Tidio Review
Tidio is the only desk in this comparison that does not charge by the seat, and that single decision changes everything about who it suits.
- From:
- $29/ticket
- Founded:
- 2013
Our verdict
Tidio is the only desk in this comparison that does not charge by the seat, and that single decision changes everything about who it suits. You buy a quota of conversations your team actually replies to; an unanswered message costs nothing, and an AI reply does not touch the quota at all. Put ten people on it for the same money as one. It is the obvious pick for a small ecommerce team with spiky volume, and the wrong shape entirely for a large team with steady load, where a per-conversation meter gets expensive faster than seats do.
Every other desk in this comparison charges per seat. Tidio charges per conversation, and once you understand what it counts as a conversation, most of the rest of the product follows from it.
Is it right for your team?
Tick what's true for you.
Points for
Points against
Tick what describes you. We'll weigh it against this review.
What it does
- Live chat, ticketing, email, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp, all available from the free plan
- Lyro, the AI agent, answers customers from your content and can be attached to another help desk rather than only Tidio
- Flows, a no-code visual builder for chatbots and conversion paths
- Desktop and mobile apps, visitor list, operating hours, macros and automatic assignment higher up
- Missing: no voice channel, and no self-hosted option
How the billing actually works
- A conversation is billable only once a human agent replies, or when your team starts one proactively
- A customer message nobody answers costs nothing
- One conversation counts once, no matter how many messages go back and forth inside it
- Replies from Lyro and from Flows are not agent replies, so an AI-handled conversation never touches the human quota
- Lyro, Flows and human conversations are three separate meters that do not borrow from each other
That is a genuinely well-designed model. Deflecting work to AI lowers the bill rather than moving it sideways, and you are never charged for a message you ignored.
Pricing at a glance
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed annually | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | Free | 50 Billable conversations. |
| Starter | $29 | $24.17 | 100 Billable conversations. |
| Growth | $59 | $49.17 | Starts at the listed price. |
| Plus | $300 | $300 | Starts at $300/mo. |
| Premium | Contact sales | – | Contact for pricing. |
Prices in US dollars. Source: tidio.com/pricing, checked .
- Priced by the conversations a human agent answers, with up to 10 seats included: Starter is $29 billed monthly ($24.17 billed annually) for 100 conversations, and Growth runs $59 to $349 billed monthly for 250 to 2,000.
- The Lyro AI agent and Flows are separate meters on top: Lyro costs $39 to $700 a month billed monthly for 50 to 1,000 conversations. Past 2,000 conversations or 10 seats, you move to Plus, from $300 a month plus usage.
- Plan by plan, the add-ons and a worked cost example are on the Tidio pricing page.
What the quota ladder costs
- Growth rises by volume rather than by feature: 250 conversations $59, 400 $89, 600 $129, 800 $159, 1,000 $179, 1,500 $249, 2,000 $349
- Lyro AI is its own ladder: 50 conversations a month $39, 100 $75, 150 $110, 200 $140, 300 $210, and quoted above that
- Flows is a third: 2,000 visitors reached $29, rising to 50,000 at $169
- A shop running all three is paying three meters, and they are easier to model separately than together
Before you commit
- The meter is the risk. Seat pricing punishes hiring; conversation pricing punishes a good month, and you control volume far less than headcount
- Ten operators is a hard limit on Free and Starter, so team growth forces a plan change independently of volume
- Hosting is in the EU only, on AWS in ISO-certified data centres. There is no regional choice, which is the exact mirror of the US-only desks
- Tidio's pricing data carries separate, lower Latin American variants, so the price a buyer is shown depends on where they are. The figures here are the standard ones
- No uptime percentage is published
Where it is genuinely strong
- SOC 2 Type II covering security, availability and confidentiality, with completed penetration testing
- TLS 1.2 and above with 256-bit certificates in transit, AES-256 at rest
- GDPR compliance since 2018, with standard contractual clauses and a data processing agreement
- Channel coverage on the free plan that several paid competitors gate behind a tier
Who should buy it, and who should skip it
Who should buy
- Small ecommerce and DTC teams where everyone answers chat and seat licences would be pure waste
- Anyone deflecting real volume to an AI agent, since that work leaves the billable meter entirely
- European buyers who want EU hosting as the default rather than an add-on
- Teams who want to try a help desk properly before paying, on a free plan that is not a countdown
Who should skip it
- Larger teams with steady, high volume, where per-conversation pricing overtakes per-seat
- Anyone needing a voice channel
- Buyers who need data held outside the EU
- Teams that cannot absorb a bill that moves with a busy month
How we checked this
Plan names, prices and quotas were read from Tidio's pricing page and the pricing data that page carries on 2026-09-24; the page displays annual equivalents by default, and the monthly figures come from that same data. The billable-conversation definition, the operator limits and the Lyro quotas come from Tidio's help centre, and the certifications, hosting and encryption from Tidio's security pages. We could not find a published uptime figure. No review-site text was used.
Channels
How each channel is delivered, and the plan it starts on. Native, through an integration, or absent.
Email management and integration on all five plans; multiple inboxes connectable.
Live chat on all plans, including live video calls.
Tidio's own FAQ lists connectable channels as email, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and live chat — no phone or voice.
SMS is absent from Tidio's stated channel list.
Messenger and Instagram (DMs, story reactions, comments) on all plans.
WhatsApp integration on all five plans.
Checked on the vendor’s own pages, .
AI and automation
What the AI does, what it costs, and what the desk automates without it.
Copilot on all five plans; Advanced Copilot is Premium-only.
Lyro is usage-priced and bought separately: 50 free conversations once per account, then from $39 a month billed monthly ($32.50 a month billed annually) for 50 conversations, up to $700 a month for 1,000 billed monthly, sales above that. Premium bills Lyro per resolution with a guaranteed 50% resolution rate.
First Lyro Action free; full access with a paid Lyro quota. Up to 10 Actions on Plus, more on Premium.
Published on the pricing page: Lyro from $39 a month for 50 conversations billed monthly ($32.50 billed annually), stepping to $700 for 1,000. About $0.70 to $0.78 a conversation billed monthly, $0.58 to $0.65 billed annually. Premium is pay-per-resolution.
Ticketing automations/workflows from Growth. Flows (visitor automation) is separate and usage-priced: 100 visitors reached/month free on every plan, paid from $24.17/month.
Automatic chat assignment from Growth; department-based ticket routing from Plus; AI fills ticket custom fields. No explicitly named AI triage feature.
Macros unchecked on Free and Starter; included from Growth.
Lyro answers on chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and email; no voice channel exists.
Checked on the vendor’s own pages, .
Strengths
- Priced by conversation, not by seat. Ten operators cost the same as one, which is unique in this comparison.
- A conversation is only billable once a human replies. Unanswered customer messages are free.
- Replies from the AI agent and from automated flows do not count against the human quota, so deflection genuinely lowers the bill.
- The free plan is a real product: 50 conversations a month and up to 10 operators, not a countdown trial.
- AI, flows and human conversations meter separately, so one running hot does not eat another's allowance.
- SOC 2 Type II covering security, availability and confidentiality, with completed penetration testing.
- Email, live chat, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp are on every plan including the free one.
Trade-offs
- The conversation meter is the whole risk: a busy month costs more, and volume you cannot control drives the bill.
- Ten-operator limit on both Free and Starter, so a growing team changes plan for headcount as well as volume.
- The quota ladder climbs steeply - 250 conversations is $59 a month, 2,000 is $349.
- Everything is hosted in the EU with no regional choice, which is the mirror image of the US-only desks and equally absolute.
- Lyro AI conversations are a separate meter again, from $39 for 50 a month up to $210 for 300.
- Tidio carries separate, cheaper Latin American price variants, so the figures a buyer sees depend on where they are.
- No uptime percentage is published.
What’s new in Tidio
The latest from Tidio’s own changelog, linked to each post.
- Lyro now understands your Shopify metafields and tags
updates.tidio.com
- Manage Lyro’s knowledge just by asking
updates.tidio.com
- Shape Copilot suggestions with Guidance
updates.tidio.com
- Chat about Tidio data with Shopify Sidekick
updates.tidio.com
- New Tidio dashboard in your Shopify admin
updates.tidio.com
- Upload Multiple PDFs to the Lyro Data sources
updates.tidio.com