by Overview
Tidio – Live Chat & AI Chatbots is a powerful, all-in-one customer support plugin designed for WordPress, enabling website owners to interact with visitors in real time, automate support using AI, and manage messages across multiple communication channels—all via a single dashboard.
Core Features
Live Chat Widget
- Enables real-time messaging between site visitors and your team, fostering immediate assistance.WordPress.orgTechRadar
- Fully customizable and mobile-responsive; you can tailor colors, greetings, and placement to align with your brand.WordPress.orgWordPress.com
- Advanced capabilities include live typing previews, enabling agents to see what visitors are typing even before submission, helping speed up responses.TechRadarTidio
- Additional support tools include pre-chat surveys, canned responses, file attachments, and storage of chat transcripts.TechRadarTidio
AI-Powered Chatbots (Lyro)
- The star of the show: Lyro, Tidio’s advanced conversational AI agent, can automatically handle up to 70% of customer inquiries, at any time, without human help.WordPress.orgTechRadar+1
- You can train Lyro using your business’s support content (FAQ pages, documentation), helping it provide accurate, responsive, and context-aware answers.Tidio
- Lyro offers features such as order updates, product recommendations, email resolution, and smart redirections when the AI can’t fully resolve an inquiry.Tidio
- It also supports multiple languages and communicates across all integrated channels (chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger).Tidio+1
- You can monitor conversations and intervene manually when needed, with real-time control and analytics feedback.Tidio
Automation Flows & Proactive Engagement
- Tidio includes a visual drag-and-drop chatbot flow builder, complete with prebuilt templates for use cases like lead generation, cart recovery, or FAQ handling.WordPress.orgTidioTechRadar
- You can create proactive triggers—for instance, displaying a chat popup when a user lingers on a page or shows exit intent—to nudge engagement before visitors leave.WordPress.orgTechRadarTidio
Unified Inbox & Multichannel Support
- Manage messages from live chat, email, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and more in one unified inbox.WordPress.orgTechRadarTidio
- This centralized approach ensures you don’t miss messages, regardless of platform, and aids in delivering a consistent experience.TechRadar
eCommerce Integration
- Deep integration with WooCommerce and Shopify: agents or chatbots can view visitor carts, order histories, and send product cards within chat.WordPress.orgShopify App StoreCommon Ninja
- Features like cart abandonment recovery and personalized product upsells help drive conversions.WordPress.orgShopify App Store
Analytics & Reporting
- Track visitor behavior in real time, monitor how visitors engage, and adjust your strategy accordingly.TechRadar+1Tidio
- Lyro contributes analytics like answer rate and estimated time saved—helpful for measuring automation effectiveness.Tidio
Mobile & Desktop Access
- Tidio offers iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac apps, making it easy to stay responsive while on the go.WordPress.orgTechRadar
Multilingual Support
- The chat widget supports multiple languages (e.g., English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese), enabling localized visitor experiences.WordPress.orgTidio
Performance & Security
- Lightweight and asynchronously loading—the plugin has minimal performance impact.TidioWordPress.com
- Tidio maintains compliance with GDPR and CCPA regulations and secures your customer data.Tidio
Installation & Setup (on WordPress)
- In your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Plugins → Add New, search for “Tidio,” then install and activate the plugin.TidioWordPress.org
- Upon activation, you’ll be prompted to create or log in to your Tidio account, followed by a brief onboarding tour.TidioWordPress.org
- Customize your chat widget from the WordPress admin area with branding, greetings, and behavior settings.WordPress.orgWordPress.com
- Configure Lyro’s knowledge base, build chatbot flows, and add proactive triggers to enhance engagement.Tidio+1
- Manage incoming messages via the unified inbox and keep track of performance through Tidio’s analytics dashboard.
Pricing Overview
- Free forever plan: includes a functional live chat widget, basic AI conversation access, support for up to 50 live chat interactions, 50 Lyro conversations, 100 chatbot-reached visitors, and 500 emails/month.TechRadar+1
- Paid plans (Starter, Growth, etc.) start around $29–59/month, offering increased conversation volumes, advanced analytics, and automation capabilities.TechRadar+1
- Lyro AI agent-only plans begin near $39/month, focused on AI automation.TechRadar
- Larger business tiers like Plus and Premium start from $749/month and $2,999/month, offering enterprise-level features and support.TechRadar
Why It Stands Out (Pros)
- All-in-one solution: Combines live chat, AI automation, helpdesk, and analytics into one interface.TechRadarTidio
- Easy setup: Installable in under a minute via plugin; no coding necessary.TechRadar+1
- AI automation: Lyro can autonomously solve up to ~70 % of routine support queries.WordPress.orgTechRadar
- Multichannel handling: Unifies live chat, social messaging, emails—great for keeping tabs on all customer touchpoints.TechRadar
- Ecommerce optimized: Deep support for WooCommerce and Shopify aids in cart recovery and product upselling.Shopify App StoreWordPress.org
- Strong support & resources: Includes dedicated help docs, onboarding tours, and even agent fallback when automation needs escalation.TechRadar+1
Considerations (Cons)
- Trigger limits in chatbot plans can be quite restrictive; you may need to upgrade if visitor engagement grows.TechRadar
- Pricing scale: Higher tiers (e.g., Plus, Premium) may be expensive for smaller operations.TechRadar
- No phone support: Help is available via chat or email only.TechRadar
Real Feedback from Users
On Reddit’s r/smallbusiness, one user shared:
“I have used it for about 2 years and feel good about it. Gets me a lot of leads and 1-on-1 face time that has generated many sales… I still never found the need to pay for the full feature set…”Reddit
Summary
In summary, Tidio – Live Chat & AI Chatbots is a highly capable and user-friendly WordPress plugin offering real-time chat, smart AI automation with Lyro, and multichannel messaging via a unified dashboard. It’s especially suited to small and medium e-commerce businesses wanting to improve customer experience, automate common queries, and boost conversions—without having to juggle multiple tools or complex integrations. With tiered pricing including a free tier, it scales from startups to larger enterprises alike.
