8 best Tidio alternatives for customer support in 2026

The strongest Tidio alternatives in October 2026 are Robylon for an AI agent that takes action across chat, email, voice and WhatsApp; Crisp and tawk.to for the lowest prices and generous free plans; Text (formerly LiveChat) for stores that want the chat agent to sell; Intercom for SaaS teams that live in a messenger; Gorgias for Shopify stores; and Help Scout and Freshdesk for teams that want a full helpdesk around the chat.

Tidio is an easy way to put live chat and an AI agent on a small business website. Teams evaluating or running it look elsewhere when Lyro’s conversation packs grow expensive at volume, when the AI needs to change an order, when customers phone as well as chat, or when the team passes 10 seats. Every tool below is judged on three things: whether its AI takes the action a ticket needs, whether every channel runs from one setup, and whether it fits the stack you already run.

Tidio alternatives at a glance

Prices checked October 2026 on each vendor's pricing page. G2 ratings read October 2026, with the review count in brackets.

Robylon publishes this page and ranks itself first; every tool on the list, Robylon included, gets the same “Where it falls short” line.

What Tidio does

Tidio is a live chat and customer service platform for small businesses and Shopify and WooCommerce stores. One panel handles live chat, email tickets, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp, with rule-based Flows and the Lyro AI agent. Lyro answers from your FAQs, website and files, follows multi-step Procedures, and calls external APIs through Actions (3 on the Core plan, up to 10 on Plus). Tidio bills by conversation packs rather than seats: Billable conversations when a human replies and Lyro conversations when Lyro replies. The Free plan covers 50 conversations a month for up to 10 agents, and self-serve plans stop at 10 seats. Lyro runs on Claude from Anthropic and supports 48 languages.

Why teams look beyond Tidio

Lyro billed per conversation pack

Lyro is sold in fixed monthly packs, from 50 conversations for $39 to 1,000 for $700, according to Tidio’s pricing page. A Lyro conversation is used as soon as Lyro replies in a new thread, whether or not it resolves the question. On monthly plans Tidio upgrades the pack automatically at 95% of the quota, and anything above 1,000 Lyro conversations needs the Plus plan, from $300 a month plus usage, through sales.

Human and AI billed separately

Human replies draw on Billable conversations from a Customer Service plan (Starter at $29 a month for 100, Growth from $59 for 250 up to $349 for 2,000), while Lyro draws on its own pack. A conversation Lyro answers and then hands to an agent uses one Lyro conversation and one Billable conversation, as Tidio’s help centre describes.

Free quota stops at 50

The Free plan’s 50 Billable conversations reset monthly, but its 50 Lyro conversations are given once and never renew. When the 50 Billable conversations run out, incoming messages are hidden until the monthly reset.

Key AI features on Plus

Core gives Lyro 3 Actions. Up to 10 Actions, MCP connections, Lyro for sales (suggesting products and editing orders) and Lyro Connect, which puts Lyro inside another helpdesk, are on Plus and Premium, sold through sales.

No voice or phone channel

Tidio’s docs list no phone, voice or SMS channel as of October 2026. A business whose customers ring a phone number needs a second tool for those calls. Self-serve plans also stop at 10 seats, so a larger team buys Plus or Premium through sales.

Four kinds of Tidio alternatives

Four kinds of product get called Tidio alternatives, and they solve different problems.

• Chatbot and live chat tools: a website widget, a shared inbox and an AI agent, priced for small teams. Crisp, Text (formerly LiveChat) and tawk.to belong here, as Tidio does. All three AI agents answer from your content and can call outside systems (Crisp through MCP tools, Text through Custom Skills, tawk.to through order lookups and custom APIs), and all three run only inside their own inbox.
• AI agent platforms: an agent that answers and resolves across channels, standalone or inside a helpdesk. Robylon belongs here. It takes actions in other systems and runs inside nine helpdesks or with its own inbox.
• Helpdesk suites with their own AI: ticketing, inbox, SLAs and reporting for a human team, with an AI agent added on top. Intercom, Help Scout and Freshdesk belong here. Fin on Intercom and Freddy AI Agent on Freshdesk take actions through APIs; Help Scout AI Answers only answers.
• E-commerce support tools: a helpdesk and AI agent built around the store. Gorgias belongs here, with AI Agent actions on Shopify orders.

If the bot only needs to answer questions in a chat widget, the first kind costs least. If it must change orders, accounts or bookings on several channels, the other three fit.

How we compared the tools

We read each vendor’s pricing page, help centre or docs, and security or trust page on 7 and 8 October 2026, and each tool’s G2 page the same days. Where prices differ by region, the table uses the US dollar price. We did not run hands-on tests for this page.

We compared them on what the AI agent can resolve, channels covered, where each runs, billing model, setup effort, and how each works for support agents and team leads.

The 8 best Tidio alternatives

1. Robylon

Best for: teams that need the AI agent to finish tickets by acting in their systems, across chat, email, voice and WhatsApp from one setup, standalone or inside the helpdesk they keep.

What it is for: Robylon is an AI customer support platform that resolves tickets across email, chat, voice and WhatsApp. It works standalone or alongside an existing helpdesk. It takes the action a ticket needs: agents read the systems the answer lives in, act through tools built from your APIs and connected apps, and hand anything they cannot finish to a person with the checking already done. Every channel runs from one setup. And it fits the stack you already run, inside the helpdesk your team uses or standalone with its own inbox. Robylon resolves over 95% of queries automatically for a gaming company.

What the AI does:

• A triage agent routes each conversation to the sub-agent for that topic, so order status, returns and account changes each follow their own instructions.
• Agents call tools built from your APIs and from 32 pre-built integrations, among them Shopify, HubSpot, Salesforce and Google Sheets. Custom API integrations are on the Business plan.
• With Shopify connected, an agent looks up an order and cancels it, and five store events (a new order, an order update, a cancellation, a refund and a new customer) can start a workflow.
• The knowledge base answers from your sources, and the KB gap report shows the questions it could not answer (Pro plan and above).
• Anything the agent cannot finish goes to a person with the conversation, intent and checks attached.
• Evaluations score conversations against your own criteria, and teams choose the AI model per agent from the models Robylon supports.

Channels: email, website and in-app chat, voice, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, SMS through Twilio, YouTube comments, and reviews on Google Play, the App Store and Google My Business, all listed on the channels page, in over 40 languages. Robylon runs standalone with its own inbox and optional human seats, or inside Freshdesk, Zendesk, Zoho Desk, Salesforce, Vtiger, Intercom, Freshchat, SalesIQ and Gorgias. WhatsApp and email start on the Pro plan; voice phone calls and the Freshdesk, Zendesk, Zoho Desk, Intercom, Freshchat and Gorgias integrations start on Business. The human team works in a unified inbox with tickets, SLAs, queues and canned responses.

Pricing: by AI credits rather than conversation packs (see pricing). The Starter plan is free with 300 credits a month (about 40 conversations), paid plans start at $25 a month for 500 credits, Business starts at $180 a month, and yearly billing takes 10% off. Seats for a human team are optional, at $19 (Basic), $49 (Advanced) or $89 (Expert) per seat a month. G2 rating: 5.0 from 42 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: on the worked example below, Crisp (about $190 a month) and tawk.to (about $219) cost less than Robylon ($682) at 3,000 conversations a month, and both have free plans that cover a human team’s live chat at no cost, while Robylon’s free Starter is chat only. Voice phone calls start on the Business plan at $180 a month, and Robylon publishes no per-minute voice price. Credits per conversation vary with the AI model chosen, so the monthly bill is harder to forecast than a fixed pack.

Where Tidio does better:

• Free live chat for a team: Tidio’s Free plan covers 50 conversations a month for up to 10 agents, with Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. Robylon’s Starter is chat only, and human seats cost $19 to $89 each.
• No seat charges: Tidio’s self-serve plans include up to 10 seats and bill by conversation packs, so adding an agent costs nothing until the team passes 10.
• Self-serve setup: Tidio gives 7 days of every paid feature with no card and a pre-built Shopify integration. Robylon connects Shopify through a custom app its team sends, and plan changes go through an account manager.
• Review volume: 1,962 G2 reviews for Tidio against Robylon’s 42.

Pick it if: you need the AI agent to cancel an order, update an account or book a callback, or want voice, WhatsApp and email answered by the same agents as chat. Choose Tidio if a small team needs low-cost live chat and an AI agent that answers from your FAQs. For the head-to-head on email, see Robylon vs Tidio.

2. Crisp: best for flat workspace pricing

Best for: small and mid-size businesses that want live chat, a shared inbox and an AI agent in one workspace at a flat monthly price.

Crisp prices per workspace with seats included: 2 on Free, 4 on Mini, 10 on Essentials and 20 on Plus, with unlimited conversations for the human team. Its AI agent, Hugo, answers from Q&A snippets, a website crawl, files and the Crisp knowledge base, follows written instructions, and routes or escalates by situation. Hugo takes actions through MCP: one-click Shopify tools get order details, get the customer’s address and update a shipping address before fulfilment, alongside PrestaShop, WooCommerce and Stripe lookups and custom MCP servers you build for refunds or account resets.

What the AI does: Hugo answers and acts through MCP tools, on Mini, Essentials and Plus; the plan table lists the MCP server on Essentials and Plus.

Channels: website chat widget, contact form and mobile SDKs on every plan; email, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and X DMs from Mini; Instagram, WhatsApp, Line and Viber from Essentials. SMS through your own Twilio number or Aircall, and phone through Aircall, Ringover or KrispCall, from Essentials.

Pricing: Free costs $0 for 2 seats with no AI; Mini costs $45 a month per workspace with $5 of AI credits, Essentials $95 with $25 and Plus $295 with $75. Hugo usage beyond the credits is billed by tokens, which Crisp estimates at $0.05 to $0.10 a conversation (Crisp pricing). G2: 4.5 from 205 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: Crisp publishes no per-token rate, so the Hugo billing article gives only a range per conversation, and a conversation Hugo hands over still uses credits. Crisp’s help centre says it has not been through a SOC 2 audit, and Crisp sells no phone numbers or voice AI.

Pick it if: you want chat, an inbox and an AI agent at a flat workspace price, and the AI mostly answers and looks up orders.

3. Text (formerly LiveChat): best for sales chat

Best for: online stores, Shopify above all, and B2B SaaS teams that want live chat, email tickets and an AI agent that sells as well as answers.

Text is LiveChat’s successor from the same company, Text S.A. New sign-ups at livechat.com get Text plans, and existing LiveChat customers keep their LiveChat plans. Text AI Agent is on every plan: it answers from website pages, help content and files, creates tickets, hands over to a person and shares discount codes. Up to 10 Custom Skills per agent call outside systems through webhooks and APIs, for order status lookups in Shopify or WooCommerce, CRM updates and stock checks. With Shopify it recommends products, shows the live cart and adds items to the cart inside the chat.

What the AI does: answers, sells and acts through Custom Skills, in 46 languages; 1 AI Agent on Essential, 10 on Growth.

Channels: website and in-app chat widget, a chat page, email forwarded into tickets, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp (native since 17 June 2026), Instagram DMs (since 6 October 2026), SMS through your own Twilio account, and a Shopify checkout chat widget.

Pricing: Essential costs $19 per user a month billed annually or $25 monthly, with 10 AI resolutions a month; Growth costs $79 or $99, with 200. Extra resolutions cost $49.50 per package of 50, or $0.99 each (Text pricing). G2: 4.1 from 12 reviews (G2, October 2026), on Text’s own listing.

Where it falls short: there is no free plan, only a 14-day trial, and every human user needs a seat. Text’s help centre documents the AI Agent on chat, WhatsApp and Instagram but not on email tickets as of October 2026, and HIPAA is listed as coming soon.

Pick it if: you sell online and want the chat agent to recommend products and build carts as well as answer. The LiveChat alternatives guide covers the tools teams compare it with.

4. tawk.to: best free live chat

Best for: small businesses that want free live chat for any number of agents and pay only for the AI they use.

tawk.to charges nothing for the platform: unlimited agents, chats and properties, with a live chat widget, inbox, ticketing, a knowledge base and a CRM, carrying “Powered by tawk.to” branding. AI Assist answers from FAQs, website crawls, documents and knowledge base articles. On Growth, Business and Enterprise it calls tools: Shopify order search with customer verification and product search, WooCommerce and BigCommerce lookups, custom OpenAPI integrations, Google Sheets and, since December 2025, MCP servers.

What the AI does: AI Assist answers and looks up orders and products; its Shopify operations are read-only lookups, and the free Hobby tier answers without handing over to a person.

Channels: live chat widget, email by forwarding, chat pages, knowledge base, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Telegram; SMS through your own Twilio account; voice and video calls in the widget through a paid add-on. AI voice agents on a phone number were waitlist only on 8 October 2026.

Pricing: AI Assist Hobby is free with 100 message credits a month; Growth costs $29 a month for 1,000 credits, Business $99 for 5,000 and Enterprise $399 for 20,000, and extra credits cost $30 per 1,000. Each AI reply uses 1 to 10 or more credits depending on the model (tawk.to add-ons). G2: 4.5 from 203 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: AI Assist bills per AI message, so cost depends on how many replies a conversation takes and on the model, and the default Auto model uses 3 credits a reply, according to tawk.to’s billing article. The security page lists no SOC 2 or ISO 27001, and removing the branding costs $39 a month.

Pick it if: you want free live chat for a whole team and a low-cost AI agent that answers and looks up orders. The tawk.to alternatives guide covers the tools teams compare it with.

5. Intercom: best for SaaS messengers

Best for: SaaS and product teams that want a polished messenger, help center and proactive messaging, with an AI agent billed per outcome.

Intercom is a helpdesk built around a messenger for websites and apps, with a shared inbox, ticketing and a help center. Its maker renamed itself Fin on 12 May 2026, and Salesforce completed its acquisition on 10 September 2026. Fin AI Agent, included on every plan, answers from your knowledge sources and takes actions through Procedures: plain-language instructions that call REST APIs and MCP connectors, with templates for Shopify and Stripe.

What the AI does: Fin answers and takes actions through Procedures, in more than 45 languages for chat and email; nothing is billed when the customer asks for a person or Fin cannot answer.

Channels: messenger chat on web, iOS and Android, email, WhatsApp, SMS, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Slack and Discord; Fin Voice for select customers through sales.

Pricing: Fin costs $0.99 per outcome. Advanced seats cost $85 a month billed annually or $99 monthly, and Expert $132 or $139 (Intercom pricing). G2: 4.5 from 3,918 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: every human teammate needs a seat from $85 a month billed annually, SSO and HIPAA sit on the Expert seat, and Fin Voice has no published price.

Pick it if: your product runs on an in-app messenger and you want onboarding, proactive messages and support in one tool.

6. Gorgias: best for Shopify stores

Best for: Shopify brands that have outgrown a chat widget and want a helpdesk built around the store.

Gorgias prices by tickets rather than seats, from 50 tickets a month on Starter to 5,000 on Advanced. On Basic and above, its AI Agent takes Shopify actions with no extra setup: it cancels an unfulfilled order with a refund and restock, edits a shipping address, removes or replaces items, reships an order and adds an order note. The Gorgias alternatives guide compares the tools stores weigh against it.

What the AI does: answers and acts on Shopify orders and connected store apps, in over 80 languages; it needs a connected Shopify store.

Channels: email, chat, help center, contact forms, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp; voice and SMS through paid add-ons. AI Agent on Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp is in open beta as of October 2026.

Pricing: Starter costs $10 a month for 50 tickets, Basic $50 a month billed annually for 300 and Pro $300 for 2,000; AI Agent adds $0.90 per automated interaction on annual plans or $1.00 monthly, on top of the ticket fee (Gorgias pricing). G2: 4.6 from 582 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: AI Agent works only with a connected Shopify store, Gorgias’s docs list no AI Agent on voice, and a ticket the AI resolves is billed twice, as a ticket and as an automated interaction.

Pick it if: your Shopify store has outgrown Tidio and you want the AI to change orders inside a store-focused helpdesk.

7. Help Scout: best for small teams

Best for: small and mid-size teams that want a simple shared inbox, a knowledge base and a chat widget.

Help Scout combines a shared inbox, Docs knowledge base sites and the Beacon chat widget, free for up to 5 users, 1 inbox and 100 contacts a month. AI Answers answers visitors in Beacon from Docs, websites and files, and charges nothing when the customer asks for more help.

What the AI does: answers only, in the Beacon widget, in over 50 languages; Help Scout lists connecting the AI to other apps as coming soon.

Channels: email, live chat through Beacon on web and in apps, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and SMS through your own Twilio number; phone through Aircall.

Pricing: Standard costs $25 per user a month billed annually or $30 monthly, Plus $45 or $54, and Pro $75 or $90 with a 10-user minimum; AI Answers adds $0.75 per resolution (Help Scout pricing). G2: 4.4 from 431 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: the AI answers but takes no actions in other systems, Help Scout’s docs list no AI Answers on email as of October 2026, and the Free plan includes no AI tools.

Pick it if: a small team wants a clean shared inbox and help center, and the AI only needs to answer questions.

8. Freshdesk: best full helpdesk upgrade

Best for: growing teams that want a full ticketing helpdesk, with SLAs, routing and an AI agent, at a moderate seat price.

Freshworks sells two helpdesks: Freshdesk, which is email-first, and Freshdesk Omni, which is multichannel. Freddy AI Agent, built in AI Agent Studio, answers from knowledge sources and runs workflows with conditional logic and API actions, including pre-built integrations with Shopify, Stripe, PayPal and Wix.

What the AI does: answers and runs workflows with API actions, in more than 60 languages for chat.

Channels: email, a customer portal, web chat and Facebook Messenger; Freshdesk Omni adds Instagram and WhatsApp. Phone comes through Freshcaller, a separate Freshworks product.

Pricing: Freshdesk Growth costs $19 per agent a month billed annually ($23 monthly) and Freshdesk Omni Growth $29 ($35); Freddy AI Agent costs $49 per 100 sessions (Freshdesk pricing). G2: 4.4 from 3,777 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: there is no free-forever plan, chat AI needs the pricier Freshdesk Omni, and a Freddy session is billed whatever the outcome, handovers included.

Pick it if: your team has outgrown a chat tool’s inbox and needs SLAs, routing and a customer portal.

Alternatives by situation

What to decide before switching

Actions versus answers

Count what share of your chats ask the AI to change something (cancel an order, update an address, issue a refund). If most only need answers, Crisp, tawk.to and Help Scout cover them at the lowest cost. If many need actions, shortlist Robylon, Intercom with Fin, Gorgias for Shopify orders and Freshdesk Omni.

Channels your customers use

List every channel customers use today, including phone. Crisp routes phone through Aircall, Ringover or KrispCall, Help Scout through Aircall and Freshdesk through Freshcaller; Gorgias sells voice as an add-on with no AI Agent on calls in its docs, and Intercom sells Fin Voice through sales. Robylon includes voice phone calls from its Business plan, so the same agents answer chat, email, WhatsApp and calls.

Where your team works

Decide where the human team will reply. Chat tools give a light inbox; Help Scout, Freshdesk and Intercom add help centers, SLAs and routing; Robylon gives an inbox with tickets, SLAs and queues, or runs inside Freshdesk, Zendesk, Zoho Desk, Salesforce, Vtiger, Intercom, Freshchat, SalesIQ or Gorgias if the team already works there. Count seats too: Tidio stops at 10 on self-serve plans, Crisp Plus includes 20, and tawk.to has no limit.

Pricing at your volume

The billing units differ, so compare at one volume. On published prices for 3,000 chat and email conversations a month, 60% resolved by the AI (1,800 resolutions), 3 human agents and monthly billing:

Robylon’s figure is 3,000 conversations at about 7.5 credits each: the Business 10,000-credit tier at $300 plus 13 extra 1,000-credit bundles at $25, and 3 Basic seats at $19. Crisp’s figures use the $0.05 a conversation of Crisp’s Hugo calculator, the low end of its $0.05 to $0.10 range; monthly plans carry paid usage of up to 3 times the plan price, so Mini on monthly billing may not reach this volume and Essentials is the safer figure. tawk.to’s figure is on tawk.to’s per-message credits, assuming three AI replies a conversation on a 1-credit model; the default Auto model uses 3 credits a reply. Tidio’s packs stop at 1,000 Lyro conversations, so its figure is an extrapolation at $0.70 a conversation, with human replies on a separate plan not counted.

When to stay on Tidio

• You handle fewer than 50 conversations a month, and Tidio’s Free plan covers them for up to 10 agents.
• Your AI only needs to answer questions in a chat widget at a few hundred Lyro conversations a month. If price is the deciding test at 3,000 conversations a month, Crisp (about $190) and tawk.to (about $219) cost less than Robylon ($682), and both have free plans.
• Your team is under 10 agents and values paying by conversation rather than by seat.
• You rely on Tidio’s Flows for visitor messages and lead capture alongside support.
• You want Lyro inside another helpdesk and can buy Tidio Plus through sales, which adds Lyro Connect.

What usually drives a switch is a need Tidio’s plans make expensive or leave out: Lyro packs above 1,000 conversations, AI that changes orders on every plan, a phone channel, or a team past 10 seats. If none applies, staying is reasonable.

Moving off Tidio

1. Baseline today’s numbers: Billable and Lyro conversations a month, Lyro’s resolution rate, CSAT and total monthly cost.
2. Export the knowledge Lyro answers from (FAQs, website sources and files), plus its Guidance, Procedures and Flows.
3. List the Actions Lyro calls today and every system the new agent must act in: Shopify or WooCommerce, order management, billing and CRM.
4. Build the top intents first and test them in bulk against real past conversations, with bulk knowledge base testing or the new tool’s equivalent.
5. Install the new chat widget on a subset of pages, or move one channel, while Tidio handles the rest.
6. Reconnect email, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram, and repoint any Zapier or CRM automations.
7. Compare resolution rate, CSAT and cost per resolution against the baseline, then move the remaining pages and channels.
8. Keep Tidio on its Free plan for 30 days in case you need to roll back.

Choosing a Tidio alternative

Tidio is a capable starting point for a small business: live chat, messaging apps and an AI agent in one panel, a free plan for up to 10 agents, and low prices while volume stays low. For a team whose AI mostly answers website questions, it remains a sensible home.

Move when Lyro’s packs, the 10-seat limit or the missing phone channel start to cost more than they save. Crisp and tawk.to are the cheapest moves, Text suits stores selling in chat, Intercom fits SaaS messengers, Gorgias fits Shopify stores, and Help Scout and Freshdesk add a full helpdesk. Robylon suits teams that want the agent to take the action a ticket needs, run every channel from one setup and fit the stack they already run, and its Starter plan is free to try.