Tidio vs Crisp for a small support team

Tidio counts billable conversations, the ones someone on your team replies to. A thread counts once however long it runs, and a message nobody answers doesn’t count. The free plan covers 50 a month, and Starter, at $29 a month or $24.17 a month billed yearly, covers 100. Seats cost nothing, up to 10 on every self-serve plan. The AI is a second purchase. Every account gets 50 Lyro conversations once, and after that Lyro needs a monthly package, from $39 a month, or $32.50 a month billed yearly, for 50. A Lyro conversation is any chat Lyro replies in at least once.

Crisp charges for the workspace, whatever the number of conversations. Its plans are $45, $95 and $295 a month for 4, 10 and 20 seats, and each includes a month of Hugo credits, worth $5, $25 and $75. Hugo draws on them by the token, so every extra reply in a conversation costs a little more. Crisp’s billing article puts a full Hugo conversation at around $0.05 to $0.10, and the credits reset on the 4th of each month without rolling over. There’s no yearly price to compare. You switch to yearly billing in the app once you’ve subscribed, and the year is paid in advance.

So Tidio’s bill follows how many conversations people answer, with the AI bought on top, and Crisp’s follows the plan you pick, with the AI’s allowance growing with it. For a small team that wants the AI answering, the entry points are close. Tidio’s free plan plus the smallest Lyro package is $39 a month for 50 AI conversations. Crisp’s Mini is $45 a month for 4 seats and around 90 AI conversations, by Crisp’s estimate.

Pick Tidio if you want the most on a free plan, or you sell online. Up to 10 teammates share one inbox for live chat, ticketing, email, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram without paying anything, and the 7-day trial of the paid features needs no card. There are plugins for Shopify, WordPress, WooCommerce and Wix, Lyro can learn your products from Shopify or WooCommerce, and from Growth your team can cancel a Shopify order, change its shipping address or offer a refund from the chat window. The bill moves when your team answers more, or when you add Lyro.

Pick Crisp if a few of you share an inbox and want a bill that doesn’t move with your volume. Conversations are unlimited on every plan, Hugo comes inside the plan from Mini, and Crisp hosts your data on European servers on every plan, the free one included. From Essentials you get WhatsApp, Instagram and the phone in the same inbox, and a help centre Hugo learns from as you write it. Hugo can also reach into your own systems through an MCP server, to look up an order or issue a refund within rules you set. A young startup that qualifies gets 30% off Essentials or Plus.

Both are built around a team working an inbox. Tidio counts the conversations your team answers, and Crisp prices the workspace your team sits in. If you handle support yourself, between building, neither was shaped around you, and there’s a third option.

When you’re the whole support team, the same questions pull you off the product every day. Deacon answers them in seconds, at any hour, from your own docs and in the language your customer writes in, with no flows to build first. When your docs don’t cover a question, it says it doesn’t know rather than make something up, and asks for the visitor’s email. You get an email when they leave one or ask for a person, and your reply from Deacon’s dashboard appears in their chat if it’s still open. There’s no inbox to staff.

Then you answer each new question once. Crisp’s help centre says Hugo doesn’t learn from past conversations, and asks you to turn recurring questions into Q&A snippets yourself. Deacon brings those questions to you. One your docs didn’t cover gets an Answer this button, and what you write becomes part of what Deacon knows, so it can answer the next person who asks. Save & check asks Deacon the question again, shows you the reply it now gives and tells you how many other open questions your answer covers. The more you answer, the less Deacon needs you.

You also see what customers need, not just what the loudest few email about. Every conversation is saved and searchable by what visitors asked. Hugo’s Topics sort conversations into themes you name and describe in advance. Deacon’s Topics form on their own from what people ask, count how many asked and label most of them as a feature ask, a bug report, a how-to and so on, so you find out what to fix and what to build next, including the things you didn’t think to look for. That’s on every plan, free included, and the same script counts your visitors, where they came from and which goals they reach.

The price stays plain, too. Every feature is on every plan, and the plans differ only in answers, knowledge, crawled pages and seats. The free plan gives you 50 answers every month, where Lyro’s free 50 come once and Crisp’s free plan has no AI. Every plan answers with the same model, nothing is billed past a plan’s answers, and no plan moves itself up a level. There’s no badge to pay to remove, and the free plan needs no card, has no end date and deletes nothing for inactivity.