A program for creating a chat bot. The Complete Guide to Chatbot Development

The use of smart assistants is relevant in a variety of business areas where there is a need to automate work processes. Bots can relieve the support service by recognizing common problems and offering tips (in other words, a “frequently asked questions” section in real time).

Let's consider another example - you are the owner of a food delivery business, a chatbot may well take on the function of a waiter to receive (in chat) and confirm the order (by phone). In fact, there are a huge number of examples; a bot can provide up-to-date information about the status of a parcel (order), advise on company products, book tickets and search for information and pictures on the Internet.

Bots are able not only to solve problems, but also to aggregate information about interactions with clients, thereby “learning.” This simplifies subsequent iterations - for example, when contacting the bot again, the client can tell the bot something like: “like last time” (when ordering food in a restaurant), the bot will bring up information about the previous order and send it for processing - fantasy? No, these are very real cases in coffee shops and restaurants in the USA.

In the near future, this will reduce personnel costs - sounds scary doesn't it?

• Framework
• Hosting

Supported platforms:

• FB Messenger
• Slack
• Telegram

XO flow- a powerful cross-platform solution for creating bots without programming skills. The intuitive interface of the editor allows you to customize the logic of the future bot in a matter of minutes. Key advantages also include a huge number of built-in integrations (more than 90) with all kinds of external services.

The platform offers several tariff plans (there is no free option), starting at $19/month. Tariffs include a limited number of iterations (interactions with bots). It is possible to customize the plan by adding new bots and the number of interactions.

• Framework
• Hosting

Supported platforms:

• FB Messenger
• Slack
• Telegram
• Skype

Recast.ai- a platform based on its own natural language recognition technology (Natural language processing), according to the developers, the core of the platform easily recognizes user input queries, highlighting key phrases:

The service has excellent multi-platform functionality: Facebook messenger, Slack, KIK, Weechat. Bots can be embedded into the web interface and process incoming mail. A user-friendly interface allows you to create your own bot in 8 minutes. (information from the official manual).

The platform offers a wide range of development tools (SDK) for Python, NodeJS, PHP, Android, as well as a functional API. It is worth noting that there is a large community of experienced developers who will be happy to suggest a solution to beginners.

Pricing ranges from a free plan for developers, which includes an unlimited number of bots (which must be posted publicly), and 3 basic plans for creating private assistants. Tariffs also limit requests; it is also possible to place a bot outside the site or on it (in this case there is an SLA guarantee).

Supported platforms:

• FB Messenger
• Telegram

ChatFuel- one of the first public online services for creating chatbots. At the time of writing the review, it supports several platforms - Facebook and Telegram, and soon the developers promise to add Viber, Slack, KiK and WhatsApp.

The platform offers a convenient and simple interface for designing and launching a bot in a product. According to the developers, the built-in natural speech recognition (NLP) tool “understands” a wide range of queries and is capable of responding to them situationally (passing a query parsed by keywords for processing to a user-specified algorithm).

ChatFuel already uses several well-known brands to interact with customers - National Geographic, TechCrunch, UBER.

The service offers a free plan (up to 100,000 requests), which significantly exceeds the offers of competitors (on average, 2 times the number of iterations in the free plan).

In our opinion, now Chatfuel is the real optimal solution, at least in terms of functionality/cost ratio.

API.ai- not exactly a platform for creating chatbots, it is an American startup founded in 2010 by immigrants from Russia - Ilya Gelfenbein, Pavel Sirotin and Artem Goncharuk. At the beginning of the journey, the team was developing a voice interface for managing applications (similar to Siri).

On September 19, 2016, the platform was acquired by Google. According to Vice President of Engineering Scott Huffman, the acquisition of Api.ai is one of the planned investments in machine learning technologies.

Today, the capabilities of Api.Ai are widely used by services for creating chatbots as an external NLP tool. To properly process incoming requests, the bot needs to convert the input text into a language it understands - highlighting key commands. This is exactly what happens “under the hood” of the service.

The “parsed” request is returned to the bot via the external programming interface, which then reacts to keywords, dates and actions based on the specified operating logic. The logic of work, in turn, is configured in the interfaces of services for creating chatbots.

The Telegram bot designer is a popular service, as it allows even the most inexperienced user to develop their own robot and launch it into the messenger. We offer you an overview of the most popular services.

@Manybot. The most famous internal bot designer for Telegram. Absolutely free and has strong support.

Chatfuel. Register in it via social networks and get started. The designer will help you create your own Telegram robot for free. Today it is the leader among programs of this kind. It is supported by Yandex. Hundreds of thousands of resources have already been designed on the site.

Converse.ai. Paid constructor with a trial period for 1000 messages in Telegram. The unlimited plan costs $150. A fairly complex tool that has a graphical interface and allows you to implement artificial intelligence in your project.

Flow XO. Paid Telegram bot builder aimed at creating business tools for Telegram. Has templates for ready-made modules. Cost – from $19 per month.

@LivegramBot. It appeared not so long ago, so it still has few functions. You can build a simple feedback robot and manage it by viewing user activity, messages, etc.

How does the Telegram bot constructor work?

The scheme is simple:

• Create your own bot, search for @Botfather and click start.

• send the command /newbot

• enter the name of the future bot - must be in Latin

• Next, enter the username of the bot, the name by which you can find it in Telegram. There is only one requirement - one must end in bot.

• Everything is ready - you will receive a message in response with a token - the unique name of your bot.

The robot development service offers users many tips and functions, so usually there are no difficulties. It is impossible to set up a complex service in it, but a basic chat is easy.

We use the Telegram bot constructor @Manybot

• First, look for @Manybot and click Start

• To create, click Add a new bot or type /addbot.

• Go to @Botfather, create a bot /newbot and copy the issued token - the detailed process is described above.

• Paste the token into the manybot chat.

• Type a description or skip this step; you can come back to it later.
• Further links are offered for inviting subscribers, /newpost for sending messages within the service and setting up autoposting from the RSS feed /autoposting

• Go to your bot and configure it. For example, to create a new command, type /commands.

• Click "Create Team". Its name must be in English.

• When the user enters a command, he will receive text, image or file. To set it up, enter the text, send it and click the “Save” button.

• To add a file, simply attach it below the text. To do this, click the paperclip icon and select a document or picture.
• To add a command to a custom menu, click Customize Menu.

Need a chatbot, but don't know how to code? We offer a selection of the best bot design services. And some of them are even free :)

If you are a businessman, chatbots will surely come in handy in the near future. It sounds categorical, but it is true. A company that works with clients (that is, every brand) has a couple of processes to automate. Bots in messengers will relieve support staff, increase the level of customer service, reduce personnel costs, and so on.

And you don’t have to work online to do this. Chatbots will even replace waiters - and such cases are already appearing in the States. Let’s imagine: you go to your favorite cafe where you have breakfast every morning. On the wall at the counter there is a poster with the name of the waiter bot (you can find it by searching in applications). You download the messenger and write:

Hello bot!

Hi Andrew. Are you as usual?

Yes, just espresso instead of juice.

Order is accepted!

After 15 minutes, breakfast is brought to you. A bot that imitates a person takes orders via messenger, advises on the menu - and most importantly, stores a history of requests. Therefore, it is not necessary to repeat one thing every time - it is enough for the system to send “I’m like last time”, and it will understand. After placing the order, it is sent to the kitchen, and a little later the food is brought by a “live” waiter.

This is not an abstract fantasy. Similar bots are already being implemented in coffee shops in the USA - and are awaiting pioneers in Russia. Creating such a robot is quite simple, and the interaction with it is impressive. As you can see, process automation with chatbots is available not only online, but also in the catering industry. Bots can already book tickets, search for information on the Internet (text, visual content), advise on company products, etc. Think about how you can apply bots to your business? And how much will they save you?

Once again, creating chatbots is not as complicated a process as it seems. There are enough platforms that allow you to design a “robot” for instant messengers without knowledge of design and coding. Let's look at 5 convenient chatbot design services.

5 best solutions

Multi-platform solution for creating bots. Supported sites:

Service features:

• extensive content libraries;
• speech interfaces;
• large community (more than 225 thousand participants);
• learning ability of created bots;
• support for most languages.

And most importantly - the service is free! In addition to advanced services: staff training, code review, hosting and licenses, extended support, etc. The platform also offers an interesting solution: AIaaS (artificial intelligence as a service). Using Pandorabots resources (or your favorite text editor), you create a bot and then activate it in minutes through the built-in RESTful API.

“Everything you need when creating bots. For instant messengers, Slack and Telegram,” reads the first window of the service. Claimed benefits:

• True cross-platform. A bot created once works on all platforms;
• Convenient bot editor, does not require knowledge of code;
• More than 90 built-in integrations;
• Hosting.

Pricing includes two tariffs: free (5 bots, 100 interactions, email support) and standard ($19/month, 15 bots, 1500 interactions). But not only. The standard plan for $10/month adds 5 bots, and for $25 - 25,000 interactions.

The system considers each instance of a user launching a bot as an interaction, or interaction.

A platform for creating Facebook bots with a charming octopus logo :) The service does not require knowledge of code, it is free and simple. But - forget about cross-platform, because ManyChat only supports Facebook Messenger.

The bot is designed on site in a few minutes - an intuitive interface facilitates this. There are several benefits to using Facebook Messenger that ManyChat focuses on. So, when a person starts corresponding with your corporate page (bot), he automatically becomes a subscriber. Now you can send him updates, notifications, and other content.

Automate the bot's interactions with users, create content for mailings, set the sending date/time - and relax, the bot will do the rest;) In addition, ManyChat is applicable as an auto-posting platform via RSS, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.

In a word, ManyChat is a convenient solution that lacks only cross-platform functionality.

The service works with many platforms: Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Slack, Smooch, Intercom, Telegram, KiK, Twilio, Webhooks, Luis.ai, Wit.ai, GitHub.Among the features:

Meya has a very detailed price list (compared to the other heroes in the selection) - as many as 5 tariffs. It’s not a fact that this is good - your eyes are a little dizzy from the abundance of options.

• Free(200 messages, 1 bot, 1 employee, community support);
• Startup($49/month, 10,000 messages, 5 bots, 2 employees, “bronze” support and analytics);
• Business($99/month, 20,000 messages, unlimited bots and employees, “silver” support, analytics, Github export);
• Organization($199/month, flexible pricing - 50,000 messages or 10,000 users, bots and employees without restrictions, “golden” support, analytics, Github export);
• Company(price by agreement, flexible pricing - more than 50,000 messages or 10,000 users, bots and employees without restrictions, “platinum” support, analytics, Github export).

As a summary: an interesting platform with wide functionality.

Highlight of the selection. The platform allows you to create bots for Facebook and Telegram. Slack, KiK, WhatsApp and Viber are coming. The service offers intuitive functionality that does not require knowledge of code. The platform’s AI recognizes user requests in a wide range and responds to them, and the solution itself supports integration with many services (twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc.).

ChatFuel is already used by National Geographic, TechCrunch, UBER. And most importantly, the platform is free! Amendment - up to 100,000 bot activations per month. But this limit is conditional, because it is 2-5 times wider than the conditions of competitors. It seems that the creators of ChatFuel have made the most attractive solution on the market. At least in terms of price/quality ratio.

Instead of a conclusion

We reviewed the TOP 5 solutions for creating bots. The list of available platforms, functionality, price - everything varies from solution to solution, but you will certainly find a service that suits your needs.

But remember, if your time is expensive and you don’t want to spend it on designing a bot, or if you need a non-standard product with special functionality - take your ideas and contact RoboMarketing :) We will design bots of any complexity for you, without functional limitations or limits and monthly subscription fees.

Gartner estimates that by 2020, up to 85% of business communications with customers will be bots. Already now they are working with job seekers, carrying out and performing many other tasks. Plus, creating a chatbot that answers simple customer questions is cheaper and easier than hiring and training a customer service agent.

Here is a list of services that will help you make your own bot even without programming skills:

ChattyPeople

The service is suitable for small companies, although it also has functionality for large businesses. With ChattyPeople you can make a bot for Facebook messenger. It is enough to know how to use a computer mouse and keyboard. The bot created with this service can answer simple customer questions, but it can also be integrated with the Shopify e-commerce platform.

Flow XO

In the Flow XO service you can create more “advanced” bots for Slack, Messenger, Telegram and other platforms. It's not as easy to use as ChattyPeople, but you don't need to know how to program it either. Flow XO has many integration options: it can be built into JIRA, Buffer and GitHub services, which will facilitate communication both with clients and within the team.

MEOKAY

This multi-platform service is suitable for those who already know how to program a little, but have not yet gained enough experience. In MEOKAY, you can create many dialogue scenarios so that the bot can have a more lively conversation. The technical support service will help beginner developers in creating a bot.

Morph.ai

The strength of the Morph.ai service is speed. You can create a bot in minutes. Another feature of the service is natural language processing and the use of deep learning. They help the bot have a much more lively conversation, not limited to primitive answers. This is not the most budget-friendly solution - the optimal set of functionality without restrictions costs $299 per month. The bot can be integrated with Twitter, Slack, LINE, Facebook Messenger, Shopify, Zendesk, and even the Salesforce CRM system.

Botsify

Using this service, you can create a free bot with simple functionality for communicating with a limited number of users (up to hundreds) per month and integrate it with Facebook Messenger. Bots created using this service can work with videos, images, audio and other file formats.

Botkit

Botkit makes it easy to design and create bots, but it only supports Slack. The service is suitable as the first platform for learning and experimenting with chatbots. On Botkit you can test the technology before purchasing a subscription to one of the paid tools.

Chatfuel

According to the creators of the Chatfuel service, you can use it to launch a bot on Facebook Messenger in just seven minutes. No programming skills are needed - everything is done through a simple user interface. The bot can be integrated with other platforms, including JSON and YouTube. Chatfuel services are free.

Recast

Recast is suitable for those who want to focus on one bot rather than making many bots on different platforms. The list of possible integrations includes all standard applications, as well as Kik and Skype.

Cortana Intelligence

Microsoft's Cortana Intelligence platform allows you to create bots to perform a variety of tasks. This service is not for beginners. To use it, you need knowledge in the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence. But the level of abilities of the bot created using Cortana Intelligence will impress anyone.

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Bots in the Telegram messenger are becoming increasingly popular and the number of their users is constantly growing. In this regard, more and more different designers are appearing that allow you, without special knowledge and skills, to create your own robot in just a few clicks. TodayTelegram bot designer allows you to create a program that can cope with any tasks.

It is about bot designers that we will talk today. You will learn: what they are and why they are used, what they are and much more.

First, let's understand what a constructor is. A designer is a special software (program) designed to quickly create bots without knowledge of any programming languages. In other words, the entire creation process involves pressing certain buttons and entering text (for example, the name of the button, the text of the message, etc.).

Now, every Telegram user (even not the most experienced one) can create his own robot assistant, configure it, give it action algorithms and put it to work. And all this, we repeat once again, without knowledge of any programming languages.

In addition to simplifying the work, designers are called upon save our time. The time that is spent on manually creating bots. And sometimes even programmers use one or another constructor. After all, they are simpler and faster. This is especially true when you need to perform simple tasks.

Yes, constructors have some limitations - you will not be able to go beyond the capabilities of the constructor itself. But if the functions that are offered to you are sufficient, then why not take advantage of them? After all, this saves time and will allow you to avoid mistakes that can be made when writing code.

And finally, it’s worth noting that sometimes designers can do things that you cannot do yourself. For example, you don’t know how to get a bot to parse news from external resources and then post them in Telegram. But the designer has such an opportunity, and then it is much easier to create a bot in it.

What bots can be created in constructors?

The answer to this question depends on which constructor you are using. As a rule, each designer is designed to create bots of a certain type. For example, for business topics, for games, for receiving feedback, etc.

Conventionally, all bots can be divided into four groups:

• Chatbots;
• Informant bots;
• Game bots;
• Assistant bots.

The first ones are designed to create activity in the group and maintain a conversation with interlocutors. With a high-quality setup of such a bot, people will not even understand that they are communicating with a robot.

The latter are intended to inform the audience. Posting news, answering certain questions and much more.

Still others are for fun. They are used to play the games that are embedded in them. There are even bots where you can play for real money.

And the last, fourth, are intended to help the administration in performing certain tasks. More often they are forced to do routine work.

What types of constructors are there?

Many who work with bots are wondering what types of constructors are there?

Conventionally, they can all be divided into two groups:

• Located inside Telegram itself;
• Software located on external resources.

Speaking of the former, they are ready-made bots that are capable of creating other bots. The advantages of such constructors are that they are always free and easy to learn.

The second ones are most often an online service or software that needs to be downloaded, etc. That is, the creation occurs outside the messenger.

Below we take a closer look at the most popular designers.

@ManyBot

One of the most popular It is completely free, and most importantly easy to use.

Its interface supports two languages: Russian and English.

What can robots created on this constructor do:

ManyBot is most often used to create auto-posting.

How to use:

For example, we entered “/autoposting” and selected the social network VKontakte, entered the public link and started autoposting. Now everything that will be published there will be automatically published in Telegram.

Also, don’t forget to add the bot to the desired chat/channel so that it can start working.

Converse.ai

Perhaps this is the best bot designer for Telegram

This is a fairly popular constructor with which you can create a bot for Telegram and more.

Using Converse, you can create a bot that can:

• Process frequently asked questions;
• Will be able to automate work processes;
• Has support for voice, pictures and video;
• Has quick launch templates;
• Maybe ;
• Can notify users;
• It can work both with internal Telegram tools and with external resources (for example, PayPal).

Unfortunately, this designer is not free. It has a trial period of 1000 messages, but after that you will have to pay monthly to use it. There are three tariffs: 50, 100, 150 US dollars. The availability of certain functions will depend on the selected package.

To use, follow these steps:

We will not consider the setup process itself in detail. Since there are a large number of different parameters and it will not be possible to describe all of them in this article. All of them are intuitive, and if you have any questions, you can find detailed step-by-step training on how to work with this service on the Internet.

You can integrate a ready-made robot into Telegram in the “Channels” tab.

Flow XO

Another quite popular online service that allows you to create chat bots for more than 90 services, including Telegram.

Pricing here is flexible and you can choose one or another tool and add it.

To get started, you are encouraged to purchase the Standard plan for $19 per month. It has 15 bots and 5000 interactions (for example, receiving a message counts as one interaction, regardless of the number of messages and response actions). If you need to purchase more bots, you can purchase 5 more for $10, and you can also purchase an additional 25,000 interactions for $25.

There is also a free trial period that lasts 2 weeks and has 500 interactions and 5 bots.

So, how to use the services of this software:

You need to get three fields: Name, Bot Username and Bot Token from @BotFather in Telegram (read how to do this in the ManyBot instructions, steps 1-4).
Here we see how the bot sent us a message with a greeting.

By customizing it in more detail, you can create a full-fledged interlocutor.

@LivegramBot

Another internal constructor for bots in Telegram. With its help, you can create a robot for feedback.

To use it, you must:

Setup is quite simple. Under the last message there will be a “Configure bot” button, click it and select one of the items that you want to configure.

Bottom line

Today we looked at bot designers for Telegram. Now you know what it is, for what purposes it is used and what it is. We told you about some of the most famous and popular ones. It's up to you to decide which one to use. We hope our article was useful to you.