Why you can trust TechRadar
We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
Tidio is a complete customer service helpdesk platform aimed at improving support and boosting sales for small and medium businesses. It combines live chat with AI chatbots, allowing real-time customer engagement while automating responses to common questions. Tidio is known for its easy-to-use interface and quick website integration, enabling businesses to start communicating with customers in minutes.
Tidio simplifies customer communication across channels like live chat, email, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram, all from one inbox. This cuts response times and enhances customer satisfaction. Its automation features let companies manage inquiries 24/7 with chatbots. The Lyro AI agent learns from FAQs and can address up to 70% of customer issues without human help. Tidio also offers visitor tracking, letting you see real-time visitor activity and start chats based on user behavior.
Case studies show great results. Integratec boosted qualified leads by 25% after integrating with Tidio. Meanwhile, ADT Security Retailers, e-commerce stores, and service companies benefit greatly from Tidio. Pricing starts at $29/month, with a free option and an annual discount, making it an accessible choice for businesses of all sizes to enhance customer engagement, automate support, and drive sales.
Tidio: Plans and pricing
Tidio’s pricing has been updated to a simpler structure with four main tiers: Free, Starter, Growth, Plus, and Premium. The pricing mainly depends on the number of conversations handled each month, advanced analytics, and AI features.
The Free plan is great for beginners or those wanting to test the platform. It offers basic live chat with up to 50 conversations per month. You also get essential features like live chat, a help desk, and social media integrations. Plus, there’s a one-time allocation of 50 Lyro AI conversations, allowing you to reach up to 100 visitors with automated flows. This plan gives you a solid start without any financial commitment.
When you’re ready to grow, the Starter plan at $29 per month increases your conversations to 100. It adds useful features like basic analytics, a live visitors list, operating hours setup, and dedicated support via live chat. You still receive the same one-time allocation of 50 Lyro AI conversations and 100 flow visitors as in the Free plan. This tier suits small businesses that want to enhance customer service without a big investment.
The Growth plan at $59 is a significant upgrade. It expands your conversations to 250 per month, with the option to scale up to 2,000. You gain access to advanced analytics and other powerful features. You can also opt to remove Tidio branding as an add-on. This plan keeps the same AI and automation limits as earlier tiers but offers more tools for businesses focusing on customer service as a competitive edge.
For complex needs, the Plus plan starts at $749 per month with a custom quota of handled conversations. You’ll enjoy premium features, including a dedicated Success Manager, custom branding, multisite support, departments, multilanguage capabilities, and OpenAPI access. AI features are enhanced, allowing up to 5,000 Lyro AI conversations and tailored visitor limits. This tier is for larger organizations needing better limits, more integrations, advanced features, and premium support.
At the enterprise level, the Premium plan starts at $2,999 per month and offers unlimited handled conversations with the most comprehensive features. It includes a guaranteed 50% Lyro AI resolution rate, priority service, super admin role capabilities, advanced analysis tools, and Lyro AI as a managed service. This plan includes up to 10,000 Lyro AI conversations and custom flow visitor limits. It’s designed for complex businesses with extensive customer service operations needing top-level automation and support.
All paid plans come with a 7-day free trial. You get full access to features without needing payment info upfront. This lets you evaluate the platform thoroughly before committing financially. Compared to similar platforms, Tidio offers competitive rates and a comprehensive feature set, especially in AI capabilities and conversation handling limits. The scalable plans ensure you can start with a basic package and upgrade as your business grows and your customer service needs change.
Tidio: Features
With Tidio, you get a full set of customer service tools. These tools help improve your business communication and boost sales. Tidio combines live chat, automated chatbots, helpdesk features, and analytics into one system. And it balances all of this with a user-friendly design. You can set up advanced customer service solutions without any tech skills.
Tidio started as a simple live chat tool. Now it’s an all-in-one customer experience platform. It covers your entire customer communication journey, from first contact to ongoing support and analytics. Tidio connects various communication channels — like website chat, email, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp — into one inbox. This creates a smooth experience for both customers and support teams.
Live chat
The Live Chat feature is the most important part of Tidio. It allows real-time chats between your support team and website visitors. You can customize the chat widget to fit your brand. Plus, it has advanced tools like live typing preview. This lets agents see what customers type before they send messages, helping them respond faster.
Your team will find helpful tools like canned responses for quick answers to common questions. Pre-chat surveys gather visitor information before chats start. These features cut response times and boost your support team’s efficiency. Live Chat also includes real-time visitor tracking. Agents can offer help based on what customers are doing. You’ll have chat transcripts for records, multilanguage support for global clients, and tools to measure customer satisfaction.
AI-powered chatbots
Tidio offers Lyro as an advanced AI agent for all your support tasks. You can train Lyro using your company documentation and website content. This allows it to handle up to 70% of customer inquiries automatically, without needing human help. The system uses natural language processing to understand questions and provide accurate replies that feel human.
This means your business can offer 24/7 support, even during off-hours. It significantly cuts response times while keeping customer service quality high. Tidio’s chatbots go beyond just answering questions. You can also use a visual flow builder to create automated conversation paths that trigger based on user actions or behaviors. These flows can include conditional logic, enabling personalized interactions based on customer inputs or past actions.
Unified inbox and helpdesk
With Tidio’s Unified Inbox, you can manage all customer communications in one place. This includes website chat, email, and social media. This approach ensures that no message goes unnoticed, no matter which platform customers use.
Your support agents can see full conversation histories and customer profiles with the click of a button. This helps them give more personalized and thoughtful responses. The system also features automatic chat assignment, which directs new chats to available agents. It even includes tags and contact properties for better organization and team collaboration tools. These tools let agents work together on tough customer issues.
The helpdesk expands these features with ticketing options. These help your team track, prioritize, and solve customer inquiries quickly. You can categorize requests, assign them to team members, and monitor them until resolution. Plus, you get performance metrics to measure response times and resolution rates.
Having an organized approach to support helps your business keep service quality high as you grow. It leads to better customer retention and loyalty. A unified platform also eases the workload for support teams. It allows them to spend more time meeting customer needs instead of juggling different tools.
Visitor tracking and engagement
Tidio’s visitor tracking tools provide real-time insights into customer behavior on your website. You can see which pages visitors browse, where they are located, how they found you, and how long they stay.
This data helps your support teams understand what customers want. For instance, if a visitor spends time on product comparison pages, you can send a helpful message to guide their choice. Likewise, someone looking at shipping info might need a nudge about delivery options.
The engagement tools work with tracking features to turn insights into action. You can set automated triggers based on visitor behavior. For example, show special offers to returning customers, start chats with visitors who have items in their cart for a while, or offer help to those struggling on a page.
These proactive strategies can greatly impact your business. Case studies show conversion rates can increase by 30% or more when implemented well. By spotting and addressing friction points in the customer journey, you can lower abandonment rates and boost sales while enhancing the customer experience with timely, relevant help.
Multichannel integration
With multichannel integration, you can connect with customers on different platforms. You can manage all communications from one interface. For now, the system supports website chat, email, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. You can also integrate this data with your CRM software.
This is especially useful for businesses with a global presence or those targeting younger audiences who use a lot of messaging apps. By centralizing these channels, you avoid needing separate tools. This reduces the chance of missed messages or inconsistent responses.
Tidio: Analytics
When you use Tidio, you get a powerful analytics suite built-in. It gives insights into customer interactions, team performance, and support operations. The platform also has detailed dashboards that track many key metrics, including conversation volumes, response times, customer satisfaction ratings, and chatbot effectiveness.
These tools help you spot patterns in customer inquiries. You can monitor peak activity times and see which issues are most common. You can see which pages get the most inquiries and which products prompt the most questions. You’ll also see how different visitor segments interact with your support channels.
Tidio’s chatbot analytics are equally noteworthy. They provide detailed performance metrics for your automated conversations. You can track completion rates for chatbot flows. You’ll see where customers drop off or ask for human help. And you can even measure conversion rates for automated sales.
The platform also has A/B testing for chatbot messages and flows. This lets you optimize automation strategies based on real data. That way, you can create effective automated experiences that balance efficiency with customer satisfaction.
For team management, Tidio offers performance analytics. You can monitor individual agent productivity using metrics like average response time, resolution rate, and satisfaction scores. This helps you identify top performers and those who need more training.
The platform also provides workload distribution analytics. This ensures balanced coverage across different times and channels. By optimizing team performance through data-driven insights, you can boost operational efficiency while keeping high-quality customer service. This leads to better customer retention and increased revenue.
Tidio: Ease of use
You can use Tidio via web browser, mobile app (iOS/Android), and desktop app (Windows, Mac, and Linux), though the latter doesn’t run as smoothly as on the browser.
Setup is quick, collecting your name, email address, website, and your main goal, such as solving customer problems, increasing sales, or both. Then, personalized instructions for platforms, including Shopify and WordPress, help you add the Tidio chat widget to your website.
The dashboard nudges you to complete the next steps, such as connecting Facebook Messenger and Instagram. On the left, a taskbar takes you to Inbox, Flows, Visitors, Contacts, and Analytics. Overall, the Tidio account section is very easy to navigate.
Operators can chat directly from the Inbox, where conversations are classified as open, unassigned, and solved. The Flows section lets you select and personalize templates according to specific scenarios, which include a cart booster, a post-purchase discount, and an Instagram autoresponder.
We simulated a live chat conversation being taken over by a bot and were impressed by the modern design and speed with which messages appeared on-screen.
Tidio: Support
It may sound counter-intuitive but not every ‘Help Desk’ website is particularly helpful in terms of offering help with getting started. Sometimes they’ll have a ‘troubleshooting’ section plus a chatbot and leave you to the rest.
This is an area where Tidio truly shines. There’s a dedicated Help Center that discusses common topics like getting set up, customizing widgets, managing chatbots, and so on.
You can access this via the ‘Resources’ section on the main website. We were astonished to see that Tidio also offers a free e-book for download here on how to use AI tools to improve customer service for your online business. This forms just one of the titles available in the extensive ‘Playbook Library’ on the Support pages – other free-to-download works include manuals on sales techniques and how to replicate an in-store shopping experience using chatbots.
The ‘Resources’ section also contains helpful comparisons between Tidio and other help desk software providers.
If you’re on the Free plan then you’ll have to make do with standard e-mail support during normal business hours. Conversations and Chatbots plans have priority email support, including weekends, and 24/5 live chat. Tidio+ additionally boasts 24/7 emergency phone support. Our live chat conversation with a Tidio operator had an almost immediate first response time and a knowledgeable response.
Tidio: Security
Tidio also claims to offer encryption for all Tidio chat connections using “the 256bit SSL protocol.” As SSL was officially deprecated in 2015, we assume they mean they use the TLS protocol instead and are simply using ‘SSL’ as its more familiar term.
We were more reassured to learn that all Tidio domains use HTTPS and that any sensitive information like passwords and credit card numbers are stored in their databases using a one-way cryptographic hash.
Their infrastructure uses AWS servers, which are generally considered to be very secure and reliable.
Tidio also pledges not to share or redistribute any customer data but we’d have been more reassured to see that they regularly go through independent security audits to prove this, as other providers like RingCentral do.
Tidio: The Competition
Intercom is a strong alternative to Tidio, offering not only live chat, conversational bots, and ticketing, but also help centers, lead qualification, and A/B testing to optimize performance. Give Intercom a go if you fancy advanced features across Support, Engage, and Convert plans. However, Tidio combines quality support and sales features for an affordable price.
LiveChat is closer to Tidio, focusing on live chat, chatbots, and ticketing. Its chatbots are optimized for both support and sales, just like Tidio. However, LiveChat doesn’t have a self-learning AI chatbot. Its plans start at $20 per operator, per month (billed annually), with no free plan. For basic chat features, Tidio’s cheaper plans may be the better option.
Tidio: Final Verdict
Tidio grabs attention with a slick design, quick messaging, and straightforward features. It gives customers plenty of support options, from live chat and chatbots to ticketing, Instagram messages, Facebook Messenger chat, email, and WhatsApp. A self-learning AI response bot sets it apart from similar competitors, while the free plan offers a basic option for the budget-conscious.
While we’re on the subject of budgeting, this is one area where we think Tidio falls down. The basic ‘Flows’ plan includes just 2,000 ‘triggers’: a ‘trigger in this case is any time a chatbot is activated per unique customer. This remains true even if the customer doesn’t interact with the chatbot in a meaningful way, meaning you could burn through your allocation of ‘triggers’ pretty fast. Of course, you could just increase your quota to 40,000 per month but that will cost you nearly five times the amount of a standard ‘Chatbots’ plan at $139. Tidio does reassure users though if you create multiple chatbots who interact with the same customer simultaneously, this still only counts as one ‘trigger’.
The company is also pushing forward with new innovations, including Lyro, a conversational AI chatbot for SMEs. Lyro AI chatbot can automate up to 70% of your support requests.
This, combined with the broad number of features in the free plan and excellent support resources make Tidio a very strong contender in the help desk arena. It’s easy to see why hundreds of thousands of users deploy it every day.
We’ve compiled a list of the best ITSM tools.
Leave a Comment
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *