People hate waiting on the line. Enterprises need conversational ai at scale to affordably delight their customers and handle a high volume of queries. The problem is, there are over 200 chatbot companies, making it hard to choose. Enterprises can find the right solutions by focusing on key features:
- Integrations to their tech stack
- Integrations to platforms of their customers
- Customization in customer communication and more
First, see all platforms for developing chatbot applications. Regardless of whether you work with an agency or build an in-house application, one of these are most likely to be used:
All chatbot platforms
Vendor | HQ | Launch year | Category* | Code | Communication | # of employees |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Amplify.ai | USA | 2016 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 14 |
Chatfuel | USA | 2015 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 46 |
Clustaar | France | 2018 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 31 |
CM.com | Netherland | 1999 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Voice / Text | |
Cognigy.AI | Germany | 2016 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Voice / Text | 193 |
DeepSeek | China | 2023 | Chatbot Platform | Programmable | Text | 57 |
Engati Chatbot Platform | India | 2016 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 192 |
Enterprise Bot Live Chat | Switzerland | 2016 | NLP Engine | Programmable | Text | |
Floatbot | India | 2017 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 39 |
Dialogflow | USA | 2010 | NLP Engine | GUI & Programmable | Voice / Text | 15 |
Freshchat | USA | 2010 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 8,754 |
Gubshup | USA | 2004 | Chatbot Platform | GUI & Programmable | Text | 2000+ |
Haptik | India | 2013 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Voice / Text | 315 |
IBM watsonx Assistant | USA | 2014 | NLP Engine | GUI & Programmable | Voice / Text | 314,781 |
Meya | Canada | 2015 | Chatbot Platform | Programmable | Text | 7 |
Manychat | USA | 2015 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 298 |
Microsoft Bot Framework | USA | N/A | NLP Engine | Programmable | Voice / Text | 244,900 |
Microsoft Azure Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS) | USA | N/A | NLP Engine | Programmable | Voice / Text | N/A |
Octane AI | USA | 2016 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 127 |
PandoraBots | USA | 2008 | Chatbot Platform | Programmable | Text | 8 |
Pypestream | USA | 2015 | Chatbot Platform | Programmable | Text | 69 |
rasa NLU | Germany | 2013 | NLP Engine | Programmable | Text | 136 |
Recast.AI | France | 2015 | Chatbot Platform | GUI & Programmable | Text | |
Twyla AI | Germany | 2015 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 15 |
Table Features:
- Sorting: Sponsors with links are listed at the top, and other products are listed alphabetically.
- We divided chatbots into two categories:
- NLP Chatbot platforms offer developers the capability to build and publish their chatbots. NLP engines provide mainly natural language processing capabilities to developers, which they can use to create their bots.
- The second ones only offer their own chatbot platforms.
- UX use is also divided into two.
- With a GUI type, users that allow others to interact with a system through graphical elements such as windows, icons, buttons, and menus, rather than text-based commands.
- Programmable refers to systems or interfaces that allow users to automate tasks or customize the functionality through scripting.
In addition, large language models can be used to build chatbots.
After this overview, you can continue with a step-by-step process to pick the right vendor:
Clarify your requirements
The right vendor will depend on the type of solution you are looking for. The solution will have these important parameters:
- The type of bot: FAQ bot, sales bot, customer service bot etc.
- Dialog volume.
- Channels: For example, major messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or Slack can be considered for deployment (conversational commerce platforms).
- Industry. For options, see:
Understand the options in the market

We can categorize the chatbot options in the market into the following 3 groups:
1. Self-service solutions with GUI
Build your bot using a simple Graphical User Interface (GUI) by dragging and dropping components. This approach is suitable for quickly building a simple bot with basic capabilities.
2. Self-service solutions with a programming interface
These solution providers build an API, SDK, or a library, to provide a framework for your bot to use Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities to understand the intent of user queries.
Building blocks for understanding intent, such as parsing the user query, can be provided by the API. Using the available tools, beginner or citizen developers can build bots in a couple of hours. However, a best-in-class bot would take significantly longer to build, depending on the requirements.
3. End-to-end solutions
This is the easiest way of building a chatbot. Specify what your bot needs to do and get a vendor to build it from the ground up. The price varies depending on your specifications, and the chatbot developer.
In most cases, after your bot is built, you would have access to a panel through which you can further customize the functionality of the bot.
Decide whether to buy or build a chatbot
We recommend companies to deploy the following type of chatbots under these specific circumstances.
- Go for a self-service with GUI if all of the following are true:
- You have little to no budget for chatbots,
- You have limited expectations from your bot,
- You don’t have/can’t access many technical skills.
- Go for a self-service with an API option, SDK, or library if all of the following are true:
- You have little to no chatbot budget,
- You have limited expectations from your bot (however, with a great technical team, you could also build a world-class bot).
- You have or can access some tech skills.
- If all the above factors do not fit your business, go for an end-to-end solution chatbot company.
- For all other cases, it would be good to keep exploring all the options. For example, if you have tech skills, it might be worth building your own chatbot with some support from self-service solutions even if you can allocate a sizable budget for it.
In any case, having a look at the overall industry landscape would be helpful in deciding who to work with. See: Top 30+ Conversational AI Platforms: Detailed Guide
Understand the self-service chatbot provider (chatbot platform) landscape
Consider if your business has the ability to tackle chatbot programming. If it does, there are various advanced chatbot development tools in the market that can do the job in a couple of hours. Let’s look at your options:
1. Tech giants
Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and Facebook are all usable in building a functional bot. Today AI is on the agenda of all tech giants. Their solutions have a supportive community and a small army of developers, so you will not need to worry about developing on a platform that can suddenly be deserted.
On top of already familiar names, relatively new companies are also part of tech giants. For example, Google’s Dialogflow is a chatbot development platform that can be used in designing conversational AI interactions such as chatbots, voice assistants, and virtual assistants, which are integrated with different conversational platforms, especially Google assistant.
To learn about the pros and cons of the tech giants’ platforms, check out the article on how to choose your chatbot platform. In this guide, we analyzed the top 5 chatbot platforms, Google Dialogflow, Amazon Lex, IBM Watson Assistant, and Microsoft Azure Bot Service.
2. Startups
Startups are trying various approaches to innovate in this emerging market. For example, graphical user interfaces and even bots to build bots are offered to facilitate bot development.
Understand different types of end-to-end chatbot providers
This section highlights different kinds of chatbot vendors for businesses that need an end-to-end solution:
RPA companies
Robotic process automation automates mind numbing back-office work typically handled by outsourcing companies. Since RPA bots deeply integrate with a company’s systems, they can also help chatbots access data and operational capabilities.
Check out a prioritized, data-driven list of RPA vendors
Customer service experts
These companies create end-to-end solutions for firms’ customer service needs, such as:
- Automating customer queries via chatbot.
- Collecting consumer data via chatbots.
- Offering personalized products/services via chatbot based on consumer data.
- Analyzing chatbot analytics to find consumers’ expectations and needs. Also chatbot analytics help to find efficiency of chatbot.
Pure chatbot companies
They use their own platform to develop complex bots fast. Some players focus on a specific niche in the market and produce bots customized for the industry or business function they specialize in.
- Companies founded in the 2000s: This was the beginning of the chatbot business when the first web chat features were added. Accumulated decades of data and experience.
- Companies founded in the 2010s: Founded in the 2010s, they developed novel approaches to chatbots. They offer end-to-end services and enable enterprises with limited capabilities to develop chatbots.
Chatbot developers
These companies rely on chatbot platforms to build custom bots for their clients. There are hundreds of such companies, and some of them are specialized in specific industries. However, most are software development houses that build various custom software solutions.
We are listing major chatbot developers that we came across. However, there are too many chatbot developers to list and new chatbot development companies are entering the market constantly.
Company | Number of employees |
---|---|
QBurst | 3,511 |
Contus | 567 |
Ideas2IT | 785 |
OnGraph Technologies | 304 |
Peerbits | 213 |
OCDLAB | 124 |
The Bot Forge | 124 |
Root Info Solutions | 62 |
Botscrew | 59 |
iGnovate Solutions | 16 |
Chatbots Studio | 36 |
Singularika | 18 |
Unibot | 1 |
Other: Agencies, system integrators, consultants
Large organizations consider these as swiss army knives. Think of any tech problem, and there’s probably a company that can build a custom solution for you from available solutions in the market. For example, if you already work with a system integrator and consider getting an end-to-end service, consider asking them about their conversational capabilities.
Further reading
- Top 7 Conversational AI Platforms: Detailed Guide
- Top 3 Yellow.ai Alternatives & Competitors Detailed Guide
- Top 3 Kore.ai Competitors & Alternatives
- Top 5 WhatsApp Business Partners
- Conversational Commerce: Benefits, Best Practices & Examples.
If a decision is yet to be made, feel free to check our data-driven vendor lists:
Comments
Your email address will not be published. All fields are required.