Chatbots have seen a 92% increase in usage since 2019. Thanks to their innate ability to streamline customer interactions and enhance customer experiences. According to Salesforce, about 23% of companies are currently leveraging AI chatbots to engage their customers while 31% are planning to use them within the next 18 months.
If you are one among this 31% of companies, you must be wondering how to choose the best free AI chatbot for your company. Well, the answer lies in this post.
This article shares a list of top free AI chatbots of 2024. Read on to learn more about each of these chatbots in detail and choose the right one for your business.
What to Look for in a Free AI Chatbot
Before we dive into the list of the best free AI chatbots, let us understand some of the important features/functionalities your AI chatbot must have.
- Basic Functionalities - Look for essential features like greeting messages, FAQs, and information retrieval from your knowledge base.
- Natural Language Processing (NLP) - Ensure the chatbot comprehends and responds naturally to user inputs. It must generate human-like responses.
- User Interaction Limitations - Research if there are any restrictions on the number of interactions or features in the free version.
- Customization Options - Research if you can customize the chatbot's appearance, responses, tone, and functionalities to align with your brand.
- Branding - Understand if the free version includes the tool's branding. If yes, ask yourself if you would be okay with the same.
- Integrations - Check if the chatbot can integrate with third-party tools or platforms that you are currently using for your business.
- Scalability - Assess if the chatbot will be able to handle increasing user interactions without compromising performance.
The Top 10 Free AI Chatbots of 2024: Overview
Here are the top 10 free AI chatbots you can consider for your business this year.
- Tidio
- Landbot
- SendPulse
- FreshChat
- Smartsupp
- Wotnot
- Botpress
- Botsonic
- Chatsimple
- Botmaker
Let us now explore each of these tools in detail. We will cover their top features, limitations, user reviews, and ratings across major software review websites.
Detailed Comparison of the Top 10 Free AI Chatbots
Let us explore each of these free AI chatbots in detail.
#1. Tidio
Tidio offers intuitive chatbot software that helps you build plug-and-play chatbots for automating your sales, support, and customer support activities. It helps you engage your customers in real-time and deliver personalized experiences.
Top Features
- Build your chatbot using a visual chat flow builder.
- Collect lead information on your website with the help of a chatbot and qualify them.
- Share product recommendations with your customers to improve shopping experiences.
- Send automated discount coupons to boost sales.
Limitations
- May not have the ability to respond to unexpected or complex questions.
- The free plan has monthly conversation and automation limits.
- Chatbots do not have A/B testing functionality. This limits your ability to test conversation flows or bot responses for analyzing their impact.
Ideal Use Case Best chatbot software for businesses that are just getting started or ones with small teams.
User Reviews Summary There are mixed reviews about Tidio online. While a section of customers find it to be a top-notch chatbot platform, another section feels otherwise. A few reviews have reported that the software is not user-friendly and contains integration-related issues.
Check out this review of Tidio on G2Crowd.
Overall Ratings
4.7/5 stars on G2Crowd
#2. Landbot
Landbot is a no-code chatbot builder that helps you build frictionless conversational experiences for your customers. It is powered by an AI engine and GPT language model to understand the customers' intent and engage them better.
Top Features
- Create chatbots using visual drag and drop builder and conditional logic.
- Build customizable chatbots and forms to capture lead information.
- View chatbot analytics to understand its performance better.
Limitations
- The freemium version offers only 100 chats per month. Does not support the purchase of extra chats or seats.
- Limited functionality is available on the free plan.
- Does not offer reliable customer support on the freemium plan.
- Does not support multiple languages.
Ideal Use Case
Businesses want to enhance their customer engagement.
User Reviews Summary
Landbot has garnered quite many reviews across leading software review platforms. Most Landbot users find this tool to be user-friendly and affordable (even paid plans are cost-effective). However, a few of them have pointed out its limitations, such as poor customer support, customizations unavailability, third-party integrations, and more.
Here’s a screenshot of one such review.
Overall Ratings
4.7/5 stars on G2Crowd
#3. SendPulse
SendPulse offers an all-in-one marketing automation platform containing an intuitive chatbot builder that helps you engage your customers and scale your business.
Top Features
- Create an intelligent chatbot using the drag-and-drop builder.
- Add various multimedia content such as images, videos, emojis, and other files.
- Deploy chatbots on websites, landing pages, social media pages, and more.
Limitations
- Free plan allows you to send up to 10000 messages every month.
- Can create only 3 chatbots with almost 10 triggers at a time.
- Offers limited customer support.
- Involves a learning curve, especially for beginners.
Ideal Use Case
Businesses who want to deploy chatbots across multiple channels.
User Reviews Summary
There are many reviews of SendPulse on various software review websites. SendPulse offers amazing functionality for email marketing but the chatbot functionality is basic and involves a learning curve.
Here is a review screenshot from SendPulse's Capterra page.
Overall Ratings
4.6/5 stars on G2Crowd
#4. FreshChat
FreshChat is another chatbot platform that enables you to have smarter conversations with your customers and engage them with your brand. FreshChat's AI-powered bots can be easily created using its no-code chatbot builder and deployed to offer personalized self-service options to customers.
Top Features
- Create context-driven chatbots to offer instant service to customers.
- Configure chatbots on multiple channels to provide omnichannel service.
- Select from 33+ languages to offer support in the language of your choice.
- Offers performance reports to track productivity metrics.
Limitations
- Involves a learning curve.
- Contains some occasional bugs that may hamper team productivity.
- Does not offer video chat functionality.
Ideal Use Case
Businesses of all sizes are looking to amp up their customer support initiatives.
User Reviews Summary
FreshChat is a chatbot platform that is currently helping many businesses streamline customer communication. Most customers find this platform to be excellent chatbot software with a simple user interface. A few reviews mention that the application is fast. However, most of them pointed out the inadequate audio and notification system that glitches quite often. Customers have also found it difficult to merge duplicate chats.
Here is a screenshot of one such review on G2Crowd.
Overall Ratings
4.4/5 stars on G2Crowd
#5. Smartsupp
Smartsupp is another free AI chatbot platform that boosts your online sales through engaging conversations. It enables you to create different types of chatbots including conversational AI chatbots, lead generation chatbots, and more.
Top Features
- Create AI-powered chatbots using the intuitive chatbot builder.
- Build your chatbots in a few minutes using ready-to-use chatbot templates.
- Integrate AI shopping assistant with your chatbot to boost customer experiences.
- Offers intelligent dashboard analytics for better decision-making.
Limitations
- The free plan allows only one chat agent.
- Conversation history is deleted after 14 days.
Ideal Use Case
Ecommerce businesses of all sizes looking to amp up their customer service.
User Reviews Summary
Smartsupp is highly rated across major software review websites. Most reviews speak of Smartsupp as an easy-to-use tool that can get your chatbots up and running in just a few minutes. These reviews also highlighted the excellent features the tool provides for building seamless customer experiences.
Check out this Smartsupp review on G2Crowd.
Overall Ratings
4.7/5 stars on G2Crowd
#6. Wotnot
Wotnot is the next free AI chatbot platform that helps you build engaging chatbots to automate customer journeys. It offers a no-code chatbot builder with drag-and-drop tools for creating intelligent chatbots from scratch without writing any code.
Top Features
- Offers a no-code bot builder to build chatbots for various channels.
- Supports multiple languages allowing you to build multilingual chatbots
- Allows the use of images, videos, gifs, emojis, and more in your chatbot messages.
Limitations
- May involve a learning curve especially if you are building your first-ever chatbot.
- Supports only 500 conversations in a month.
- Does not offer any email or call support on the free plan.
- Does not support integration with third-party apps on the free plan.
Ideal Use Case
Businesses want to automate their lead generation and customer support at scale.
User Reviews Summary
Wotnot has garnered many reviews on leading software review platforms. Most customers are in awe of their no-code bot builder which allows seamless bot creation and real-time bot testing. However, these reviews do mention the limited functionality that is available on the free and lower subscription plans.
Here is one such review of Wotnot on G2Crowd.
Overall Ratings
4.6/5 stars on G2Crowd
#7. Botpress
Botpress is an intuitive conversational AI platform that offers a suite of chatbot-building tools powered by Generative AI. It leverages large language models for creating personalized chatbot experiences for your customers.
Top Features
- Build interactive chatbots with a visual editor.
- Integrate with third-party platforms seamlessly.
- Supports 100+ languages encouraging multilingual chat support.
- Gain real-time insights into chatbot performance and customer metrics.
Limitations
- Involves a high learning curve, especially for flow builders.
- Can create only 5 bots per month.
- Offers $5 credit as AI Spend balance.
Ideal Use Case
Businesses looking to create and publish chatbots on multiple channels.
User Reviews Summary
There are many reviews of Botpress on various websites. Botpress is preferred by its customers because of its simple interface and multi-browser compatibility. A few reviews do mention that the product documentation and tutorials must be more extensive.
Here is one such review of Botpress on Capterra.
Overall Ratings
4.5/5 stars on G2Crowd
#8. Botsonic
Botsonic is another AI-powered chatbot platform that utilizes an intelligent machine learning model to imitate human speech. It offers you incredible tools to improve your customer interactions and supercharge your customer support.
Top Features
- Create chatbots using the no-code visual builder.
- Publish chatbots on multiple channels without any hassles.
- Offers multilingual support as it supports 25+ languages.
- Offers real-time analytics to monitor user interactions.
Limitations
- Allows you to create just one chatbot on a free plan.
- Send upto 100 messages per month for free.
- Removes chatbots after 7 days of inactivity.
Ideal Use Case
Businesses looking for technologically advanced chatbot platforms.
User Reviews Summary
Botsonic has gained attention from large masses in a short period of time. Customers are loving this tool but are dissatisfied with their support team. Here is a screenshot of a review published on G2Crowd.
Overall Ratings
4.6/5 stars on G2Crowd
#9. Chatsimple
Chatsimple is the next AI chatbot platform that engages with your website visitors to understand their needs and offer them an accurate explanation to their queries.
Top Features
- Create smart chatbots in just a few minutes
- Create lead generation chatbot workflows to capture relevant visitor details
- Supports 175+ languages
Limitations
- Allows you to create just one chatbot
- Supports 25 free messages per month
- Does not support third-party integrations on free plan
Ideal Use Case
Small and medium businesses in eCommerce, education, and health industry.
User Reviews Summary
Chatsimple has garnered quite many reviews across leading software review platforms. Most Chatsimple users claim the platform to be user-friendly. Here is a screenshot of one such review published on G2Crowd.
Overall Ratings
4.9/5 stars on G2Crowd.
#10. Botmaker
Botmaker is the last tool in this list of free AI chatbots. It offers an intuitive bot builder that helps you create intelligent chatbots without any programming.
Top Features
- Create intelligent chatbots with custom flows in just a few minutes
- Deploy chatbots across 20+ channels without any hassles
Limitations
- Have to create your chatbot on your own by accessing online documentation
- Supports 300 sessions per month
Ideal Use Case
Businesses looking to scale their customer support efforts with ChatGPT.
User Reviews Summary
There are many reviews of Botmaker on leading software review platforms. Here is a screenshot of one such review published on G2Crowd.
Overall Ratings
4.5/5 stars on G2Crowd.
Feature Comparison Chart
Here is a quick overview of these platforms for your reference.
Overall Ratings on G2Crowd | Free Version | Pricing Plans | Customer Support on Free Plan | |
Tidio | 4.7/5 stars | Yes | Starts from $29 per month | Email support |
Landbot | 4.7/5 stars | Yes | Starts from €40 per month | Email support |
SendPulse | 4.6/5 stars | Yes | Starts from $8 per month | Live chat and email support |
FreshChat | 4.4/5 stars | Yes | Starts from $18 per month | No details about customer support were found on the website. |
Smartsupp | 4.7/5 stars | Yes | Starts from $28 per month | No customer support |
Wotnot | 4.6/7 stars | Yes | Starts from $49 per month | No customer support |
Botpress | 4.5/5 stars | Yes | Follows a Pay-as-you-go model | No customer support |
Pay-as-you-go model | Support | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
Botsonic | 4.6/5 stars | Yes | Starts from $20 per month | No details about customer support were found on the website. |
Chatsimple | 4.9/5 stars | Yes | Starts from $29 per month | No customer support |
Botmaker | 4.5/5 stars | Yes | Starts from $149 per month | Email support during business hours |
How to Choose the Best AI Chatbot for Your Needs
Consider your specific business requirements and goals when choosing the best AI chatbot for your company. For instance, if your goal is to improve customer service, you ought to choose a platform that offers natural language processing and sentiment analysis capabilities. Similarly, if you wish to collect lead information, you must choose a platform that can engage your website visitors and capture necessary information via personalized interactions.
It is hence important to test out these chatbot platforms to identify the one that suits your business requirements the best. Sign up for free product trials to assess the features and monitor their performance. This will help you learn whether the tool would align with your evolving needs while delivering a seamless experience to your customers.
Limitations of Free AI Chatbots
Free AI chatbots often come with their fair share of limitations. For example, you might not be able to deploy more than 5 chatbots on a free plan or you might be allowed to send only 1000 messages per month. The free versions might not offer advanced chatbot capabilities like natural language processing, sentiment analysis, conversational human-like messaging based on user inputs, and so on.
These limitations might prove to be a huge blocker for your business in the long run. If your business demands more sophisticated functionalities, you must consider investing in a paid version of your favorite AI chatbot platform. Paid subscription plans often offer premium features, dedicated support, and scalability. Thus helping you create a tailored chatbot experience for your customers.
Introducing Bodt
Bodt is a powerful AI chatbot platform that is powered by ChatGPT for engaging your customers in tailored conversations. It offers a host of features to amp up your customer experiences and offer incredible support to your customers.
- Offers conversational chatbot to engage your visitor proactively and get them interested in your brand.
- Provides 24/7 multi-lingual support to your customers by generating accurate responses to their queries.
- Leverages AI engine to recommend personalized product suggestions to your customers (in case, you are an eCommerce brand)
- Generates interesting lead capture workflows to gather visitor data for outreach.
With Bodt, you can build your conversational chatbots in less than 15 minutes. All you need to do is connect your website to Bodt application and our intelligent engine will retrieve all your website pages into a structured list. Next step is to train our chatbot engine on your data. You can do so by selecting the pages containing crucial information and it's done. Customize your chatbot widget by adding your company logo, changing chatbot theme color, and adding a welcome message. Lastly, embed your chatbot widget on your website and make it live!
Creating a chatbot with Bodt is that easy!
As for the pricing, Bodt offers a 'Pay As You Go' plan at $1 per month which supports unlimited chatbot creation and about 100 AI responses.
If you are a business that is fed up with the limitations free AI chatbots bring along, you must consider investing in Bodt. Bodt offers incredible features at a significantly lower price when compared with other chatbot platforms we mentioned in this post.
Conclusion
Choosing the right chatbot for your business is an important task. We hope this list of best free AI tools has helped you select the one that addresses your business requirements. Sign up for a free trial and assess the platform's capabilities through thorough testing. Good luck!
Frequently Asked Questions
Which AI chatbot is completely free?
Some of the best free AI chatbots are Tidio, Landbot, SendPulse, FreshChat, Wotnot, Botmaker, Botsonic, Smartsupp, Botpress, and Chatsimple.
Is there a free AI better than ChatGPT?
Although ChatGPT is a powerful AI tool, there are many free AI chatbot platforms that can help you build specialized chatbots for your unique business requirements.
Is chatbot AI free to use?
Yes, many AI chatbot platforms do offer a freemium version with basic functionalities. You may subscribe to a paid plan if you want access to premium features.
What is the best AI chatbot?
Bodt is the best AI chatbot of 2024.