Best AI Chatbots for Small Business: Chatbase and Lyro

Collect the recurring questions a small business receives: delivery timing, booking changes, product compatibility or how to use an account. Pick a narrow set with clear, current answers. Chatbase supports configuring an agent from business information and instructions; Lyro documents website and FAQ knowledge in the Tidio support workflow. Neither can fix a contradictory policy page. Decide who owns the source material and what the bot should do when a question falls outside that scope.

Chatbase lists website chat and channels including Slack, WhatsApp, Messenger, email and voice, with availability depending on the chosen setup and plan. Lyro sits alongside Tidio live chat and ticketing and documents guidance and actions. A small team should start with the channel it already manages. Check whether the person taking over can see the question, the answer already given and the relevant customer context. Add another channel only when the team can maintain its knowledge and handle exceptions.

Chatbase counts message credits: model requests use credits, and actions can trigger additional requests. Its monthly cards show Hobby at $40 for 700 credits, Standard at $150 for 4,000 and Pro at $500 for 15,000. Subscription credits reset at the start of each calendar month and do not carry over. Tidio defines a Lyro AI conversation as a customer interaction with at least one AI reply. Those units are not interchangeable. Run a sample of short and multi-step questions, note how each consumes the plan allowance, and include the human-support features you need in the budget. Prices were checked September 11, 2026.

Chatbase Free lists 50 message credits per month and one team member. It also says free agents are deleted after 14 days of inactivity, which matters if you only test occasionally. Tidio describes an initial free Lyro conversation offer and paid recurring quotas. Confirm the current free count and selected plan at signup; an initial allowance should not be budgeted as a new allowance every month. Keep a copy of the approved support answers and configuration decisions so the workflow remains understandable to your team.

Test a clear FAQ, an ambiguous request, an outdated policy, a question with no source answer and a direct request for a person. Check that the assistant does not invent a refund, appointment or account action. For an action integration, use a test record and inspect the result as well as the chat response. Confirm where a failed action goes and who receives a handoff. Then change one source answer and ask the question again to verify the update process. This is a suggested buying test; this guide does not claim a measured resolution rate. Use the Chatbase vs Lyro comparison to compare the two workflows.