28 Best Chatbot Software of 2024: Reviewed & Compared

LiveHelpNow is a comprehensive suite of professional customer service tools that businesses use to facilitate seamless communication with clientele in real time. It offers a combination of live chat support, email ticketing, customer self-help knowledge systems, call management, and more, to provide customers instant access to assistance and information they need.

Why I picked LiveHelpNow: I chose LiveHelpNow because of its ability to manage omnichannel communication and support ticket management. LiveHelpNow's live chat software facilitates real-time communication between customer service agents and website visitors, with capabilities such as chat window customization, proactive chat invitations, real-time visitor monitoring, and concurrent chat management.

Additional features include 2-way SMS texting for text-based customer support, FAQ software for self-service knowledge bases, 24/7 live chat support, a cloud phone system for call management, social media customer support integration, and agent gamification to encourage performance and service quality.

LiveHelpNow Standout Features and Integrations

Standout features include the integration of ChatGPT technology which enables automated customer service interactions, with the AI chatbot capable of responding to inquiries, guiding users, and escalating complex issues to human agents. Also, the help desk ticketing system centralizes customer inquiries, supports ticket management, and includes automation for routing and follow-ups, while the live chatbot offers automated responses to common questions and data collection.

Key integrations include Google Business Messages for customer interactions, a cloud phone system for telephony needs, and HIPAA-compliant chat and email for secure communications. Additionally, the platform integrates with various CRM, helpdesk, and e-commerce systems such as Salesforce, ZenDesk, and BigCommerce, enabling businesses to manage customer support, lead generation, and sales processes effectively.

Guru is a search and knowledge management platform that centralizes a company's collective intelligence. Users can connect all their apps, documents, and chats to the platform to get instant answers in their workflow.

Why I picked Guru: This software earned its spot on my list because of how it brings your company's knowledge base into your key workflows, whether with chatbots or other channels. It uses AI to quickly and effectively find key information from your wiki or intranet and bring it into your communication systems.

This AI-powered functionality allows your teams to find answers to their questions quickly, and deliver personalized, contextual recommendations in real-time. It can be leveraged for both internal and external knowledge sharing.

Guru Standout Features and Integrations

Standout features include the AI Suggest tool, which uses artificial intelligence to find relevant knowledge from the Guru database for users based on the content displayed on their screen. Knowledge Triggers automatically display information when specific conditions on a webpage are met, such as visiting a certain URL. The browser extension and integrations with Slack and MS Teams allow for easy access to the knowledge base within commonly used platforms.

Integrations include Slack, Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, Google Chrome, Gmail, and Outlook.

Zoho SalesIQ is a live chat software that businesses can use to manage customer interactions.

Why I picked Zoho SalesIQ: The chatbot feature has a no-code drag-and-drop builder that can be used to craft scripts to respond to common customer queries. It can also use AI to understand the context of a visitor's question and provide answers directly from your customer resource hub. Both your support agents and your customers will have access to their chat history, helping everyone catch up on the situation at hand when an agent needs to step in to handle a request.

What's particularly noteworthy about the software is its capacity to manage live chats on your website and social media profiles, but it can also be used directly in your app. Customers can connect with your support team (or support bot) straight from your product, cutting out the need to visit your site or send an email to get in touch.

Zoho SalesIQ Standout Features & Integrations

Features include chatbot templates, drag-and-drop script builder, social media message management, visitor tracking, lead scoring, ticket routing, and analytics.

Integrations include Zoho CRM, Zoho Desk, and Zoho Campaigns, as well as Google Analytics and Salesforce.

Zoho SalesIQ Plans & Pricing

Plans start at $7/operator/month, and they offer a 15-day free trial.

Tars is chatbot software that makes building conversation workflows easy. Its visual interface lets you choose what happens after each interaction and then test out your workflows before pushing them live.

Why I picked Tars: One place the tool stands out is in its templates. There are over 1,000 choices for industries like healthcare, insurance, education, real estate, and even government. Once you choose your favorite, you can easily customize it using the drag-and-drop builder.

You can make a chatbot for your website by adding it as a widget or a standalone page. You can also build a bot for WhatsApp that let you automate L0 & L1 queries.

Tars Standout Features & Integrations

Features include chatbot analytics, NLP, a no-code chatbot builder, and multi-language bots.

Integrations are available so you can connect your platform to Hubspot, Zendesk, and Google Calendar.

Tars Plans & Pricing

There are 3 plans, and pricing is available upon request.

Intercom is a customizable chatbot platform that helps you scale every part of your business through your own creations.

Why I picked Intercom: Its business messenger enables multiple types of conversation within the same widget. The chatbot functionality lets you set up automated conversions to help with common customer issues. Guide the conversation in a particular direction by including options for customers to select.

I especially like how you can customize the chat widget. You can include a chatbot, a direct link to your live support team, a knowledge base search function, and relevant articles and guides. You can also customize the widget for different pages to encourage users to take particular actions. For example, on a blog post, you can use the widget to add links to relevant resources. But on a landing page, you can make buying easy by only linking to a live sales rep.

Intercom Standout Features & Integrations

Features include a white label messenger, mobile app support, a collaborative inbox, rules and automated workflows, and a drag-and-drop visual campaign builder.

Integrations include 300+ apps like Slack, Hubspot, and Salesforce.

Intercom Plans & Pricing

Pricing starts at $74/month (billed annually). Contact the company to see pricing details for other plans.

Drift is a conversation platform that keeps your marketing, sales, and customer teams connected. Among their many products, they have custom chatbots that will make your customer conversations richer.

Why I picked Drift: Drift’s chatbots help you increase lead generation on your website. It turns website visitors into prospects by pre-qualifying and scheduling meetings with your sales team. Central to this is personalization—the bot uses information about the customer to tailor the conversation to an individual’s needs. Enterprise buyers and small business owners each receive content relevant to their specific challenges.

You can also tailor conversations to the stage of the pipeline the buyer is in, ensuring optimized customer engagement. Someone visiting your site for the first time via a blog post gets a different experience from someone who has already viewed your pricing page.

Drift Standout Features & Integrations

Features include A/B testing, insights from customer conversations, AI chatbots, advanced lead routing, and a fast-track option for hot leads.

Integrations include custom ones you can build with its open development platform, automations through Zapier, and native integrations with apps like Marketo, Salesforce, Clearbit, Optimizely, Slack, and Poptin.

Drift Plans & Pricing

Drift has 3 plans, and pricing is available upon request.

Kommunicate is a chatbot builder that automates your customer conversations using AI chatbots.

Why I picked Kommunicate: The tool is easy to use. You can add a bot to your website right away using pre-built templates, meaning you’ll start deflecting customer queries immediately. The fastest way to get set up is within the dashboard: either choose a blank bot or select one of the ready-made templates—the latter option makes things much easier, and you can always customize it to suit your needs.

Creating intents is easy. Either choose from the premade automation that comes with the template or build your own. Just add the questions and answers you expect customers to use. Don’t worry if you forget to add a particular way of phrasing a question; the bot interprets intent even if the customer doesn’t express the request exactly as predicted. The tool also has a handoff feature that allows customers to speak to live agents if the bot can’t solve their problem.

Kommunicate Standout Features & Integrations

Features include deflection, unlimited bots, pre-chat lead collection, multilingual bots, omnichannel support, and templates.

Integrations include Pipedrive, and AgileCRM for the Grow plan. Zendesk and Zapier integrations are included in their Business plan.

Kommunicate Plans & Pricing

There are 3 plans, and pricing starts at $40 /month. There’s also a 30-day trial you can use to create free chatbots to test the software.

Acquire’s chatbot software is an easy way to build helpful bots without code.

Why I picked Acquire: You can create flow-based bots and AI bots to ensure customers get the contextual help they need. I particularly like the knowledge base integration. This provides customers with easy access to support documentation, helping to streamline self-service solutions.

You can also integrate Acquire with other tools to provide a more personalized experience. For example, e-commerce stores can use order history when replying to chat requests.

Acquire provides detailed analytics on the conversations that are happening in your chatbot. This helps you discover which bots are performing best and point out ones that could use improvement. Or, you can use the information to find common customer questions that your bots aren’t set up to answer and create workflows for these issues.

Acquire Standout Features & Integrations

Features include live chat, video chat, email, contextual customer information, automation, co-browse, a single interface for all support channels, and the ability to pull up customer data and historical conversations.

Integrations are not available at the moment.

Acquire Plans & Pricing

Acquire has three pricing plans; contact the company via their website for information.

Yellow.ai is a chatbot with a simple-to-use no-code interface that lets you build powerful automated sequences. The tool even has premade nodes you can use to get started.

Why I picked Yellow.ai: One of the best things about Yellow.ai is that it works on an incredible 35 different channels, including web, app, WhatsApp, SMS, Facebook Messenger, Apple Business, and email.

This means you can use it in all the places where customers contact you. The tool also has voice capabilities, so you can build workflows for your IVR or virtual assistants like Amazon Alexa. There’s plenty of reporting and analytics data to dig into when your bot goes live.

One feature I liked is that you can see what customers are looking for and then build conversations around the intent of these queries.

Yellow.ai Standout Features & Integrations

Features include a no-code builder, pre-trained NLP bots, campaign automation, self-learning FAQ bots, analytics, and an agent-assist dashboard.

Integrations include 100+ plug-and-play apps like Zendesk, Salesforce, Hubspot, Shopify, Magento, Genesys, and Slack.

Yellow.ai Plans & Pricing

Yellow.ai doesn’t advertise pricing, but you can request a quote on the website.

Kore.ai is a powerful AI- optimized customer and employee experience platform.

Why I picked Kore.ai: The tool can detect the intent of customer questions and then choose the right solution, whether that is to provide further information or deflect the request to an agent. The tool works across over 30 channels, including messaging and voice. Why is this useful?

Well, it means common customer problems—such as requests for opening hours—can be automated while ensuring your team can respond to more valuable contact—for example, by routing account close requests to a retention specialist. The tool also provides in-conversation support to agents.

It makes suggestions for replies that team members can click on, saving them from having to compose a reply. This can speed up the conversation, reducing average handle time.

Kore.ai Standout Features & Integrations

Features include NL training, a dialog builder, testing, conversation designer, multilingual bots, custom dashboards, and NLP insights.

Integrations have to be custom-built using its API integration framework. You can connect apps like Zendesk or ServiceNOW.

Kore.ai Plans & Pricing

Pricing for the virtual assistants is $0.01 per request and they give you $500 in credit after you publish your first bot. Building is free.