Tidio for Shopify: Setup Guide, Lyro Knowledge Base, and When the Free Plan Is Enough

A chat widget only helps if someone, or something, answers it well. Tidio’s selling point is Lyro, an AI agent that answers from a knowledge base you write. The installation takes minutes. The part that decides whether it works is the knowledge base, and that is where most of this guide spends its time.

What the free plan actually includes

Check this first, because it shapes everything else. On 15 October 2026, Tidio’s pricing page listed the free plan at:

• 50 billable conversations a month.
• The first 50 Lyro AI conversations free, for the lifetime of the account. This is a one-off allowance, not a monthly one.

The cheapest paid plan, Starter, was listed at $24.17 a month. Tidio’s pricing page has an annual billing toggle, and its Shopify App Store listing presents plans differently (separate Customer Service, Flows and Lyro plans), so check which billing period and which plan a figure refers to before comparing.

The practical reading: the free plan is a good way to find out whether chat and AI answers reduce your inbox. It is not a free helpdesk for a store with steady chat volume.

Step 1: Install and connect Shopify

1. Install Tidio from the Shopify App Store. The widget appears on your storefront.
2. In Tidio, confirm the Shopify integration shows your store as connected.
3. Look up a recent customer in the Tidio inbox and check you can see their orders. Tidio’s listing says agents can see orders and the live cart, and send products, discounts and order updates from the inbox.

Step 2: Set up the widget so it sets expectations

• Welcome message: say what the chat is for and when a person replies, for example “Questions about delivery, sizing or an order? We reply within a few hours, Monday to Friday.” Only promise a response time you can keep.
• Operating hours: set your real hours. Outside them, the widget should collect an email address rather than leave a visitor waiting.
• Position: make sure the widget does not cover your add-to-cart button or cookie banner on a small phone screen. Check on a real phone.

Step 3: Write the knowledge base Lyro answers from

Lyro answers from the content you give it, so this step decides how useful it is.

Find the questions first

Do not start from a template list. Start from your own inbox: go through the last two months of customer emails and messages and write down every question that came up more than twice. For most stores this produces a list of 15 to 30, clustered around:

• delivery times and costs, by country if you ship abroad;
• returns and exchanges: the exact steps, not just a link to the policy;
• order status and what each status means;
• product questions for your best sellers: sizing, materials, compatibility, care;
• discount codes that do not apply, and why.

Write answers Lyro can use

• One question, one answer. Separate question-and-answer pairs give more reliable results than pointing Lyro at a long policy page.
• Be specific. “Orders placed before 2pm on weekdays ship the same day; UK delivery takes 1 to 3 working days” can be answered. “We ship fast” cannot.
• Include the edge cases. If personalised items cannot be returned, say so in the returns answer.
• Keep it current. When a policy or delivery time changes, change the answer that day.

Step 4: Decide what goes to a person

Set clear rules for handing a conversation to a human:

• Always: complaints, damaged or missing items, anything involving a refund you have not pre-approved, and any customer who asks for a person.
• Outside hours: collect the customer’s email address and promise a reply time.
• When Lyro cannot answer: hand over rather than guess.

If you allow Lyro to act on orders, start with the narrowest rules and widen them only after reading how it handles real conversations.

Step 5: The weekly review that improves Lyro

Lyro improves only when someone reads its conversations. Once a week:

1. Open the conversations Lyro handed to a person. Group them by topic.
2. For any topic that came up several times, write or improve a knowledge base answer.
3. Read a sample of conversations Lyro marked as resolved. Check its answers were correct, not just confident.
4. Note the share Lyro resolved this week in Tidio’s reporting, so you can see whether the changes are working.

Those handed-over questions are useful beyond support. A pre-purchase question that keeps coming up (sizing, delivery dates, compatibility) is a question your product page failed to answer, and most visitors with the same question leave instead of asking. Add the answer to the product page too; the free conversion rate optimisation guide covers finding where buyers drop off.

When to move off the free plan

Stay on the free plan while your monthly conversations fit inside 50 and you are still testing whether AI answers help.

Move to a paid Tidio plan when you regularly run out of conversations, or the free Lyro allowance has shown that AI answers resolve enough of your questions to be worth paying for. Buy the smallest plan that covers your busiest month.

Look at a ticket helpdesk such as Gorgias instead when messages arrive across email, Instagram and Facebook as well as chat, or when one or more people spend a large part of their day on support. The Tidio vs Gorgias comparison sets out a workload test for that decision.

Install Tidio free to run the test on your own store. Tidio links on this site are affiliate links.