8 Chatbot APIs To Watch Out For In 2023 + 3 Chat APIs

What is a Chatbot API?

A chatbot API is a set of protocols that allow developers to access the functionalities of a chatbot. A chatbot API enables seamless integration into various applications, systems or platforms by standardizing the way you send, receive and extract messages via the chatbot.

Chatbot APIs connect your messaging software (SMS, Social media messengers, WhatsApp) with chatbot software and features.

How does a Chatbot API work?

We are going to explain how a Chatbot API works in Four simple steps:

Step 1: Message Processing:

This is the step where the Chatbot API receives a message from the developer. It then processes the message using NLU techniques, which helps the chatbot API understand user intent. NLU also helps the chatbot API extract relevant information and determine the appropriate response.

Step 2: Intent recognition:

This is the step where the chatbot API uses machine learning algorithms and NLU to make sense of what the user is trying to say. This step involves advanced computing, where the chatbot API has to analyze the speech or text input and identify keywords which it then maps to predefined intents.

Step 3: Generating response:

Based on the underlying logic and data, the chatbot API then generates a response once it recognizes the input. This response can come from an existing knowledge base, or perform external API calls.

Step 4: Deliver response:

Through the API’s response endpoints, the chatbot API sends the generated response back to the developer’s application. The response can be of different formats such as JSON, XML or plain text depending on the API design.

The chatbot API uses session management techniques to maintain context in multi-turn conversations. Keeping track of the conversation history, the chatbot maintains context and gives meaningful responses to queries.

What are the features you should look for in a chatbot API?

Here are some of the features you must consider when you are considering investing in a chatbot API.

1. NLP Capabilities: Make sure the chatbot NLP you choose offers advanced NLP Capabilities. A good NLP engine means the chatbot can better understand, and respond to user queries.
2. Intent recognition: This is a subset of the NLP capability, a chatbot API that can clearly understand the intent behind a user query should be a top feature that you must look for.
3. Ability to understand context: A good chatbot API should maintain the context through a conversation, remembering previous user inputs and providing coherent responses.
4. Numerous integration capabilities: When considering investing in a chatbot API, look for one that supports integration with various systems, platforms, and messaging apps.
5. Analytics and reporting: A good chatbot API should provide analytics and reporting capabilities so that you can track user interactions and see how effective the chatbot is.

It provides a method for sending and receiving messages while managing users and conversations.

It provides a method for understanding user queries, generating responses, and handling different types of conversations.

Now that we know the basics of Chatbot APIs, let us look at 8 of the best Chatbot APIs available in the market today. This is by no means a comprehensive list, and it can be expanded to include a lot of other players.

8 Chatbot APIs you should watch for in 2023

Let us now take a look at each of them in detail:

1. Kommunicate

We are beginning this list with a Chatbot API platform that we are the most familiar with, since we have been building and perfecting it over the past few years — Kommunicate. With Kommunicate, you can be up and running building a chatbot in less than 10 minutes.

Test your bot in parallel as you are building it, and see the changes that you make reflected in real time. Flow designer, ChatGPT integration, Multilingual bots, all come bundled in a neat package with Kommunicate.

With Kommunicate, you have:

Price:

1. Lite: The Lite plan is priced at $100/month, with 2 teammates included and 500 Monthly Tracked Users (MTU).
2. Advanced: The Advanced plan is priced at $200/month, with 5 teammates included and 5000 MTU.
3. Business: Talk to Kommunicate sales.

2. Drift:

First on our list is a company that claims to be the masters of Conversational AI, providing tools for marketing, sales, and support. Drift is known for its “Drift conversation cloud” where chatbots, email, and live chat come together.

Drift has one of the best chatbot API libraries available in the market today, and you can leverage their Users, Contacts, Playbooks, Drift SDK, and App Admin. With Drift, you can:

Price:

For small businesses, Drift has a premium plan that starts at $2500/ month. For larger plans, you will have to contact Drift Sales.

Did you know?

There are 4 major components of a smart conversational AI, which you can learn in this blog.

3. Intercom Fin

Fin is Intercom’s way of Supercharging an OpenAI chatbot. Intercom claims that it is the most advanced AI chatbot available in the market and provides safer, more accurate answers.

Fin is aimed specifically at the customer support teams. The chatbot has built-in safeguards that ensure that it doesn’t give any misleading answers. The chatbot builder has also built in a “Custom” section, where customers can input their most important questions and Fin prioritizes them over its AI answers.

Price:

Fin usage is measured in Resolutions. It is currently priced at $0.99 per Resolution. To get this pricing, you need to be subscribed to an active Intercom plan.

4. Chatbot API

Chatbot uses NLU to help end users create intelligent chatbots that integrate with your messaging applications. The intelligent chatbots that you create can handle requests, interact with rich messages and images and carry on conversations.

The chatbots API also helps you make bots and track their performance across a wide variety of metrics. Chatbot also has an easy drag-and-drop builder, using which you can create intelligent chatbots from scratch.

Other features of Chatbot API are:

1. Integrations with FB Messenger, Slack, and various CMS systems.
2. Advanced chatbot analytics.

Price:

The entire chatbot package has been split into 4 plans

5. Slack API

Slack is an internal communications tool, kind of like Discord, but more professional. It is a preferred mode of communication for startups and small businesses around the world. Slack comes bundled with a Slack bot API that allows you to build chatbots. These chatbots in turn help you communicate with customers and also handle small tasks.

Slack has 4 different types of APIs, which includes “Real Time Messaging API,” “Events API,” “Web API,” and “Conversations API.” The RTM API allows you to receive “events” from Slack in real time and send messages as users.

With Slack API you can:

1. Give your bot a name or even a profile in your directory.
2. Program your bot to automatically post messages and reminders.
3. Add interactive components like buttons and polls to your messages.

Price

Slack is free to use for a limited number of features, and the Pro plan generally costs $8.75/per user per month.

6. Wit.AI

Wit is an API platform that makes it easy for developers to build apps and devices that you can then talk to or text to. It uses AI to train its chatbots to identify the intent and implied meaning of the user inputs.

What makes Wit.ai special is that it can understand user emotions and respond accordingly. This makes it the perfect Chatbot API to build complex bots where user input may not always be clear. Other features of Wit.AI include:

Price:

Wit.AI is free to use, including for commercial purposes.

7. Zendesk API AI

Zendesk provides what is known as Zendesk AI API as part of its broad range of offerings. There are pre-chat surveys, team collaboration and ticket routing. Zendesk also lets you build no- code bots that improve agent collaboration, through an agent-to-agent chat feature.

Zendesk has an impressive list of more than 700 integrations, including Atlassian, Freshbooks, etc. There are also reports and dashboards that you can use for analytics.

Price:

Zendesk offers a free trial, followed by 4 plans which include:

8. IBM Watson Assistant

IBM Watson Assistant is also an open-source chat API, which uses AI to provide a chat widget for your website and communication channels. It is a cloud based system, and uses NLU capabilities to understand and respond to user queries.

What makes this API solution a bit different from others on this list is that it is a bit complicated to implement. Users need to know the basics of programming to build bots using IBM Watson. Other features of this platform include:

Price:

IBM Watson has a free plan and a Plus plan that starts at $140/month. The Enterprise plan details are available on request.

3 of the best ChatAPIs in the market

1. Facebook Messenger API:

Facebook Messenger API allows businesses to automate conversations with their customers through Facebook Messenger. Companies can now respond to customer queries quickly and efficiently, with minimal manual effort or intervention.

Facebook’s Messenger API helps businesses create automated messages, which can be sent to customers based on specific triggers. For example, if a customer purchases a new item, then you can have the Messenger API send that customer a specific message.

Other features of Facebook Messenger API include:

Price:

Facebook Messenger API is currently free for developers, if you do not exceed the rate limits.

Twilio ChatAPI

Does your business need chat-based communications? Twilio offers a convenient, all-in-one API for scalable, multi-party conversations across channels. The system allows developers to add real-time messaging and chat functionality to their applications.

Users can send and receive messages, share images and videos, and engage in conversations via the Twilio ChatAPI. There are cloud-based archives, advanced opt-out and opt-ins, chat client SDKs, and webhooks and scoped webhooks, among other features, that make this API attractive.

Twilio provides access to an extensive resource library. Its pay per-user pricing makes sure you are only paying for the functionalities you are using. This makes Twilio chatAPI the perfect solution for small businesses that are on a budget, and also for larger businesses that can scale at the pace that they want.

Price:

Like we said, Twilio offers a pay-per-user model of pricing. Currently, the model is priced at $0.05 per active user per month. There is also a price for the stored data per month, which starts at $0.25 GB per month.

3. SendBird

SendBird claims to be the world’s largest private in-apps conversation platform. It offers a myriad of features such as group chat and one-on-one chat, typing indicators, messaging history, etc. It is also an easy-to-use API and comes bundled with push notifications.

SendBird API has a reliable infrastructure that ensures that the application can handle millions of concurrent users. It also ensures that there is smooth communication across mobile, web and desktop platforms.

If you are building a social networking app, a customer support platform or a collaborative workspace, SendBird offers a robust set of APIs. This empowers developers to create engaging chat experiences. SendBird offers pre-built UI for major platforms, and flexible messages format like .json and .xml.

Price:

A subscription for SendBird is priced at $4788 for 12 months, and additional usage cost if your usage exceeds your contract.

There you have it. 8 of the top chatbot APIs that you must know in 2023, along with 3 of the best ChatAPIs. Some of the chatbot APIs mentioned here are open source. For others, you may need to pay to access the advanced features. It all depends on the type of chatbots you want to build and the kind of conversations your customers are going to have. So, choose wisely.

Originally published at https://www.kommunicate.io on June 22, 2023.