Is your business flooded with inquiries everyday? Are your employees overwhelmed? Do you want to provide an efficient and manageable workspace while also addressing your customers’ needs? 

If you answered yes to any of the questions above, you’ve come to the right place. Let me introduce you to your own personal superhero: AI chatbots. More and more businesses are integrating AI chatbots to relieve their daily tasks.

There are plenty of developed chatbot frameworks to choose from, but with each being constantly updated and with each new release, it can be difficult to decide which one works best for your business. 

So, how do you decide which AI chatbot to use? 

When comparing, there are 2 main aspects that ultimately determine if the chatbot is worth taking on or not:

1. Will it increase efficiency for your business?

2. Does it save you time? 

As the AI market is continuously growing each day, we’ve narrowed down the top 6 chatbots in terms of the 2 factors listed above. 

To make it even easier for you, we also list the pros, cons, integration elements, and pricing plans for each chatbot framework- helping you make a decision for your business’ investment. 

6 Chatbots that will change your business for the better:

Microsoft Bot Framework 

Microsoft is one of the most well known brands within the technological world, so obviously, their progression within the AI realm has been phenomenal. 

Their bot framework is composed of a set of tools and SDKs which help connect bots to one another. These chatbots will provide your business with full ownership and control of your data so that you don’t have to worry about security!

The pros are:

• Machine learning for speech to text data

• Technical computer support to assist your business and customers

• Multilingual so your business is able to provide a global service

• SDKs for a vast number of computer languages

• Prebuilt entities 

The cons are few and limited to:

• Must be using either Node.js or C# platform for business development 

Integrate your chatbot with:

• Facebook Messenger

• Microsoft

• Skype  

• Slack

• Your business website

• Cortana 

Now.. What's the cost?

Microsoft Bot framework offers both free and paid versions. The free version is self-explanatory and the paid version functions as a ‘pay as you use’ structure. The charge is 50 cents for every 1,000 messages that are exchanged through the premium channel while using the chatbot. Microsoft also offers flexible plans which start at only $29/month! 

Rasa

Rasa is open-source and has 2 main components: Rasa Core and Rasa NLU. So, what’s the difference?

Rasa NLU is the natural language comprehension component, whereas Rasa Core assists in the creation of machine learning chatbots, making them intelligent and conversational on a human-level. 

Which is exactly how you want your bot to function!

Rasa is the leading framework within the open-source landscape for machine learning resources. These resources are beneficial for developers as they provide assistance with the improvement of AI chatbots, and the best part is it requires minimal training data! 

The pros are:

• Customization! Your developers are able to create a chatbot the way YOUR business wants. 

• It can be used on your server, allowing you to retain your in-house components. 

• Multiple landscapes for production, staging and development- again, flexibility. 

• Analytics that dive into your customers data, allowing you to understand and provide proper solutions. 

• Rasa is an interactive learner, meaning, the more it interacts with humans, the more human-like it becomes.

The cons:

• This AI chatbot is better suited for experienced developers. Those who are beginning their developing career may find it rather challenging and difficult to use when first starting out. 

Integrate your chatbot with:

• Slack

• Telegram

• Rocket.Chat

• Facebook Messenger

• Twilio 

Pricing: 

If the open-source version of Rasa doesn’t suit all your business needs, then consider their paid version: Rasa platform. If your business requires higher performances and more in-depth functionalities, then this may be the better option for you. Although pricing is not public through their website, you’re able to contact their customer service executives to learn more about Rasa platform. 

Wit.ai

This AI chatbot is owned by Facebook, with a NLP platform that allows developers to freely establish their own entities and intent. Wit.ai, similarly to Rasa, is an open-source framework with open resources to assist your business’ developers. Your developers don’t need to worry about teaching the bot the basic human conversation skills, as this framework comes equipped with that. 

The pros:

• As it is owned by Facebook, you can easily move it to work on Facebook Messenger; allowing you to create it for solely that platform- arguably the best AI chatbot framework.

• Open-source = large developer community 

• The NLP engine engraved into Wit.ai is one of the best in market and is able to compete against larger bot-building tools 

• Offers SDKs in Python, Ruby, Node.js, and iOS 

• Global reach abilities with access to 80+ languages worldwide; your developers can translate data without an additional stress factor. 

The cons:

• In the past, developers have said that it can be more difficult to retrieve missing criteria in Wit.ai in comparison to other AI chatbots. 

Integrate your chatbot with:

• Your business’ website

• Your business app

• Facebook Messenger

• Home automation

• Wearable devices 

• Slack 

The best thing about Wit.ai?

It’s completely free! Save time AND money. 

Dialogflow 

This AI chatbot is a subsidiary of Google, so your business would be gaining lots of great tools. Dialogflow comes with preinstalled machine learning capabilities, NLP features and an ability to integrate with a vast amount of communication platforms. Your customers will be happy to hear about that! 

Your developers would be able to create VERY intelligent bots that are able to not only understand multiple languages, but also consistently improve as time goes on. As this is a subsidiary of Google, it is supported by Google’s Cloud Natural Language. Meaning, it is easier to train your AI chatbot to adapt to human emotions. 

The pros:

• Easy for every level of developer to use 

• Supports both text-based and voice-based assistants 

• SDKs for over 14 platforms 

• High quality conversations using natural language

• Support for over 20 global languages

• Ability to complete tasks such as: payment handling, event searches and even comes equipped with an understanding for jokes! (We all need a little humour in our lives). 

• In-line editor to efficiently and quickly process coding 

• Sentiment analysis for each inquiry 

• Access to IoT for even more intelligence towards home automation

The cons:

• Unfortunately, fine control over how the dialogue is processed is not available to the programmer. 

Integrate your chatbot with:

• Google Assistant

• Slack

• Facebook Messenger

• Cortana

• Alexa 

• Skype

• Line

• Twilio

• Telegram

• Viber 

Pricing: 

Like most AI frameworks, you have an option to use the standard free edition or choose to use the paid version- especially if you find your business receives lots of inquiries on a daily basis. 

The paid version starts at $0.002 for each text request and can increase to $0.075 per minute for each phone call being processed. 

IBM Watson 

Watson has gained a lot of media attention (amongst developers) within the recent years as the platform has been growing on a wider scale. It offers resources to build your personal bot, with pre-installed machine learning capabilities. In contrast to many of the big-time AI chatbots, IBM Watson has its own features, flexibility and integration. 

Many large companies have switched over to IBM Watson in order to build highly intelligent AI chatbots.

It is amongst the community of AI, one of the greatest in its field, especially in terms of: machine learning, reasoning and natural language processing. Not only that, but it also gives developers advanced cognitive abilities! 

The pros:

• Advanced machine learning engine

• Watson Assistant GUI for non-technical business users

• Automated predictive analysis

• Visual recognition security to make sure your data is truly SECURE

• IBM allows you to store your data on a private cloud instead of collecting it externally 

• Support for 10+ languages worldwide with a pre-installed translator 

• One of the more unique features offered is a tone analyzer; helping your business distinguish differences in negative and positive responses from your customers 

The cons:

• Some developers are concerned with how many tools are available through IBM Watson. This can cause confusion when building a simpler non-AI chatbot, however, if you’re looking for one of the better AI options, Watson is the way to go! 

Integrate your chatbot with:

• Intercom

• Slack

• Facebook Messenger

• WordPress 

Pricing:

There are 4 different pricing plan options for you to choose from. The Lite version is free and allows up to 10,000 messages each month. If you find you’re needing more than that, consider some of the paid versions. 

These include: Standard, Plus, Premium and Deploy Anywhere. Standard pricing is $0.0025 per message and gives you access to unlimited messages each month. Plus pricing is not public information and requires you to contact IBM, but the plus side is you get a free 30-day trial!

Premium and Deploy Anywhere plans are based on custom pricing. 

Amazon Lex

A diverse AI framework that comes ready with cultivated bot-building tools and super easy to use for beginners. As per the name, Amazon Lex is part of the Amazon Web Services family and is one of the most powerful and all-round chatbots available on today’s market. 

It comes with pre-installed machine learning and natural language capabilities thanks to Amazon Web Services (AWS). It definitely is one of the better AI chatbot options that is available for use! 

The pros:

• Integrated with AWS → large network

• Automated speech recognition and speech-to-text capabilities 

• SDKS for varying platforms

• Completely free with an AWS account! 

The cons:

• There can be a language barrier when developing AI chatbot using Amazon Lex as the framework was only available in American English as of early 2019. 

Integrate your chatbot with:

• Slack

• Twilio SMS

• Facebook Messenger 

Pricing: 

Amazon Lex works on a ‘pay as you use’ structure. The charge is $0.004 for every voice request and $0.00075 for every text request. It is however, very flexible! The framework allows users a free trial for the first year.

The free trial includes: up to 10,000 text requests and 5,000 speech requests per month for the first 12 months. 

And there you have it! The top 6 AI chatbot frameworks available on today’s market. So, which one will it be?

For Information or inquiries on custom software solutions feel free to reach out and we will get back to you shortly.