Switching live chat tools makes most Shopify owners nervous. The worry is almost always the same: you've spent a year building flows, collecting contacts, and training Tidio's Lyro AI on your products. Walking away feels like throwing that work in the bin.
Here's the good news. You don't have to. Every piece of customer data and chat history that matters can be preserved before you leave Tidio, then carried into AeroChat so your new setup feels like a continuation, not a restart.
This guide walks you through exactly what to export from Tidio, what to do with it in AeroChat, and how to switch channels over without a support gap. Budget an afternoon for the full move. Most stores finish in under three hours.
Before you start: what actually transfers and what doesn't
Be clear about what "chat history" means in a switch, because most guides are vague here and it costs people later.
There are four types of data inside Tidio that matter when you move:
Contacts. Customer emails, names, phone numbers, tags. These matter most, and they export cleanly.
Chat transcripts. Past conversations with individual customers. These export as CSV, one at a time.
Flows and automations. The logic behind your Tidio bots. These export as JSON files.
Lyro knowledge base. The Q&A pairs and sources Tidio used to power its AI replies.
Here's the honest reality most migration guides skip: live chat transcripts from any chat tool, not just Tidio, almost never transfer into a new tool as searchable, agent-facing history. They come out as downloadable files. That's a limitation of how chat platforms are built, not a Tidio problem specifically.
What you can do is preserve every transcript as a permanent archive, then carry over all the data that actually drives new conversations: your contacts, flows, and knowledge base. That way, when a returning customer opens a chat in AeroChat, your agents still see who they are, what they've bought, and what they've asked before. Which is what "not losing history" actually means day to day.
Step 1: Export your Tidio contacts
Start here. Contacts are the foundation of everything else.
Log in to Tidio and go to the Customers section in the left sidebar. Click All contacts. You'll see your full list.
Use the Customize field option to add every property you want to preserve. The ones worth keeping are:
Name
Email
Phone
Tags
Created at
Last seen
Source
Any custom fields you've built
Click Export in the top right. Tidio generates a CSV file with all your contacts and their properties.
A few things to double-check before moving on:
Open the CSV in Google Sheets or Excel.
Confirm no columns are broken or mismatched.
Look for contacts with missing emails. These won't match inside AeroChat later, so tag them for manual review.
Save the CSV somewhere safe. You'll import it into AeroChat in Step 5.
Step 2: Archive your chat transcripts
Tidio lets you export chat transcripts one at a time from inside each conversation. There's no bulk export button, which is annoying, but there are three ways around it depending on how many transcripts you care about preserving.
Option A: Export your most important conversations manually.
Open your Inbox in Tidio. Find each important conversation. Click the three-dot menu in the top right of the chat. Choose Export transcript to .CSV.
This works best when you only need to preserve a small number of high-value transcripts. Think: disputes, VIP customers, conversations linked to refunds or promises you made.
Option B: Use Tidio's email forwarding.
From the same three-dot menu, choose Send transcript to email. You can forward every transcript to a shared archive inbox (for example, archive@yourstore.com). This creates a searchable email record of every chat you care about, without needing to download files individually.
Option C: Keep Tidio active for 30 days after switching.
This is the most practical option for most stores. Downgrade Tidio to the free plan after your final billing date. Your past transcripts stay accessible in Tidio's inbox for reference, but you stop paying. You can look up any old conversation if needed while your team is finding its feet in AeroChat.
Pick the option that matches how often you actually revisit old chats. Most stores never do. If you're one of them, Option C is the cleanest path.
Step 3: Export your flows
Your Tidio flows represent real work. Don't throw them away just because you're switching tools. You'll rebuild them faster in AeroChat if you have them as reference.
Go to the Flows section. For each flow you want to preserve:
Click the Options menu on the right of the flow.
Select Export.
A JSON file downloads with all the flow's logic, triggers, and message content.
Save every flow you've actually used in the last 90 days. Delete flows that were experiments or never activated. No point carrying dead weight.
You cannot import these JSON files directly into AeroChat. Chat tools don't share a flow format. What these files give you is a permanent record of your flow logic so you can rebuild the same automations in AeroChat without starting from memory.
Open each JSON in a text editor (or ChatGPT if you want a readable summary) and note:
The trigger (what starts the flow)
The conditions (who sees it)
The messages, in order
Any tags or actions at the end
Write this out for each flow in a simple Google Doc. You'll use it in Step 6.
Step 4: Save your Lyro knowledge base
If you've been using Tidio's Lyro AI, you've built a knowledge base of Q&A pairs and source URLs. This is the content Lyro used to answer customer questions automatically.
Go to Lyro > Data sources. You'll see a list of everything powering your AI: website URLs, manual Q&A pairs, uploaded CSV files, imported Zendesk articles.
For each source:
If it's a website URL, copy the URL into a list.
If it's a manual Q&A pair, copy both the question and the answer into a spreadsheet.
If it's an uploaded CSV, go find the original file on your computer.
Save everything into one folder on your drive. Name it "AeroChat knowledge base source files" so you know what it's for.
This is the most important file set of the whole migration. The speed at which AeroChat's AI starts answering questions well depends entirely on how good the knowledge you feed it is. You already built this work inside Lyro. Don't rebuild it from scratch.
Step 5: Set up AeroChat and import your contacts
Now the Tidio side is fully archived. Time to move in.
Install AeroChat from the Shopify App Store. Follow the onboarding steps: connect your store, choose a plan, install the chat widget on your theme. This takes about 15 minutes.
Once you're inside AeroChat, go to Contacts > Import. Upload the CSV you exported in Step 1.
Map the fields carefully:
Tidio "Name" → AeroChat "Full Name"
Tidio "Email" → AeroChat "Email"
Tidio "Phone" → AeroChat "Phone"
Tidio "Tags" → AeroChat "Tags"
Anything custom: map to the equivalent AeroChat custom field, or create a new one first.
Run a test import of 10 contacts before importing the full list. Check that the fields landed correctly. Fix any mapping issues, then import everything.
If you need help with this step, AeroChat's support team handles migrations via email and chat. Send them your CSV and tell them you're coming from Tidio. They'll walk you through the mapping if anything looks off.
Step 6: Rebuild your key flows in AeroChat
Open the Google Doc where you summarised your Tidio flows in Step 3. Open AeroChat's flow builder in another tab.
Work through one flow at a time:
Start with your highest-volume flow first (usually a welcome message or FAQ deflection).
Recreate the trigger. AeroChat's triggers cover the same common cases: page visit, message keyword, returning customer, abandoned cart.
Add messages one at a time. Copy the exact text you used in Tidio so your brand voice stays consistent.
Add the end actions: tags, handoff to agent, email capture.
Test the flow yourself before publishing.
You don't need to rebuild every flow on day one. The top three usually handle 80% of your volume. Do those first. The rest can wait a week.
Step 7: Feed your knowledge base into AeroChat's AI
Open your knowledge base folder from Step 4.
Inside AeroChat, go to AI settings > Knowledge sources. You'll have the same options Tidio had:
Add website URLs. Paste your product pages, FAQ pages, shipping policy, returns policy.
Add Q&A pairs manually. Paste the ones you saved from Lyro.
Upload CSV files. Use the same source files you used in Tidio.
Give AeroChat 15 to 30 minutes to process everything. Then test with three questions:
A common pre-purchase question (sizing, shipping).
A common post-purchase question (order tracking, returns).
A question you remember Lyro handling well.
If the answers look right, you're ready. If they're off, go back and check whether the relevant source is included.
Step 8: Connect your channels
Move each channel across one at a time. Don't try to switch everything at once.
Shopify. Should already be connected from install. Confirm by sending a test message from your store's front end.
WhatsApp. If you used Tidio's WhatsApp integration, disconnect it from Tidio first, then connect it inside AeroChat. Meta only allows one chatbot per WhatsApp Business number at a time, so this order matters.
Instagram. Same rule. Disconnect from Tidio, then connect from AeroChat.
Facebook Messenger. Same pattern.
Email. Point your customer-service inbox forwarding rules at AeroChat.
Test each channel with a live message before moving to the next.
Step 9: Run both tools in parallel for 7 days
Don't cut Tidio off on day one. Leave it running on your free plan for a week after your AeroChat install is live.
Here's why. There will be edge cases you didn't plan for. A flow that fired in Tidio but doesn't fire in AeroChat. A tag you forgot to map. A customer who replies to an old email thread and routes to Tidio instead.
Running both for a week catches these issues while you can still refer back to Tidio for context. After seven days of clean operation on AeroChat, you can close Tidio for good.
Step 10: Close your Tidio subscription properly
Before you cancel:
Download one more contacts CSV as your final backup.
Archive any new conversations from the parallel week.
Screenshot your flow list, just in case you need a visual reference later.
Then cancel inside Tidio's billing section. Tidio refund policy is generally prorated, so time your cancellation right after your billing date to avoid overlap.
Remove the Tidio chat widget from your Shopify theme. This often gets forgotten and causes two chat widgets to show on your site. Go to your Shopify theme code, search for "tidio," and delete the lines.
Common issues and how to fix them
Contacts import with missing tags. Tidio tags export as a single column, sometimes comma-separated, sometimes not. Open the CSV, standardise the tag format, then re-import.
AeroChat's AI gives a different answer than Lyro did. This is usually a knowledge gap, not a model problem. Find the question Lyro answered well, then check whether the source content is in AeroChat's knowledge base. If not, add it.
WhatsApp won't connect to AeroChat. Almost always because Tidio's integration wasn't fully removed. Go into Meta Business Manager, find WhatsApp Manager, remove Tidio as an app, then try connecting AeroChat again.
Two chat widgets appear on your store. Tidio's widget is still in your Shopify theme. Edit the theme code and remove it.
Past customers get auto-tagged incorrectly. Your old Tidio tags may not map cleanly to AeroChat's system tags. Fix them in bulk inside AeroChat's contact list, not one at a time.
What you actually preserve
By the end of this process, your store keeps:
Every customer contact, with emails, phones, and tags.
A permanent archive of every past chat transcript that matters.
A rebuilt version of every important Tidio flow.
The full knowledge base that powered Lyro, now powering AeroChat's AI.
Uninterrupted chat coverage across every channel.
Your customers won't notice you switched. Your team will notice the flat monthly bill.
Why stores switch from Tidio to AeroChat
Since you're already reading a migration guide, you probably know your reasons. The most common three we hear:
Pricing predictability. Tidio bills human conversations, Lyro AI conversations, and Flows as separate quotas. AeroChat charges one flat fee with AI included. For growing stores, the predictability matters more than the sticker difference.
Shopify depth. AeroChat is built specifically for Shopify stores. Product recommendations, order tracking, and abandoned cart recovery all work natively without extra configuration.
AI quality. Lyro handles simple questions well but struggles with multi-turn conversations. AeroChat's model is newer and handles nuance better, which matters most for pre-purchase questions where the customer is deciding whether to buy.
None of these are reasons to rush. Plan your move properly, use this guide, and give yourself a week of parallel operation. You'll finish with your history preserved and a support setup that scales without surprise bills.
Ready to start?
You can install AeroChat from the Shopify App Store and begin your trial without a credit card. Once you're in, our support team can help with any migration step that trips you up. Email support@aerochat.ai or open a chat inside the app and mention you're coming from Tidio.
The setup takes an afternoon. Your history stays intact. Your store keeps running.