Chatbots have been one of the most visible technology breakthroughs in recent years. Over 58% of B2B websites use chatbots. As the demand for chatbots has increased, the market for chatbot software has gotten more challenging to navigate. Therefore, we at SaaSworthy have put together a list of the top 7 free and open-source chatbot software for you to choose from in 2021.
Table of Contents
What is a free and open-source chatbot software?
A chatbot software includes tools for creating and configuring chatbots for a particular customer base. Chatbots are essentially computer programs that can converse with humans. Chatbots employ human-style conversation but are not attempting to impersonate a real person.
A free and open-source chatbot software comes at no cost with a publicly accessible source code. The source codes of all these software are accessible to the public on Github. Open source chatbots function similarly to modern web apps. They exist on the internet and rely on databases and APIs to read and write files, send and receive messages, and carry out routine operations.
What are the benefits of using chatbot software?
- The entire process of developing a chatbot using chatbot software saves your time and allows you to work more effectively on other important duties.
- A chatbot can assist a user with obtaining answers to FAQs, downloading a digital resource, scheduling an appointment, or signing up for an event.
- Chatbots can take on personalities and have their own personality to enhance the conversation experience. They can maintain a human-like interaction with the consumer.
- An intelligent chatbot, like a web application, can guide customers through the customer acquisition process, answer questions, collect marketing leads, and sell products.
Top 7 free and open-source chatbot software you should consider in 2021
SaaSworthy has combined the top 7 free and open-source chatbot software for you to leverage into a single article. Hence, it has made your job of finding the best free and open-source chatbot software easier.
1. Rasa
Rasa is a free and open-source chatbot software and a conversational AI framework. It is designed for customized interactions at scale. It comes with everything you need to build sophisticated text and voice-based assistants and chatbots. Rasa has over 10 million downloads worldwide and is SaaSworthy’s top choice when it comes to the best open-source chatbot.
The various features of Rasa include –
- Its dialogue management powered by machine learning determines what the assistant should do next depending on the user’s text and conversation context.
- It parses the user’s intent and extracts crucial information by converting raw text from the user interactions into structured data.
- You can connect with APIs, databases, and other systems with Rasa’s custom actions. You can also integrate with CRMs, content management systems, and knowledge bases.
- By interacting with your assistant, you can generate training data and offer feedback for improvement when it makes a mistake.
The limitations of Rasa are –
- It can be challenging for beginners and people without the required knowledge.
- It requires a server with a higher amount of RAM compared to other chatbot software.
2. Botpress
Botpress is a free and open-source chatbot software that was mainly designed for developers to build chatbots. It is a conversational AI platform with a wide range of capabilities. It is used by thousands of companies across four continents. It works with Fortune 500 companies, digital agencies, governments, and startups to create digital assistants. Botpress is undoubtedly the best open-source chatbot free.
The various features of Botpress include –
- It is cloud-independent. As a result, you can operate it on your preferred cloud platform or an on-premise server, providing you complete control over your data protection.
- Its simple SDK provides you with greater freedom when developing customized features and functions.
- It has a graphical user interface that allows you to create conversation flows and process automation.
- You can record anything the chatbot does not comprehend and use it to broaden the functionality of your chatbot.
- It includes natural language processing functions like spell checking, entity extraction, intent detection, and slot tagging.
The limitations of Botpress are –
- The documentation and instructions provided lack a lot of necessary information.
- The installation and setting up process consumes a lot of time.
3. MobileMonkey
MobileMonkey is a free and open-source chatbot software. You can construct a complete flow without writing code using chatbot builder. You can also use pre-built templates to get started. One of the best things about MobileMonkey is that it is frequently updated with the latest features and functionalities. Because of its user-friendly UI, MobileMonkey is the most popular open-source chatbot builder for companies, marketers, and websites.
The various features of MobileMonkey include –
- It aids in collecting the user’s identity, location, and the possibility to send subsequent messages even before the bot answers to the initial message.
- When the AI finds a high-quality lead, it will inform you. One of your agents can now talk instead of the live chat and develop the lead easily until sales occur.
- Regardless of the platform on which consumers are chatting, their messaging history is kept in a single inbox.
- Using segmented campaigns and planned sequences, you can create a chatbot to provide follow-up messaging that supports leads.
The limitations of MobileMonkey are –
- The user interface and the dashboard can do with some revamping.
- The initial integration can be challenging and time-consuming and can take a while to get accustomed to it.
4. Microsoft Bot Framework
Microsoft Bot Framework is a free and open-source chatbot software and is built with C#, Azure, and Node. Js. You caneffortlessly incorporate chatbots developed with the Microsoft Bot Framework with other Microsoft products. The Microsoft Bot Framework is an all-inclusive open-source bot framework for developing conversational AI experiences.
The various features of Microsoft Bot Framework include –
- It is capable of hearing commands, identifying distinct speakers, translating, and responding to customers in a natural language using a personalized voice.
- With native connectivity to Azure Cognitive Services, you can empower your bot to talk, listen, and comprehend your customers.
- Microsoft Bot Framework enables you to create sophisticated, enterprise-grade bots that have ownership and management over your data.
- It includes a variety of samples and templates to assist developers in swiftly creating excellent bots. It is also great for firms who want to take an omnichannel strategy.
The limitations of Microsoft Bot Framework are –
- It can be challenging for people who do not have knowledge about SDK.
- It requires a lot of coding for creating a simple chatbot.
5. Bot Libre
Bot Libre is a free and open-source chatbot software programmed with javascript. Bot Libre empowers you to build a bot for the mobile, web, social media platform, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Bot Libre provides an Enterprise bot platform as well as an Offline bot for Android, iOS, and desktop bots.
The various features of Bot Libre include –
- You can use the web API to manage chatbots, live chat, and forums. You can also integrate them with your website using the JavaScript SDK.
- You can link your chatbot to live chat and set up live chat channels and chatrooms. You can also train your bot by allowing it to listen in on your live chat interactions.
- You can filter chats, replies, and reported keywords, view response context, words, and topic, and modify, reject, or mark responses.
- While chatting, you can modify your bot’s replies. Keywords, synonyms, context subjects, and sentiment can all be used to train your bot.
The limitations of Bot Libre are –
- The UI is old-fashioned and not up to today’s standards.
- The AI is not fully interactive.
6. Pandorabots
Pandorabots is a free and open-source chatbot software and is also an artificial intelligence as a service (AIaaS) platform. Pandorabots provides API access to your bots’ SDK and hosting infrastructure. Pandorabots boasts over 2,75,000 registered developers around the world who have created more than 3,25,000 chatbots.
The various features of Pandorabots include –
- The major features of Pandorabots are its customization, content, community, voice interfaces, learning, scalability, multilingual capability, and free cost.
- Pandorabots blends artificial intelligence chatbots and a restful API with apps to provide users with the highest possible engagement with any application.
- By decreasing support requests and monitoring forums, Pandorabots improves customer experience. You can use a chatbot that knows your company’s FAQs to automate tasks.
- Its Small Talk Libraries include 10,000 frequently used chat inputs, saving you from having to start from the beginning.
- Its comprehensive, feature-rich self-service IDE enables IT teams to create locally, providing end-to-end control and custody of your customer data and codebase.
The limitations of Pandorabots are –
- The playground user interface needs improvements.
- It lacks the machine learning tools that other open-source chatbot builders include as it uses only the AIML language.
7. Chatfuel
Chatfuel is a free chatbot software that does not require any coding to create a chatbot. Chatfuel is a bot builder that provides people and businesses with a unified platform for developing AI conversational chatbots. Chatfuel guarantees a 99.9% platform uptime and has over 100 million registered users who send more than 50 million messages a day.
The various features of Chatfuel include –
- You can send a series of automatic welcome messages to your opted-in users and follow-up messages to those who have recently found the chatbot.
- You can also utilize a live chat plugin as part of the chatting process. It allows human support representatives to take over from the bot and interact with the users.
- You can create and share content cards with users, extract information from chats, and integrate with several other platforms.
- You can quickly create an AI-powered chatbot that can engage with your customers and prospects and rapidly answer their most frequent queries.
The limitations of Chatfuel are –
- The chatbot options are limited to a maximum of four.
- The server slows down at peak hours, impacting both user experience and bot performance.
Conclusion
We hope that we were able to throw some light on the top free and open-source chatbot software. Since these software are free and open-source, you can experiment with them before choosing one that is best suited for you. You can now make an informed decision while choosing the best open-source chatbot free. You should choose the software depending on the functionalities or circumstances that your organization will require.
If you want to know more about such top software in the free and open-source category, visit SaaSworthy’s articles on free and open-source software.
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