The Terms also let Tidio upgrade an account that exceeds its plan and suspend service if you refuse.
The trial lasts 7 days without a card, then the account moves to Free at no charge. You can cancel any time and keep paid features until the period ends. The Terms owe no refunds for partial periods, downgrades or unused time, and a discretionary refund is capped at three months of service [4]. With that rule, a cautious buyer starts monthly. Our full Tidio pricing breakdown lists every Growth tier and the main Lyro and Flows quotas on both billing terms.
Every Tidio project gets 50 Lyro conversations once, never refreshed; ongoing AI answers need a paid Lyro quota on top of the conversation plan.
Lyro, Flows and Copilot: what the AI actually does
Lyro answers only from knowledge you supply: website pages, manual Q&A, CSV files, PDFs, a public Zendesk Help Center or Tidio's own Help Centers. It does not search the web, it shows its sources, and it hands off to a human or creates a ticket when unsure. It speaks 48 languages. On email it answers only the first message of a new thread. Tidio says Lyro runs on Anthropic's Claude plus its own models, and that its customers average a 75% resolution rate; only Premium carries a guaranteed 50%, along with pay-per-resolution billing.
Lyro Actions let the agent call external systems for order status, address changes, returns or bookings. Free, Starter and Growth get one Action without a paid Lyro quota and three with one, and Plus raises that to 10. You supply the logic and credentials, and the Terms leave the results with you. They also require you to verify AI output and tell end users they are talking to AI. Product recommendations in chat need a paid Lyro quota. For setup depth, read our Tidio AI playbook.
Flows builds trigger, condition and action chains on a visual canvas, with triggers such as first visit, exit intent or a Shopify add-to-cart, plus Shopify-only nodes for order status and coupon codes. Tidio says it ships 40+ templates. The number of Flows is unlimited on every plan; only visitors reached are metered. For agents, Copilot suggests replies from the same knowledge Lyro uses and is listed on every plan. Order matters. By default, Flows fire first, then Lyro, then a human.
Only conversations a human agent replies to or starts are billable; ones Lyro or Flows handle alone do not use the plan's conversation quota.
Where Tidio falls short
The clearest gap is voice. Tidio has no native SMS or phone channel, and Tidio itself offers no phone support. Support reaches every plan by email, live chat with Tidio's team starts on Plus, and Slack support is a Premium perk. The 10-seat ceiling on Free, Starter and Growth is the second limit: an eleventh agent means Plus, which Tidio lists from $300 a month plus monthly usage, through sales. Departments, OpenAPI access, webhooks and the Analytics API also wait at Plus. SSO is Premium only.
Security documentation is reasonable but not enterprise-deep. Tidio says it completed a SOC 2 Type II examination, and it offers 2FA and a GDPR data processing agreement inside the Terms. Data is mainly processed in the EEA, yet the privacy policy allows transfers to the United States. Tidio is not a HIPAA business associate. It does not publish an audit log, SCIM provisioning or IP restrictions, and the Terms state no uptime commitment. Transcripts export one at a time. Health-data teams should look elsewhere.
Two smaller frictions deserve a check. WhatsApp includes 1,000 free outgoing messages per number a month, counting agent, Lyro and Flows replies; beyond that, paid plans are billed at Meta's local rates at month end, while Free and trial projects cannot send more. Tidio's Zendesk integration asks for a Zendesk API token, while Zendesk stopped issuing new API tokens in October 2026. Confirm the connection method with Tidio.
On new projects with monthly self-serve packages, automatic upgrades are on by default and move a package up a level at 95% of its quota. Switch them off if you prefer a hard cap, knowing agents then cannot see new conversations at 100% until the monthly reset.
How we score Tidio
Our scorecard rates Tidio on the same axes as the other help desks in this category, each from its own evidence, so the breakdown shows where the price advantage is offset by the gates and meters above. Tidio lands at 3.6/5. In our reading, value for small teams and channel breadth on every plan are the strengths, while enterprise controls, developer access below Plus and the missing voice channel pull it down.
Email (forwarding or one-click Gmail), Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and the website widget land in one inbox on every plan with no per-channel fee, and the native integrations are on every plan including Free: Shopify (with native order actions from Growth), WooCommerce, WordPress, BigCommerce, Wix, Squarespace and other store builders, HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Omnisend, GA4, Google Tag Manager, a Zendesk ticket link and Zapier (one way, Tidio to the app, only data collected by a Flow); Lyro Connect (Plus and Premium) puts Lyro on top of Zendesk, Intercom or Salesforce, and Lyro can call external MCP servers. Held back by a developer platform that starts high: the full OpenAPI, webhooks, the Analytics API and its MCP server need Plus (sales-led, from $300 a month plus usage) or Premium (custom pricing), with only the product endpoints open to a paid Lyro quota at 10 requests a minute; Slack and Stripe are Plus and Premium only, and many directory entries (Twilio, Telegram and others) are custom integrations built for Plus or Premium customers. There is no native SMS, phone or voice channel, Tidio cannot start a WhatsApp conversation, and WhatsApp messages above 1,000 per number a month are billed at Meta's local rate (Free and trial projects cannot exceed 1,000).
One product covers live chat with live video calls, a shared inbox with email ticketing, SLA policies for ticket response targets, the Flows visual automation builder (unlimited Flows, triggers from page visits to Shopify add-to-cart, HTTP API call and Shopify order, availability and coupon nodes) and the Lyro AI Agent, with a live visitors list, operating hours and Chat Page from Starter and permissions with custom roles, automatic chat assignment, macros, satisfaction surveys and advanced analytics from Growth. Held back by depth that sits on the sales-led plans: departments, ticketing automations, ticket import and migration services, the Analytics API and seats beyond 10 need Plus, SSO, the super admin role and the Mobile SDK need Premium, automatic assignment covers live chat and social but leaves emails unassigned, and Analytics Overview looks back three months at most. Tidio does not publish an audit log, SCIM or IP restriction, transcripts export one at a time with no batch download, there is no native phone channel, and Tidio says itself it is not a full CRM or an ITIL service desk.
A permanent Free plan at $0 with no card covers 50 billable conversations a month, 10 seats, 100 Flows visitors a month and 50 Lyro conversations once, and paid plans are priced per project by human-answered conversations with 10 seats included, never per seat: Starter $29 a month billed monthly or $24.17 a month billed annually for 100 conversations, Growth from $59 a month billed monthly or $49.17 a month billed annually for 250, up to $349 a month billed monthly for 2,000; conversations Lyro or Flows handle alone are not billable, and for 10 agents Growth 1,000 at $149.17 a month billed annually costs less than the per-agent help desks in our catalog except Zoho Desk Standard billed annually (our arithmetic). Held back by three separate meters: Lyro AI starts at $39 a month billed monthly or $32.50 billed annually for 50 Lyro conversations (counted per conversation Lyro joins, not per resolution), Flows beyond 100 visitors start at $29 a month billed monthly or $24.17 billed annually for 2,000, and the free Lyro conversations never refresh. Automatic upgrades are on by default for new projects on monthly self-serve packages (the package moves up a level at 95% of a quota unless switched off), the Terms owe no refunds for partial periods or unused time (discretionary refunds capped at three months), annual billing saves 16.7% but equals monthly at 10 months of use (our arithmetic), and more than 10 seats means Plus, from $300 a month plus usage.
Signup needs no card, a 7-day trial unlocks the full feature set of any Customer Service, Lyro or Flows plan and the account then moves to Free with no charge, installation is one JavaScript line or a ready plugin or app (WordPress and WooCommerce plugin, Shopify App Store app switched on under App embeds, BigCommerce Marketplace app, custom code on Wix and Squarespace), and agents work from the browser panel, desktop apps for Windows and macOS or mobile apps for iOS and Android, with 40+ Flows templates (Tidio's figure) and Lyro answering in 48 languages. Held back by a pricing model buyers must model on three meters (billable conversations, Lyro conversations, Flows visitors), an automatic-upgrade switch to check at checkout, a hard stop at the conversation limit (agents cannot see or answer new conversations until the reset or an upgrade), an admin panel in 6 languages, Wix installs needing a paid Wix plan and a connected domain since the Wix app was dropped in September 2024, a widget that must be switched on again after every Shopify theme change, and enabling Lyro switching off existing Visitor Says Flows until they are re-enabled by hand.
The Lyro AI Agent answers only from the knowledge you give it (website pages, Q&A, CSV, PDF, a public Zendesk Help Center, store products) in 48 languages, shows sources, hands off to a human or opens a ticket when unsure, and works on live chat, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and the first email of a thread; Actions call external APIs (order status, returns, bookings), Guidance sets tone and handoff rules, Procedures run multi-step workflows, proactive roles open conversations, Lyro can use external MCP servers, Copilot and an AI reply assistant are listed on every plan, and a free Copilot Chrome extension works inside Gorgias, Intercom and Zendesk. Tidio says Lyro runs on Claude plus its own models, the Terms bar sub-processors (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Cloud) from training their foundation models on customer inputs and outputs, and Premium adds a guaranteed 50% Lyro resolution rate with pay-per-resolution billing. Held back by AI that is a separate paid quota counted per conversation Lyro joins rather than per resolution, 50 free Lyro conversations once per project, Actions capped at 1 without paid Lyro, 3 with it and 10 on Plus, Guidance at 5 below Plus, Lyro Connect on Plus and Premium only, a fair-use token limit that can queue or throttle heavy users after notice, and Terms that make the customer verify AI output and tell end users they are talking to AI.
Tidio says it completed a SOC 2 Type II examination (report on request through its Trust Center), a DPA is part of the Terms with EU-US Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses, data is encrypted with TLS 1.2+ in transit and AES-256 at rest, 2FA is available, and a public status page tracks live chat, Lyro, Flows, ticketing, the widget, the API and the Meta channels with email or Slack alerts. Support over email comes with every plan, live-chat support from Tidio on weekdays starts on Plus, Slack support and a dedicated services team are Premium, and the Plus and Premium plans add a Success Manager and implementation help. Held back by no phone support, no uptime commitment in the Terms, no HIPAA support (Tidio is not a Business Associate), SAML SSO only on Premium, no data-residency choice with customer data transferable to the United States under the privacy policy, and Terms that let Tidio suspend or terminate at any time, owe no refunds and cap liability at the greater of $100 or 12 months of fees.
A large help center on help.tidio.com covers setup, billing, quotas, channels, Lyro and Flows down to per-plan limits, the free Tidio Academy offers courses with a shareable certificate, and the developer docs on developers.tidio.com document the OpenAPI (versioning header, error codes, rate limits per plan), the Analytics API and its MCP server, webhooks with signature samples in PHP, Node.js and Python, and the widget SDK. Held back by pages not updated that buyers will meet: llms.txt and several blog posts still listing old Plus and Premium prices, review posts describing 50 free Lyro conversations a month and English-only Lyro, a product page giving Lyro 12 languages, help articles with older Guidance and Action counts and an older way of counting billable conversations, and product pages naming 2 or 3 seats instead of the 10 the pricing page includes.
G2 4.6 from 2,083 reviews and Capterra 4.7 from 590 (both as indexed by Google); App Store US 4.76 from 4,767 and Google Play 3.5 from 2,870 rate the Tidio mobile app; Shopify App Store 4.8 from 1,356 and WordPress.org 4.8 from 395 rate the store app and the plugin; Trustpilot 3.5 from 225. Trustpilot skews to unhappy customers and is read as a complaint map, not a trend: its low reviews cluster around billing, support, account suspension or login and refunds. Axis score 4.4: the mean of each platform's displayed rating with at least 30 reviews, app stores and Trustpilot included, weighted by review count (12,286 reviews; computed 4.42, rounded to one decimal).
Weighted across the axes above (weights reflect what actually drives the decision in this category). How we score →
User ratings run high on the business review sites and on the Shopify and WordPress listings. The Android app reads noticeably cooler than the iOS one. Trustpilot is different by nature: it works as a complaint map, not a trend. Complaints there cluster around billing, support, account suspension or login trouble, refunds and cancellation. Those themes line up with the upgrade default and the refund rules above, so read the billing settings before the first payment.
Who should pick Tidio, and who should look elsewhere
Tidio fits a team of up to 10 people answering chat, email and social messages from one inbox, especially an online store. Shopify merchants get native order cancellations, refunds and shipping-address edits from the inbox on Growth. Seats cost nothing up to 10, which rewards teams with several part-time agents. For three agents handling 250 conversations a month, Tidio Growth at $59 a month billed monthly compares with $207 a month for three Zendesk Suite Team agents billed monthly. Zoho Desk Standard billed annually is the exception: three agents cost $42 a month, against $49.17 for Tidio Growth billed annually.
Look elsewhere if you need a voice channel, protected health data handling or more than 10 agents without a sales conversation. Per-agent desks also win for small teams at high volume. At 1,000 conversations a month, Tidio's Growth tier costs $179 a month billed monthly, more than five Help Scout Standard users at $150 a month billed monthly. The AI meters differ too: Tidio bills every conversation Lyro joins, while Zendesk and Help Scout charge per automated resolution. Count before you choose. Our Tidio alternatives guide runs those comparisons plan by plan.
Frequently asked questions
Can one Tidio account cover several websites?+
Yes. One widget can serve several sites with shared settings, or you can create separate projects, each with its own widget, plan and billing.
How do I install Tidio on WordPress or Shopify?+
WordPress and WooCommerce sites use the official Tidio plugin, which WordPress.org lists at 70,000+ active installs. On Shopify, install the Tidio app and switch the widget on under App embeds, again after every theme change, and never run two install methods at once.
Can Lyro work on top of the help desk I already use?+
Yes, through Lyro Connect, which answers inside your existing help desk and creates a ticket there when it cannot answer; Tidio names Zendesk, Intercom and Salesforce. Lyro Connect requires the Plus or Premium plan.
What happens to chats nobody closes?+
Live conversations with no visitor reply for 30 days are solved automatically on every plan, Free included; tickets and Flows-only visitor conversations are excluded. Tickets in the Spam folder are deleted after 30 days.
The bottom line
Tidio gives small teams a real help desk, live chat and an AI agent for less than most per-agent tools charge for three seats, and our score reflects that value. Its weak spots are predictable: three separate meters, automatic upgrades switched on by default for new monthly projects, no refunds owed, a 10-seat ceiling and no voice. Buy it if your volume is measured in conversations a human answers and you can size Lyro honestly from your own chat history. Skip it if phones, protected health data or a large agent roster drive your decision.
- [1] [Toggle state: initial, read from the US on 2026-11-04] This website uses cookies. We use (2026-11) https://www.tidio.com/pricing/
- [2] Tidio help: The Lyro AI agent limit (2026-11) https://help.tidio.com/hc/en-us/articles/13924459295900-The-Lyro-AI-agent-limit
- [3] Tidio help: Automatic upgrades (2026-11) https://help.tidio.com/hc/en-us/articles/13590446473372-Automatic-upgrades
- [4] Terms of Service and Conditions of Use (2026-11) https://www.tidio.com/terms/