// tidio alternative
The Tidio alternative
that answers chats by itself.
AI included from minute one, not gated to the Plus tier.
Tidio vs Agentbot at a glance
- Tidio is the closest direct competitor for our ICP — they target the same SMB segment, ship a usable free tier, and have a solid AI agent called Lyro. The catch: Lyro is metered by 'billable conversations' and the unlimited AI lives on the $749/month Plus tier.
- Agentbot ships AI in the base product, no separate Lyro tier, no per-conversation metering. Free during beta.
- If you fit the Free or Starter tier of Tidio and don't need Lyro, the comparison is close. The moment you want AI to actually handle volume, the Tidio bill jumps in a way Agentbot doesn't.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Agentbot | Tidio |
|---|---|---|
| AI agent in base product | ✓ | Higher tiers / metered |
| Free tier with full AI access | ✓ | ~ |
| Knowledge-base RAG out of the box | ✓ | ✓ |
| Per-'conversation' metering | ✕ | ✓ |
| HMAC-signed webhooks | ✓ | ~ |
| Tickets filed by AI | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multi-site from one dashboard | ✓ | ~ |
| Industry / use-case landing pages | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multilingual widget UI | partial (English-first) | ✓ |
| Visitor-list "Live Visitors" feature | ~ | ✓ |
Pricing: Tidio's real cost vs Agentbot beta
Tidio's pricing reads simple but compounds quickly: Free → Starter $24.17/mo → Growth $49.17/mo → Plus $749/mo → Premium contact-sales. On top, 'Lyro conversations' are metered separately (50/mo free, then add-ons). A small support team using Lyro to handle 500 chats lands in Plus territory fast. Agentbot is $0 during beta with AI included, and the planned paid model is a single growth tier — no separate AI add-on bill.
Where Agentbot wins
- AI is the default, not the upsell. Tidio gates serious Lyro usage to Plus ($749/month); Agentbot includes the AI in the base product.
- No "billable conversation" metering. Tidio counts conversations against your tier limits and bills overages. Agentbot does not meter conversations at all.
- Open webhooks. HMAC-signed events to any HTTP endpoint, no vendor-specific connector required for the integration you actually use.
Where Tidio still wins
- Tidio's Shopify integration is more mature — they were built for e-commerce first and the cart-recovery / abandoned-checkout flows are first-class. If you're a Shopify store leaning on those specific automations, Tidio still has the edge.
- Tidio ships in 5+ languages with translated widget UI. We're English-first today; non-English markets get a worse experience on Agentbot until i18n lands.
Switching from Tidio
- Step 1
Export your Tidio conversations
Tidio Settings → Account → Export gives you conversations and contacts as CSV. Useful for backup; the high-value piece is your FAQ / knowledge content — if you've trained Lyro on docs, re-upload those docs to Agentbot's knowledge base and the AI is at parity on day one.
- Step 2
Install Agentbot
One <script> tag from /dashboard/embed into your site head. Configure your AI persona and brand color from Settings → AI. The widget is live; nothing to wire per-page.
- Step 3
Switch off Tidio
Remove the Tidio JS snippet (the widget vanishes immediately) or downgrade to Free first as a safety net while you verify Agentbot is handling traffic the way you expect.
FAQ
How does Agentbot pricing compare to Tidio?
Agentbot is $0 during open beta, with the AI included. Tidio starts free, but serious Lyro AI usage is on the $749/month Plus tier and conversations are metered. For an SMB doing 200–1,000 chats a month with AI handling most of them, Agentbot's planned post-beta pricing will be meaningfully cheaper.
Is Agentbot AI as good as Lyro?
Both are LLM-backed agents that retrieve from a knowledge base. Agentbot's AI is page-aware (sees the URL the visitor is on), auto-files tickets when the issue needs follow-up, and resolves a conversation with mark_resolved when the visitor signals satisfaction. The model layer is a moving target — both products are competitive on quality and improving monthly.
What about Tidio's Shopify integration?
Tidio still wins for Shopify-specific automations like cart recovery and abandoned-checkout flows. Agentbot installs on any Shopify theme via the standard <script> tag, but we don't have e-commerce-specific automation flows yet. If those are your reason for using Tidio, we're honest: stay with Tidio for now.
Does Agentbot meter conversations?
No. Tidio counts billable conversations against your tier and bills overages. Agentbot does not meter conversations during beta, and the planned post-beta model is volume-friendly (no per-conversation surprise bills).
Can I migrate my Lyro knowledge base?
If you trained Lyro on uploaded docs (PDFs, Markdown, etc.), drop those same files into Agentbot's knowledge base. The AI uses RAG over them on every turn — same retrieval pattern, no Tidio-specific format to translate.
Is Agentbot multilingual like Tidio?
The widget UI is English today. The AI itself can reply in any language the underlying model supports — so a visitor writing in Spanish gets a Spanish reply, but the surrounding widget chrome (buttons, placeholders) stays English. Full widget i18n is on the roadmap.
Try Agentbot — free during beta.
One <script> tag. No credit card. See all features.
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