11 Must-Try Chatbot Providers for Every Budget
If only there was a Tinder app for sorting through all the chatbot providers on the market. Deciding on the right one is a daunting task.
It’s definitely possible to find a clever, pre-built or easy-to-build chatbot solution. Even one with a reasonable price tag that won’t drive your customers crazy. But it takes time.
That’s why we went ahead and did the digging for you. As chatbot enthusiasts, we judged each provider based on certain criteria:
- Is it easy to build and implement without a developer/limited developer help?
- Is it simple for customers and support agents to use?
- Is the price reasonable for limited budgets and worth what you get?
Here are our top chatbot providers for businesses organized by pre-built and advanced models.
Chatbot service providers for an advanced digital assistant
These are the AI chatbot providers with the big guns fit for an enterprise or companies with a roomier budget and development team.
1
Userlike
With more than 10 years of experience, Cologne-based chatbot provider Userlike is one of the leading software providers for customer messaging and support automation in Germany and is used by companies such as Toyota and Nivea.
The all-in-one platform enables AI chatbots and support agents to work together and manage chats across the most popular channels such as website chat, WhatsApp and Instagram.
Userlikes AI chatbot is the first point of contact for your customers, covering for your agents when workloads are high and answering questions outside of service hours. If the bot gets stuck, it forwards the request to a human colleague. This means that with Userlike, you don't need a separate live chat solution for bot-to-human handoffs.
With Userlikes AI Automation Hub, a self-learning knowledge database, you can build your AI chatbot intuitively and without any IT knowledge. By enabling GPT-4 integration, you can extend the capabilities of your AI chatbot to creatively combine answers from your knowledge base and provide personalized answers to customers. The bot will also be able to include context from previous messages or show empathy, giving your customers a natural chat experience.
In addition to the built-in GPT-4 capabilities, you get additional chatbot features: For example, create button options and carousels with just a few clicks to help your customers find the information and products they need faster, or use in-chat media to allow the bot to send important documents such as insurance applications, invoices, or product catalogs for lead generation.
- Chatbot type: AI chatbot/context-based with GPT-4 integration
- Compatible apps: Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Threema, SMS
- Price: AI Automation Hub starting at 200 euros/month ( available from the Corporate plan )
The software is based on a central knowledge database - the "core" of the AI Automation Hub. It provides the chatbot with its knowledge as it learns from its customer interactions.
The self-learning database is not only connected to the AI bot, but also to two other automation modules: Smart FAQ and a dynamic contact forms extension. With Userlike, you can create an intelligent self-service portal that uses customer feedback to improve itself. The interactive contact form suggests answers to website visitors based on their text input. With our AI Automation Hub, we offer a unique chatbot software that allows you to exploit all the possibilities of customer service automation.
This is the most advanced chatbot provider in this post. It’s a context-aware, cross-channel compatible solution that lets you download and own your code.
- Chatbot type: Contextual/decision tree
- Compatible apps: Facebook Messenger, Line, Viber, Twitter, Telegram, WeeChat and more
- Price: Free sandbox version, $19 a month for developer, $199 for pro, negotiable for enterprise
Implementing this chatbot requires the help of your development team or CX designers. Pandorabots, based in San Francisco, makes the job easier by providing “small talk” libraries, a free Udemy course and code/no code options.
You can write your scripts in any natural language and have the option for speech-to-text (and vice versa).
3
Cognigy
Cognigy is a conversational AI platform for a more advanced chatbot setup. You can design humanlike conversations using its low-code conversation editor.
- Chatbot type: Contextual/AI
- Compatible apps: Alexa, Google Assistant, WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram
- Price: Must inquire for pricing
The German chatbot provider supports a large number of languages so you can offer high-quality chat service without barriers. The system can either run on Cognigy’s SaaS cloud or your infrastructure. It’s omni-channel compatible, which means you can connect it to your live chat provider’s API, like Userlike’s HTTP framework .
With Cognigy, you have unlimited scalability and deep-learning algorithms for better performance. It’s an ideal solution if you’re in the market for an advanced setup to meet your service demands.
Chatbot providers for building your own code-free bot
These chatbot service providers offer bot builders that give you customization freedom without a developer. With little to no coding, you can have AI capable of learning and improving on its own. There are also simpler decision tree interfaces to help your customers with easy tasks.
Botsociety lets you design chatbots for WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Slack and your own website or app. The California-based company provides an easy-to-use platform for collaborative conversation design.
- Chatbot type: Decision tree, “user says, bot says”
- Compatible apps: WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Slack, Alexa Skill
- Price: Starts free, $79 a month for unlimited everything and negotiable plans (with a team to help you out)
All conversations designed on Botsociety are easy to export and share among platforms. This lets you use the same bot across apps and give both internal and external shareholders access to the bot’s code.
Botsociety emphasizes the importance of conversational design. Used by AirFrance and Accenture , the chatbot provider works extremely well as a prototyping tool. Your team can test multiple conversation paths before launching.
You can achieve all of this without a developer, but Botsociety offers full integrations with Dialogflow, Rasa, Azure and more. Your development team can then easily edit intentions and variables in your design.
5
Dashly
If you want to improve your lead generation, Dashly offers an intuitive chatbot builder with smart automation features. Dashly’s custom chatbot can collect visitors’ contact information, which is directly transferred to your CRM or other customer management software.
From there, you can use your Dashly chatbot to guide your customer through your sales funnel by answering FAQs and asking qualifying questions. Promising prospects are then easily handed over to your support team for follow-up.
- Chatbot type: Button-based decision tree
- Compatible apps: Facebook Messenger
- Price: Starts at $31 a month depending on your website traffic and support/feature needs
You don’t need technical knowledge to add Dashly to your website — according to their customers, it’s easy to install. If you’re new to creating chatbots, Dashly even offers templates for creating a leadbot and welcome bot, which you can customize to fit your needs.
6
Landbot
For those who want to skip the tutorials and start designing right away, Landbot is a great builder. This modern, intuitive chatbot provider lets you get started for free without a credit card and is easy to figure out how to use on your own.
- Chatbot type: Button-based decision tree
- Compatible apps: WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger
- Price: Ranges from free to $100 a month, plus larger customized plans
Using Landbot is as simple as connecting dots; you have a variety of boxes and widgets you can link together to create your own conversation structure. It’s an ideal builder for chatbots that handle scheduling, answer simple questions and engage new visitors. I personally designed a chatbot with Landbot in the post “6 steps for creating a smooth chatbot conversation flow.”
Landbot’s design options help you create visually attractive chatbots and preview conversations as you build them. Trusted by L'Oréal Paris , Uber and LG , Landbot chatbots also allow for agent handover when your customers need help with more significant matters.
6
Chatfuel
Chances are you’ve chatted with a Chatfuel bot. The user-friendly chatbot provider powers bots for many big names like Lego , ABC News , HelloFresh , Adidas and T-Mobile .
- Chatbot type: Decision tree/contextual/AI
- Compatible apps: Facebook Messenger
- Price: Starts free, pro is $15 per month, plus negotiable plans
Chatfuel has templates to help you get started. You use customizable “building blocks” to craft your conversation flow and can predefine keywords and phrases for AI to detect and respond to. It’s the closest you can get to humanlike conversation without spending the big bucks.
Their YouTube channel has a lot of helpful videos to aid you in your chatbot journey, not to mention a video addressing their GDPR compliance , an important topic for global businesses.
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7
Ada
Ada is a no-code chatbot that connects seamlessly to your live chat provider. Conversations with Ada aren’t scripted, keeping the exchange fresh every time.
- Chatbot type: Decision tree/contextual/AI
- Compatible apps: Live chat providers like Userlike , Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Salesforce, SMS
- Price: Starts free, but price is decided based on your needs
Ada gives you an easy blueprint to follow when building your bot. You can design conversations with AI that learns from your customers and can read typos, jargon and any other keywords you define. To make sure your chatbot is offering high quality service, Ada lets you A/B test conversations.
The conversational chatbot supports 14 languages and randomizes greetings and responses for a new conversation experience customer to customer.
Used by National Geographic , Smartloop personalizes automated engagement with your customers and makes it easy to hand-off conversations to your agents.
- Chatbot type: Button-based decision tree/contextual capabilities
- Compatible apps: Facebook Messenger, Viber, your own custom channel
- Price: Free starter plan, $10 a month for premium
Smartloop helps you re-engage leads by sending personalized push notifications based on past conversations. You can then analyze its conversations and improve your chatbot to better serve your customers.
When designing your bot, you use a building blocks structure that lets you preview as you go. Smartloop chatbots can handle any amount of conversations and you don’t need a developer to create and manage your chatbot once it’s live.
Chatbots pre-built for lift-off
Pre-built chatbots are a viable solution for an affordable quick fix. They’re limited in speech and capabilities, but can still be customized to communicate your services, product and brand. There are only two in this list because we recommend investing a little more time into creating your chatbot for customers. But sometimes you need to start somewhere.
9
TARS
TARS has hundreds, yes hundreds, of pre-built chatbot templates for a variety of industries such as insurance, healthcare and travel. It’s an ideal solution for generating leads and creating conversational landing pages.
- Chatbot type: Decision tree
- Compatible apps: Facebook Messenger, Zapier (which then lets you connect to many other apps )
- Price: Free to get started, $99 for five chatbots, 1,000 chats a month, plus a free custom-built bot
These pre-built templates are ideal for those with less technical experience since they just require minor editing to fit your brand. You can have conversational AI without code or having to design your own conversation flow. TARS also offers the option to build a chatbot from scratch and has many tutorial videos on their YouTube channel as assistance.
Based in the U.S., TARS supports 25 languages and is used by industry leaders such as DHL and Vodacom .
10
ManyChat
ManyChat lets you create a chatbot that helps boost engagement on your Facebook Business page. It can sell products, collect contact info and nurture leads without an agent.
- Chatbot type: Decision tree
- Compatible apps: Facebook Messenger, SMS, Zapier
- Price: Free, Pro option is $10 a month for 500 subscribers, $145 for 25K
ManyChat offers pre-built templates for your industry and a drag-and-drop bot builder for creating your own bot from scratch in minutes. It even has a widget localization tool, which lets your customers choose their preferred language from a list.
Located in San Francisco, ManyChat provides courses and marketing advice if you’re new to chatbot marketing.
Userlike: All-in-one AI provider for your support automation
Userlike helps you make your chatbot an integral part of your customer service team. By combining it with live chat, you'll ensure that your agents’ time is spent qualifying leads — your chatbot can take care of the routine stuff.
With Userlike's GPT-4 integration, you benefit from the world's most powerful AI and take your chatbot support to the next level. Your digital assistant will be able to creatively combine answers from your knowledge base and provide customers with personalized answers. It even remembers the context of the conversation to correctly categorize follow-up questions. This not only improves your resolution rate, but also gives your customers a positive chat experience.
The Smart FAQ is a responsive self-service portal that helps customers resolve their issues quickly. You can pin popular topics to the top and ensure that customers receive consistent answers with every search.
Contact Form Suggestions attempts to answer the customer’s question before they write to your team. This reduces tickets and redundant inquiries, freeing up your agents’ time.
Both features use auto-completion to answer customer questions as they’re typing them, saving time and effort.
And the best part - the AI Automation Hub doesn’t require a developer or IT experience to set it up.
Sign up for our free 14-day trial to get an impression of Userlike’s AI Automation Hub.. If you like what you see, we’d be more than happy to set up a call to discuss our AI features to see if it’s a good fit for your business.
