ManyChat headquartered in San Francisco provides their chatbot building platform to deploy Facebook messenger chatbots for support and service.
$10
per month
Smith.ai
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Smith.ai is a call answering platform for businesses of all sizes. The AI Receptionist from Smith.ai handles call scenarios, such as qualifying leads, answering questions, and scheduling appointments 24/7. Smith.ai Virtual Receptionists aim to maximize meaningful interactions, with the goal of moving a business forward with a professional human touch. With its integration ecosystem of over 7,000 platforms — like HouseCall Pro, ServiceTitan, MyCase, and HubSpot— call data flows directly into a…
$95
per month
Pricing
ManyChat
Smith.ai
Editions & Modules
500 Subscribers
$10.00
per month
1,000 Subscribers
$15.00
per month
2,500 Subscribers
$25.00
per month
5,000 Subscribers
$45.00
per month
10,000 Subscribers
$65.00
per month
15,000 Subscribers
$95.00
per month
20,000 Subscribers
$125.00
per month
25,000 Subscribers
$145.00
per month
25,001+ Subscribers
Contact Sales
Starter
$95
per month
Basic
$270
per month
Pro
$800
per month
Enterprise
Custom
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ManyChat
Smith.ai
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
All plans include:
- Lead screening
- Lead qualification
- Appointment booking
- Intake
- Call transfers & routing
- Live agents on standby 24/7
- Instant call summaries
- Bilingual English/Spanish call handling
- Comprehensive dashboard with rich business insights
- Dedicated phone number
- Phone and e-mail support
Additional features available:
- Integration with CRM software - including ServiceTitan, HubSpot, and Clio), Zapier, Slack and others
I found that ManyChat is a strong tool when receiving incoming messages, being able to create a tree of potential responses based on options given to the initiator. There is also a huge potential for complex automation (as long as the environment required by Facebook in order to send outgoing messages is maintained).
Smith.ai Website Chat is an excellent solution for law firm owners that want a cost-effective strategy to capture lead information from website visitors. Our website generates hundreds of visitors each day and over 7,000 visitors per month. I strategically have placed the online chat feature on the contact page on our website to engage with only those potential clients that are serious about retaining our services and making a purchasing decision. I have priced this type of online chat service with several other providers (Ngage, Apex Chat). Some of these providers charge as much as $35 or hire per qualified lead. Smith.ai comes in at approximately $8-$15 per chat session with a potential lead and even offers some flat rate options. There can be further cost savings if only the chatbot feature is used without live agent support. In this option, a website visitor can engage with a chatbot using Automated questions and answers without the need for live agent support. My firm beta tested this product in of it itself and it generated several thousands of dollars in revenue. The customer support has also been exceptional. All the representatives at Smith.ai have been responsive to customer service questions and implementation of the product. Capturing leads with the chatbot feature and the live agent support has even been more profitable. Based on our CRM data, website chat leads generated over $127,500 of revenue for our firm and engaged with 230 potential clients in just the past 12 months.
Honestly, the only thing I don't like about ManyChat is their support. It seems to be almost non existent. However, that concern is negated by having a fantastic user base that helps each other out on Facebook.
ManyChat is a great tool, provides loads of features, integrations and just saves you a whole load of time once all set up. If you aren't tech-savvy or used to how digital marketing tools work, it can appear complicated. That's how I felt initially 2 years ago, and after watching tutorials online I had a better understanding of it. This is why I rated it a 7, as it's not a tool that you can just play around with and guess how it works. There's definitely a learning curve with it so I recommend doing the free training and watching video tutorials.
Smith.ai Live Website Chat allows you to provide a script for when they answer prospective clients. The script is customizable as your needs change. However, the script only goes so far, as they do not know your business personally. Once they do go through that script, they send you an email with the caller's contact information so you can reach out personally if they seem interested. They do so with efficiency.
There is room for improvement but frankly, we haven't had the need to request for support. Everything is pretty easy to setup and there are very useful video explanation guides and walkthroughs on ManyChat's YouTube channel. The only challenge we have had was to integrate it with Zapier, it's a bit tricky because you need to do a setup workaround first, but nothing too complicated.
Smith.ai pays for itself if we can help one site visitor move down our lead funnel to being a client. We have averaged over 50+ new leads each month since implementing the chat and with a close rate for becoming new clients that is double what our advertising PPC new client closing rate has been.
I've worked in the past with Chatfuel. However, I decided to switch to ManyChat due to a variety of reasons. Overall, ManyChat offers much more functionality out of the box (e.g., Facebook comments tool), sequence builders are much more intuitive. Also, they provide flexible pay as you go pricing plan, which is perfect for a startup like us.
Came down to pricing. Smith.ai Live Website Chat did not have the same level of customization and support as other alternatives but there are enough customization and tools that it was clear it would solve the problems and at a good price.
For the intended application, we experienced a negative ROI due to the inconsistency in the ability to maintain the automation without incoming responses. Since it is a free service that was meant to lead to paid services organically, the inconsistencies prevented the desired outcome.
We did experience a higher conversion rate with basic incoming messages with questions about services or products due to the ability to have pre-created responses and direction immediately supporting the prospect.
Positive - Smith.ai has easily saved me $25k+ in receptionist costs. They probably helped me land another $50k in new business I would otherwise not have brought in the door because they immediately grabbed the client on our website so they didn't get away or have to wait 2 days for a call back. Great ROI (100 to 1 ROI is probably not an exaggeration for my law firm).
