Choosing your chatbot building platform: a guide for both bot newbies and experienced coders
Chatbot is quite a hot topic right now. Facebook, Line, Slack, other communication and social platforms have already released their chatbot API recently. To build a bot for your service, you don’t need build it from scratch. There are already many bot builders that can save you large effort. You should choose the one based on your goal and ability.
Basically, we can divide bot builders into three main categories : non-coding,coding and NLP platform.
Non-coding builders provide convenient interface to build the chatbot without coding. Users need only to drag and click to design their chatbot. It’s great for the users looking for a shortcut to build a chatbot service. However, if you’re seeking for having some specific and advanced functions, you should go with the platforms which allow developer to build the bot with codes, and choose the one which fit your product and support the language you’re familiar with. Lastly, NLP platform plays an important role in enabling bot to create meaningful conversations with users. It’s necessary if you want your bot to serve as a intelligent agent and provide better experience for the customers.
We are going to list the most popular bot builders for the starters.
Non-coding builders
Platforms : FB Messenger / Support NLP tool : none / Flexibility : low
Chatfeul is one of the most popular builder. More than 360,000 chatbots have been created using Chatfuel. Their clients include Bloomberg, Forbes and many other big brands. They provide a complete solution in the platform, and have basic analysis tool to help optimize the bot and track the conversation.
Functions such as purchase and broadcast are also available in their platform. Although their AI tool is still not smart enough and only for Facebook Messenger currently, users can connect their bots to NLP platforms and other social platforms by themselves.
In short, it’s a great option for those who want to build their service on Messenger in a short time.
Platforms : SMS, FB Messenger, Slack, Email, Smooch / Support NLP tool : Wit.ai or Api.ai / Flexibility : medium
Motion.ai provide flow chart in designing the bot, so user can have clear map when organizing the conversation flow. Slack, Facebook Messenger and other Web-based chatbot are also integrated in Motion.ai. Besides, there are many templates available and user can also sell the bot they design on the bot store. Some special modules are also provided such as sentimental detection and information collection in their platform and user can also extend their bot with node.js.
Thus, if you are looking for not just a simple bot but more functionality and flexibilty. you can go with Motion.ai.
Coding builders
Develop Language: Node.js, C# / Platforms :FB Messenger, Slack, Telegram, Skype, Email, Kik,Web chat…etc / Support NLP tool : LUIS.ai / Flexibility : medium
Microsoft bot framework provide SDK for C# and Node.js. They support connection with wide range of messengers and conversation platform like Slack, Telegram, Skype and Email. In addition, LUIS.ai is tightly integrated in this framework, but you have to connect your backend manually if you want to use other NLP api. There is also a PaaS option on Azure for bots. As for the payment, Microsoft Bot Framework is generally free and only charge for the use in Azure.
Overall, Microsoft Bot Framework is great for simple stuff and integration, but will be a limit to develop a complex bot. If you are .NET developers or familiar with developing in Visual Studio, it absolutely would be a great option.
Develop Language : python, node.js / Platforms: FB Messenger, Slack, Telegram, Skype,Twitter, Kik, smooch,Web chat / Support NLP tool: Luis.ai, Wit.ai / Flexibility : high
In Meya, developers build the flows based on YAML and can also integrate with other APIs using Python or Node.js. Meya provide a friendly Web-developed IDE and can directly connect the code via Github repository. They also provide complete documents and guidelines to indicate how to build the bot. Beside, they also offer integration to analytics tools, Cloud Server for database management and broadcast tools just like Chatfuel. Wit.ai and Luis.ai are supported in their platform.
As for the payment, Meya charges users with different level depending on amounts of messages and bots in use. They announce they will include the code suggestion and code dependencies from npm and pip in the near future.
All in all, it’s easy to use and can have more flexibility while developing the bots, but it costs higher comparing with other builder.
Develop Language: Java, Node.js,Python / Platforms :Twilio, Slack, Telegram, Hubot,Twitter,Firebase / Support NLP tool : AIaaS / Flexibility : high
Pandorabots is an web service for building and deploying chatbots through its Playground and AIaaS. Playground provides a feature-rich UI designed to help developer create AIML (Artificial Intelligence Modelling Language) based chatbot,. Artificial Intelligence as a Service (AIaaS) help to build conversational AI for applications with API access and software development kits. Over 225 developers have registered and over 3 billion interactions were made.
Although Pandorabots provide plenty of resources for developers, Pandorabots API is not free to use. You can start with a 10-days free trial then you have to pay for the plan you have chosen.
NLP API
NLP(Natural Language Processing) platforms make the chatbot more language- intelligent. They allow bot to understand what the user wants to do and collect a series of information about it. Developers will provides examples of user input, then say what was the intent of the user highlight and tag words represent entities. For example, if the user asks “I want to buy the cake“. The ‘intent’ is ‘buy something’ and ‘entities’ is ‘cake’.
Basically, NLP APIs need to be trained by the developer before being able to determine intent and entities. Most of the NLP tools provide machine learning method and already have some pre-trained models for frequent use cases (ex. Weather, Place, Time, etc.). The followings are the three main popular NLP platforms.
LUIS is introduced with Microsoft Bot Framework and has integration to Microsoft Azure and other services. They allow building applications with LUIS web interface without coding and return the data in JSON. With Bot Framework, it’s also possible to script a loose dialogue using Node.js or C#. LUIS has bountiful pre-built intents and entities.
Pricing :
- Free for 10,000 transactions monthly
- $0.75 per 1000 transactions 10 transactions per second
API.ai is acquired by google. They have SDK for Android, iOS, Apple Watch, Node.js, Unity, C#, Windows Phone,Python and Javascript. Api.ai provides integrations with the main platforms like Slack, Facebook,actions on google etc. 15 languages is now available although the pre-trained domains are mostly in English. Comparing with other NLP APIs, API.ai has built-in domains of knowledge (Intents with Entities and even suggested Replies) on topics and Speech to Text and Text to Speech capabilities.
Pricing :
- Free with limitation in bandwidth
- enterprise option available by request
Wit.api is purchased by facebook and open the entire platform for free. They support API of developer of iOS, Android, Node.js, Ruby,Python, C++ and Javascript. Besides, Wit currently support 50 languages. However, the SaaS engine is not provide in support, so calling external services require to be implemented outside the platform.
The model built by other developers are publicly available,so you can copy another developer’s Story (including training) to start your project.
Pricing :
- completely free with no limitations
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