Artificial intelligence chatbot is not a new concept, and to date, thousands of chatbots have worked as a boon for the business being the virtual assistants in almost all sectors. As per Gartner’s 2011 summit report, by 2020, 85% of customers will use chatbots as the automated platform for communication.
For example, some bots are simple and made for just messaging purposes like Facebook messenger bot. On the other hand, another stack of intelligent chatbots provides a complex experience like speech recognition, natural language processing, etc. So, many chatbot development platforms have stepped into the market for the purpose a chatbot works for.
Usually,
1.Task bot
2.Informational bot
3.Conversational bot
4.Entertainment bot
5.Voice bot
Hence, it is evident that numerous
Furthermore, with the rage of machine learning practices, bots are getting smarter day by day. In addition to that, a chatbot development platform is not the only solution to build a chatbot. It would help if you published them as well. Hence, there are two types of
1.Development platform
A chatbot development platform is an application to build a chatbot. Besides, it adds functionalities like API integration, flow generation, injecting machine learning capabilities, etc.
2.Publishing platform
A chatbot publishing platform is a medium to access the chatbot by the users.
Here we will discuss such 15 best artificial intelligence chatbot development platforms as well chatbot publishing platform.
Related article – Are AI bots harmful to your business?
Best artificial intelligence chatbot development platforms
1.IBM Watson Assistant
When we talk about the best artificial intelligence chatbot development platform, IBM Watson Assistant is the first name that comes to our mind. This is the best choice for businesses. Interestingly, it is more than just a chatbot for communication, instead of an AI-powered, enterprise-ready chatbot development platform.
Features: IBM Watson’s main features include –
– It provides the conversational service.
– It is built on a neural network (one billion Wikipedia words), which is more than mimicking human voice. Besides, it enables to search for an appropriate answer from its knowledge base. It also seeks clarification as and when required and redirects to the human assistance at an appropriate case.
– It’s Dialogue skills are designed in a way that it can understand intents (questions) and entities ( clarification terms), and using machine learning models builds appropriate natural language requests for the users.
Supported Programming Languages SDK: Node SDK (Software Development Kit), Python SDK, dotnet-standard SDK, Ruby – SDK, go -SDK, Swift SDK, Java SDK, android-SDK
Licensing: Free, Standard, Plus, Premium, IBM Cloud private
Supported language: English and Japanese (Detail info)
Channel integration: Facebook and Slack in the mode of Speech, Text, and Image
Service domains: Healthcare, Legal, Finance, Retail
More info: https://www.ibm.com/cloud/watson-assistant/
2. Microsoft Bot Framework
Microsoft Bot Framework is an enterprise-grade artificial intelligence chatbot development platform for Azure Bot service.
Features:
– This platform enables developers to build an AI-powered bot using Azure cognitive services, including natural language processing, Question answer maker, speech recognition, and searching.
– Moreover, this chatbot building platform supports open source SDKs and tools to connect with the developed bot through different channels.
– Microsoft Bot framework can be explained from four perspectives:
Azure Bot Service – This bot development platform is an integrated environment to build, test, deploy, and manage bots. It supports C# and JavaScript SDK. Besides, Azure bot service offers SDKs for development, integration tools, services for messaging end event generation, Azure deployment, and channel configuration features.
It also facilitates Natural language processing, knowledge base creation, and enhanced user experience features like cards, graphics, etc.
Bot framework Emulator – This is an open-source desktop application to test the developed bots. The Emulator can be downloaded from the GitHub release page.
LUIS – Language Understanding (LUIS) comes under Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services. This is a cloud-based API service. Applying custom machine learning intelligence with Azure Bot service enables developers to build commerce chatbot mainly in banking, entertainment, and travel segments.
QnA maker – In today’s fast-paced life, people don’t love to go through documents, whether it is a simple question-answer FAQ or a long product manual. The QnA maker of Microsoft builds a bot in minutes from document URLs.
Supported Programming Languages SDK: Java SDK, C# SDK, JS SDK, Python SDK
Licensing: Free, Premium
Supported language: Supported languages are English, Italian, Spanish, French, German, Brazilian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Chinese
Channel integration: Supports channels including Skype, Skype for business, Slack, Facebook Messenger, Cortana, Kik, Web chat, LINE, GroupMe, Direct line, Microsoft teams, Telegram, Twilio, etc.
More info: https://dev.botframework.com/
3.Wit.ai
Wit.ai is an easy bot development platform used by over 180,000 developers.
Features:
-It helps to build applications and devices for messaging in the form of text or speech.
–It empowers developers with an open and extensible natural language platform. Also, it uses intents, entities, actions, and contexts.
Supported Programming Languages SDK: Node.js SDK for wit.ai, Python SDK for wit.ai, Ruby SDK for wit.ai,
Licensing: Free
Supported language: Supports almost all languages. Moreover, they provide support if the required language does not come under their list.
Channel integration: Voice and text
More info: https://wit.ai/
4. DialogFlow Api.ai
Formerly known as Api.ai is acquired by Google presently, and it is a one-stop-shop for whatever you wish from an artificial intelligence chatbot.
Features:
–Built on Google’s infrastructure, it is powered by Google machine learning and efficient in making voice and text-based chatbots.
–There is no installation required for this chatbot development platform, and it has a web-based interface for the build.
–With the help of its robust API, developers can build intents and entities.
–It can be operated on servers or on premises, and all data only can be hosted on the cloud.
Supported Programming Languages SDK: Node.js, Python, Java, Go, Ruby, C#, and PHP
Licensing: Free(Standard).Pay as you go( Enterprise)
Supported language: Supports 20+ languages.
Channel integration: Voice and text and also optimized for Google assistance. Also, it can be integrated with Skype, Slack, Facebook messenger, Twitter, Kik, Line, Telegram, Twilio, Viber, etc
More info: https://dialogflow.com/
5. Chatfuel
If you are not easy to go with coding or don’t even have any programming knowledge, then Chatfuel is the best artificial intelligence chatbot development platform for you on Facebook. Founded in 2015, Chatfuel is the largest bot platform on Facebook messenger, and 46% of all messenger bots run on Chatfuel.
Features:
–This chatbot development platform can incorporate neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and also supports analytics technology.
–Anyone without having programming knowledge can create bot using Chatfuel interface.
–This chatbot development platform is ideal for business as with its analytics support, and one can get valuable insights on the AI bot performance.
Supported Programming Languages SDK: NA
Licensing: Free, Pro, Premium
Supported language: English.
Channel integration: Facebook messenger, Twitter, and Evernote, etc
More info: https://chatfuel.com/
6. Botsify
Botsify is another artificial intelligence chatbot development platform which intensifies the business outlook of a bot.
–The beauty of this platform is it can send push notifications. Thus, it can be easily determined which customers’ questions need to be redirected to the human agent for answering.
–Besides channel integration, Botsify enables developers to make chatbot for educational purposes.
Supported Programming Languages SDK: NA
Licensing: Free for a limited timeframe, Self-serviced, Fully Managed
Supported language: English.
Channel integration: Facebook messenger, Slack, Google Sheets, Google Search, Shopify, DialogFlow, JSON API, and RSS feeds.
More info: https://botsify.com/
7. Pandorabots
I hope you have heard about Mitsuku, the award-winning AI conversationalist bot? Do you know the technology behind it? It is an open standard scripting language called Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML), and Pandorabots is the platform that supports this AIML.
Features:
–What makes Pandorabots distinguishable from other chatbot development platforms is this AIML which is XML based and easy to learn.
–However, without having strong programming knowledge or a solid base of Natural language processing, using AIML, a developer can build the most complex chatbot using Pandorabots.
–This chatbot development platform is backed by an active community worldwide
Supported Programming Languages SDK: Node.js, Python, Java, Go, Ruby, C#, and PHP
Licensing: Free, Developer, Enterprise
Supported language: English.
Channel integration: Facebook messenger, Slack, Twitter, Firebase, Twilio, Skype, Whatsapp, Unity
More info: https://home.pandorabots.com/home.html
8. Chatscript
If you are looking for a next-generation ai chatbot development platform, then Chat script is the answer for you.
Features:
–Registered on the SourceForge.net as an open source project,
–This chatbot engine comes with many advanced features like pattern matching, debugging capabilities, foreign language dictionary support, etc.
Supported Programming Languages SDK: NA
Licensing: MIT license
Supported language: English.
Channel integration: NA
More info: http://chatscript.sourceforge.net/
9. Chatterbot
Features:
–Chatterbot is basically Python library.
–With the support of machine learning algorithms generate automated responses.
–As it is language-independent, you can train your developed bot to speak in any language.
Supported Programming Languages SDK: NA
Licensing: MIT license
Supported language: Language independent.
Channel integration: Django
More info: https://chatterbot.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
10. Pypestream
Pypestream is one of the most advanced conversational AI chatbot platforms that provides end to end bot solution for the enterprise.
Features:
–It enables engagement automation, works as B2C patented messaging carrier, and works as a conversational interface for the customers.
–Besides, it supports message encryption, an essential security boon for enterprise communication.
–It supports Natural language processing
Supported Programming Languages SDK: Pypeconnect SDK
Licensing: Subscription/Software- As-a- service
Supported language: Language independent.
Channel integration: NA
More info: https://www.pypestream.com/
11. ManyChat
ManyChat is a Facebook messenger chatbot development platform.
Features:
–It is entirely free for access.
–It provides drag and drop feature for creating the bot which makes it easy and fast to create the bot.
–It is ideal for developing bot which can handle subscribers for Facebook page and interact with them in a different
Supported Programming Languages SDK: NA
Licensing: Free and Pro
Supported language: Language independent.
Channel integration: Facebook messenger
More info: https://manychat.com/
12. Semantic Machines
Semantic Machines AI bot development platform is used to create a proprietary conversational AI. Recently the company Semantic machine is acquired by Microsoft, and it is expected that the joint venture will take AI conversational computing to the next level.
Features:
– The features include a conversation engine, deep learning, speech synthesis, speech recognition.
– Reinforcement learning
– Language generation (NLG) technology
– Semantic intent extraction
Supported Programming Languages SDK: NA
Licensing: Contact the company for the subscription.
Supported language: English and tonal languages like Mandarin.
Channel integration: NA
More info: http://www.semanticmachines.com/
Read more – 5 Big data Analytics trends for 2019 expected to influence Artificial Intelligence
Publishing platform
13. Facebook messenger
Used by almost 1.3 billion people, worldwide Facebook is the most used social media platform, and Facebook chatbot messenger is the chatbot publishing platform. It has a broad category of features and capabilities. It has built-in natural language processing, analytic tools, supports plugins, and rich media. Additionally, the platform has various APIs of support for different activities like broadcasting, id matching, etc.
More info: https://messengerdevelopers.com/
14. Slack
Slack is a cloud-based collaboration platform. It is a messaging platform where communication happens through channels. The slack bot works like a virtual team member and helps to manage project tasks. Besides, it can integrate with project management software. In addition to that, the Slack bot automates tasks.
Licensing: Free, Standard, Plus
More info: https://slack.com/
15. Twitter
A Twitter bot is a program that sends an automated post on a Twitter account through Twitter API. Using a Twitter bot, one can twit, re-twits, follow, unfollow, replies to other accounts. These bots can be useful; however, sometimes they can be spam and dangerous as a source.
More info: https://developer.twitter.com/
To conclude, with the progression of machine learning and natural language processing, bots will undoubtedly continue to evolve. Today, it is no big task to convert questions and corresponding responses through coding using bots theoretically.
However, today’s business needs more varieties of responses; it needs more creativity, which means more intelligence to be instilled in bots. Hence, it is expected that bot development platforms will grow and enhance on a rapid scale, widening more scopes in bot development areas.
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