Comparison · website chat
Tidio and our chat solve the same job: let the guest write straight from the page. After that they part ways. Tidio meters conversations a human replied to and sells its AI agent as a separate subscription; our chat is free, and a conversation opens as a channel in the work chat of the same team that runs the shift.
Facts about Tidio were captured from its own pages on 1 and 12 September 2026; each one carries a link and a date. www.tidio.com
No card · the chat is free · until it is configured, the widget does not appear
A guest opens a product page and wants to check the delivery time. Here is what happens on each side — first through the guest's eyes, then through the owner's.
What the visitor sees and what answers them.
Vendor · Tidio
Us · Cenaly.com
Who answers, what it costs, and what happens when volume grows.
Vendor · Tidio
Us · Cenaly.com
A standalone chat service builds its own inbox around the conversation — for Tidio that is a shared inbox and tickets (captured 2026-09-01). We build it the other way around: the conversation arrives in the chat where the team already lives.
Not a separate app you have to remember to open, but a channel in the same team messenger where the shift is discussed. An administrator, a manager or the owner answers — whoever has access.
A system card is created on the transition "this thread needs attention again", with repeat protection: the author of the event does not get the card, and self-assignment does not create one. Otherwise the team chat would become a stream of duplicates.
That section gathers every inbound channel of the location: popup leads, forms, the contact form, callback requests, appointments and bookings. Site chat does not live a separate life in a third-party service.
The widget works both on your site and on the Cenaly.com storefront — no second setup and no second subscription.
No empty bubble opening a window nobody answers will appear on your site: the bundle stays silent until the chat is set up in the admin panel.
The tag, Google Tag Manager, single-page apps and Content-Security-Policy are the four places where chat usually breaks.
| What we compare | Tidio | Cenaly.com |
|---|---|---|
| What goes on the site | On the captured pages installation is described as connecting the chat to the site plus integrations — deepest with Shopify, where the guest's order history appears inside the conversation card. source · 2026-09-01 | One site/v1.js tag for all twelve widgets, with the chat enabled by a toggle. A standalone chat-widget/v1.js tag also works — but then the shared action links and QR codes are not read by it: each bundle has its own size budget. |
| Installing through Google Tag Manager | The pages captured on 1 and 12 September 2026 do not describe GTM installation separately — worth checking in their help centre. (not stated on the pages we captured) | It works. But the server-side install check will not see such a tag: it reads markup rather than executing the page — which is why we never raise a "your tag is gone" alert for GTM sites. |
| A single-page app (React, Vue, Next) | Behaviour during navigation without a reload is not described on the captured pages. (not stated on the pages we captured) | The chat window survives transitions: it mounts once into its container. A change of |
| A site with Content-Security-Policy | The captured pages carry no CSP requirements and no host list. (not stated on the pages we captured) | The loader copies its nonce onto the chat tag, so under a nonce-only policy the chat does load. But the window styles live in a Shadow DOM and need style-src 'unsafe-inline', and the language pack is a separate request to our CDN: blocked by the policy, the window opens in English and keeps working. |
An empty cell on the left describes our snapshot of the vendor's marketing pages, not its capabilities: the Tidio help centre returned 403 on both attempts, so we could not check it there.
Tidio has three units at once — conversations with a human reply, AI conversations and Flows visitors. Our chat is metered by nothing.
| What we compare | Tidio | Cenaly.com |
|---|---|---|
| A conversation with a human reply | The main unit, a "billable conversation": Starter $24.17 a month billed annually for 100 conversations, Growth from $49.17 for 250 and up, Plus from $300 plus usage. source · 2026-09-01 | Not metered: we have no conversation limit. |
| A conversation with AI | Lyro is billed separately — from $32.50 a month for 50 AI conversations; the Premium plan states a "50% AI resolution" guarantee. source · 2026-09-12 | There is no separate price per AI conversation; the AI assistant is configured in the Chat section and runs on your knowledge base. We give no contractual guarantee of an automatic resolution rate. |
| An operator seat | Up to ten seats are included on Starter and Growth, while the price itself is tied to conversations rather than seats. source · 2026-09-01 | Not charged: operator seats do not exist here as a concept. Anyone with access to the work chat can answer. |
| Visitors of scripted bots | Flows is metered by visitors — from $24.17 a month for 2,000. source · 2026-09-01 | Not charged, because we have no visual builder for scripted bots at all. That is a missing feature, not a benefit. |
| Trial period | A 7-day trial is stated as of 12 September 2026. source · 2026-09-12 | There is no trial, because there is nothing to try temporarily: the chat is free permanently. |
Cases where the honest answer is "take theirs". We do not have the things below and we will not promise them.
On the Premium plan the vendor states a "50% AI resolution" guarantee as of 12 September 2026. Our AI assistant answers from your knowledge base and hands over to a human, but we guarantee no share of automatic resolutions — neither in a contract nor on a page.
Operator apps for macOS and Windows, department routing, automatic ticket assignment, macros and a live preview of what the guest is typing (captured 2026-09-01). Our operator workplace is the admin panel in a browser plus the staff mobile app, and there is no typing preview.
Deep Shopify integration and the guest's order history right in the conversation card are the vendor's stated focus (captured 2026-09-01). Our chat knows your guest through our own orders and appointments, not through someone else's store.
The vendor states handling of Instagram comments, not only direct messages (captured 2026-09-01).
Our whole argument is that the conversation arrives in the same work chat as the shift, the orders and the bookings. If you run the shift in another system the argument fails: you get one more dashboard, not one shared one.
Every claim above was captured from these pages on the date shown. The vendor may have changed since — the links go to the original, check for yourself.
We do not quote third-party reviews, logos or screenshots, and we never present a vendor's numbers as our own. Found a discrepancy with the vendor's page? Tell us and this page gets corrected.
The widget itself is: conversations, staff and sites are not metered, and operator seats do not exist here. Other products of the platform are paid, and the one chat-adjacent cost is telephony minutes if you enable the web call — those go through your own carrier, and nothing goes to us.
Whoever is on shift. The conversation opens as a work-chat channel, and an administrator, a manager or the owner can answer — including from the mobile app. That is precisely why operator seats do not exist here.
Yes, but it is off by default. Three modes: off, AI writes a draft that a staff member sends, and AI answers on its own until it hands over. The last one requires a separate legal confirmation. The assistant answers from your knowledge base and only from documents marked shareable externally.
Yes — WhatsApp, Telegram and email are connected in the Chat section, and enquiries from every channel gather in one conversation list. Telegram is not named in Tidio's channel list on the page captured on 1 September 2026; if it matters to you, check the current state with the vendor.
The loader is one small async script, and only the enabled widgets are fetched. The web-call engine — the heaviest file — loads only when the handset is pressed. The window language pack weighs between 0.6 and 7.7 KB and is waited for no longer than 2.5 seconds.
Conversations and contacts are stored in your Cenaly.com account, in the cloud that account belongs to: cenaly.com on AWS, cenaly.ru in Yandex Cloud in Russia.
More detail — per-platform installation, settings and troubleshooting — in the docs. Installation guide →
The widget page explains how it works on our side, the docs cover installation and setup, the hub lists the other eleven.
Sign up, paste the shared website tag and turn the chat on — the conversation opens as a work-chat channel and the history stays in your account.
Get started freeNo card · no charge for operators or conversations · until it is configured, the widget does not appear