Over the past couple of years, chatbots have been increasingly employed by businesses to engage website visitors, start conversations and generate quality leads.
These bots have helped companies boost their inbound marketing strategies and automate a variety of tasks - improving customer experiences, collecting consumer feedback, answering prospect questions and so much more.
Their ability to simulate a human touch and create personal dialogues with users 24/7 have helped chatbots become a popular point of contact with consumers. In fact, it is estimated that two-thirds of customers sought help from chatbots in 2019.
In this article, we’re going to show you some of the top chatbot creation platforms for businesses that’ll help you build your very own virtual chatbot and create deeper connections with your potential customers.
But first, we need to understand just what a chatbot is.
What is a Chatbot?
A chatbot is a computer program (usually AI or Artificial Intelligence) that simulates a human persona and takes part in quality virtual conversations with prospects and customers, often to generate leads, provide on demand customer support and boost the overall consumer experience. The term ‘chatbot’ is derived from the original ‘chatterbot’ - the name given to these programs by their creator, Michael Mauldin in 1994.
By providing immediate answers to consumer queries, chatbots help brands convert prospects who would have otherwise been whisked away by the competition.
At the same time, bots help companies focus their efforts on more important managerial tasks that require human subtlety. It’s estimated that using chatbots to interact with customers can help reduce operational costs by upto 30%.
It’s time to give your inbound marketing strategy a boost. Listed below are our top picks for the best chatbot platforms of 2020 to help you generate leads effectively and take your business to the next level.
Let’s get started.
10 Best Chatbot Platforms of 2020:
1. MobileMonkey
2. Bold360
3. Chatfuel
4. Botsify
5. Manychat
6. VideoForm
7. FlowXO
8. Sequel
9. Pandorabots
10. Aivo
With the right content strategy in mind and a good understanding of your target audience, you’ll be able to use these chatbot creators to build your very own lead generation machine.
1. Mobile Monkey
Mobile Monkey is an easy-to-use chatbot creator that has a host of features to help you make every consumer conversation all the more pleasant.
With several brilliantly designed templates that work for a variety of industries, MobileMonkey allows you to create your own personal chatbot with ease, even if you’re new to the game.
Mobile Monkey makes it onto our list of the best 2020 chatbots because it lets you build conversational chatbots for Facebook Messenger and connect them to a wide range of lead generation efforts - ad campaigns, broadcast messages, drip campaigns, list building etc.
Mobile Monkey chatbots also allow quick human intervention, letting you join the conversation at any time that you please.
Pricing: You can use mobile monkey for free and reach any number of contacts, but with limited features. For $149/month you get The Premier Plan which lets you use an agency dashboard, unlimited live bots and Facebook pages, for 5,000 contacts. Alternatively, you could try out the $49/month plan, which gives you most of the Premier plan’s features, but without any Premier support.
2. Bold360
With their very own patented Natural Language Processing (NLP), Bold360 is an advanced AI driven chatbot platform that enables businesses to build chatbots that can understand customer intent without requiring keyword matching.
This allows them to give more immediate and accurate responses to consumers. What makes Bold360 one of the best chatbot platforms is its conversational AI that can understand complex linguistics, remember the context of the entire conversation and provide natural responses to customers. Give your chatbot it’s own personality and help customers purchase your products - directly from their conversations.
Pricing: Flexible pricing on a quote basis.
3. Chatfuel
Chatfuel is a powerful chatbot creator designed specifically for Facebook. No coding is required to create chatbots on this platform.
Chatfuel ranks among the top chatbot creation platforms thanks to its NLP that can recognize linguistic phrases and intelligently respond with predefined answers.
The bot is also great for lead generation as it logs every user that interacted with it into your database so that you can contact them in the future.
Pricing: You can use the basic version of Chatfuel for free. However, there is also a Premium Plan priced from $300/month that lets you build an unlimited number of robots for up to 30,000 users.
4. Botsify
Botsify is an extremely easy to use chatbot builder that’s perfect if you want to make and deploy a chatbot quickly.
Botsify makes it onto this list of the best chatbot platforms thanks to its several customizable templates and an easy to use drag and drop interface that lets you create chatbots for Slack, Facebook messenger and a ton of other apps in a user friendly, code free environment.
It also allows easy human intervention, letting your agents join and carry on the conversation at any point.
Pricing: Botsify starts at $50/month for a personal plan. For this price you can create 2 active chatbots and interact with upto 5000 users a month. They also offer a 14 day free trial to help you get a hang of the chatbot builder.
5. ManyChat
ManyChat is a free, yet brilliant chatbot builder that’s designed to help boost marketing and sales efforts over Facebook Messenger.
Featuring a simple drag and drop interface, ManyChat allows you to create a complete chatbot in a matter of minutes - no coding required.
Broadcast messages to your Facebook subscribers, get them to sign on and grow your messenger audience easily.
Powering over 40,000 companies worldwide, ManyChat is regarded as one of the top chatbot platforms today and is a great option if you’re looking for a quick chatbot solution for your lead generation efforts.
Pricing: You can sign up with ManyChat for free with access to basic templates and growth tools. For more powerful tools like A/B testing, unlimited audience segmentation etc, you’ll have to subscribe to the pro plan at $10/month.
6. VideoForm
VideoForm combines the power of chatbots with interactive video to create a unique experience for your prospects.
Unlike the other chatbots on this list that communicate with your prospects through audio or textual means, VideoForm is designed to communicate through video.
What this means is that you can record yourself talking to your prospects and start asynchronous conversations on a more personal basis.
Simply record a video, create pathways for your conversations and you’re good to go - no coding required.
Your VideoForm can be embedded on your website or shared by link as a standalone landing page.
It can also be shared via email to boost your email marketing campaigns. With the added human touch, you’ll be generating more leads for your business in no time.
Pricing: Signing up to VideoForm is free and gives you access to all templates and 30 minutes of audio or video responses per month. For agencies, try out the Pro plan which gives you the ability to manage multiple websites from a single portal at $50/month.
7. FlowXO
FlowXO is an all-in-one chatbot builder that allows you to create bots for multiple platforms.
The chatbot platform is really easy to use, and the editor features heaps of prebuilt templates that you can use to create your chatbot.
Your FlowXO bot can be used as a website widget or integrated with third party platforms. You can further get your users to share your chatbot with their contacts for better lead generation.
Pricing: The free version gives you access to all FlowXO features and the ability to build upto 5 chatbots. However, you will be limited to 500 interactions a month. The paid plan starts at $19 a month and lets you build 15 bots and 5000 interactions a month. You can always upgrade from here for more features.
8. Sequel
Sequel is a unique chatbot builder that makes it onto this list because of its focus on creating chatbots to engage users rather than to generate leads.
With a variety of interesting templates - and a drag and drop interface to make things easier, Sequel lets you create a chatbot that can engage followers with intimate conversations.
Templates include PublisherBot, PersonalBot, StoryBot, GameBot, and ChatterBot. Got something else in mind? No problem - Sequel lets you create your own chatbot for Messenger, Kik, Telegram or Viber from scratch.
You can even integrate Sequelbot with other services using a web API. The user friendly interface is perfect for those who are new to chatbot creation.
9. Pandorabots
Have a good coding background? Then check out Pandorabots. Pandorabots supports Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML) which makes it capable of having sophisticated conversations with users. The coding interface provides chatbot builders an immense amount of flexibility.
The famous Mitsuku chatbot was created on Pandorabot.
As one of the oldest and most renowned out there chatbots in this list, Pandorabots is trusted by a large number of businesses, including several Fortune500 companies.
Try this platform out if you’re looking to create something really custom made, and have a good amount of coding experience.
Pricing: Pandorabots give you a free plan that lets you build 2 bots and handle upto 1000 messages a month. You also get a developer option that lets you build 10 bots at $0.0025 per message for upto 100,000 messages.
10. Aivo
Aivo is one of the largest and most successful chatbot builder platforms in the world.
Aivo’s bots are AI driven, letting them respond to users in real time via text or audio.
You can set up rules for each channel and still ensure a personalized experience for your customers.
With third party integrations with several major platforms like Zendesk, Salesforce and Zapier, Aivo chatbots will help you provide your customers with a seamless experience.
Pricing: Aivo starts at $240/month, giving you 1,000 monthly sessions. After that, you’ll have to pay $26 every 100 sessions. It also comes with a free 30-day trial.
And there you have it! That was our list of the best chatbot creation platforms for businesses in 2020.
Each of the chatbot builders listed here has its own unique set of features that will help you push more prospects down the sales funnel than ever before.
Depending on your use case and brand persona, some chatbot platforms may suit you better than others. So be sure to check them all out before you make a decision.
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