28 Best Chatbot Software of 2026: Reviewed & Compared
10 Best Chatbot Software Shortlist
Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 28 tools reviewed.
With so many different chatbot software solutions available, figuring out which is the right one for your business is tough. You know you want to automate responses to common customer questions to enhance your customer experience, but you need to figure out which option is best. In this article, I'll help you make this choice easier by sharing my insights on the best chatbot software to automate your interactions with customers, based on my personal CX experience.
What is Chatbot Software?
Chatbot software is a digital tool that uses artificial intelligence to respond to customer inquiries, simulating a human conversation. Chatbots deal with requests without employee input, meaning your team can help far more customers without increasing the number of resources. While the chatbots deal with the first few levels of queries, your team deals with special requests.
Using chatbot software allows businesses to provide 24/7 customer assistance to customers around the world, reducing staffing and labor costs and speeding up customer response times for a better customer experience.
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Hiver
Visit WebsiteThis is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.4.7 -
CRM Creatio
Visit WebsiteThis is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.4.7 -
monday service
Visit WebsiteThis is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.4.6
Overviews Of The 10 Best Chatbot Software
Here’s a brief description of the top 10 chatbots that I’ve highlighted in detail in this article, which showcases each tool’s best use case and noteworthy features. I’ve also added screenshots to give you a snapshot of their user interface too. Plus, there are 18 additional options below if you’d like even more possibilities to consider.
Tidio is a cloud-based chatbot software solution that helps businesses automate customer service. It offers many features, including live chat, email marketing, and automation.
Why I picked Tidio: It integrates with a website and monitors visitor activity in real time. Users can configure chatbots to automatically start a chat session when a visitor arrives on a website and engage in conversation with the visitor to provide assistance. If an agent is unavailable to chat, you can set up automatic responses so that the visitor still receives some level of customer service.
The order placement feature of Tidio's chatbots streamlines the process of placing an order on a website. By providing a link to the product page and a form to fill out, the chatbot can handle the entire process from start to finish. The chatbot can also provide confirmation of the order, estimated delivery time, and other relevant information.
Additionally, Tidio's abandoned cart saver feature is a powerful tool that can help recover lost sales and boost your bottom line. When a customer adds an item to their shopping cart but does not complete the purchase, Tidio's chatbot will automatically reach out and send a reminder with a link to the product page and a unique discount code that can be used to complete the purchase.
Tidio Standout Features & Integrations
Features include ticketing, AI-response bots, shared inbox for teams, a live view of visitors, canned responses, and pre-chat surveys.
Integrations are available with popular third-party applications, such as Zendesk, MailChimp, Shopify, Magento, and Klaviyo.
The software’s chatbots can provide 24/7 assistance to website visitors, freeing human customer service representatives to handle more complex inquiries.
If your business is on the lookout for a solution that combines email management with live chat capabilities, Hiver might be the tool for you. Designed for teams that thrive on efficiency, particularly in fast-paced sectors like logistics and e-commerce, Hiver utilizes AI to handle repetitive tasks, allowing your team to focus on what truly matters—customer engagement and satisfaction. With Hiver, you can manage communication processes and reduce response times, which can be crucial for maintaining customer loyalty and ensuring smooth operations.
Why I Picked Hiver
I picked Hiver for its ability to integrate AI-driven functionalities that cater specifically to businesses looking for more than just a chatbot solution. The platform's automated response drafting ensures your team can handle high volumes of inquiries swiftly, while conversation tagging helps keep interactions organized and easily retrievable. These features are particularly beneficial for those who need to manage multiple communication channels from a single workspace, making Hiver an excellent choice for businesses aiming to enhance their customer service efficiency.
Hiver Key Features
Aside from its standout capabilities, Hiver offers several other features that can be highly beneficial for your team:
- Omnichannel Inbox: This feature allows you to manage emails, chats, and voice communications from a single platform, ensuring no message is ever missed.
- Workflow Automation: Automate repetitive tasks to free up your team's time for more complex customer interactions.
- Knowledge Base: Provides a self-service option for customers to find answers to common questions, reducing the load on your support team.
- Analytics Tools: Offers insights into team performance and customer satisfaction, helping you make data-driven decisions.
Hiver Integrations
Integrations include Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Zapier, Freshdesk, Zoho Desk, Zendesk, Asana, Trello, and Notion.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- AI tools automate response drafting
- Omnichannel inbox unifies customer communications
- Workflow automation reduces repetitive tasks
Cons:
- Basic plans lack some advanced features available in higher tiers
- Dependence on a stable internet connection for optimal performance
New Product Updates from Hiver
Hiver Release: Shared Drafts, AI Tasks & More
Hiver's release brings Shared Drafts, AI Tasks for workflow automation, AI-drafted reply refinement with your Knowledge Base, customizable Ask AI tone and style, nested Knowledge Base categories, and enhanced note searching—helping your team collaborate and find answers faster. Visit Hiver’s website for more details.
for more details.
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.
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.
Chatbase is chatbot software built for creating AI-powered support agents that can handle complex customer interactions. It’s designed to be intuitive for both technical and non-technical users, making it easy to build, train, and deploy chatbots that learn from your business data.
Why I picked Chatbase: I picked Chatbase because it focuses on helping you create sophisticated AI support agents powered by large language models. This means your bots can understand context, handle nuanced questions, and escalate conversations to human agents when necessary. The platform also includes a real-time data sync capability, so your bots can pull information directly from CRMs, payment systems, or scheduling tools to provide instant, accurate responses.
Another reason I chose Chatbase is that it continuously learns from previous conversations. Over time, your AI agents become more capable, improving both customer satisfaction and resolution rates. Combined with its detailed analytics dashboard, you can monitor chatbot performance, identify gaps, and fine-tune responses for better accuracy.
Chatbase Standout Features & Integrations
Standout features include action configuration for automating routine workflows within integrated apps, AI model comparison to test different models for response accuracy, and smart escalation to human support when issues fall outside bot capabilities. It also supports multilingual chat in over 80 languages and includes advanced reporting to track interaction quality and agent performance.
Integrations include Make, Zendesk, Notion, Slack, Stripe, Salesforce, Cal.com, Calendly, WhatsApp, Zapier, and Messenger.
Chatbase Plans & Pricing
Chatbase pricing starts with a free plan, then scales from $32/month for the Hobby plan to $400/month for Pro, with an Enterprise option offering custom limits, SLAs, and priority support.
Quidget is a no-code AI chatbot designed to automate repetitive frontline support. By learning from your website, FAQs, and uploaded resources, it provides instant, accurate answers around the clock.
Why I picked Quidget: Quidget relies on user-provided sources for training, such as website URLs, knowledge base documents, or custom FAQ entries. This approach ensures that Quidget AI Agents stick strictly to the information they’re trained with, delivering accurate, automated responses without introducing unverified data.
To modify how Quidget Agents respond, you can update the knowledge base or customize prompts directly in the settings.
Quidget Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include the ability to escalate complex cases to live agents, enhancing your customer support workflow. It supports multiple languages, enabling responses in the customer’s preferred language. Additionally, Quidget includes AI Sales Agents that can automatically collect lead emails and schedule meetings using an integrated Calendly feature.
Integrations include Euphoric.ai, Zendesk, WhatsApp, and Slack.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Convenient chatbot flow builder interface
- Handles numerous requests efficiently
- Easy to set up and customize
Cons:
- Could offer more direct integrations
- Limited analytics features
SparrowDesk offers a comprehensive solution for businesses seeking to enhance their customer interaction through chatbot software. It is particularly appealing to organizations aiming to automate routine customer inquiries and streamline support processes. By leveraging AI-driven technologies, SparrowDesk addresses challenges like reducing response times and improving customer satisfaction.
Why I Picked SparrowDesk
I picked SparrowDesk because of its AI-driven capabilities that set it apart in the chatbot software landscape. With its AI Agent, Luna, SparrowDesk can auto-resolve a significant portion of customer inquiries, allowing your team to focus on more complex issues. Combined with its AI Copilot feature that generates summaries and smart-reply drafts for agents, the platform supports chat-centric teams who need to keep response times low and context strong. It’s a fit when you’re looking for a chatbot/agent solution that works alongside human agents, not just a standalone bot.
SparrowDesk Key Features
In addition to its AI-driven capabilities, SparrowDesk offers several other features that can benefit your team:
- Unified Workspace: This feature allows your team to manage all customer interactions from a single platform, enhancing collaboration and efficiency.
- Self-Service Portals: Customers can find answers to their questions independently, reducing the workload on your support team.
- No-Code Workflow Automation: You can automate repetitive tasks without the need for coding, saving time and resources.
- Chat Widget & Live Messaging: SparrowDesk’s live chat module allows you to add a chat widget to your website, track visitor behavior (pages visited, browser, device) and engage in real time or hand off to humans.
SparrowDesk Integrations
Native integrations are not currently listed by SparrowDesk.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Personalized recommendations enhance customer experience.
- AI-driven features reduce customer service workload.
- Self-service portals empower customers to find answers independently.
Cons:
- Lacks detailed customization options for advanced users.
- Limited native integrations compared to competitors.
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.
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.
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.
The Best Chatbot Software Comparison Chart
This comparison chart summarizes basic details about each of my top chatbot software selections. You can view pricing details and the availability of free trials or demos side-by-side to help you find the best software for your budget and business needs.
| Tool | Best For | Trial Info | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Best for its focus on generating sales | 7-day free trial + free plan available | From $25/user/month | Website | |
| 2 | Best for automated response drafting | Free plan available | From $25/user/month (billed annually) | Website | |
| 3 | Best for providing in-app chat support | 15-day free trial available | From $7/operator/month | Website | |
| 4 | Best to connect your knowledge base | Free trial available | From $25/seat/month (billed annually) | Website | |
| 5 | Best for advanced language model chatbots | Free plan available | From $32/month (billed annually) | Website | |
| 6 | Best for automating repetitive frontline support | Free plan available | From $16/month (billed annually) | Website | |
| 7 | Best with AI summaries for agents | Free demo available | From $16/user/month (billed annually) | Website | |
| 8 | Best for its vast template library | 14 Days Free Trial | Pricing available upon request | Website | |
| 9 | Best AI-powered chatbots | Free Demo | Pricing upon request | Website | |
| 10 | Best for customized chat widgets | Free demo + 14-day free trial available | From $0.99/ AI resolution | Website |
Other Chatbot Options
Here are several more chatbots that didn’t make it into my top 10 list, but are still worth considering. If none of the above fits your needs, maybe one of the tools below will:
- Drift
For sales and marketing teams
- LiveHelpNow
For omnichannel customer support
- Acquire
For reporting and analytics
- Kommunicate
For fast setup
- Yellow.ai
For omnichannel customer experiences
- Genesys
Chatbot for contact centers
- Quiq Messaging
For conversations involving humans and bots
- Botmock
For team collaboration
- Birdeye
Chatbot and reputation management in one
- 14.ai
Intent-aware customer response engine
- Haptik
For providing automated proactive support
- Birdeye
For collecting reviews
- ChatBot
For LiveChat users
- Userlike
For tracking customer interactions
- Landbot.io
For simple lead capture
- Hyro
Adaptive communication platform
- Heyday
For eCommerce
- Ada
For real-time support
Selection Criteria for Chatbot Software
I researched and compared a number of popular options to help me select the best chatbot solutions for this list. After gathering my long list of potential options, I began weighing a number of factors that make chatbot software a great fit for customer satisfaction and customer experience teams. My final selections went through an evaluation based on the criteria and key features below.
Key Features
To help me select the best chatbot software out there, I assessed the key features of each system in detail. Here are the main features I focused on:
- Drag-and-Drop Chatbot Builder: This is an intuitive way for anyone to create a chatbot—even those who can’t code. Just build a flowchart that shows how the bot will respond to different situations.
- Omnichannel Support: Many of the tools on the list let you create chatbots for multiple platforms. For example, your website, mobile app, email, and social media.
- Natural Language Understanding (NLU): People rarely ask chatbots questions using the exact phrase you suggested. NLU technology helps chatbots understand the intent behind various terms.
- Reporting and Analytics: Tools with reporting and analytics show how your chatbots perform and let you optimize them accordingly. Some tools also highlight common questions you haven’t yet built solutions for.
Once I was satisfied that each system contained the features above, I dug into the following, more general criteria, as well.
User Interface (UI)
A good UI simplifies the complexities of creating and deploying a chatbot and makes the experience more user-friendly. The visuals should make it easy to identify where to access key features, display information on metrics in clean visuals, and overall improve the user experience.
Usability
The best tools simplify the chatbot creation process so anyone can build one. All the tools on this list are no-code, which means you can create bots without coding knowledge. Usually, these builders are based on some drag-and-drop functionality that lets you build conversation workflows and behavior modeling easily.
Software Integrations
Chatbots need to integrate with messaging tools and your website. Tools may also integrate with your CRM or help desk software. I've provided a list of some of the pre-built integrations, any information on app integration through third-party software, or custom-built options through the tool’s API.
Pricing
The tools on this list come in at a wide range of price points. I’ve got ones suitable for small businesses and others that are best for enterprise clients. But, I think they all offer good value to the right company.
Chatbot Software: FAQ
Here are some answers to frequently asked questions related to chatbot software and how it works:
What is a chatbot?
A chatbot is a piece of software that uses an algorithm to help it mimic human communication via chat. The whole point of it is for you to feel like you are talking to another person, but unlike other people who you talk to, chatbots have no initiative. Therefore, conversations you have will follow a question-answer-question-answer sequence.
To learn more about chatbots, pop over to our article explaining how chatbots work for more details.
How does chatbot software work?
Chatbot software is a program that has pre-built chatbots that you can use to automate parts of your business that are customer-facing, like sales and customer support.
Additionally, chatbot software normally features a bot builder that helps you create your own chatbot from scratch. Once you have your chatbot though, you can deploy it on a website or through an app and let it handle initial, repetitive queries. However, if a customer requires additional information, the chatbot software can re-route the communication to a real person and let them handle the rest.
If you need tips on how to get started, take a look at this article explaining how you can create a chatbot yourself for more info.
Are there different types of chatbots?
There are two main types of chatbots: rule-based and AI-based (artificial intelligence-based). Rule-based chatbots let you set up workflows to answer pre-programmed questions like discovering opening hours or making bookings.
Conversational AI chatbots go further by using natural language processing (NLP) to gauge the intent of a customer inquiry and provide a suitable answer.
What can you use chatbots for?
Chatbots have many use cases, all of which aim to take the burden of basic and repetitive customer service off of your employees. Support teams can use chatbots to solve customer issues and troubleshoot problems. Sales and marketing teams can use them to qualify and convert leads. Ecommerce stores can use them to answer customer questions about products. These interactions will happen 24/7 without your team lifting a finger.
You can also use chatbots as part of a hybrid model that combines live support and automated help. For example, by using the chatbot to collect customer information and then handing off the conversation to a live rep.
How popular are chatbots?
Chatbot usage is growing. According to a 2021 Gartner survey, 37.5% of customer service leaders are planning to deploy chatbots in 2023. And in a time where ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) solutions are becoming everything everyone is talking about, this percentage is expected to increase.
What is customer support automation?
Customer support automation is when a machine is the first point of contact. As you can probably tell, chatbot software is a type of customer support automation, along with Interactive Voice Response and email automation.
Learn more about its benefits and the role of AI in automation.
What's Next?
Whichever chatbot you choose, one thing is clear: they can have a huge impact on the efficiency of your support and sales teams.
If you're interested in knowing more about this topic you can learn what is a chatbot and how they work, how to build a chatbot, and the benefits and challenges of customer support automation.
Other tool lists you might be interested in are:
- The best live chat software to connect at scale
- The best AI chatbots for customer service
- The best chatbots for small businesses
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