Chatbots are becoming more commonplace on platforms like Facebook messenger, Slack, Whatsapp and even within company websites and apps. Some brands are leveraging chatbots to enhance customer experiences, while others are deploying them in-house to shape up their digital workplaces. As for the future, Gartner is forecasting that the average human will have more conversations with bots than with their spouse.
Please check out the newest version of this content here: Top 26 ChatBot Builders for 2019
What Is A Chatbot Builder?
A chatbot builder, or a chatbot development platform, is an application through which one can construct a chatbot for the web, their app or for popular messaging platforms. Some have visual, drag-and-drop builders for low-code users, while others leverage machine learning to ensure the chatbot doesn’t just represent your company with pre-learned responses, but also learns from every interaction. The inclusion of APIs and SDKs are also typical for enterprise chatbot builders.
A chatbot publishing platform on the other hand, is the channel through which the chatbot can be accessed by users. Aforementioned channels like Facebook Messenger and Slack fall into this category.
Once you’ve educated your development team about the dos and don’ts of chatbot building, you’ll want to move on to choosing the chatbot building platform that best suits your project. The list below was compiled after careful consideration, taking into account the existence of enterprise features, the platform’s enterprise clientele and testimonials, as well as the platform’s status and popularity within software review sites and industry reports.
1. Motion.ai
2. Converse.ai
3. QnA Maker
4. Octane AI
5. IBM Watson
6. Botsify
7. Chatfuel
8. Pandorabots
9. Microsoft Bot Framework
10. Wit.ai
11. Semantic Machines
12. Pypestream
13. FlowXO
14. Engati
Motion.ai
Recently acquired by Hubspot, Motion.ai was a chatbot platform to visually build, train, and deploy chatbots on FB Messenger, Slack, Smooth or on a website. Hubspot has indicated that the software is being reworked and will be available for “free” at some stage in 2018.
Converse.ai
Converse AI is a code-free chatbot builder that’s integrated into Hubspot, Salesforce, Stripe and PayPal. It handles FAQs, voice, image and video support, workflows and surveys. It also has a built-in query and analytics engine, allowing you to easily track, drill down, and understand how your users are engaging with your services.
QnA Maker
Got a list of frequently asked questions to help your customers and clients? Microsoft created QnA bot for just this reason. The builder allows users to build bots based on FAQ URLs, structured documents or editorial content in minutes. QnA Maker also integrates with other APIs, allowing it to become a more encompassing bot that can answer queries not shown on your FAQ page.
Octane AI
Octane AI is designed for eCommerce brands. It helps them engage with customers through published content, discussions about listed products, forms and showcasing merchandise. Octane also intervenes when shopping carts are abandoned to rescue revenue, it provides real-time analyticsand integrates with social media.
IBM Watson
A study conducted by Mindbowser in association with Chatbots Journal discovered that IBM Watson is the most popular chatbot builder among 61% of businesses. Watson’s proprietary Conversation Service leverages a neural network (one billion Wikipedia words) for context in every conversation. It also understands intent, interprets entities and dialogs, supports English and Japanese languages and provides developers with a wide range of SDKs to extend the product.
Botsify
Botsify is machine learning chatbot development platform that integrates with Facebook Messenger, Alexa, Shopify and WordPress. It suits eCommerce brands and educational institutes by allowing for human chat takeovers and drag-and-drop template building.
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Chatfuel
With Chatfuel, you can build a Facebook Messenger or Telegram Chatbot without any coding experience. It claims to be able to launch your chatbot within 7 minutes, and it integrates with Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and other platforms to provide a personalized, AI-driven experience for brands in various industries.
Pandorabots
Pandorabots is an open source chatbot building platform with a large community. It’s multilingual, voice-enabled and has an API that lets you deploy your chatbot pretty much anywhere you like. It also markets itself as an Artificial Intelligence as a Service (AIaaS), providing API access, a bot hosting platform and SDKs for developers to easily build and integrate chatbots.
Microsoft Bot Framework
Microsoft’s answer to IBM’s Watson comes with an SDK that includes .NET SDK and Node.js SDK. The three parts that make up the framework are the Bot Connector, Developer Portal, and Bot Directory. It’s all open source and available to on Github. It supports automatic translation to more than 30 languages while understanding users’ intents. With Microsoft’s Bot Framework, you can deploy bots to a website, an app, Cortana, Slack, Teams and more.
Wit.ai
Wit.ai is designed to power chatbots, robots and wearable technology. It allows using entities, intents, contexts, and actions, and it incorporates natural language processing (NLP). While it can be used in customer service situations, it positions itself as a platform that learns user requests and then carries out tasks — like turning off the lights.
Semantic Machines
Aided by team members with experience working with Siri and Google Voice, Semantic Machines created a proprietary, language independent conversational AI. The features of the system include a conversation engine, speech synthesis, deep learning, reinforcement learning, semantic intent extraction, and language generation (NLG) technology. It also boasts speech recognition.
Pypestream
As the name suggests, Pypestream’s Smart Messaging Platform uses a patented framework of ‘Pypes’ and ‘Streams’ for natural language processing and keyword parsing. With it, enterprises can deploy utility-based chatbots to process payments, schedule appointments, share promotions and provide real-time customer support across channels like Facebook Messenger or IoT devices.
FlowXO
FlowXO helps create bots for Messenger, Slack, SMS, Telegraph and the web. It has over 100 built-in modules & integrations as well as a HTTP integration that allows developers to access data from anywhere. Human takeover is also possible, so customer support representatives can step in when needed.
Engati
Engati claims to let users build, manage, integrate, train, analyse and publish a chatbot using its software in just 10 minutes. It focuses on customer engagement and can be deployed to eight major messaging platforms including Facebook Messenger, Kik, Telegram, Line, Viber, Skype and Slack.
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