Best Chatbot Building Platforms For Developers In 2018

Best Chatbot Building Platforms For Developers
In 2017 we saw unprecedented hype about chatbots, mainly thanks to Microsoft's bot 'Tay' and Facebook moving to integrate chatbot capabilities into Messenger.

The current use of artificial intelligence to communicate with us in natural language can make us feel like we are experiencing the future already. However, you don't have to be a giant conglomerate with an entire team of developers to be in a position to build one for your own business. With the new readily available technology on the market, you can now literally do it from your own home, and you won't need complex programming skills to do so.

Here is a selection of the best current platforms to help to build your chatbot.

Pandorabots

An online service that lets developers build, host and deploy chatbots. It has 225,000 registered developers, and its tools have helped to create nearly 300,000 chatbots. Pandorabots uses AIML [Artificial Intelligence Markup Language], which is the open standard for writing chatbots. Tools on offer include 'Artificial Intelligence as a Service', which provides API access to its bot hosting platform and the 'Pandorabots Playground': a free, integrated development environment for building chatbots.

Rebot.me

A simple service lets you create, teach, test and then deploy chatbots to your website. One of its more attractive selling points is that you don't need programming skills to be able to use it. It works by letting you set up then customize your chatbot, teaching it to respond to specific questions. The more you talk to it, the more it learns. Rebot.me says its chatbots can help visitors to your website become familiarised with your products or services more quickly, among other uses.

Imperson

Disney Accelerator 2015 alum Imperson has created a chatbot generator for designing, deploying and managing chatbots via Facebook Messenger, Skype, Kik, Slack, Twitter, Amazon Echo and SMS.

Specialising in character bots, Imperson has successfully launched Miss Piggy and Doc Brown chatbots developed for Facebook Messenger.

In essence, it breaks away from some of the first menu-driven bot experiences whereby new brands can differentiate themselves and get deeper conversing with their consumers and an overall more engaging relationship.

Flow XO

This UK-based company is providing a visual platform that allows you to quickly build and create your chatbot for your website, Facebook, SMS, Telegram and Slack. It has over 100 integrations with other systems businesses use, without the need for coding abilities or technical knowledge.

Pricing plans start at $19 per month.

ChatbotsBuilder

An online platform that lets you build Facebook Messenger chatbots to capture leads, engage users and build new business relationships. Users can build chatbots in three steps: by choosing and creating a Facebook page, using ChatbotsBuilder to create triggers and replies, then deploying and promoting their bot. It is free to try with basic pricing plans starting at $19 per month.

Mobile Monkey

It lets you build a Facebook Messenger chatbot in minutes with no coding experience required, enabling automated mobile messaging between businesses and their customers. The training process needs you to review and answer a few questions every couple of days, helping your chatbot learn to ask and answer any question about your company.

Mobile Monkey's plans start with a free version with options up to $149 per month.
Best Chatbot Building Platforms For Developers

Landbot.io

A platform that lets you turn a website into a chatbot. With this tool, you can also create bots on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or live chat and manage them from the same platform with human assistance features. It creates a conversational interface in substitution of forms and requires no coding experience to get started.

The Bot Platform

The Bot Platform's CMS allows you to build, test, deploy, and track multiple bots on both Facebook Messenger and Workplace.

Used by the likes of the BBC, Showtime, and Sony Music, its platform enables those with little or no coding experience to build a deployable bot in minutes.

The Bot Platform's marketing automation system functionality allows both users to be segmented based on how they interact with the bot. Alongside the ability to integrate into Google Analytics, this provides insights into user preferences and behavior. Customers can then use the platform to generate bespoke outbound messages like surveys, drip campaigns, and more, aimed at specific user segments.

Engati

A chatbot platform that claims you can build, manage, integrate, train, analyze and publish a chatbot using its software in just 10 minutes.

It currently supports eight major messaging platforms including Messenger, Kik, Telegram, Line, Viber, Skype, Slack and Web chat.

Bot Builder

In March, Microsoft announced it was bringing chatbot capabilities to Skype, and launched Bot Builder for Node.js, a framework for constructing your bots. "It can handle both freeform interactions and more guided ones where the possibilities are explicitly shown to the user," according to Microsoft. It provides a platform where developers can build, test and publish their bots, using frameworks like Express and Restify.

Bots for Messenger

At their F8 developer conference in April, Facebook launched ‘Bots for Messenger’, a tool allowing developers and businesses alike to build chatbots for its Messenger platform (currently being used by almost a billion people). Developers build bots, submit them for review then Facebook decides which get onto Messenger. The three central capabilities are its send/receive API, generic message templates and the ability to customise the welcome screen users first see when interacting with your bot.

Conclusion

There has been a recent explosive growth in messaging apps, 2018 leading into 2019 will see businesses thinking 'messaging first'.

With bot platforms maturing and delivering custom content through messaging, voice, web or app, along with adding features like analytics and live chat, the change has come to how businesses now think about customer interaction.

AUTHOR_NAMEAbout the Author:
James Row is a passionate blogger and professional software developer who started his career in website development Melbourne, has a love for informative writing, and looks to keep you up to date with the latest information about the industry.
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