How much does a chatbot cost? We have heard this question a lot. And for those that ask, the most common and also probably the most annoying answer is “... it depends”. With that in mind we have put together a list of ballpark prices for chatbots for you to better understand how chatbot pricing works.
Chatbot pricing can be similar to a car. Take an old minivan and a new sports car. You can drive them both and get from point A to point B. But a sports car costs 10x of a minivan because of the features and comfort it offers. Chatbot cost depends on features and functionality you want. So let’s dig in.
What Is A Chatbot?
A chatbot is an interface through which the user can obtain information automatically from a software program. The UI is usually in written form (chat, messaging) and often the chatbot presents the user information with a simple multiple choice selector. Advanced AI chatbots (also known as Intelligent Virtual Assistants, a subdomain of Conversational AI) are capable of providing intent detection and resolving customer inquiries through natural language understanding. Chatbots are used in multilingual customer support, lead generation and sales automation across a variety of channels (e.g. websites, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS).
What Is An Intelligent Virtual Assistant?
An Intelligent Virtual Assistant (or IVA for short) is a machine learning based system capable of understanding human language and answering questions that people ask. These intelligent AI assistants are not only capable of presenting a multiple choice selection of answers to the user but also understand user intent from free text.
As the IVAs are used extensively in customer support automation they are also known as Virtual Customer Assistants. Understanding natural language is a significant leap in the development of smarter machines. The ability to conduct Natural Language Processing gives machines the capability of understanding users in a better fashion and serve more useful and accurate information.
Level 1 - Free
Price
Free. Software providers offer the free tier that usually has a maximum number of users (e.g. 50 to 1,000 contacts) that can chat with your bot. For more users the chatbot platforms charge anywhere between $20-$500 / month.
Your time commitment
Usually 1 hour to get to know the platform and build a first bot.
Fine tuning and adding more content can take another few hours. The more content you add, the more of your time it takes.
What you get
Clickable chatbot. The bot offers the users a multiple choice and the users get answers by pressing buttons.
Most chatbots are connected to Facebook Messenger.
An experienced agency has a process and can get you results quicker than developing on your own.
The agency can offer ideas and feedback from experience to improve your bot.
Cons
You can spend a considerable amount of time finding a suitable agency.
Monthly fees can pile up for work that you later find you could do on your own.
Chatbot usually has no intent detection.
Usually no integration to human agents and your backend systems.
Level 3 - Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVA)
Price
Software providers can charge a setup fee from $1,000 (this is for lower end setup). More complex setups can easily be 10x that price.
Monthly fee for using the platform usually in the $1,000 - $5,000 range. Though there are some Conversational AI platforms where the monthly fee is in the $400 range.
Your time commitment
4-8 hours of getting used to the platform. Building the IVA, training it. Most companies provide 1-4 hour training sessions to get you up to speed quickly. With no code AI tools you can get started quicker.
Expect spending each month around 8-16 hours on training the IVA. This makes the IVA constantly better.
What you get
Natural Language Understanding Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA). This is smarter than your regular chatbot. The IVA can understand free text i.e. users can chat with it like they would chat with their friend
Also expect to have a handover from the IVA to your customer service agents in live chat.
IVAs are most often connected to websites through a chat widget. They can also be connected to most messaging apps as well.
Handover to your CRM via email can be possible or connection to a live chat system. However, in those cases, setup or monthly price will be more on the higher end.
Expect setup fees from $10,000 upward. Higher end and more complex setups can be around $50,000.
Monthly fee for using the platform usually in the $5,000 - $15,000 range.
Your time commitment
4-8 hours of getting used to the platform. Building the IVA, training it. Most companies provide 1-4 hour training sessions to get you up to speed quickly.
Expect spending each month around 8-16 hours on training the IVA. This makes the IVA constantly better.
Integration costs depend on the complexity of deployment but expect development, testing and deployment to take anywhere from 2-5 months.
What you get
Natural Language Understanding Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA). This is smarter than your regular chatbot. The IVA can understand free text i.e. users can chat with it like they would chat with their friend. Often in multiple languages.
IVA is able to authenticate users through free text interactions and provide them personalized answers automatically based on the data in your database.
Handover from the IVA to your customer service agents in live chat.
IVAs are most often connected to websites through a chat widget. They can also be connected to most messaging apps as well.
SLA, SSO, API access, dedicated account manager.
AlphaChat is a chatbot software platform allowing anyone to build Conversational AI bots for their website. Aside from Natural Language Understanding, the AI is capable of authenticating users with deep automations for online customer service.
Top Features:
Built-in Natural Language Understanding for training Conversational AI.
Dedicated tool for website chat automation. Live chat built-in.
Use API to authenticate users and provide personalized automated support.
Pre-trained industry templates. Works in all languages.
What’s special about this tool: Powerful tool with no-code interface for anyone to build online customer service onversational AI. Launch a bot in minutes. API available for advanced users with deep insight into bot content and AI suggestions on how to improve the Conversational AI. SLA and Alpha Operating System with custom code available for enterprise chatbots.
Pricing: 10-day free trial. Paid plans from €399/month.
2. Hyro
Hyro is platform that analyzes conversational data to create a basis for customer service Conversational AI bots.
Top Features:
Virtual Assistants.
Parse existing data.
Knowledge graph.
Healthcare focus.
What’s special about this tool: Focus on the healthcare, government and real estate sector.
Pricing: Paid plans price available on request.
3. Ebi
Ebi is a Conversational AI platform for building customer support automation solutions utilizing IBM Watson machine learning models.
Top Features:
Uses IBM Watson machine learning.
Connect to voice.
Multichannel deployment.
Live chat.
What’s special about this tool: Ebi offers custom online customer support Conversational AI development projects to build an MVP in 30 days.
Pricing: Price available on request.
4. Rulai
Rulai is a Conversational AI platform allowing to create Virtual Assistants for websites.
Top Features:
Natural Language Understanding.
Integrations.
Drag and drop design console.
Multi-channel.
What’s special about this tool: Rulai enables training smart AI bots to understand natural language and integrate with various 3rd party tools.
Pricing: Free trial available on request. Price available on request.
5. Ultimate.ai
Ultimate.ai is a Conversational AI software for automating customer support.
Top Features:
Virtual Assistant training.
Enterprise focus.
CRM integrations.
Custom machine learning models.
What’s special about this tool: Ultimate.ai allows building AI bots in several languages and launching customer service automation within weeks.
Pricing: Paid plans starting from €499/month.
Summary
Chatbot cost is anywhere from zero to a few thousands dollars per month. Set up fees can range from your own time to tens of thousands of dollars.
Simple clickable chatbots cost less and intent detecting Intelligent Virtual Assistants built on Conversational AI platforms cost more. Add additional cost if you want your bot to authenticate users and connect to your backend systems.
If you are looking to try this out for your own business or needs, feel free to sign-up for an account with alphachat.ai In just 5 minutes you can get your own natural language understanding Intelligent Virtual Assistant that you can connect with your website. If you have any questions, just reach out or scan this WhatsApp QR code down below and chat with us.
