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The answer to this question depends entirely on your needs and resources. Well, if you are on this page, you have probably made your choice. 

Nevertheless, it is important to see the whole picture of the world of chatbots and understand the limitations of your choice. No-code chatbot platforms are easy to use, don't take a lot of time, and usually, come with analytics tools. But their AI might not be so strong or they do not offer all the deployment channels you need. 

So, let's compare two ways you can build a chatbot. 

 

 

	Using a chatbot app	Building a chatbot from scratch
Time to build	A simple chatbot based on a template can be built in half an hour. A more sophisticated one might take a month or so.	Building will probably take about a month or so, testing and improving a chatbot might take a couple of months. Overall, even if you are using code samples or code frameworks, building a chatbot from the ground up takes more time than using an app.
Affordability	Various platforms have a wide range of pricing options. There are also free plans available. Most of these platforms are quite affordable.	To build a fully functional AI chatbot in a reasonable amount of time, you will likely need to hire a team of professionals. Taken it takes longer to build such a chatbot, you would have to carefully plan your finances.
Resources	All you need is an app and a few employees to plan and test the chatbot.	You are likely to need at least one skilled developer and a tester.
Features	Features are limited and defined by the platform. Often platforms have an ample amount of features. Still, if you	Depending on the developer's skills and the time you have, you can have pretty much everything you want.

 

 

 

In case you didn't change your mind and the chatbot building software is still the best choice for you, let look at criteria that will help you choose the right chatbot app for your business.  

What to Consider When Choosing the Best Chatbot Platform? 

There is a handful of chatbot apps available, and it is easy to get lost in this abundance. Further in the article, we will look at the most popular chatbot apps, but that is not nearly everything. So, we want to equip you with a toolkit so that you could assess any apps that you come across.

Before you look at the chatbot app's aspects described below...

1. List all the problems of your company that you are planning to solve with a chatbot.
2. Think about the channel your company is most present on and which attracts most clients. If it is Facebook, for example, then you need to make sure the app you choose offers a Facebook chatbot. How is a chatbot going to solve the problems you listed via the channel of your choice?
3. Are you planning to expand in the future? If yes, what other channels would you like your chatbot to be deployed on in the future? 

After you carefully thought out your needs and problems, it is time to analyze the features a chatbot building app might have. 

Interface  

For the platform to work successfully and efficiently, check if the interface of an app has the following features:

• It is clean and easy to understand.
• It doesn't take months to learn how to use the app. 
• There is a visual drag-and-drop interface. 
• The process of chatbot building is rather intuitive.

Message Features

The following are important elements that you might want to be able to use when sending messages to users. 

• Delays

This feature makes chatbots wait for some time before proceeding with the conversation. This gives room for the user to think and creates a feeling of a more authentic and smooth conversation&. 

• Various types of attachments: images, video, audio, gifs, lists, emoji’s
• Persistent Menu

In this menu, there are options available to the user at all times. It might have options like "Contact us" or "Leave a review" that users might want to use regardless of where they are with their conversation with the chatbot.

• Quick Replies

Quick Replies are pre-written response options that you give to users. They are of great help when the chatbot app doesn't have an AI feature, and even if it does, if you feel like many users will have similar answers to the question, then quick replies will be a good option as well. Combining quick replies with free text input will give you the best of both worlds. 

• Free Text Input

This is a great feature that allows you to create a smoother and more pleasant conversational experience. However, not all apps have it since it requires AI to process users' queries. 

• Different Types of Validation.

Validation is verifying whether the information filled in by the user is correct. When users leave their emails or phone numbers, you want to know that the data they gave you is valid.

Chatbot User Features 

To deliver value to your customers, you need to get to know them well. Chatbot applications are pretty much capable of doing this if they have the following features:

• Custom Tags or Attributes.

It is a certain "comment" that you can assign to a customer. For example, a customer doesn't like phone calls, so you can tag them "no calls, emails only", which will let your sales team take a more personal approach. 

• Location Sharing.

Knowing where your customers are from is absolutely crucial for any business. 

• Grouping

If you can group your customers based on certain criteria, for example, "e-book lovers" (if they downloaded the e-book on your website), then you can send them personal emails and offers. 

The Type of Messages  

Messages are an integral part of your marketing strategy. So, the following types of massages will help you carry out this strategy.

• Broadcasts

Does the app allow you to send the message to all the users or to certain groups of users at once?

• Campaigns or Sequences, or Automations

You should be able to automatically send messages to the users who have signed up for your campaign. 

• Languages supported

Make sure the app of your choice supports all the languages you need. Or might need in the future as your business grows!

Artificial Intelligence 

"I'd like a pepperoni", "Large Pizza", "Can I order pizza?" These are different wordings but the intention behind them is the same: a customer wants to order a pizza. The job of AI is to see this intent behind the users' words. No doubt, this makes the conversation smooth and pleasant because AI chatbot applications minimize misunderstanding. 

Usually, the best chatbot apps are AI-powered, but always make sure this feature is included.  

Deployment Channels 

As we've mentioned before, you need to know your primary channels where your business is mostly run. So, when choosing the app, check if it offers all the channels your marketing campaign needs. 

Integration With Other Platforms 

The more integration opportunities an app has, the better. However, there are integrations you just can't do without.

• Live Chat

This is the most important integration for your chatbot. When your chatbot is confused, it will say to the customer something like "Sorry! I cannot give the answer to your question. Would you like me to transfer you to a real human?". If this option isn't available, the user will be left unsatisfied every time the chatbot cannot give the answer to their question. 

• Zapier

This app connects different apps to each other. Google Sheets, Gmail, Google Calendar, Discord, Slack, Hubspot, Instagram... and hundreds more. With Zapier, you have a great opportunity to connect everything you need to your chatbot to automate some data flows. 

• DialogFlow

It is Google's AI. This can be an important integration if a chatbot does not understand intents. Well, even for chatbots that already have some AI infusion, Google's tool is usually more experienced and has more data.   

Analytics and Tracking

This is one of the most crucial features of your chatbot's success. How can you improve the performance of you chatbots, if you don't know how well it is performing? 

So, what can this analytics tool include?

• Dashboard

It is great to have all of your statistics in one place. 

• User Input

Accessing what users write to chatbots is important, especially those queries that didn't get answers from your chatbot. This is how you know the limits of your chatbot and the areas of improvement. 

• Messages Sent

This is the number of messages sent by your chatbot. 

• Open Rate, Click Rate, Conversion Rate

You want to know how many messages sent by the chatbot got opened, clicked on, and how many users actually complete the goal of your chatbot. This defines the success of chatbots.  

• Fallback Rate

How many times has a chatbot failed to give an answer? This is an important metric to have because you want to keep it as low as possible. Otherwise, the chatbot needs serious improvement. 

Payment

If you intend to do e-commerce with the help of chatbots, It delivers a lot of value if users are able to pay within the chatbot. There are several ways chatbots can be used for payment:

• Connection to Shopify
• Direct payment in chatbot
• Referral to the payment page

Cart abandonment is another great feature to have if you are doing e-commerce. When the user puts something in the cart and then leaves it, the chatbot can remind the user of the items waiting for them in the shopping cart. This can twofold your cart abandonment rates.  

Support Provided by the Chatbot Software Company

Is the software company helping you to create the best chatbot experience? These are basic things to consider:

• Templates for chatbots
• Tutorials 
• Proper documentation
• Customer support

Top Chatbot Apps for Greater Customer Experience

Now, as you are equipped with all the assessment tools, you can take a critical look at all the options in the market, and make the best choice for yourself. We hope that our little "top chatbot apps" list will save you time, and help you find the app of your dream. 

If there is more than one app that appeals to you, go ahead and sign up for free trial periods. This first-hand experience will answer all the questions you might have left.

ManyChat

 

 

 

 

Manychat is the biggest and most popular app to create chatbots for Facebook Messenger. It usually has great ratings and reviews and is used by hundreds of clients around the world. It is often considered one of the best chatbots in the market. But keep in mind: even if it is the best of the best, it might not be the right platform for you. Let us look at their strengths and weaknesses to see if this might be the right app for your business.  

Interface

The interface of ManyChat is clean and intuitive. On the left side, it's got the menu, and on the right side, you will find the content of each menu section. 

Once you log in for the first time, it suggests several tutorials on how to get started with the platform. This is especially helpful since it always takes time to explore and learn about a new tool. 

To take a deeper dive into the platform, ManyChat has an entire Youtube playlist dedicated to the successful use of the platform.

ManyChat offers multiple automation tools for marketing:

1. Facebook chatbots
2. Message sequences 
3. Simple chatbots based on keywords
4. Automated actions for specific contacts (say, one of your clients is having a birthday, or a customer hits a "subscribe" button) 

The Flow is the tool that is responsible for chatbot building. The basic principle of its work is connecting messages to actions. What is great about its interface is that it offers two modes to help you design your chatbot logic: 

The Flow Builder

This is a visual drag-and-drop interface that's offered by the majority of apps. If the structure gets too complicated and messy, you can always switch to the Basic Builder, which is a great advantage of this platform. 

The Basic Builder 

Here all the messages in a flow are presented in order.

Message Features

ManyChat has a great number of features and is outperforming many competitors:

Available	Not available
Delays	Vertical list
Images
Video
Audio
Attachments
Gallery
Emojis
Persistent menu
Quick replies
Free text input
Location sharing
Email / phone number / date validation

ManyChat is available for a huge number of languages. However, translating chatbots that already exists is almost impossible because you'd be doing it manually.

Users

ManyChat offers quite some features that allow you to manage your customers well and achieve a more personal level of interaction. You can assign a customer a field or a tag, you can group customers by groups or tags and then broadcast certain messages or perform certain actions. 

Even more, each customer has a profile where all their unique preferences and tastes are presented as well as their location:

Channels 

Here are channels available for ManyChat clients if you are on a free plan:

• Facebook
• Instagram

If you sign up for pro, you get:

• SMS (US and Canada only. There is Twilio integration available for an extra fee if you want to send SMS to other countries)
• Email
• WhatsApp

Channels that are still missing:

• Telegram
• Slack
• Skype

Integrations

ManyChat provides its users with the most important integration: Live chat 

Other website apps available for integration:

• Zapier
• Integromat
• Google Sheets
• ActiveCampaign
• MailChimp
• ConvertKit
• HubSpot
• Walletly
• Botsheets
• Janis

Besides, ManyChat offers two more features:

1. A mobile app for IOS and Android so that you could communicate to your users everywhere. 
2. They have their own App store! There you could find some extra features, integrations, and marketing tools.

Analytics 

While performing well in other parts of this review, ManyChat cannot boast of its analytics tool.

First, what you can track using ManyChat dashboard:

• Subscribers dynamic 
• The number of people that received the message, the open rate, and the clock rate for chatbots and sequences.
• In 2020, ManyChat introduced ManyChat Pixel. If a link button in Messenger gets a click and then the person goes on your website, this tool will track that conversion back to the specific flow. This will give you an idea of the most productive flows. 

What you cannot do with ManyChat:

1. There is no single comprehensive dashboard. Analytics are all over the place in different sections of the platform. 
2. The platform doesn't offer an overview of unmatched keywords. It means that if a customer types in a keyword that isn't provided by your chatbot, you will never find out about it, thus missing out on a great window of opportunities. 

AI and Natural Language Processing Feature

 

Can do	Cannot do
Group keywords and create certain responses for them	Understand the user's intent behind the words
	Support automatic synonyms
	Connect a chatbot with DialogFlow

 

E-commerce 

Direct integration with Shopify is provided, so:

• It is possible to update customers about their orders. 
• Receive feedback after the purchase.
• Recover abandoned carts 

The chatbot doesn't offer a direct payment feature, however, you can set up direct payments with the Stripe or Paypal integration.

Pricing

 Free plan: you can engage up to 1.000 users

Pro: the fee per month starts from $15 and grows, depending on the number of your subscribers. ManyChat website has a calculator that will count the exact price for your business. You can't have a trial period for Pro plan, but it's no problem with a 30-day money-back guarantee. 

ChatBot

 

 

 

 

This is another popular tool that usually gets good reviews and often is called one of the best no-code platforms for chatbots. Let's see what ChatBot has to offer. 

Interface

The interface of the ChatBot platform is clean and simple. It uses the same logic as the interface of ManyChat: the main menu is on the left and all the details are on the right. 

What stands out on this platform is the amount of support a new user is getting. You are taken on a tour with a clear and simple explanation of the basics of chatbot creation right after you sign up. 

Then, you find visual props here and there as you explore the platform. What is more, there is a whole page dedicated to step-by-step lessons about all the things you can create using ChatBot. 

The chatbot building page looks clean and as intuitive as it can get. All the steps have quite self-explanatory names. You can test your bot right away by clicking the "Test" button you can see in real-time how the logic tree of your chatbot takes the user through each step. This is an unusual and convenient feature that not each platform has. 

Message Features

 

Available	Not available
Delays	Vertical list
Images	Video
Gallery	Audio
Emojis	Attachments
Quick replies	Persistent menu
Free text input	Location sharing
Email / phone number / date validation

 

ChatBot supports a great number of languages: Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian

Users

Each user of each of your chatbots has a profile on ChatBot with a lot of valuable information for your marketing.

Also, you can assign each user to a segment and then use them to send certain messages or perform certain actions to the entire segments of customers. 

Last but not least, you can see each dialog your user had with your chatbot, which lets you identify where the interaction went wrong. This gives a lot of room for chatbot improvement. 

Channels 

You can deploy your chatbots on the following channels:

• Facebook
• Slack
• Chat-widget (basically a chatbot for the website)

Through the integration with external websites and apps, you can deploy your bot on:

• WordPress

Channels you cannot connect to:

• SMS 
• Email
• WhatsApp
• Instagram 
• Skype
• Telegram

However, ChatBot is currently considering adding WhatsApp, Skype, Twitter, and some other channels. 

Integrations

ChatBot offers the most vital integration: Live Chat. Besides that, ChatBot doesn't offer a wide variety of apps, but it's got the most important ones covered: 

• Webhooks 
• Zapier
• Freshdesk

The good part is that you don't need any extra clicks to enable these integrations. They are already part of a chatbot-building process.  

Analytics 

ChatBot offers some great analytics so that you could carefully track and improve. 

There is no single Dashboard to overview all of your chatbots and activities. Most of the metrics you will find under the Reports section:

• Total number of chats.
• Total number of messages and the number of messages of each of the chatbots;
• The popularity of actions by chatbot. This one allows you to see the percentage of customers who actually completed the chatbot's goal. 
• Total number of customers.

You can come across some more analytics if you go to the Archives section:

• All interactions you any customer has with any of your chatbots.
• Debug mode for each dialog that shows where things went wrong.

Under the Traning section, you will find one of the greatest features for chatbot improvement and development: 

• Unmatched keywords (these are keywords typed by your user that were not recognized by the chatbot). 

The only thing you cannot do with ChatBot is to have all the metrics in one place. 

AI and Natural Language Processing Feature

ChatBot is a platform that does a great job with keywords but does not have AI or Machine Learning mechanics. 

 

Can do	Cannot do
React if the user types in certain keywords or requests	Understand the user's intent behind the words
See what keywords types by the customer didn't get reactions	Support automatic synonyms
	Understand anything the customer types in

 

E-commerce 

ChatBot platform is not designed for e-commerce, so you cannot:

• Connect your bot to Shopify.
• Enable direct payments. 

Pricing 

The 14-day free trial is available for the Team plan with 5 active chatbots and 5,000 valid chats. Then the Team plat is available at $126 per month.

The most basic plan is Starter with only 1 chatbot available. You can enjoy it for $42 a month. 

The Business plan costs $424 per month and offers an unlimited number of chatbots. 

If you want features like a custom integration (ChatBot development team will build custom integrations for your business) or chatbot maintenance (ChatBot development team will track and improve your chatbot over time), there is the Enterprise plan, and the price is negotiable. 

TruVISIBILITY Chat 

 

 

This is a relatively young company that offers various solutions to improve and automate marketing strategies, chatbots included.

Interface

TruVISIBILITY has got a relatively clean and clear interface though it might take some time to get used to it. 

You land right on the Dashboard with all the statistics and data of your chatbots. The top bar will take you to other sections: chatbot-building, dialogues, etc. 

The number of visual props and the amount of support, in general, are very substantial. You will find tooltips with tips all around the platform and there is a chatbot in the bottom right corner always ready to answer your questions. 

The chatbot building process is also pretty straightforward with a visual drag-and-drop interface. The structure of TruVISIBILITY chatbots is a bit more complex than that of other chatbots building apps that we reviewed but it's got great AI capacity as well as allows for more freedom for an authentic conversation. 

To help you explore all the capacities of the chatbot building process, there are visual props, multiple support articles as well as the TruVISIBILITY chatbot.   

 

Message Features

TruVISIBILITY offers a surprisingly rich number of things you can offer to your user. 

 

Available	Not available
Delays
Images
Gallery
Emojis
Quick replies
Free text input
Email / phone number / date validation
Business cards
Video
Youtube video
File upload/download
Persistent menu
Comment
Web View

 

TruVISIBILITY is only available in Russian and English. 

Users

What you can do using TruVISIBILITY chatbots:

• See the user's comprehensive profile with their phone, company, geographic location, social media, etc. 

• Assign tags to your users to then further adjust your marketing strategy. 
• A feature that stands out from other platforms: you can see all the leads collected by the chatbot. 
• All the dialogue scripts users had with your chatbots. 

Channels 

You can deploy your TruVISIBILITY chatbot on the following channels:

• Facebook
• Website
• Slack
• Twitter
• Telegram
• Viber

Channels you cannot connect to:

• WhatsApp
• Instagram 
• Skype

SMS and Email aren't directly available in the chatbot directly but can be used through other TruVISIBILITY Products that come in one package. 

Integrations

Sure, the Live chat integration is available. Besides:

• You can connect your chatbot to other TruVISIBILITY tools such as Sheets and Email Server. 
• Google Calendar
• Google Spreadsheets 
• Any other email server that you are using

Analytics 

Analysis tools are a strong part of TruVISIBILITY chatbot. It's got pretty much everything you need to track and improve that chatbot.  First, there is one single Dashboard for all your activities. 

[Screenshot TruVISIBILITY Dashboard]

You can track the statistics for: 

• Conversations
• Live chats
• Tickets
• Callbacks
• Chats missed
• Response time
• Leads

An outstanding feature is that you can see the data not only about your chatbots but about your live chat agents as well. 

AI and Natural Language Processing Feature

The logic of TruVISIBILITY chatbots is based on pre-written answer options combined with AI rather than on keywords. 

 

 

Can do	Cannot do
Offer a range of answer options	Give answers based on keywords
Understand the user's intent behind the words
Understand anything the customer types in

 

E-commerce 

However, there is no integration to Shopify, the payment through the chatbot is available. You can connect either PayPal or Stripe to your chatbot and enable direct payments. 

Pricing 

 TruVISIBILITY offers a Freemium account with 100 free conversations and a maximum of 10,000 conversations monthly. 

Further, the price depends on the number of chats, landing pages, etc you need for your business. You can calculate the cost directly on their website. 

Chatfuel

Chatfuel is one of the most searched chatbot-building brands along with ManyChat and IBM. Take a look at our review and find out if it is worth your money and time. 

Interface

Once you register on the platform, the platform tries to get to know you better by asking questions about your business and how you are going to use the bot. 

The interface is quite clean and intuitive, there is a menu on the left and everything each menu section includes on the right. This is very much like the interface of ChatBot and ManyChat. 

As for the chatbot building process, it ChatFuel uses a logic tree. The interface of a chatbot builder has a vast amount of buttons, menus and takes time to get used to. On the other hand, literally, every step you take is accompanied by a tutorial. 

Message Features

ChatFuel offers pretty much everything there is to offer!

 

Available	Not available
Delays	Vertical list
Images	Attachments
Video	Location sharing
Audio
Email / phone number / date validation
Gallery
Emojis
Persistent menu
Quick replies
Free text input

 

A ChatFuel chatbot is available in pretty much any language! 

Channels 

With ChatFuel, you can use your chatbot on the following platforms: 

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Website

Here is where you cannot have your chatbot:

• WhatsApp
• Telegram
• SMS
• Email
• Slack
• Skype

Users

In ChatFuel, you can see all of your users in the People tab. By clicking on each person, you will see all the relevant information about them. Much like we saw in ManyChat, ChatBot, and TruVISIBILITY apps.  

ChatFuel lets you divide users into segments to further broadcast specific information. However, you cannot assign tags to users. The issue isn't really big since you can use segments as tags by creating a custom field and setting the value to "Yes" or "No".

Integrations

ChatFuel provides its clients with the most vital integrations:

• Live chat
• Zapier 
• Integromat
• Google Sheets
• Webhooks

Analytics 

ChatFuel has something that we haven't seen in ManyChat or ChatBot: one single clear Dashboard with all analytics.

With this Dashboard, we can learn about:

• the number of users
• user retention
• user activity
• popular blocks
• popular buttons
• popular messages
• users' input that the chatbot didn't reply to (crucial feature for the chatbot improvement!)
• delivered rate, seen rate, and click rate of elements in your chatbot flow

We cannot learn about:

• conversion rate
• fall back rate
• custom dashboards/reports

AI and Natural Language Processing Feature

There is no AI feature in the ChatFuel chatbot, its work is based on keywords or groups of keywords.

 

Can do	Cannot do
Recognize keywords or groups of keywords and give certain answers	Understand the user's intent behind the words
	Understand anything the customer types in
	Understand synonyms
	Directly connect with DialogFlow

 

E-commerce 

ChatFuel is a good choice for e-commerce because you can:

• have an abandoned cart integration with Shopify.
• pay directly in the chatbot using Stripe integration.

You cannot directly connect your chatbot to WooCommerce, but it is possible through Zapier or Integromat. 

Pricing 

ChatFuel is absolutely free if you have less than 50 users. Also, you get basic email support for 30 days. 

The next plan is Pro, which is $15 a month as long as you have up to 500 users. Then the price scales up as the number of users grows.  

In case you want: 

• Premium customer support
• Your own account manager 
• Bot-building guidance from ChatFuel experts

Contact ChatFuel for the Premium plan price. 

They also have an Agency plan, where you get everything from Pro and Premium, plus:

Final Word

Of course, there are much more chatbot-building apps in the market. We looked at popular ones that you will most likely come across on the Web. But now, with the criteria and examples from this article, we hope you have a good toolkit to assess any app that there is out there.

Each of the chatbot apps is unique as is each business. So, there is no ready-made solution that one could apply to any case. Hopefully, now it will be easier for you to find the perfect match! 

Let TruVISIBILITY cater for your company's needs!