Thanks to the advancement of machine learning and artificial intelligence, consumers now get technological help in all aspects of their lives. With this, the demand of chatbots – a program that imitate human conversations to solve tasks – is steadily increasing especially in business websites. Chatbots are well on their way to becoming the most important feature in stellar customer service. In fact, according to a study conducted by Gartner, by 2020 chatbots will be handling no less than 85% of all customer service interactions.

 

Chatbots are also easy to come by. There are thousands of AI chatbot services that provides them or you can build one through a chatbot development platform or simply known as a chatbot builder. There is no shortage of chatbot builders available but when it comes to the best ones, the company Chatfuel always comes to mind. The best thing about this platform is you don’t need advanced and complex programming skills to build your own chatbot.

 

What is Chatfuel?

 

Chatfuel is a chatbot development platform that aims to make it easy for everyone to build chatbots. The company was founded by Dmitrii Dumik and Artem Ptashnik on 2015 in Russia. Originally, they started on Telegram but they are now focused on helping people build bots on the Facebook Messenger. “If you look at mobile apps, it all started as a simple concept that has evolved into something sophisticated today,” Dmitrii Dumik said in an interview with TechCrunch. “Messengers are bigger than social networks now.” [1] [2]

They believe in the power of chatbots to strengthen the connection between companies with their audience – whether it’s customers, readers, fans, or others. [3]

 

Chatfuel has a free plan where you get access to all features with the exception of the People Tab.  However, it has a limit of up to 5000 subscribers and your Messenger Bot will also display the “Powered by Chatfuel” branding in the menu. To remove the Chatfuel branding, you will need to upgrade to the PRO plan which starts from only $15/month. Aside from the removed branding, you also get the following with the PRO plan:

 

Best Alternatives for Chatfuel

 

As stated above, there is no shortage of chatbot builders available in the market and you would want to choose a platform that best suits your project. Aside from Chatfuel, here is a selection of great platforms to use if you want to build your own chatbot.