Tidio Alternatives 2026

Tidio is a live chat, chatbot, and AI agent platform headquartered in San Francisco and Szczecin, Poland, serving over 300,000 businesses according to its own website. Tidio combines a website chat widget, a visual chatbot builder called Flows, and an AI agent called Lyro that can autonomously resolve customer queries trained on your help center content. Pricing follows a conversation-based model with three separate billing quotas — billable conversations, Lyro AI conversations, and Flows visitors reached — starting with a free plan (50 billable conversations/month) and running through Starter, Growth, Plus and Premium, the top two of which are quoted by sales rather than published.

Converge is a messaging-first customer support inbox at $49/month flat for up to 15 team members. Where Tidio is built around AI chatbot automation for website visitors, Converge is built around a unified inbox for human-led conversations across messaging platforms. Tidio supports website chat, email, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. Converge covers those plus Telegram and Discord on its single plan (Tidio sells them only on Plus and Premium), and Zalo OA and X (Twitter), which Tidio does not offer.

Tidio's strongest asset is Lyro AI: an autonomous chatbot agent trained on your FAQ content, website data, and custom knowledge entries. Lyro handles full conversations without human involvement, including multi-step question flows and contextual follow-ups. It supports custom persona configuration and provides an analytics dashboard showing resolution rates, unresolved topics, and knowledge gaps. The Flows builder uses a drag-and-drop visual editor with conditional logic, API webhook actions, and behavioral triggers (time on page, cart value, exit intent), with a library of pre-built Flow templates for e-commerce scenarios. The Shopify integration shows order lookup, fulfillment status, and product recommendations directly in the agent's chat panel — no tab switching required.

Channel coverage includes website chat widget, email (via Gmail OAuth or forwarding), Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, and WhatsApp (reply-only). The three social channels are ticked on every plan including Free — Tidio does not gate Messenger, Instagram or WhatsApp behind a paid tier. Telegram and Discord are available on the Plus and Premium plans only (Telegram and Discord integration pages, read 26 September 2026); Zalo and SMS are not offered. Every self-service plan caps agents at 10 seats; a custom number of seats is a Plus feature, and Plus starts at $300/month plus usage and is quoted by sales (tidio.com/pricing, read 14 September 2026). Visitor tracking shows a live list of who is on your site (Starter plan and above), but UTM attribution, lead lifecycle stages, and beacon tracking are not part of Tidio's feature set.

Converge covers WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Instagram, Zalo OA, Messenger, X (Twitter), email through your own mailbox over IMAP and SMTP, and its own embeddable chat widget — nine channels, all included at the base $49/month price with no channel gating. AI reply suggestions assist human agents with context-aware responses and quick reply matching rather than resolving queries autonomously. The chat widget includes visitor tracking with UTM attribution, beacon tracking (device info, IP, referrer), lead capture with lifecycle stages (visitorengagedleadcustomer), FAQ self-service, CSAT collection, and suggested conversation starters. Converge does not include a visual chatbot builder, autonomous AI resolution, or native Shopify/WooCommerce integration — it is a focused messaging inbox with AI-assisted replies and lead intelligence rather than a chatbot automation platform.

Tidio's plans, read from tidio.com/pricing on 14 September 2026. The page defaults to annual billing ("Annually (2 months free)"), so the headline number is the annual rate; the monthly rate is in brackets.

• Free: $0 — 50 billable conversations/month, 100 Flows visitors reached/month, 10 seats, 50 Lyro AI conversations as a one-time lifetime allowance that does not renew
• Starter: $24.17/month ($29 monthly) — 100 billable conversations, live chat and ticketing, live visitors list, operating hours, basic analytics, chat page
• Growth: from $49.17/month ($59 monthly) — starts at 250 billable conversations and scales to 2,000, 10 seats, advanced analytics, user permissions, automatic chat assignment, automatic and offline auto-reply, live typing preview, macros, automated satisfaction survey, ticketing automations. Tidio no longer publishes a price for the top of that range
• Plus: from $300/month plus usage, contact sales — custom conversation volume, custom number of seats, departments, multiproject, custom branding, OpenAPI, premium support, dedicated success manager, discounted usage rates
• Premium: contact for pricing — from 3,000 Lyro AI conversations, a guaranteed 50% Lyro resolution rate with pay-per-resolution billing, Mobile SDK, AI insights and CSAT, super admin role, custom analytics, Advanced Copilot, SSO

What counts as a billable conversation on Tidio?

This is the number that decides your bill, and it is narrower than "a chat". A billable conversation is any live chat, ticket, email or social conversation that contains a message from a human agent. A visitor message nobody answers is not billable. One conversation counts once no matter how many messages it holds. Most importantly, replies from Flows and from the Lyro AI agent do not count as agent replies — an exchange handled entirely by automation never touches the conversation quota. Lyro conversations are metered on their own track: one customer interaction with at least one Lyro reply is one Lyro conversation, however many times Lyro answers inside it. So a store that deflects heavily with automation can sit on a low conversation tier and a high Lyro tier, and a store with a small, chatty human team can do the reverse.

What do Tidio's add-ons cost on top of the plan?

Lyro AI is billed separately from the base plan and starts at $32.50/month ($39 monthly) for 50 Lyro conversations; Tidio also sells it standalone. Flows starts at $24.17/month ($29 monthly) for 2,000 visitors reached — counted per visitor who sees the trigger, not per interaction, so paid traffic burns that quota whether or not anyone engages. Removing the "Powered by Tidio" branding is $16.67/month ($20 monthly) on Growth, and is included on Plus and Premium. The trial is 7 days with no credit card, after which the account downgrades to Free rather than lapsing.

Converge: $49/month flat for up to 15 team members, no conversation cap, AI reply suggestions included with no credit system, all nine channels included, 7-day free trial with no credit card required. The comparable Tidio setup — Growth from $49.17 plus Lyro from $32.50 — is $81.67/month on annual billing, and that entry price buys 250 billable conversations and 50 Lyro conversations. Add Flows and branding removal and the floor is $122.51/month, before any of the three quotas moves.

Choose Tidio if:

• You want an autonomous AI agent (Lyro) that resolves customer queries without human involvement
• Your primary support channel is website chat and you need a visual drag-and-drop chatbot builder
• You run a Shopify store and need native in-chat order lookup, cart visibility, and product recommendations
• You handle high-volume FAQ-style inquiries suited for automation (return policies, shipping status, product questions)
• You want a library of pre-built chatbot templates for e-commerce scenarios like cart abandonment and lead qualification

Choose Converge if:

• You need a multi-channel messaging inbox covering WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Zalo OA, Instagram, Messenger, X (Twitter), a website chat widget, and email through your own mailbox
• You prefer AI-assisted human messaging (reply suggestions with configurable tone) over autonomous AI chatbot resolution
• You want flat $49/month pricing that does not scale with conversation volume, AI usage, or chatbot visitor triggers
• You need visitor tracking with UTM attribution, beacon tracking, and lead capture built into the chat widget
• Your team is 5–15 agents and you want to avoid Tidio's 10-seat self-serve ceiling, where an 11th seat means moving to Plus (from $300/month plus usage, contact sales)
• Predictable billing matters — no separate quotas for conversations, AI, and Flows; no overage charges