Best Chatbots Software
Chatbots, also called virtual agents or virtual assistants, are used in place of humans to conduct specific tasks or provide information based on written or spoken requests, allowing users to interact with applications in a conversational manner to automate tasks that formerly required human intervention.
Core Capabilities of Chatbot Software
To qualify for inclusion in the Chatbots category, a product must:
- Provide an output based on the initial request in written or speech form
- Allow for the automation of formerly human-necessary tasks
- Be sold as a standalone chatbot solution, and not simply contain NLP or speech recognition within a conversational interface
Common Use Cases for Chatbot Software
Businesses use chatbots to automate customer-facing and internal interactions across a growing range of functions. Common use cases include:
- Serving as a first line of defense in customer support alongside live chat, help desk, and contact center software
- Handling sales and marketing knowledge base queries with automated, scripted responses
- Enabling users to retrieve data points from business intelligence software through natural language requests
How Chatbot Software Differs from Other Tools
Although chatbots frequently use natural language processing (NLP) or speech recognition to understand requests, they primarily function through scripted conversations, distinguishing them from intelligent virtual assistants, which use natural language understanding (NLU) to conduct more dynamic, human-like conversations. Chatbots are rules-driven and best suited for predictable, structured interactions, while AI-powered alternatives offer greater flexibility and intent comprehension.
Insights from G2 Reviews on Chatbot Software
According to G2 review data, users highlight ease of scripting and deployment speed as key strengths. Support teams frequently cite reductions in routine inquiry volume and improved first-response times as primary outcomes of chatbot adoption.
Featured Chatbots Software At A Glance
G2 takes pride in showing unbiased reviews on user satisfaction in our ratings and reports. We do not allow paid placements in any of our ratings, rankings, or reports. Learn about our scoring methodologies.
"Zendesk for Customer Service is an AI-powered service solution that’s easy to set up, use, and scale. It offers out-of-the-box functionality that’s simple to modify, helping businesses move faster. L
Zendesk is a customer support tool that consolidates all customer communications into a single platform, automates repetitive tasks, and provides valuable insights. Reviewers frequently mention the ease of use, the ability to manage customer support across multiple channels in one place, and the time-saving automation features. Users mentioned that Zendesk can be overwhelming for smaller teams due to its complexity, the pricing can become expensive when adding advanced features, and some useful capabilities are locked behind higher-tier plans.
103,009 Twitter followers
Fin by Intercom is the best performing AI Agent for customer service. It automates complex queries, improves resolution times, and delivers consistently high-quality support at scale. Key benefits
Fin by Intercom is an AI-powered customer support tool that provides automated responses to customer inquiries, reducing the workload for human agents. Reviewers frequently mention the efficiency of Fin by Intercom in handling routine customer inquiries, its ability to pull content from various resources for accurate responses, and its adaptability to different conversations. Users reported issues with Fin by Intercom's understanding of multiple languages, its struggle with complex issues requiring investigation, and the occasional provision of incorrect information to customers.
44,090 Twitter followers
Qualified is the Agentic Marketing platform for B2B companies around the world. Headquartered in San Francisco, Qualified is built to modernize and maximize inbound pipeline generation with Piper the
Qualified is a tool that helps connect with website visitors, understand their activity, and generate better leads. Reviewers appreciate the excellent level of customer success offered by the Qualified team, the AI chatbot functionality, and the ability to streamline processes with automatic appointment setting. Reviewers experienced issues with incorrect account tagging, a need for interface improvement, and difficulties in refining the list of industries offered.
712 Twitter followers
Birdeye is the #1 agentic marketing platform for multi-location brands, trusted by the biggest multi-location brands globally including H&R Block, Aspen Dental, and Caesars Entertainment. One P
Birdeye is a platform that manages online reputation, customer engagement, and reviews across multiple locations from a centralized dashboard. Users frequently mention the ease of use, the ability to consolidate reviews in one place, and the efficient management of online reputation as key benefits of Birdeye. Users experienced a learning curve when first implementing all features across multiple locations and found some features overwhelming due to the multitude of tools packed into the platform.
5,239 Twitter followers
Jotform AI Agents are automated real-time assistants designed to help your users at any time of day or night. AI Agents are the future of customer service. Train and customize your own personal AI Age
Jotform AI Agents is a product designed to automate client interactions and manage administrative tasks, providing 24/7 support by answering client questions and managing service requests. Reviewers frequently mention the ease of setup, the ability to train the AI, and the efficiency of automating client interactions and administrative tasks as key benefits of Jotform AI Agents. Reviewers noted issues with the level of customization in complex conversational flows, occasional bugs, and challenges with the site's user interface and user experience.
39,420 Twitter followers
Tidio is an all-in-one customer support software suite comprising (1) help desk, (2) live chat, (3) chatbot automation, and (4) AI agent features. Over 300,000 businesses across ecommerce, services, a
Tidio is a customer chat portal that manages real-time visitor conversations on websites and offers automated AI features for handling common inquiries. Reviewers appreciate Tidio's clean and customizable interface, quick support, easy setup, and the ability to manage conversations from multiple platforms in one place, with features like automation flows, AI suggestions, and detailed dashboards for tracking customer interactions. Users mentioned concerns about the high pricing, the need for more customization options, occasional glitches with the chat widget, limitations in analytics, and the lack of certain features in the free and lower-tier plans.
1,321 Twitter followers
Podium is an AI native communications platform that deploys AI Employees to help local businesses turn every conversation—text, call, or web chat—into revenue. Trusted by over 100,000 local businesses
Podium is a customer communication platform that consolidates messages, reviews, and customer interactions into one place for efficient management. Reviewers frequently mention the simplicity and effectiveness of Podium in streamlining customer communication, improving response times, and enhancing overall customer engagement. Users mentioned that Podium can be expensive for small businesses, with some advanced features and customization options only available on higher-tier plans, and integrations with other tools can be restrictive.
4,197 Twitter followers
Started as WhatsApp team inbox in 2020, Wati has evolved into a full revenue orchestration system beyond one platform. Designed for businesses that sell, support, and grow through conversations, Wati
Wati is a platform that enables businesses to automate and manage customer communication through WhatsApp, including features such as structured message campaigns, automated replies, and bulk messaging. Users frequently mention the ease of use, streamlined communication, and the ability to reach a large number of clients simultaneously while maintaining personalized communication. Users reported issues with the approval process for message templates taking longer than expected, complex setup for certain features, and high pricing for certain packages.
540 Twitter followers
Smartsupp helps businesses grow online sales with advanced AI Shopping Assistants, live chat, multichannel solution and automated workflows. We offer everything you need to grow your online sales:
Smartsupp is a live chat platform that allows businesses to communicate with website visitors in real time and organize conversations within the team. Reviewers appreciate the ease of setup and use, the clear interface, the ability to communicate with visitors instantly, and the real-time tracking of visitor behavior on the website. Reviewers mentioned limitations in features in the lower plans, occasional lack of clarity in the conversation history, and a desire for more advanced customization options and detailed analytics.
440 Twitter followers
Alexa for Business is a service that enables organizations to integrate Alexa, Amazon's voice assistant, into their workplace environments. It provides tools for deploying and managing Alexa-enabled d
2,220,162 Twitter followers
The Genesys Cloud CX™ platform is trusted by thousands of small, medium and large enterprises and recognized across the globe as an industry-leading cloud call center solution and customer experience
Genesys Cloud CX is a cloud-based platform designed to manage customer interactions across various channels including voice, chat, and email. Users like the platform's flexibility, scalability, and its ability to integrate with third-party systems, as well as its robust analytics and AI-driven insights that optimize customer experience and agent performance. Reviewers mentioned that the initial setup and configuration can be complex, especially for new users, and advanced features can be costly, which may be a challenge for smaller organizations.
32,290 Twitter followers
Kore.ai, a leader in enterprise AI, accelerates business outcomes from AI with agentic AI applications built on the industry-leading Kore.ai Agent Platform. Its growing catalogue includes pre-built so
Kore,aI is a conversational AI platform designed for enterprise use, offering features such as low-code/no-code interface, omnichannel deployment, advanced NLP capabilities, and integrations with major enterprise systems. Users like Kore,aI for its robust dialog management, seamless integration capabilities, customizable workflows, strong support for automation AI use cases, and the ability to reduce operational workload by automating repetitive requests. Users experienced issues with high latency, platform bugs, a steep learning curve, and complexities in switching between teams or domains, and some users found the platform's old architecture and context management to be lacking.
5,648 Twitter followers
Zoom Virtual Agent is an AI-powered solution that helps businesses deliver fast, effortless support to customers across both voice and digital messaging channels. It uses agentic AI to understand cont
Zoom Virtual Agent is a tool designed to handle customer queries without constant human involvement, integrating with the Zoom ecosystem to route issues to the appropriate agent. Reviewers like how Zoom Virtual Agent can answer common questions instantly, reduce response time, improve customer experience, and alleviate pressure on support teams, especially during high-volume periods. Users reported that Zoom Virtual Agent can sometimes struggle with complex or differently phrased queries, and requires proper setup and regular tuning to function effectively, which can be time-consuming.
1,045,404 Twitter followers
Botpress is a leading AI platform built for creating and deploying autonomous AI agents at scale. Headquartered in Montreal and trusted by teams in over 190 countries, Botpress gives organizations the
Botpress is a platform designed to solve AI chatbot problems, offering features such as natural language understanding, customization, integration capabilities, and performance efficiency. Reviewers frequently mention the ease of use, the proactive support team, the platform's ability to make complex chatbot development more accessible, and the freedom it offers in handling various situations. Reviewers experienced issues with the interface, particularly on the Edge browser, a lack of desired integrations, high costs, outdated documentation, and challenges in conversation management.
2,653 Twitter followers
SendPulse is an all-in-one marketing automation platform designed to help you streamline your sales and marketing efforts from start to finish and scale your business. SendPulse features include: - b
SendPulse is a multi-channel messaging platform that allows users to manage email, SMS, and web push notifications. Reviewers frequently mention the ease of use, quick setup, and the Automation 360 feature which saves time and ensures no leads are missed, as well as the platform's ability to integrate with popular CMS. Reviewers experienced issues with the dated user interface, basic analytics dashboard, confusing SMS credits system, limited advanced features unless upgraded, and a mobile app that lacks features from the desktop version.
2,283 Twitter followers
Learn More About Chatbots Software
What are Chatbots?
Chatbots are impacting every aspect of how businesses communicate with people. Although chatbots are still in the early days, they have grown and developed in leaps and bounds. Chatbots—also known as digital assistants, virtual assistants, virtual agents, interactive agents, and more—have gone from being a simple conversational interface where the user would input text and receive a canned response, to a robust tool where users can converse with a computer via text or voice and receive bespoke responses based on the given context. This advancement is due largely to the rise of artificial intelligence and natural language processing (NLP) software, as well as improvements in computing power. However, the rise of chatbots should not be viewed in a vacuum. Messaging, in general, has arisen as a preeminent form of communication, and as such, it should come as no surprise that people want a faster and more accessible way to get information. Chatbots can get them that information quickly and can help companies fulfill this desire.
With the use of machine learning and deep learning, chatbots can grow intelligently and understand a wider vocabulary and colloquial language, as well as provide more precise and correct responses to requests. Through providing information and conducting specific tasks, whether external, customer-facing requests or internal, employee-facing requests, chatbots can augment humans’ abilities.
What Types of Chatbots Exist?
The manner in which a user might interact with a chatbot can differ, especially as it relates to the sophistication of the chatbot’s conversational abilities and the degree to which a human might need to step in when the chatbot is not able to respond to a particular query in a reasonable manner.
Button-based bots
Users interact with these chatbots through menus and buttons.
Keyword recognition-based chatbots
Users interact with these chatbots through text or speech and the bot responds based on certain pre-programmed keywords.
Contextual chatbots
Users interact with these chatbots in a natural, conversational manner and the bot responds appropriately, thanks to advanced NLP software techniques.
What are the Common Features of Chatbots?
To fully evaluate a chatbot, it should fulfill the task that it has been programmed to do in an efficient and effective way. Here are some criteria through which it can be evaluated.
Emotional intelligence: In any conversational context, it is critical that each speaker responds to the other in an emotionally intelligent manner, paying careful attention to the emotional state of the other. This is no less true with a chatbot. The best chatbots on the market respond to the user in a way that is commensurate with their emotional state.
Conversational ability: As the name implies, chatbots should be able to chat in a way that is natural and fluent, understanding the intent of what was said and responding appropriately.
Broad knowledge base: Good chatbots are well integrated with a host of business systems or knowledge bases, giving them the ability to answer questions correctly and contextually.
Personal: Stellar chatbots connect to the user in a way that is bespoke and tailored to the individual. They take in personal information in a safe and secure manner and output a response which befits the question as well as the questioner.
Personality: Boring chatbots might work in some cases, but adding a bit of zest and personality can help unlock the full potential of these conversational agents. When a chatbot has a touch of sass, the conversation is enriched and enlightened, thus raising the level and sophistication of the conversation.
What are the Benefits of Chatbots?
Chatbots affect any touchpoint where businesses communicate with people. Therefore, there are many key reasons a company might deploy a chatbot for a given use case. Chatbots aren’t just useful for website visitors, app users, and customers, but businesses as well. Below are a few reasons why businesses may decide to use chatbots.
More people are ready to use chatbots: At least in certain circumstances, consumers actually prefer using chatbots for quick communication with brands. People are in front of their computer and phone screens now more than ever, so it makes sense to provide them with a service they can access with their fingertips.
They never take a day off: Bots are not constrained to traditional work hours or time zones. So, if one approaches the bot with a basic issue at odd hours, it can be resolved within minutes.
Knowledge acquisition: Chatbots can be used to help visitors sign up for marketing newsletters, register for webinars, schedule appointments, and even guide customers to a landing page or e-commerce site to finalize transactions.
Who Uses Chatbots?
Chatbots, as a multi-purpose, many-featured solution, can be utilized by various business users.
Marketers: Marketers are always looking to connect and engage with customers and potential customers. Some channels which they utilize include SMS, email, and telephone. Through conversational solutions, like chatbots, marketers can connect in an automated manner, which would help increase their scale and scope.
Customer support: When one has issues with a product or service, they want to be able to engage with the business in whatever channel they desire. As such, businesses across industries are developing solutions, such as chatbots, to ensure that they are always available. With chatbots, they are able to provide 24/7 support and services to employees and customers.
Human resources: Employees frequently have questions for their human resources (HR) team, sometimes known as employee success. These questions range from benefits to paid time off (PTO) to salary-related queries. Although it is important to keep the human in human resources, chatbots can provide a channel in which employees can ask questions and receive answers immediately.
What are the Alternatives to Chatbots?
As mentioned, chatbots are making an impact across industries as well as business functions. Therefore, it is only natural that they integrate with a host of different software. Here are some different types of software that are either directly related to or can be integrated with chatbots.
Bot platforms: Chatbots are a great solution when users are looking for a chatbot that they can use off the shelf, with little to no development or coding experience necessary. However, companies looking to build their own chatbot can benefit from bot platforms, which are tools used to build and deploy interactive chatbots. These platforms provide development tools such as frameworks and API toolsets for customizable bot creation.
Intelligent virtual assistants software: If a company has more time and energy, as well as fiscal resources, it is wise for them to explore intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs), which provide the same basic capabilities of chatbots and more. With IVAs, users are enabled to have natural conversations via a host of different channels to solve their business problems. In addition, this advanced software has the ability to use the conversations to update systems such as a CRM, an ERP, or human resource management systems.
Software Related to Chatbots
The following solutions can be used in conjunction with chatbots to automate business operations and further advance digital transformation:
Help desk software: Customer service is a major use case for chatbots. Help desk software, which is designed to provide a customer with information and support regarding a company’s products or services, is extensively including chatbot functionality or the ability to integrate with chatbots.
Productivity bots software: Users looking to increase the productivity of software they are using should look to productivity bots to help them achieve this goal. Productivity bots work as add-ons to software tools, providing additional features, organization, or automation on top of the foundational features of the product.
When a bot is connected to a software platform, it boosts the utility of the existing tool that the team already uses.
Natural language processing (NLP) software: NLP software allows applications to interact with human language using a deep learning algorithm. NLP algorithms input language and can give a variety of outputs based on the learned task
NLP algorithms can provide voice recognition and natural language generation, which converts data into understandable human language. Some examples of NLP uses include chatbots, translation applications, and social media monitoring tools that scan social media networks for mentions.
Challenges with Chatbots
A software can come with its own set of challenges. Chatbots, which are changing many industries and use cases (such as customer support and e-commerce), have some key issues which one should keep in mind.
Preference for human agents: Although chatbots are great at many tasks, some contexts, such as those which require a significant amount of empathy, may be better served by a human agent.
Handoffs to humans: There might come a time when a chatbot does not have an answer to a question from the user. It is critical that the system is designed in a way to successfully resolve this problem. Typically, the best way to solve this is to transition the user to a human agent.
Which Companies Should Buy Chatbots?
Chatbots are positively affecting industries from travel to retail, as well as business functions such as HR. Within these industries, the roles can significantly vary as to who most commonly engages with chatbots.
Hospitality: The hospitality industry is being transformed by chatbots, with businesses using them to increase customer loyalty through on-demand support and personalized service. Other uses of chatbots in the hospitality sector include taking reservations, enabling personalized services like preferred room features or local restaurant recommendations supporting customer engagement and retention.
Retail: Retail and e-commerce stand to benefit greatly from the deployment of chatbots to enhance customer engagement and drive sales. Chatbots can also deliver a personalized e-commerce experience for customers.
Travel: The travel sector is adopting chatbots to assist customer bookings, provide customer support, resolve complaints, and act as a personal assistant to customize a traveler’s itinerary.
How to Buy Chatbots
When looking to deploy a chatbot solution, businesses should start by investigating their various channels, such as messaging platforms, emails, and websites. Chatbots can be deployed across any and all of these platforms. Through analyzing these channels—e.g., discovering response rates, most popular channels, etc.—users can best understand their performance and how chatbot solutions can supercharge them.
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Chatbots
Whether a company is purchasing chatbots for the first time or looking to replace their current system, G2.com can assist them with the selection process.
First, buyers should evaluate the need for chatbots and determine what functionality will be most useful for the business.
Some initial questions which should be asked include:
- Which are the channels that are supported?
- How long does it take to set up?
- How easy is it to script the chatbots?
- How is the offering priced?
Compare Chatbots
Create a long list
Evaluating vendors should start with a long list, which will help to determine whether or not a given solution is a good fit. With a long list, one creates a broad list of tools that align with one’s business goals. So that there is a level playing field, it is important to ask the same set of questions to each seller.
Create a short list
Next, a whittling down should take place. Through pointed questions, demos, and trials, one can go from a long list to a short one. Although this will differ for each business and use case, three to five products are typically a good number. With this list in hand, businesses can produce a matrix to compare the features and pricing of the various solutions.
Conduct demos
To ensure the comparison is thoroughgoing, the user should demo each solution on the short list with the same use case and datasets. This will allow the business to evaluate like for like and see how each vendor stacks up against the competition.
Selection of Chatbots
Choose a selection team
Before getting started, it's crucial to create a winning team that will work together throughout the entire process, from identifying pain points to implementation. The software selection team should consist of members of the organization who have the right interest, skills, and time to participate in this process. A good starting point is to aim for three to five people who fill roles such as the main decision maker, project manager, process owner, system owner, or staffing subject matter expert, as well as a technical lead, IT administrator, or security administrator. In smaller companies, the vendor selection team may be smaller, with fewer participants multitasking and taking on more responsibilities.
Negotiation
Just because something is written on a company’s pricing page, does not mean it is fixed (although some companies will not budge). It is imperative to open up a conversation regarding pricing and licensing. For example, the vendor may be willing to give a discount for multi-year contracts or for recommending the product to others.
Final decision
After this stage, and before going all in, it is recommended to roll out a test run or pilot program to test adoption with a small sample size of users. If the tool is well used and well received, the buyer can be confident that the selection was correct. If not, it might be time to go back to the drawing board.
Chatbots Trends
In addition, artificial intelligence techniques such as NLP software help make chatbot solutions easier to use and more powerful, providing more accurate results. Below are the trends relevant to this software.
Conversational interfaces
In general, users are looking to conversational interfaces to get answers to their burning questions. For example, they are looking to query their data in a more natural way. Since natural language understanding has improved, people can talk to their data, finding and exploring insights using natural, intuitive language. With this powerful technology, users can focus on discovering patterns and finding meaning hidden in the data as opposed to memorizing SQL queries.
Data-focused businesspeople, like data analysts, can benefit from conversational interfaces like chatbots. Users can uncover the material they are looking for using intuitive language. Intuitive methods of querying data mean a larger user base that can access and make sense of company data.
Voice
Voice is a primal method of interacting with others. It is only natural that we now converse with our machines using our voice and that the platforms for said voicebots have seen great success. Voice makes technology feel more human and allows people to trust it more. Voice will prove to be an important natural interface that mediates human communication and relationships with devices, and ultimately, within an AI-powered world.
Artificial intelligence
AI is quickly becoming a promising feature of many, if not most, types of software. With machine learning, end users can identify patterns in data, allowing them to make sense of content and help them understand what they are seeing. This pattern recognition is fueling the rise of more powerful, contextually-aware chatbots.
