The list of the five easiest free chatbot creation sites will help you to navigate through the incredible world of artificial intelligence and use the benefits of this tech concept for improving your business. Yes, robots will rule the world. They have already taken over the two most important business fields, sales and customer service.
If you are a big fan of Terminator 2: Judgment Day like me, you probably knew that at some point we would be able to have intelligent conversations with machines. Still, even the craziest SF fans and computer buffs haven’t predicted such a fast development of artificial intelligence and its widespread implementation in different industries.
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Chatbots are a very important part of the ‘weak AI.’ They are one of the most popular products that have come out of the AI concept. We meet (and communicate with) chatbots every day on popular messenger apps. Of course, the chatbots we can find on Facebook Messenger, Kik and WeChat, sound more pleasant than the Terminator Model 101. Instead of saying ‘Affirmative’ and ‘Hasta la vista, baby’ they greet us with ‘How can I help you?’ and ‘Enjoy your browsing.’
If you are interested in the development of artificial intelligence, robotic and other similar tech niches, check out the Insider Monkey’s new list of the Most Advanced Countries in Robotics.
Today, many companies use chatbots for improving customer experience and boosting their sales. Who would have thought that programs that were bombarding Yahoo and AOL chat rooms with spam will be so useful to companies like Domino’s, Disney, Whole Foods, and the Royal Bank of Scotland?
The artificial intelligence is not only used by the big corporate entities. Fast tech advance and early adopters have turned chatbots into a highly popular customer service software. Today, anybody can create a chatbot, and bring their customer experience to a whole new level.
You can do this, even if you don’t know how to code. There are many platforms where you can create chatbots by simply inserting dialogues and AI rules. The number of platforms for chatbot generation has grown fast in the last couple of years, and free access for individual users and small business entrepreneurs has become an industry standard. Each website has its unique characteristics, which is why I decided to single out the five most prominent platforms and compare their features.
Since chatbot generation is a very popular topic, I easily found sources for this comparison. I have started my search on Medium and ended up on the Chatbots Magazine, which is the most popular chatbot blog at the moment. Apart from their lists, I also visited websites and review pages of every platform I have mentioned in the article. Sometimes I have also needed to register and try their features by myself
The list of the easiest free chatbot creation sites will help you to improve your customer experience and loyalty. Since most platforms come with an easily understandable user interface, you won’t need to outsource this project to professional developers. Everything you need for building a chatbot is time and chatbot copywriting skills.
5. Beep Boop
Most important features:
Slack integration;
Beep Boop is the best developing environment for Slack integrations. Before you start building a chatbot, you will need to integrate your GitHub and Slack account and choose one of the three Beep Boop plans. The Tall is the only free plan, and it allows you to use your chatbot on three Slack teams. This plan also provides you with 150MB of free memory space, but you will need to restart it, on a regular basis. Paid plans, like Grande and Venti, offer other useful features.
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4. Botsify
Most important features:
Drag and drop template;
Scheduling messages;
Next in line on our list of easiest free chatbot creation sites is Botsify and with it you get access to the Analytics panel from the moment you register. Their drag and drop feature allows you to deploy and move blocks and create complex conversation schemes. At the moment Botsify offers only three plugins: RSS, JSON API, and Data Collection Form. Soon the platform will add the WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce and Stripe integration. The broadcast feature allows users to schedule messages in different time zones. The scheduled messages are sent to all users your bot was chatting with, during the last seven days. Recently, Botsify also added a free live chat feature.
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3. Flow XO
Most important features:
More than 100 integrations;
Solid template selection;
The Flow XO chatbots can work through several channels at once. That is one of the prime reasons why this platform has entered the list of easiest free chatbot creation sites. It has an easily understandable dashboard navigation and offers many useful plugins. You can use various templates that are customized for different types of businesses. For example, you can choose the ‘Book a Room’ template if you are creating a chatbot for a hotel or B&B, or the ‘Book a Service’ one if you run a service company. There are also ‘FAQ’ and ‘Welcome and Help’ templates made for customer support. Templates provide you with the full chatbot-user conversation, and you can edit, filter, add more fields, or delete them .
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2. Chatfuel
Most important features:
More than 20 plugins;
Ability to broadcast messages;
Chatfuel is a very popular building platform, used by Forbes, TechCrunch and several NBA and NFL teams. One of the easiest free chatbot creation sites offers an easy interface and many different plugins. For example, you can integrate your bot with Zapier, Google Calendar, Instagram, Slack, YouTube, and many other apps. The broadcast feature allows you to send personalized messages to user groups. Since Chatfuel only works on Facebook Messenger and Telegram, you will need to get authorization from your contacts before you start broadcasting. After your chatbot engages at least three users, you will gain access to the Analytics panel. There you can analyze the bot’s work and gain useful information for future upgrades.
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1. Snatchbot.me
Most important features:
Easy website deployment;
Ability to take payments;
Ability to broadcast messages;
Snatchbot is the definite winner of my list of the easiest free chatbot creation sites. It allows users to create chatbots for free, and you don’t need any coding or technical skills to work on the Snatchbot Builder. The flexible framework allows you to deploy bots on various platforms, including Facebook Messenger, Viber, Skype, WeChat and Slack. Chatbots can also be easily deployed on your website. You just need to insert a short code snippet into your template page. The deployment page offers another amazing feature, by using CSS you can modify your chatbot’s look, so it can perfectly fit into the website’s design pattern. The payment functionality is a very useful feature for e-commerce entrepreneurs. Your bot can charge products and services through PayPal, and it doesn’t collect or keep any sensitive data because the whole process works through the highly secure PayPal system. Snatchbot’s ability to broadcast messages to user groups helps marketers to keep their audience informed, and it’s much more elegant and effective than newsletters and email spam.
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