Chatbot Platforms

TrustRadius Top Rated for 2023

Top Rated Products

(1-5 of 6)

1
IBM watsonx Assistant

IBM offers watsonx Assistant, an AI and natural language driven chatbot designed to allow anyone to deploy a chatbot in an app or website.

2
Intercom

Intercom creates modern Customer Service software that aims to redefine how businesses support their customers. The platform connects businesses directly to customers using powerful messaging and automation. According to the vendor, Intercom enables teams to scale support without…

3
ServiceNow Now Platform

The ServiceNow Now Platform is a digital workflow building and extension tool for ServiceNow featuring a number of low-code / no code tools.

4
Genesys Cloud CX

Genesys Cloud CX (formerly PureCloud, Genesys Cloud) is a contact center application optimized for automatic call distribution, interactive voice response, email, social media, chat, and text/SMS. It is also a VoIP interconnect service provider.

5
Drift

Drift is presented as a human-centric, AI-powered buyer engagement platform, a platform that automatically listens, understands and learns from buyers to provide individualized and human experiences at every touchpoint of the buying journey. The platform helps businesses translate…

All Products

(1-25 of 264)

1
Genesys Cloud CX

Genesys Cloud CX (formerly PureCloud, Genesys Cloud) is a contact center application optimized for automatic call distribution, interactive voice response, email, social media, chat, and text/SMS. It is also a VoIP interconnect service provider.

2
Intercom

Intercom creates modern Customer Service software that aims to redefine how businesses support their customers. The platform connects businesses directly to customers using powerful messaging and automation. According to the vendor, Intercom enables teams to scale support without…

3
Khoros Care

Khoros Care enables brands to serve their customers on their preferred digital channels, reducing costs and increasing customer satisfaction and revenue. It Offers:Web chat & messaging gives customers convenient, efficient channels to engage brands, while giving brands a single…

Explore recently added products

4
IBM watsonx Assistant

IBM offers watsonx Assistant, an AI and natural language driven chatbot designed to allow anyone to deploy a chatbot in an app or website.

5
Genesys DX (discontinued)

Genesys DX was a live chat engagement and chatbot AI solution based on Bold360, acquired by Genesys. It is no longer available.

6
Drift

Drift is presented as a human-centric, AI-powered buyer engagement platform, a platform that automatically listens, understands and learns from buyers to provide individualized and human experiences at every touchpoint of the buying journey. The platform helps businesses translate…

7
SAP Conversational AI (discontinued)

SAP Conversational AI was a platform used to build chatbots and digital assistants in SAP integration. Starting January 2023, SAP Conversational AI, SAP’s chatbot building platform has been set to maintenance mode. Existing customers can continue to use the enterprise edition of…

8
Terminus ABM Platform

Supporting B2B strategies, the Terminus platform offers tactical playbooks that help teams meet accounts throughout their entire lifecycle. It is a platform rooted in first-party data that surrounds buyers with engaging digital experiences from account acquisition to expansion and…

9
ZoomInfo Chat

ZoomInfo Chat is a solution based on the former Insent.ai, an AI-driven chatbot acquired by ZoomInfo in June 2021 to enable sales and marketing teams to engage and convert more website visitors.

10
Sprinklr Service

Sprinklr Service is a cloud-native unified customer service platform powered by AI that enables seamless customer & agent experience across 30+ digital, social and voice channels, and delivers real-time actionable & scalable insights. Sprinklr Service – Enables customers…

11
Freshchat

Freshchat is an AI-powered customer messaging software used by businesses of all sizes to offer digital-first customer service across various channels like WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat, Facebook Messenger, website, mobile app, and others. With the world moving towards contactless…

12
ServiceNow Now Platform

The ServiceNow Now Platform is a digital workflow building and extension tool for ServiceNow featuring a number of low-code / no code tools.

13
SAP Extension Suite (discontinued)

The SAP Extension Suite (formerly part of the SAP Cloud Platform) is a legacy solution that enabled businesses to rapidly build and enhance applications, processes and experiences, with the goal of driving agility and flexibility, while extending the value of applications. The…

14
Exceed.ai by Genesys

Exceed.ai is an AI sales assistant and chatbot featuring dynamic lead nurturance and lead qualification process support, meeting scheduling, two-way conversation via chat, and other features.

15
Smith.ai Live Website Chat

Smith.ai Live Website Chat is presented by the vendor as a fast & friendly way to capture, screen & convert website leads. The Smith.ai live chat agents answer questions, screen leads & schedule appointments 24/7. Custom AI chatbots can assist with screening basic questions…

16
LivePerson Conversation Cloud (LiveEngage)

LivePerson headquartered in New York offers solutions for AI-guided live chat and conversational messaging, with the Conversation Cloud (formerly LiveEngage), supporting sales and service teams with answering questions across all popular messaging channels.

17
Qualified

Qualified is a conversational sales and marketing platform for Salesforce, which, starting with chatbots and live chat, includes advanced routing and omnichannel alerts, so users can prompt sales reps to take immediate action with their named accounts.

18
Oracle Digital Assistant

The Oracle Autonomous Digital Assistant PaaS supports building and deploying mobile apps, digital assistants, and intelligent chatbots.

19
ManyChat

ManyChat headquartered in San Francisco provides their chatbot building platform to deploy Facebook messenger chatbots for support and service.

20
Azure Bot Service (Microsoft Bot Framework)

Microsoft offers the Azure Bot Service (replacing the former Microsoft Bot Framework), a managed bot building platform, which provides an integrated environment that is purpose-built for bot development, enabling you to build, connect, test, deploy, and manage intelligent bots, all…

21
Click2Magic

Click2Magic helps businesses of all forms and sizes engage their website visitors with its live chat facility. Not just only live chat, but it also allows business owners to assess qualified leads and helps them convert into the potential customer base. This real-time customer engaging…

22
Google Cloud Dialogflow

Dialogflow (formerly Api.ai) is a chatbot building tool, designed to give users new ways to interact with digital products by building engaging voice and text-based conversational interfaces powered by AI. Dialogflow was acquired by Google in 2019.

23
XOR

XOR AI Recruiter for Blue-Collar Workers in the US. XOR AI platform helps businesses hire blue-collar workers for $500 per hire. XOR will attract, pre-screen and then schedule the best candidates for the interview with the user's recruiter or hiring manager, using a wholly automated…

24
Helpshift

Helpshift is a help desk software deployed as an in-application SDK to provide users with in-app service.

25
MobileMonkey

MobileMonkey, headquartered in Boston, offers their social media messaging marketing tool to marketers and agencies, featuring chatbots, landing page creation, integration with social ads, and an emphasis on Facebook. They offer a free plan and a paid plan with more advanced features…

Chatbot Platforms TrustMap

TrustMaps are two-dimensional charts that compare products based on trScore and research frequency by prospective buyers. Products must have 10 or more ratings to appear on this TrustMap.

Learn More About Chatbot Platforms

What Are Chatbot Platforms?

At their core, chatbot platforms are used to simulate human-to-human conversations and help provide website visitors or application users with information. They conduct online exchanges web visitors or customers via text or text-to-speech. Chatbots can be programmed to respond to specific key phrases or questions, or carry out more complex conversations about various topics.

Chatbots can be deployed on website landing pages, mobile applications, or messaging platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat, etc. Many vendors that provide chatbots, conversational platforms, or virtual assistants market them to a specific type of user or department. For example, chatbots can be designed for use by sales reps, marketers, eCommerce websites, internal employee requests, or customer service agents. However, even though certain chatbots are marketed towards specific end-users, the underlying technology is the same.

Virtual assistants and chatbots are especially well suited for companies and individuals working in the customer service industry, sales teams, marketing teams, and customer success teams. In the customer service industry, chatbots help resolve simple and routine customer inquiries. This frees up more time for agents to focus on more complex requests. Chatbots are often used by sales and marketing teams to help engage early-stage prospects and qualify new leads. This allows SDRs and marketers to spend their time on more high-value activities, such as nurturing leads identified by the chatbot.

Different Types of Chatbot Technology

There are a few different types of chatbot platforms, chatbot builders, or intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs) that fall under the ‘chatbot’ umbrella. Names for this type of software like chatbots, conversational AI, virtual customer assistants, intelligent virtual assistants, digital assistants, etc are sometimes used interchangeably. However, there are differences between the complexity and level of artificial intelligence used across these platforms.

Simple Chatbot Software

The simplest type of chatbot is a rules-based conversational interface that can engage individuals in a basic exchange. These types of chatbots allow web visitors or application users to select a specific question to ask, which is then answered by the chatbot. While these chatbots are great for companies that handle a large volume of routine or repetitive customer inquiries, their ability to deal with more complex or nuanced requests is quite limited. However, simplistic chatbots usually have the capability to escalate an exchange to a human agent if a request is too complex.

Virtual Assistant Software

Intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs) can be thought of as the next level of chatbot technology. Rather than providing a simplistic rules-based interface, these types of applications rely on artificial intelligence technology to respond to customer inquiries in a personalized way. Using Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NPL) technology, these chatbots learn from all of the exchanges they have over time to provide customers or application users with better and more contextual information.

These types of chatbots can also be found in our AI Virtual Sales Assistant software category, which provides a narrower look at chatbots designed specifically for sales.

Conversational AI Platforms

The third type of chatbot technology is often called conversational platforms, conversational AI, or chatbot builders. This type of software includes the tools needed for developers to build their own chatbots along with pre-designed chatbots themselves. Some vendors may provide only the APIs or software development kit (SKD) needed to build the chatbots. This allows businesses to create chatbots that are completely tailored to their business and industry. However, building individual chatbots also requires developer time and resources that smaller companies may not be able to spare.

Each type of chatbot technology has a set of benefits and disadvantages. The best way to figure out which type of chatbot technology is right for you is to ask what business needs the chatbot would be serving.

Chatbot Platform Features

Since there are different types of chatbot technology available, not all platforms will have the same set of features. However, there are core capabilities that will likely be common across different products:

  • Automated responses
  • Conversation routing
  • Ability to book meetings
  • 24/7 operation on your landing pages or applications
  • Integration with knowledge bases
  • Integration with marketing automation software
  • Integration with help desk software
  • Integration with customer data platforms

Conversational platforms like SAP Conversational AI and IBM Watson Assistant can be used to build simple or complex chatbots.

Chatbot Software Comparison

Before investing in a chatbot software, consider these three important factors:

  1. What type of chatbot technology is your business looking for? Do you need pre-designed bots that are ready to use out-of-the-box, or are you looking to design your own chatbots and conversational assistants? If you’re looking for a pre-build chatbot, would a rules-based chatbot serve your business best? Or would a chatbot that relies more heavily on ML and NLP technology and learns over time better fit your needs?
  2. If you’re interested in purchasing a chatbot or virtual assistant for specific personas or for use within a specific department, look for vendors that have designed AI assistants specifically for this use case. For example, Conversica offers individual AI assistants for sales, customer success, automotive sales, and higher education.
  3. Which chatbot software best matches your budget? Simpler rules-based chatbots are typically cheaper than more complex chatbot technology that relies on artificial intelligence capabilities like ML and NLP. Conversational platforms that developers can use to build chatbots can be the most expensive, and vendors often don’t advertise prices for these types of platforms publicly.

Pricing Information

Pricing will vary depending on the type of chatbot technology you need, the complexity of the software, and the number of virtual assistants required.

For chatbots and virtual assistants that come pre-built, prices can range from under $100 per month to over $1,000 per month, depending on the number of features included. Many vendors will provide either a 14-day free trial of their software or a free version with limited capabilities. Most vendors don’t disclose pricing information on their website for chatbot builders or enterprise-level plans, but will provide a quote upon request.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What are chatbots used for?

Chatbots can be used for multiple different types of activities. One of the most common sales and marketing use cases is interacting with users or customers on a vendor’s website.

Chatbots themselves can range from simple and rule-based, to complex and powered by AI technology like natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML). These tools can help answer users’ questions, direct them to knowledge-bases, escalate an issue a customer is having to a live customer service rep, booking meetings with sales reps, and collect prospect and customer information.

What are the benefits of using chatbot software?

For many businesses, chatbots can be used to help automate and streamline the work that human sales or customer service reps would otherwise need to do themselves. For example, a chatbot can be set up on a website to help identify and qualify leads by asking web visitors a few questions. In the customer service context, chatbots can help resolve routine and repetitive customer inquiries that, nonetheless, would still take up agents’ time if they had to respond to the request themselves.

What is the best chatbot platform?

According to end-user feedback on TrustRadius, the top-rated chatbot platforms are:

TrustRadius also lists 66 other chatbot tools for buyers that are interested in seeing alternative products.

How much does chatbot software cost?

Some vendors like Drift and Tidio offer free versions of their Chatbot. Though the free versions typically offer limited features or number of user seats/licenses.

Paid chatbot platforms can range from $20 per month for basic plans up to $500 per month for plans with more advanced features and number of licenses included. Some chatbot vendors do not openly disclose pricing information on their website but will provide a quote upon request.