Tidio vs Intercom for founders and small teams

Tidio charges for 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. Lyro’s replies aren’t billable conversations, because Lyro has a meter of its own. Every account gets 50 Lyro conversations once, and when they’re gone, Lyro stops until you buy a monthly package, from $39 a month, or $32.50 a month billed yearly, for 50. Tidio pricing works through a month for a founder and a team of three.

Intercom charges for people and for results. Every teammate who replies to customers needs a paid seat, and Intercom is testing two prices for its cheapest plan on the same page. Essential is $19 or $29 a seat a month billed yearly, and $29 or $39 billed monthly, depending on which version you’re shown. On top of that, Fin costs $0.99 an outcome, with none included. An outcome is counted when a customer says Fin solved their problem, when they leave without asking for more help, or when Fin completes a Procedure you’ve set up, handoffs included. It’s charged at most once a conversation, never when Fin can’t answer or the customer asks for a person, and refunded if the conversation is reopened.

So the two bills grow with different things. Tidio’s grows with the conversations your team answers, plus whichever Lyro package you pick. Intercom’s grows with your headcount and with how much Fin settles. For two of you on Essential, the seats alone come to $38 or $58 a month billed yearly, or $58 or $78 billed monthly, before Fin answers anything. Fin’s outcomes are then billed at the end of each period, with no ceiling unless you set a hard limit.

Pick Tidio if a few of you share the replies and you’d like to start free. Up to 10 teammates work from one inbox with live chat, ticketing, email, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram, all on the free plan, and the 7-day trial of the paid features needs no card. It suits an online shop, too. 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 replies more, or when you add a Lyro package.

Pick Intercom if you have a support team, or will soon, and want it all in one helpdesk. Every plan has the Messenger, a shared inbox, ticketing and a public help centre, and Workflows, round-robin assignment and custom reports start on Advanced. Fin is billed only when it reaches an outcome, and it can handle refunds, cancellations and account changes with data from systems like Stripe, Shopify and Salesforce. If you’re new to Intercom, have raised up to $10M and have fewer than 15 employees, Early Stage makes the first year of Advanced $65 a month for 6 seats.

Both are built around a team. Tidio’s meter counts the conversations your team answers, and Intercom’s counts the people answering them. If you handle support yourself, between building, neither meter 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 or decision trees 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. A question 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 learn what customers need, not just what the loudest few email about. Every conversation is saved and searchable by what visitors asked. Topics group questions, count how many people asked and label most of them, as a feature ask, a bug report, a how-to and so on, so you can see what to fix and what to build next. That’s on every plan, free included, while Intercom’s Topics Explorer needs Pro, an add-on from $100 a month, and Tidio lists its AI insights with Premium. The script that runs the widget also 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, pages from your website and seats. The free plan gives you 50 answers every month. Lyro’s free 50 come once. 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.