Tidio

Not really — the most common surprise. Free and Starter include a one-time 50 Lyro AI conversations (a total, not a monthly refill). After that, Lyro stops until you buy the add-on (~$39/mo for a small bundle, scaling up). Lyro is only truly included in volume on Plus. So a $29 Starter can become $68–107 once you add ongoing AI.

The defining feature of Tidio's pricing. Self-serve runs Free → Starter → Growth (~$59), then the next plan, Plus, starts at ~$749 — a 12× jump with nothing between. With a 10-agent cap on lower plans, a team going from 10 to 11 agents, or a store outgrowing Growth's conversation limit, leaps straight to enterprise pricing. For mid-market teams this gap is the biggest reason to evaluate carefully.

Tidio charges by billable conversations, not per seat. A billable conversation is a unique visitor you interact with in a period, however many messages are exchanged. Costs stay low at low volume, but rise with traffic — and you're tracking three meters at once: conversations, Lyro AI and Flow triggers. Exceeding any one nudges you toward an upgrade.

Yes. If you already run another help desk or have no live agents, you don't need a Starter/Growth/Plus subscription — Lyro can run standalone, priced by AI conversations. That makes Tidio worth considering purely as an AI answer layer on an existing stack. If you only want AI deflection, this is often the cheaper route.

Small-to-mid e-commerce stores and support teams wanting live chat, chatbots and AI in one clean tool, staying under 10 agents — especially Shopify and WordPress shops. Weaker fit for fast-scaling teams that'll cross the 10-agent wall, or heavy AI users paying repeatedly for Lyro add-ons; both hit the cliff sooner than expected.