“Adopting chatbots across the retail, banking and healthcare sectors will realise business cost savings of $11 billion annually by 2023.” – Juniper Research
Chatbot technology is evolving and changing how businesses interact with customers and employees. With the addition of Artificial intelligence (AI) and no-code customisation, customer service chatbot platforms are helping businesses provide round-the-clock service for assistance to their customers and truly bridging the gap between them. Companies are publishing chatbots to carry out one-on-one conversations with their customers and provide them timely assistance and build brand loyalty.
Industries ranging from banking and finance to health and wellness are experiencing a rise in the adoption of chatbots. Because of this demand, there are many competing chatbot software available in the market. The chatbot technology itself is advancing and chatbot providers are offering innovative features to stand out from the competition. But for businesses, this means they have a plethora of conversational AI chatbot platform options to choose from. Therefore, we have rounded up a list of the six best chat platforms for 2023 that are user-friendly and offer the most amazing features suitable for many business scenarios.
Key Features of a Customer Service Chatbot Platform
Most businesses looking to adopt chatbot technology struggle with finding the best chatbot platform for their specific business case. There are endless options to choose from and it is important for businesses to invest in the right chatbot platform – a platform that offers relevant tools for the best price.
Here are some of the important features to look out for when finding the best chatbot platform for your enterprise.
Live chat handover
The goal of any conversational AI chatbot platform is to respond instantly to the queries of the users and direct them toward the right information. However, it is key to choose a chatbot platform that can hand over complex queries to human agents at the right time when the bot is unable to answer them.
No-code development
Most businesses, especially those from non-technical industries, lack programming knowledge to handle the customisation and integration of the chatbot tool. Depending on the business requirements, it is vital for businesses to select an easy-to-use platform that requires minimal coding. The goal is to have a chatbot that allows you to customise the bot flow according to different use cases without any technical help.
Cross-channel integration
Cross-channel integration is an important factor to consider when choosing the best chatbot platform for your business. In order to increase your brand’s reach and generate leads through all customer touch points and relevant channels, you need to have a chatbot that can be published on your website, app, and other messaging channels such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Slack, and others.
Chatbot reporting
Chatbot platforms generate loads of data regarding customer demographics, experiences, and interactions which can be used to provide valuable insights into opportunities for business growth. Investing in a chatbot platform that offers reporting and analytical tools enables businesses to utilize this data to measure the effectiveness of the chatbot and improve the way their customers interact with them.
Six Best Chatbot Platforms for 2023
If you are overwhelmed by the options of chatbot software on the market, don’t worry! We have reviewed and tested the best chatbot platforms out there and prepared a list of the top six platforms. We have judged these platforms on the basis of their features and functionalities, user-friendliness, size of the user base, and pricing.
Engati Chatbot Platform
Engati is one of the best chatbot platforms for enterprises that can be integrated across several communication channels and devices. It offers a wide range of features that help generate leads, increase conversions, and improve response time for businesses. These include customisable AI chatbots, multi-device and cross-channel deployment, OneView Inbox, integration with third-party applications and CRMs, and multi-lingual support for chatbots.
The Engati chatbot platform uses machine learning principles and natural language processing (NLP) to help design chatbots in 50+ languages, but the main goal of the platform is to simplify the process for its users. The powerful conversational AI chatbot platform does not require advanced programming skills which means your business does not require a team of professional developers to create and deploy intelligent chatbots.
Using the library of built-in templates by Engati and the drag-and-drop interface, you can build a custom chatbot for your business in a few easy steps. The low-code platform also simplifies the job of publishing the chatbot on your website, mobile app, and social media channels. Managing the chatbot is also incredibly easy because it streamlines all the omnichannel bot interactions with OneView Inbox.
In 2021, the Engati chatbot and live chat platform received the CODiE Award for being the best AI-driven technology solution.
Key Features:
- Easy-to-customise Chatbots
- Machine Learning and NLP
- Multi-Lingual Support
- Speech recognition
- Virtual Assistant
- Third-Party Integrations
Pricing
Engati offers Standard, Enterprise, and Partner packages with flexible pricing based on monthly payments, annual subscriptions, and one-time payments.
Chatfuel
Chatfuel is another outstanding customer service AI chatbot platform that deserves a spot on our list of best chatbot platforms for 2023. It is an easy-to-use platform which requires no technical knowledge of coding and can be used to build chatbots for Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger.
For many businesses today, social media has become one of the most important lead generation platforms and Chatfuel offers powerful features such as direct message automation and comment autoreply that are revolutionalising how customers interact with a brand on social media. Not only this, but chatbots built on Chatfuel can support 50+ languages and leverage NLP to provide insights on user intent and the most frequent queries.
Key Features
- No-code chatbot builder
- Direct message automation
- Comment autoreply
- Customer re-engagement
- Chatbot drip campaigns
- Advanced chatbot analytics
- Multilingual support
Pricing
Chatfuel offers a range of pricing plans for businesses and enterprises. The free trial account is limited to 50 conversions and can be used by anyone. The monthly Entrepreneur, Startup, and Small Business plans start at $14, $24, and $59 respectively. Chatfuel also offers custom chatbot platform development services to enterprises.
Hubspot
The free chatbot builder software by HubSpot is another top contender for the best chatbot software platforms. The no-code chatbot platform enables businesses to easily build chatbots for their website by selecting a pre-built template based on the bot’s goal. Businesses can also start from scratch and build a chatbot that is unique and meets their exact requirements.
HubSpot’s chatbot platform is a straightforward software that offers many useful features to businesses that want to interact with their customers one-on-one on a large scale. The chatbots can be configured to create support tickets, update information, and assign complex queries to live agents at the right time.
The main feature of the chatbot platforms is that it is integrated with the free Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool by HubSpot and uses the information on existing customers to interact with them in a personalised manner. The data collected by the chatbot is automatically synced to the CRM system to provide complete information about customers to the team.
Key Features
- No-code chatbot builder
- Library of chatbot templates
- Personalised chatbot conversations
- Automatic synchronisation between the CRM system and chatbots
- Live chat handover
Pricing
HubSpot offers a free trial for its CRM and chatbot platform and the paid plan for a starter CRM suite which includes the chatbot software costs $46 per month.
Botsify
Botsify is one of the best chatbot platforms for you if you are looking for a tool that is easy to use and quick to set up even for someone without any programming knowledge. It is an AI and machine learning-based platform that allows you to create multiple intelligent conversation bots with ready-to-use templates.
Botsify offers cross-channel unified chat automation which enables businesses to customise autoresponse to customer queries. Chatbots can be published on many platforms including Facebook, WhatsApp, SMS and web application. The human support feature by Botsify allows live agents to quickly and seamlessly take over complex conversations that can not be handled by the bot. The conversational AI chatbot platform is also compatible with 190+ languages and can be integrated with many third-party services.
Key Features
- Multiple types of chatbots
- Customisable autoresponse
- Supports 190+ languages
- Seamless live agent takeover
- Integration with third-party tools
Pricing
Botsify is free to use for a two-week trial period which is followed by paid plans. A Personal plan costs $40 per month, while a Professional plan and Business plan start at $125 per month and $415 per month respectively. Botsify also offers custom plans for enterprises that require custom chatbot development services.
MobileMonkey
MobileMonkey is a smart conversational marketing solution that is designed to automate sales outreach for businesses across industries. MobileMonkey can help customer-centric businesses such as real estate, eCommerce, restaurants, and automobile companies communicate with their customers in real time through the AI-driven chatbot tool. Other than timely customer support, MobileMonkey is built to disseminate marketing content across various channels. The chatbot platform can be programmed to perform round-the-clock outreach campaigns and find high-value leads. Once leads are confirmed, the business can set up re-engagement funnels to keep in touch with their customers across their favourite channels.
MobileMonkey is one of the best AI chatbot platforms because it essentially eliminates the need to have a marketing and outreach department because this platform can almost do it all. With the help of automated messaging and the unified chat inbox, the process of managing all inbound and outbound conversations becomes effortless.
Key Features
- Customisable chatbots for inbound and outbound messaging
- Marketing and sales outreach automation tools
- Customer re-engagement funnels
- Unified chat inbox and dashboard
- No-code development
- Third-party integrations such as woocommerce chatbot.
- The chatbot platform allows businesses to reuse chat marketing content across any chat platform.
Pricing
There are free and paid plans for MobileMonkey depending on the requirements of the business. The Pro plan starts at $14 monthly, the Unicorn plan at $29, and the Team plan which is ideal for marketing agencies starts at $199 per month.
Pandorabots
Pandorabots makes it to our list of best chatbot platforms because it is a user-friendly and multi-lingual AI-powered chatbot. The framework for Pandrobots is based on Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML) scripting language that enables businesses to create advanced context-based customer conversation flows for various use cases.
Since Pandorabots are voice-enabled, they can be used to create bots for speech-to-text and text-to-speech. The pre-defined content libraries in the chatbot platform contain 10000+ chat inputs for common scenarios that make the task of building a chatbot much easier.
Pandorabots can be published on websites, mobile applications, and voice and messaging channels like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Slack, and others.
The extensive documentation and training courses offered by Pandorabots and their community of 275,000+ developers are particularly helpful for businesses that are inexperienced with chatbot technology.
Key Features
- Open Source framework
- Flexible AIML scripting
- Voice-enabled speech-to-text and text-to-speech bots
- Chat input libraries
- Cross-channel deployment
- Easy third-party integrations
Pricing
Pandorabot offers four different pricing options starting from a free sandbox version with basic features. The Developer and Pro plans start at $19 per month and $199 per month respectively, with a 2-week-long trial period. The Enterprise package is based on custom pricing and it includes the full range of features and custom development of chatbot libraries.
Wrapping Up
That concludes our list of the six best chatbot platforms for 2023 that we recommend for businesses who are seeking simple and user-friendly chatbot software. If you are looking to adopt chatbot technology for your business, start by analysing your requirements because that gives you a fair idea of what features are the most important for you. For instance, in case you need a simple chatbot platform for your website only then something like HubSpot would suffice. However, if your requirements are complex and you need a chatbot platform that is highly customisable and can be deployed across different devices and messaging channels, then more advanced chatbot platforms like Engati and Pandorabot can be ideal for your business.
