| Functionality | 6 <p>Tidio covers some essential features for SMBs, including live chat, email, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp support. Its AI chatbot and chat automation are excellent. Yet, the human support tools—like ticketing and routing—are basic, and it doesn’t offer help center creation and phone support.</p> | 9 <p>Zoho Desk offers very rich support functionality. It supports most channels, and the creation of help centres and community forums. It also has pretty advanced automation, AI and reporting functionality.</p><p>However, Zoho Desk doesn't support native SMS as a support channel, and has limited chat functionality compared to competitors.</p> |
| Ease of Use | 7 <p>Tidio’s chat automation is powerful but remains relatively easy to use. Templates and clearly labeled actions simplify setup. That said, the inbox is not omnichannel, which can quickly overwhelm teams handling high ticket volumes as they have to switch between inboxes. The biggest issue? You can’t see the customer’s past conversations, which complicates support.</p> | 2 <p>Zoho is bogged down by complex, unique terms like "guided conversations" and "static card block." Key workflows like replying to tickets take more clicks than average. Settings are scattered over the pages. There's an almost overwhelming amount of features (e.g. 13 tabs in total in a single open ticket view). So while powerful, Zoho's complexity can slow you down significantly.</p> |
| Look and feel | 9 <p>Tidio’s interface is modern and sleek, with just the right balance of colors and icons. Page loads are fast, typically under one second.</p> | 2 <p>Zoho Desk feels dated and cluttered, both internally and externally. Page load times are often slow. We haven't found a default Help Center theme that we'd feel confident sharing with customers</p> |
| Customisability | 6 <p>Tidio lets you create highly customized chat automation flows, including custom-coded actions. You can also add custom tags for tickets and create custom inbox views. However, ticket routing automation is limited, and you can’t build custom reports.</p> | 8 <p>Zoho Desk offers extensive customization for both internal and external pages. Externally, you can fully customize the style and layout of your Help Centre (which supports over 50 languages), as well as the Live Chat widget, with the flexibility to incorporate custom code.</p><p>Internally, you have the ability to create custom data objects and personalize the layout and display of information in your agent workspace, which dynamically updates based on ticket content.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 6 <p>Tidio offers a simple self-serve free trial for their platform. We found the initial setup to be quick, taking less than 10 minutes. Setting up your first channels may take some time though - with no easy one-click email connect option, you’ll have to setup email forwarding manually. When it comes to richer customisation options - the platform is fairly standard when compared to competitors with basic automation flows and custom inbox views being straightforward to configure in a day or two.</p> | 4 <p>Despite offering a self-serve free trial, we get the impression that Zoho is not optimised for a smooth self-serve onboarding process. Initial setup was confusing and clunky, taking over 15 minutes. Connecting your first channels is an obscure process. For example, there is no one-click email connection process and instead you'll need to set up email forward manually. Additionally, Zoho's unintuitive UX means deeper customization is also a frustrating process that can take several days.</p> |
| Customer Support | 6 <p>Tidio offers in-app live chat powered by Lyro, its AI chatbot. The experience is mixed—sometimes helpful, but other times failing to answer basic questions, even when the answers are in Tidio’s help center. The help center itself is average in both depth and quality.</p> | 6 <p>While Zoho offers 24/7 support live chat in-app, the response can be inconsistent in terms of helpfulness. The help centre is of relatively low quality, with many articles receiving mixed feedback from users.</p> |
| Integratability | 4 <p>Tidio’s integrations are heavily focused on e-commerce, supporting popular platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce, as well as marketing and CRM tools. However, it lacks integration with help centers, telephony solutions, or project management tools. While an API is available for custom integrations, the overall options feel limited for non-e-commerce use cases.</p> | 8 <p>Zoho Desk offers hundreds of pre-built integrations with common third-party tools that SMBs use, including CRMs, email marketing tools, and project management systems. It also has an extensive marketplace for additional integrations and an API for custom integrations.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 8 <p>Tidio allows self-serve export of contacts and reports. Additionally, its API supports other export needs.</p> | 6 <p>Zoho Desk allows for self-serve export of key data, however, to export email threads, you'll need to request it by emailing support.</p> |
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