The 7 Best Chatbot Platforms to Build Powerful Chatbots in 2022
Chatbots are quickly becoming an integral part of our everyday lives, and it’s no secret why — they provide faster and more convenient ways to communicate with the businesses, organizations, and individuals we deal with daily.
Whether you want to save time ordering coffee, asking how long the grocery store closes or what movies are playing, chatbots are happy to help you out. However, building chatbots can be challenging at first, especially if you’re not sure where to start or which technology to use.
There are plenty of options to choose from when it comes to developing chatbots, with varying levels of flexibility and technical capabilities.
Here are the top seven chatbot development platforms you can use in 2022 to build powerful chatbots that serve your users better, simplify your customers’ lives, and increase sales for your business overall.
1) MindMeld
MindMeld is one of the best chatbot platforms that allows you to build conversational bots for Facebook Messenger and Slack. It integrates with ActiveCampaign, Salesforce, HubSpot, and other popular CRMs and CMSes.
Additionally, it can hook into Twilio for SMS support and is built on its own AI infrastructure, so you don’t have to worry about hosting or scaling.
One thing we like about MindMeld is that they offer a free tier that gives you access to their bot-building tools, but not their customer service team.
If your bot gets stuck somewhere, you can troubleshoot it yourself rather than wait for someone else to help you out. The paid tiers start at $29/month per user (billed annually) and go up depending on how many users are part of your organization.
The one downside to MindMeld is that you’re limited to Facebook Messenger and Slack bots only. If those aren’t platforms you use regularly, then it might be worth looking into another platform instead.
2) Watson Assistant
Watson Assistant is IBM’s chatbot builder with a large pre-trained knowledge base. With Watson Assistant, you can quickly create chatbots with cognitive capabilities.
You can train Watson Assistant using your data and add new skills with no coding required. Watson Assistant is great for personalizing interactions based on a user’s location, interests, or other details collected from their device or web browser.
For example, you could use Watson Assistant to build a bot that helps users find local events based on their location. The bot would first ask users if they want help finding an event and then ask what kind of event they are looking for (concerts, festivals, comedy shows).
Then it would pull up listings of events happening nearby and suggest times when they might be available. Users can respond by selecting an event and adding it to their calendar. They can also say no thanks anytime during the conversation to stop receiving suggestions.
3) IBM Bluemix
IBM Bluemix is a Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering services, tools, and other resources. It’s an extremely robust platform that allows developers to focus on their core tasks: developing applications and solutions for their organization’s needs.
IBM has given it an extra boost by integrating Watson into Bluemix. Every service can be infused with cognitive technology so your application can think and respond intelligently.
One of its key features is its capability to quickly build chatbots— not just any chatbot, but one powered by Watson.
Watson-powered chatbots are capable of understanding natural language queries and responding appropriately. This makes them ideal for both customer support and sales purposes.
And because they’re created using Watson APIs, you don’t need to know how to code; you use your preferred development environment or drag-and-drop interface builder to create them from scratch.
The best part? You can deploy them instantly, so you don’t have to wait months before you see results from your efforts.
4) NLP Wizard
Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of those buzzwords on everyone’s lips and will continue to grow in popularity over the coming years. One key area where AI can work wonders is with chatbots.
Building chatbots can be a difficult process. Still, when it comes to conversational AI services like Amazon Lex or IBM Watson Conversation Services (and many more), you can easily build an AI-powered chatbot without any coding knowledge.
These platforms allow you to create bots using natural language processing (NLP) wizardry, meaning your bot can understand human speech patterns—and respond accordingly.
This makes for a much more engaging experience than traditional yes/no options! You could use these chatbot platforms to build everything from customer service bots to smart home control apps—endless possibilities.
5) BotFactory
BotFactory is a chatbot development platform that enables developers of all skill levels to create powerful and effective conversational bots for businesses easily.
BotFactory makes it easy for non-technical users by featuring a simple graphical user interface that allows for point-and-click bot creation.
The platform includes many prebuilt integrations with popular messaging services like Facebook Messenger, Telegram, WhatsApp, and more. You can also build your custom bot using Node.js or Java code.
Pricing: Basic plan starts at $12/month; the Professional plan starts at $48/month; the Enterprise plan starts at $96/month. Free trial available.
6) BotSociety
BotSociety lets you build chatbots for Facebook Messenger, Slack, and Twilio SMS. BotSociety uses artificial intelligence to let you build chatbots without programming them from scratch.
Microsoft and others have featured the company’s chatbot builder as one of the best ways to create a powerful chatbot without learning how to code.
It includes built-in NLP capabilities so that your chatbot can understand human language. You can start with its free plan, which allows you to integrate up to three messaging channels into your bot and comes with 1 million monthly characters.
If you need more features or storage space, there are paid plans starting at $49 per month that include an unlimited number of messaging channels. These paid plans also offer custom domains, advanced analytics, and technical support.
7) SnatchBot
SnatchBot is a chatbot platform that uses advanced artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing (NLP) to connect customers with relevant businesses.
Through SnatchBot’s visual designer and flexible API, you can build chatbots without any knowledge of coding. The service offers support for multiple conversation flows and real-time feedback.
It also integrates with popular services such as Facebook Messenger, Slack, Twilio, Skype, or Amazon Alexa through an open API developer kit. It supports multiple languages, including English, Spanish, French, German and Italian. Chatbots created on SnatchBot can engage with users by voice command using Amazon Alexa Voice Service (AVS).
Customers using Alexa devices like Echo Show will be able to interact directly with these bots by asking questions about business information like hours of operation or products offered. These features are part of what makes SnatchBot one of the best chatbot platforms available today.
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Conclusion
There are various chatbot platforms available for chatbot development. Many of them, like Microsoft Bot Framework and Amazon Lex, allow you to build your bot on their cloud-based infrastructure so that even if your site doesn’t have a ton of traffic, you can still integrate with many different messaging apps.
A chatbot platform lets you choose which platform your app will run on (Facebook Messenger, Slack) and where you can store your data—with the chatbot service or elsewhere. Some services also offer a dashboard where you can monitor analytics and see how well your bot is performing.
It’s easy to start with one of these services, but there are some tradeoffs. Building a chatbot requires some programming knowledge, and most chatbot services come with an additional monthly fee on top of what you pay for hosting. Still, they’re worth considering if you want a simple way to create a chatbot without coding everything from scratch.
Also, you can get in touch with top chatbot companies providing chatbot services in India and around the globe.