Tidio alternatives for a chatbot that runs on its own

What Tidio is

Tidio's homepage lists live chat, a help desk with ticketing, automated Flows and the Lyro AI Agent, and brings "Live Chat, email, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp in one shared inbox". Live chat means a person on your team answers the visitor in real time, and Tidio offers a view of who is on your site so your team can start a conversation. It names Shopify, WordPress and Wix among the platforms it works with.

On its Lyro page, Tidio says you feed Lyro your support content, and that when the answer is not in that content, Lyro "will automatically forward the question to a human agent". Tidio's pricing page lists a Free plan beside its paid plans and offers Lyro as an add-on.

What Tidio does well

• Live chat with people. Your team can see who is on the site and reply in person.
• One inbox. Website chat, email and messaging apps arrive in the same place.
• An AI agent that hands over. Lyro answers from your support content and forwards what it cannot answer to your team.
• An easy start. There is a free plan, and it works with store and website platforms such as Shopify, WordPress and Wix.

For a shop or service business with someone free to answer chats, live chat with an AI agent beside it is a sensible setup.

When a different approach fits better

Live chat works when someone is there to answer it. A flow chatbot is designed for the hours, or the whole business, where nobody is. It may suit you better if:

• nobody is free to answer live chats during the day, so a chat that waits for a person would go unanswered;
• you want the chatbot to ask a fixed set of questions on its own;
• you want each lead's answers saved the same way every time, with tags you choose;
• your customers reach you through your website rather than social media.

Where Alma fits

Alma is built for the chatbot to hold the conversation by itself. You write the questions and answers once, with buttons for the common choices, and the chatbot handles every visitor the same way, at any hour, whether or not anyone is at a desk.

You start from one of 145 templates in 15 categories, edit the conversation in a drag-and-drop flow builder, and paste one embed code on your site (see the install guides). The chatbot asks questions with buttons and typed answers and tags each lead by what they said. When a visitor gives an email address or phone number, Alma saves the lead and emails it to the address you set for notifications. On the Growth plan ($79 a month) and up, Zapier can pass leads to other apps, and the Agency plan ($199 a month) adds webhooks and an API. Alma also has its own booking calendar, with a booking page you can link to from the chat or from your website.

AI answering is an optional add-on for $25 a month, with up to 500 AI answers a month. It replies to typed questions your flows do not cover, using text you provide, up to 50,000 characters (about 8,000 words). The Alma team sets it up and loads your text into the bot.

What Alma does not do

Alma leaves out several things Tidio includes:

• There is no live chat and no shared inbox for email or messaging apps.
• Alma answers only on your website, not on Instagram, Messenger or WhatsApp.
• There is no free plan. Alma has a 14-day free trial, and paid plans start at $29 a month.
• Alma installs on a Shopify store with its embed code, but it is not a Shopify app and cannot see products, carts or orders.

Tidio and Alma side by side

Where these facts come from

Every statement about Tidio on this page comes from the pages below, which we read on October 17, 2026. Products change, so check them for the current version before you decide.

• Tidio's homepage
• Tidio's Lyro page
• Tidio's pricing page