Though chatbot4u was one of the first platforms to enable individuals and businesses, the platform no longer looks actively maintained and is losing users as you see on the graph above. You can quickly discover better, more modern alternatives to chatbot4u.
What did Chatbot4u offer?
Chatbot4u is introduced by Ecreation, a Netherlands based creative agency. Their website makes it possible to develop chatbots in just a few steps. They have been a solutions provider since 2005. It is possible to create chatbots for free. They provide the basic building blocks for creating chatbots and the rest is left for the user creating the chatbot, but the way to do it can be stretched, depending on the context and the ideas and dataset available, users can create their own ad-hoc chatbot. Furthermore, they provide integration with the other communication tools, making t possible to reach interactions beyond just the website.
The system also makes it possible to provide a rating for the chatbots. Users can give stars depending on their experience with the chatbot. This is, of course, a biased metric, because the performance solely depends on the user experience, a funny chatbot can get more starts even though its performance is subpar. Some of the chatbots are Barrack Obama, Justin Bieber, and Selena Gomez which are created in order to make fun of the person the chatbot named after.
There are other use cases. One such is the bots developed by the SMEs because the chatbot4u is free of charge, SMEs can integrate their own chatbot into their system. That way, they can modernize their frequently asked question tab with a chatbot.
Although the website started to lose its traffic starting 2014, in 2017 they announced that they were planning to get back to chatbot industry.
Currently, the website contains more than 37,000 chatbots with almost half of them being personal chatbots.
It offers pro service with more functions and ad-free display.
Overall, chatbot4u is regarded as one of the archaic ecosystems for chatbots. It takes a while for the chatbot to operate. Their system is slow. Their technology is criticized on the ground of archaic infrastructure. No machine learning or any other sign of intelligence is embedded in the system. Their support options are limited to only filling out a contact form.
Overall, chatbot4u is a free environment, with old technology.
Modern free alternatives for building your bot
| Bot Name | License | Supported Channels | Total Funding Amount | Referrences | Number of Employees | Year Funded | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Api.ai | Free | Agent Demo Page Actions on Google Slack Twilio IP Messaging Twilio Skype Tropo Telegram Kik LINE Spark Alexa Cortana | $8.6 mn | WSJ, KLM, Giorgio Armani, Comcast | 11-50 | 2010 | USA |
| Chatfuel | Free | Facebook Messenger Telegram | $0.12 mn | Adidas, Buzzfeed, MTV, Techcrunch, Volkswagen, Uber | 11-50 | 2015 | USA |
| ChatScript | MIT License | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | |
| IBM Watson Conversation Service | Free Standard Premium | N/A | N/A | 2000+ | 2014 | USA | |
| It's Alive | Free | Facebook Messenger | N/A | Sanofi, Capitol Music France | 1-10 | 2016 | France |
| ManyChat | Free | Facebook Messenger | $0.125 mn | N/A | 11-50 | 2015 | USA |
| Microsoft Bot Framework | Open source and available to all on Github. | Your website or app SMS Skype Slack Facebook Messenger Office 365 mail Teams | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | USA |
| rasa NLU | Is an open source tool | N/A | UBS, Raiffeisen, Yellow Pages | 11-50 | 2015 | Germany | |
| wit.ai | Free | $3 mn | N/A | 1-10 | 2013 | USA | |
| mobile monkey | Free | N/A | 1-10 | 2017 | USA |
Please note that the table is not comprehensive as new companies are being formed in this space. Additionally, fields like supported channels are constantly changing for companies so once you get a shortlist of chatbot providers to consider from this list, we suggest you to take a look at their websites to see the most up-to-date functionality.
Source of some of the data for this table is chatbotsjournal.
