A chatbot is one of the oldest envisioned use cases for Artificial Intelligence. Alan Turing suggested that instead of debating whether a machine could think, we should measure how it imitates human language. Microsoft’s Xiaoice already passes the Turing test for 10 minutes.
What about your company? Don’t you believe that some of the queries that your company is responding to on social media, webchat or SMS could be easily and quickly responded by chat bots improving customer satisfaction? If yes, do you already have a customer service chat bot or are you looking to build a new one? If you need to find a chat bot vendor to work with and have just 1 minute to solve this:
If you have more time, strap in, because there’s a few too many bot companies out there.
Understand the options in the market
First of all, you may be thinking what the fuss is about chat bots and why you need to spend time choosing a good chatbot partner. Natural languages seem relatively simple to us humans however they are one of the most difficult areas to master for machines. If you are wondering why, take a look at why chatbots fail. Keeping your expectations low is a good first step.
Though there are many bot companies out there, we can split them in 3 groups:
- Self service solutions also called chatbot platforms:
- Self-service solutions with GUI: Build your bot with using a simple Graphical User Interface (GUI) by dragging and dropping components. This is not the best approach to build a sophisticated bot but you can build a relatively simple bot very quickly.
- Self-service solutions with an API, SDK or library : These solution providers built an API, SDK or a library to provide a framework for your bot to use Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities. For example, all bots need to understand the intent in user queries. Building blocks for understanding intent such as parsing the user query can be provided by the API. Using the available tools, even novice developers can build bots in a couple hours. However a best-in-class bot would take significantly longer to build depending on what you want the bot to achieve.
- End-to-end solutions: This is the fastest way to building your company’s bot. Specify what your bot needs to do and get a vendor to build it end-to-end. Depending on your specifications and the vendor, price will vary greatly. In most cases after your bot is built, clients would have access to a panel through which they can further customize functionality of the bot.
Decide whether to buy or build and cut your search time by half
The critical decision is: What’s the right type of company for you? 3 things will be important:
- What are the required capabilities of your bot?
- Do you have a sizable budget?
- Are you technical?
Once you decide those, the solution is clear in some cases:
- Go for a self service with GUI if all of these are true:
- You have little to no chatbot budget
- You have limited expectations from your bot
- You don’t have/can’t access much technical skills
- Go for a self service with an API, SDK or library if all of these 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
- Definitely go for end-to-end service if you said no to all of the above
- For all other cases, I would keep on exploring both options. For example if you have tech skills, it might be worth building your own chat bot with some support from self-service solutions even if you can allocate a sizable budget for it.
In both cases, having a look at the overall industry landscape would be helpful to decide who to work with.
1- Understand self-service chatbot provider (chatbot platform) landscape
So you believe you or your team can tackle chatbot programming. You are probably right, chatbot development tools are so advanced that you can really build an OK chatbot in a couple hours. Let’s look at your options:
Tech giants
Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Facebook all want to help you build the next greatest bot. Having won Jeopardy in 2010, IBM Watson is one of the pioneers in the field. However today AI is on the agenda of all tech giants. Their solutions have a supporting community and a small army of developers so you won’t 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 thanks to recent acquisitions. For example, dialogflow (previously api.ai) is part of Google.
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.
See all chatbot platforms in one neat table
Below, you can find a slightly outdated list of chatbot platforms. We have the latest and greatest version of this list with a much better interface under aimultiple.com. The updated list allows you to sort/filter the results and learn more about the products.
| Bot Name | Location | Year Founded | Platform Capabilities* | UX | Bot communication | Number of Employees | Total Funding Amount | References | Languages |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amplify.ai | USA | 2016 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 11-50 | N/A | Change.org | Multilingual |
| Beep Boop | USA | 2015 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 1-10 | N/A | N/A | Multilingual |
| Botsify | Pakistan | 2017 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 1-10 | $ 0.03 mn | Apple, Shazam, Unicef, RemoteInterview | Multilingual |
| Bottr | USA | 2015 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 1-10 | N/A | N/A | Multilingual |
| Chatfuel | USA | 2015 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 11-50 | $0.12 mn | Adidas, Buzzfeed, MTV, Techcrunch, Volkswagen, Uber | Multilingual |
| Chatkoo | Indonesia | 2017 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 1-10 | N/A | N/A | Multilingual |
| ChatScript | N/A | N/A | NLP Engine | Programmable | Text | N/A | N/A | N/A | Multilingual |
| ChatterBot | N/A | N/A | NLP Engine | Programmable | Text | N/A | N/A | N/A | Multilingual |
| ChattyPeople | India | 2017 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 1-10 | N/A | N/A | Multilingual |
| Clustaar | France | 2018 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 11-50 | €1.7mn | Nestle, TUI | Multilingual |
| Cognigy | Germany | 2016 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Voice / Text | 11-50 | Henkel, TÜV Rheinland, Salzburg AG | Multilingual | |
| Conversable | USA | 2016 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 11-50 | N/A | Budweiser, EY, PG, Pizza Hut, Sony, TGI Fridays, Viacom, Whole Foods, | English |
| Destygo | France | 2016 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 11-50 | $ 1.2 mn | N/A | Multilingual |
| Engati | India | 2017 | Chatbot Platform | Programmable | Text | 1-10 | |||
| Enterprise Bot | Switzerland | 2016 | NLP Engine | Programmable | Text | 11-50 | N/A | N/A | English |
| FloatBot | India | 2017 | Chatbot Platform | Programmable | Text | 1-10 | N/A | N/A | Multilingual |
| FlowXO | UK | 2014 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 1-10 | N/A | N/A | Multilingual |
| Google Dialogflow (previously Api.ai) | USA | 2010 | NLP Engine | Programmable | Voice / Text | 11-50 | $8.6 mn | WSJ, KLM, Giorgio Armani, Comcast | Multilingual |
| Gubshup | USA | 2014 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 51-200 | N/A | Facebook, Linkedin, Citibank, Twitter, Venture Beat, Cisco, Unilever, Ebay | English, Hindi |
| IBM Watson Conversation Service | USA | 2014 | NLP Engine | Programmable | Voice / Text | 2000+ | N/A | N/A | English, Japanese |
| It's Alive | France | 2016 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 1-10 | N/A | Sanofi, Capitol Music France | English |
| KITT.AI (acquired by Baidu) | USA | 2014 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 1-10 | N/A | N/A | English |
| ManyChat | USA | 2015 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 11-50 | $0.125 mn | N/A | English |
| Meya.ai | Canada | 2015 | Chatbot Platform | Programmable | Text | 1-10 | $ 1 mn | Sony, Vodafone, Mercedes Benz | Multilingual |
| Microsoft Bot Framework | USA | N/A | NLP Engine | Programmable | Voice / Text | N/A | N/A | N/A | Multilingual |
| Microsoft Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS) | USA | N/A | NLP Engine | Programmable | Voice / Text | N/A | N/A | N/A | Multilingual |
| Mindmeld (acquired by Cisco) | USA | 2011 | Chatbot Platform | Programmable | Voice / Text | 1-10 | N/A | N/A | English |
| Morph.ai | India | 2016 | Chatbot Platform | Programmable | Text | 11-50 | N/A | Manchester City, Yamaha, Yes Bank | Multilingual |
| motion.ai (acquired by HubSpot) | USA | 2015 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 1-10 | |||
| Octane.ai | USA | 2016 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 1-10 | $1.5 mn | Kiehls, Warner Music Group | English |
| Pandorabots | USA | 2008 | Chatbot Platform | Programmable | Text | 1-10 | N/A | N/A | Multilingual |
| Pypestream | USA | 2015 | Chatbot Platform | Programmable | Text | 11-50 | $22.5 mn | Cisco, Microsoft, Salesforce | English |
| rasa NLU | Germany | 2015 | NLP Engine | Programmable | Text | 11-50 | N/A | UBS, Raiffeisen, Yellow Pages | English, German |
| Rebot.me | N/A | 2014 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 1-10 | N/A | N/A | Multilingual |
| Recast.AI (acquired by SAP) | France | 2015 | Chatbot Platform | Programmable | Text | 11-50 | $ 2.4 mn | Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte, SalesForce, Cisco, Facebook, Slack | Multilingual |
| Recime | USA | 2017 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 1-10 | $0.4 mn | Coca Cola, Wyre, Gigigo | Multilingual |
| Reply.ai | USA | 2016 | Chatbot Platform | Programmable | Text | 11-50 | $1.4 mn | Mapfre, Samsung, Starbucks, Hilton | English |
| Semantic Machines | USA | 2014 | NLP Engine | Programmable | Text | 11-50 | $20.9 mn | N/A | Multilingual |
| Sor'un | Turkey | 2014 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 1-10 | N/A | Garanti, Hepsiburada, Pizza Hut, Decathlon | Turkish |
| Twyla | Germany | 2015 | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 1-10 | N/A | Shopify, Salesforce, Oracle | English |
| wit.ai (acquired by Facebook) | USA | 2013 | NLP Engine | Programmable | Voice / Text | 1-10 | $3 mn | N/A | Multilingual |
| Yekaliva.ai | USA | Chatbot Platform | GUI | Text | 1-10 | N/A | N/A | English |
* Chatbot platforms offer developers capability to build and publish their chatbots. NLP engines provide mainly natural language processing capabilities to developers which they can use to build their bots.
If you believe you may need an end-to-end solution, read on:
2- Understand different types of end-to-end chatbot providers
We see different types of chatbot vendors:
2a) Customer service experts
Nuance, founded in 1992, is the oldest and most established company on this list. Though Nuance is quite diversified, they were already established in voice authentication and call center software so they have the business relationships and the data to prepare successful systems
2b) RPA companies
Robotic Process Automation automates mindnumbing back-office work typically handled by outsourcing companies. You can learn more from our extensive article on RPA. Since RPA bots deeply integrate with a company’s systems, they can also help chatbots access data and operational capabilities. WorkFusion offers both bots and free (free as in beer) RPA services. Integration of both is powerful yet cheap though chatbots are not offered for free by Workfusion yet.
2c) Pure chatbot players
They use their own platform to develop complex bots fast. Using their own platform they are able to quickly produce competent bots. 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 2000s
Entered chatbot business in 2000s when first web chat features were added. Accumulated decades of data and experience. Leading examples: Interactions, creativevirtual, Inbenta, next IT
Companies founded in 2010s
Founded since 2010s, they are developing novel approaches to chatbots. They offer end-to-end service and enable enterprises with limited capabilities to develop chatbots. They may lack experience and business relationships but they are plunging ahead with significant funding.
2d) Chatbot developers
These companies rely on publicly available APIs to build custom bots for their clients. There are hundreds of such companies and very few of them are specialized. Most are software development houses that build various custom software solutions.
2e) Other: Agencies, system integrators, consultants
If you are working for a large company, you already know that these are Swiss army knives. Think of any tech problem and there’s probably a company that can build a custom solution for you working on available solutions in the market. For example, if you are already working with a system integrator and considering getting an end-to-end service, consider asking them about their conversational capabilities.
Selected end-to-end chatbot providers
2c) Pure chatbot players
You can find a good list of pure chatbot players below. This list is not comprehensive but includes most of the major companies in the space.
Given their experience in omni-channel customer engagement, Nuance Communications already understands customer service industry and its chat bot Nina boasts Fortune 500 clients like Coca Cola and ING Netherlands.
Founded in 2002, Next IT is the oldest vendor in our database that focuses solely on chat bots. They claim that no other provider of intelligent interface technology has completed more successful implementations for Fortune 1000 companies.
Founded in 2014, Kore.ai is a relative newcomer into chatbots industry however it is already one of the largest players in the space. Kore.ai Bots Platform aims to provide a complete end-to-end solution with the features enterprises require to scale conversational chatbots.
Capable of dealing with 25+ languages, the InbentaBot claims to deliver industry-leading self-service rates of over 90%.
A finance specialist, Personetics claims its chatbot handles 95% of customer queries, increases cross-sell and online engagement.
With offices in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, creative virtual boasts numerous customers including numerous global financial institutions, retailers and government agencies.
Nano Rep has tens of public references from leading corporations and claims up to 70% reduction in live-agent workload thanks to its chat bot. Just 2 months after we published this post listing Nanorep, they were acquired by LogMEIn which provides authentication and connectivity solutions for those who remotely connecting to networks.
Founded in 2015, pypestream is already one of the best funded vendors in the space
Boasting numerous Fortune 500 references, MindMeld was acquired by Cisco in March/2017 for $125 M. With Cisco’s resources, Mindmeld is one of the vendors with strongest support in the space.
Claire.AI is specialized in financial services in South East Asia covering these languages: Indonesian, Chinese (simplified and Cantonese), Japanese, Korean, Malay, Tagalog, Thai and Vietnamese
Working with Fortune 500 companies including Unilever, ubisend has experience creating an engaging and scalable chatbot experience.
2d) Chatbot developers
These vendors use 3rd party chatbot solutions to develop custom solutions for their clients. Generally they enable smaller companies to build relatively simple bots fast. As they develop solutions in similar cases, they build a library of bot configurations which enable them to quickly build new bots.
We are listing major chatbot developers that we came across. However, there are too many chatbot developers to list and there are constantly new developers entering the market.
| Company | Number of employees |
|---|---|
| BitBot Studios | 1-10 |
| Botscrew | 11-50 |
| Chatbots Studio | 11-50 |
| Chatbots.Studio | 11-50 |
| Contus | 251-500 |
| Ideas2IT | 101-250 |
| iGnovate Solutions | 11-50 |
| OCDLAB | 1-10 |
| OnGraph Technologies | 101-250 |
| Peerbits | 101-250 |
| QBurst | 1001-2000 |
| Root Info Solutions | 51-100 |
| Singularika | 11-50 |
| The Bot Forge | 1-10 |
| Unibot | 1-10 |
Before you pick a solution provider
We categorized the chatbot players and put them in separate lists here. Now that you know how you will build your chatbot, it is worth thinking about where to test, analyze and deploy it. We have a detailed article on chatbot ecosystem that can guide you. An important decision is where you will deploy the chatbot. You can consider the messaging platforms Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Kik or Slack for deployment. Especially Facebook Messenger has been one of the dominant platforms for bots, helping Facebook team develop a deep understanding around bots.
If you would like to have our opinion on who would be the right chatbot provider for your business, just let us know:
43 comments
Thanks for this report Cem.
Can you add “live customers” as a factor in next iteration of this report?
That’s a bit tough to find for all vendors. If you know a good source, let me know.
You missed Conversable – with clients like Pizza Huts, Whole Foods, TGIFridays, CES, Budweiser, Sam’s Club, Denny’s, Shake Shack, Viacom, Dermstore, Boston Market, EY, Sony Pictures, Proctor & Gamble, 7Eleven, and many more.
Sure! Thanks for the heads up
Isn’t chatbottle in the list? https://chatbottle.co/
No, as far as I see from their website they are promoting services of botmakers.net which is using chatfuel or manychat templates. We include both chatfuel and manychat in our list. Let me know if I am missing anything.
Thanks,
Hey Dilmegeni,
We Ideas2IT Technologies one of the company to help businesses build intelligent chatbots that understand context and intent, and mimic human conversations.
https://www.ideas2it.com/chatbot-development-services/
Added! I would also recommend you to sign up @ https://appliedai.com/register/vendor to make sure that we do not miss you guys next time.
Could you please provide high level cost range for Self-service solutions with an API, SDK and for End-to-end solutions
It depends on your requirements. Some important criteria are the channels where you will publish the bot, whether integration CRM or support ticketing systems is necessary. Finally, API costs are usage dependent so while a few conversations will be free, thousands of conversation will incur major fees. Just to give you an idea of the range, you can build and publish a chatbot using a bot builder platform like chatfuel for free. However, if you need a bot built for a Fortune 500, that will require extensive testing and can have a wide range of costs based on its complexity and the required integrations.
Thank you for the list, Cem.
Could you also add BotsCrew – we work with clients from Global Fortune 500
Added! I would also recommend you to sign up to appliedAI.com at appliedai.com/register/vendor so we can better feature your services.
Hmmm…interesting list. I however was thinking that you may want to include Engati as well. Engati is a chatbot platform that allows you to build, manage, integrate, train, analyse and publish your personalized bot in a matter of minutes. It presently supports eight major messaging platforms including messenger, kik, telegram, line, viber, skype, slack and webchat with a focus on customer engagement, conversational commerce, and customer service and fulfillments.
Added to the list! And if you know the team, please tell them to register their service here: http://appliedai.com/register/vendor
Once they register we know more about their business and can refer them to customers who ask for similar solutions. Thanks
How about Clare.AI?
It builds both ASR, NLP, Dialogue Manager & ene-to-end chatbot in Asia.
Sure, included in the list. Please register Clare @ https://appliedai.com/register/vendor so we can easily add Clare to future articles.
I’ve discovered report only now. It gives a good picture of market. Thank you Cem
Could you please add the Singularika. We work with clients in North America, West Europe, Australia and New Zealand. We have an own dialogue processor.
Thank you
Thanks for the heads up, just added you guys!
Hi,
interesting information about the market and list of companies. My only complaint is that we are not on it! It would be great if you could add us. We are The Bot Forge, a chatbot and conversational UI solutions company based in the UK.
thank you 🙂
A
Thanks! Added you guys to chatbot developers
I suggest you to try out Yekaliva chatbot more like paas solution. I found it interesting as it was easy to setup and all i need to do is integrate and intents. Check it out at https://yekaliva.ai/
I am using it in mysite.
We at iGnovate Solutions and build real time AI chatbot development services for all kinds of business & enterprises to the next level. We design & develop awesome chatbots channels such as Slack, Facebook, Whatsapp, Skype, Telegram. More details : http://www.ignovatesolutions.com/chatbot-development.html
Sure! Added to our list of chatbot developers
Consider adding Yekaliva.ai in the chatbots list it is the first ever AI chatbot that is similar to Sophia with 13 channel integration+ Integration with legacy systems like CRM and ERP and 100+ clients as of now.
Check at https://yekaliva.ai/
Thank you, we added yekaliva
Great summary and information. I’m a co-founder at Enterprise Bot. Happy to provide some additional info about the technology and company to have us featured here if applicable. Thanks.
Sure! Added you enterprise bot
Hi there, thanks for including us.
Another update: could you please tag us as multilingual? Our chatbots are already in production in English, German, French, Italian, Dutch and Portuguese. We are now adding some more European as well as Asian languages. Thanks
Dear Sir or Madam.
My name is Volodymyr and I represent Market Leader Company in Chatbot Development – BotsCrew.
Recently, I have made a research on lists with Top Chatbot Development Companies.
I have stumbled upon your version of the list and unfortunately haven’t seen my company in it.
BotsCrew is on a market for more than 2 years.
We have succeeded a lot of recognition and awards during this period :
– We are #1 AI Developers in the world in 2017 by Clutch
– We have received only 5 star feedbacks from our clients
– Working with Fortune 500 companies.
– One of Top 3 Trusted ChatBot Development Companies in the World on ChatBot Developers’ list
– Listed among 25 Platforms to Develop Your Own Bots by Betapage
and much more.
We would really appreciate if you could add our company to your Chatbot Development Companies list.
And we will be glad to share it on our social channels.
Please, let me know if it does not bring you any difficulties.
Best wishes,
Volodymyr.
Hi Volodymyr,
BotsCrew is already in our list
You missed Clustaar a bot platform based in Paris, France and dedicated to support automation.
http://www.clustaar.com
I just added Amplify.ai. We serve marketers and provide Conversational AI for Marketing, Advertising and Demand Gen across all messaging apps.
Thanks for creating this list!
Thank you, amplify.ai added to our list
Hi there, great list. Could you please add Bitbot Studios? We’re a London based chatbot agency working with a range of exciting brands like Vauxhall and BBC. Happy to provide more details if needed, and I’m also registering on appliedai.com. Thanks!
Hi there, thank you! Sure, added you to the list!
Thank you for adding Chatbots.Studio to the list of Top Chatbot Development companies. Keep maintaining the list.
Hi AppliedAI
I’m Martina and I’m Head of Marketing at Cognigy. By a random Google Search, I saw your page right at the top of search results – good job for that positioning btw.
Unfortuanelty, I must notice that we as the leading Conversational AI technology vendor – headquartered in Düsseldorf and an additional office in San Francisco – are not mentioned or rather listed within your Top60-Chatbot Companies. How could that be?
Here is a short company description:
Cognigy is the leading Enterprise Conversational AI technology vendor. With Cognigy.AI, the company provides a highly-flexible, enterprise-ready conversational AI platform for customers and partners to build complex, integrated process automation solutions through the use of cognitive bots. Available in both On-Premises and SaaS, Cognigy.AI enables enterprises to connect to their users on any conversational channel, including chatbots, virtual assistants or phones. Cognigy provides a consistent, repeatable customer engagement that enables an always on customer service and brings bottomline results.
How shall we proceed that you screen, and particularly, recognize our enterprise within your AI Multiple universe?
Thank you for your interest! Adding Cognigy to the list
Nice Information.. I think you should consider “Depler AI Auxilium Chatbot” – Best AI Chat bot for business website. Depler AI’s SAAS based B2B service provides deep machine learning using an AI Chatbot called Auxlilum Help desk that can be deployed on businesses’ websites, enabling the businesses to “always be there for [their] customers”(TM). Auxlilum is available around the clock providing company information and first level helpdesk support, answering common questions, taking appointments, and efficiently hands off to a live agent during business hours for complex queries. Auxilium effectively helps businesses reduce support personnel cost, increases customer satisfaction and engagement while also generating actionable new customer leads and website visit heatmaps.
Hi Guys,
the list seem to be missing http://www.InteliWISE.com, with the experience of more than 160 reference Conversational AI / Chatbot deployments for enterprise customers, including Fortune 500 and European banks, insurance and ecommerce, including AXA, Castorama, Santander, governmental organizations and smart city.
Hi Marcin, this list is becoming difficult to update. We are working on a much better interface for these lists. It will be published this month on AIMultiple.com and we will definitely include inteliwise there. Thank you for your patience.
Hi! Thank you for maintaining this great list! Could you please consider adding Just AI?
Hailing from 2011, https://just-ai.com/ creates skills and content for digital assistants and designs tools for developers.
With offices in London, Nanjing, and St. Petersburg, Just AI develops comprehensive solutions for contact centers and enterprises. The company’s NLU platform is used by the likes of Papa Johns and McDonald’s, enabling contact center automation to reach a whopping 80%.
Just AI operates Aimylogic, a platform that enables developers to create skills and intelligent bots. The platform has over 10 000 users and some 4 000 skills and chatbots have been built on it.
Just AI collaborates with Roobo, NotAnotherOne, Cinemood, Mishka AI, Elari and others, helping create smart devices and digital assistants.
Hi, thanks for a great article. I do not see us on the list – zummydirect.com. We are a Swedish company delivering AI driven chatbots.