Comparison
Pooch vs Tidio
Tidio sells live chat, Flows and Lyro AI as three separate plans.
Published tiers: Customer Service $29/mo for 100 conversations; Flows $29/mo; Lyro AI $39/mo for 200 Lyro conversations. The AI is not included in the $29 plan.
Where Tidio is strong
Written honestly. If one of these matters more to you than anything below, they are the better choice.
- The most reviewed app in the category by a wide margin, and very well rated
- Mature live chat with human handoff, not AI-only
- Flows builder for rule-based automation alongside the AI
- Multichannel: chat, email and social in one inbox, with native Shopify actions on the Lyro plan
- Annual billing available at a discount
What merchants report as trade-offs
Published pricing, plus recurring themes in public reviews. Anything drawn from reviews is described as reported rather than stated as fact.
- Live chat, Flows and Lyro AI are three separately priced plans, so an AI assistant with live chat costs more than the $29 headline suggests
- Conversation volume is tiered, and the step up from the entry tier is significant
- Merchants report that reaching a conversation limit does not degrade gracefully
The honest summary
Tidio is a strong, established product with the deepest review base in the category. The difference is legibility: working out what an AI assistant plus live chat costs means adding up separate plans. Pooch meters one thing — messages — and the AI is not a separate line.
Pricing and ratings read from apps.shopify.com/tidio-chat on 2026-08-05. Vendors change pricing without notice — if anything here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
What Pooch costs
Free
Free
100 messages
Pro
$29
1,000 messages
Business
$99
5,000 messages
One meter. No separate AI charge, no per-seat fee, no automatic top-ups.