But, can ManyChat live up to its promises?
That’s what we are going to find out in this ManyChat review!
User Interface
When you log in at Manychat, you will see a dashboard with on the left side a menu with different options and on the right side the content of each section. It is a really straightforward dashboard and easy to understand:
When creating your chatbot, ManyChat has the best visual flow builder I have ever seen in a chatbot platform. The reason for this is that the interface looks really clean and it is really easy to use (even if you never created a chatbot before).
Inside the flow builder, each flow starts with a trigger (an event that activates the flow), and from there you can connect blocks to each other by simply dragging and dropping:
A block can be a message, an action, a condition or any other chatbot element that Manychat provides.
Moreover, you can test your chatbot flows directly inside the Manychat interface or on the channel that you are building the flow for (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc):
Furthermore, your chatbot flows can be divided over folders, which allows you to keep a good overview of all the chatbot flows in your Manychat account.
Overall: one of the best interfaces I have ever seen in a chatbot platform and you can set up a chatbot in a matter of minutes!
- Visual Flow Builder
- Test chatbot
- Interface easy to use?
- Easy to setup a chatbot?
Chatbot elements
Manychat provides all the chatbot elements you need to create your chatbot.
There are just two chatbot elements that I would like to point out.
The first one is the Conditions element. By using a condition, you can use logic inside your chatbot flows and create personalized conversations for your contacts:
Also, you have the Start flow element. With this element, you can start another flow within your Manychat account. This allows you to create a scalable chatbot, because you can just refer to other flows, instead of copy-and-pasting the same flow multiple times.
- Delays
- Images
- Video
- Audio
- Attachments
- Gallery (Horizontal list)
- Vertical list
- Emojis
- Persistent Menu
- Quick Replies
- Buttons
- Free text input
- Location sharing
- Email validation
- Phone number validation
- Date validation
Users
Within Manychat, you can add custom fields and tags to users. You can simply ask questions and save the answer of the user to a custom field or add a specific tag. With those custom fields and tags, you can create specific user segments (that you can use inside your chatbot flows).
In Manychat you can view all the contacts that talked to your chatbot in the “Contacts” tab. Within this tab, you can also filter on specific custom fields or tags or see all users from a specific segment (by clicking on that segment on the left):
When you click on one of the individual contacts, you can see all the information stored for that user and by clicking on “Start chat” you can also see the chat history of that user:
- Custom fields
- Tags
- User segments
Messages
Manychat provides broadcasts, sequences and also subscribing/unsubscribing from sequences.
What I really like about the sequences in ManyChat is that they are really organized. You can see the complete sequence in one overview and you also see which message is sent at which time, a really good feature.
With ManyChat it is possible to make a chatbot in any language, but it is not possible to easily translate this chatbot to different languages (because you need to do this manually and copy all your complete chatbot).
- Broadcasts
- Sequences
- Conditions
- Multiple languages
- Easy to translate
AI & NLP
The AI&NLP of ManyChat is really straightforward. Within ManyChat you can group certain keywords together and make a certain response for them. However, understanding intents and entities are not supported.
How it looks in ManyChat:
What they do provide in their keywords feature, is the possibility of how the keyword is matched. This is a feature not all chatbot software have. You could say that:
- A message is equal to the keyword
- A message contains the keyword
- A message contains the whole keyword
- A message begins with the keyword
- A message is thumbs up (a standard feature in Facebook Messenger)
ManyChat also doesn’t have a direct integration with DialogFlow. But I created a tutorial on how you can connect ManyChat to Dialogflow.
- Keywords
- Intents
- Entities
- Dialogflow integration
Channels
With Manychat you can publish your chatbot on your website, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS and Email.
This allows you to make an omnichannel chatbot experience for your users. So for example, when someone gives a certain response on Facebook Messenger, you could send an email based on that response.
With SMS, you need to connect your ManyChat account to a Twilio account. Then, ManyChat will handle the chatbot part and all the chat logic, and Twilio will take care of receiving and sending the text messages (additional costs for Twilio apply).
Moreover, you can also merge contacts across channels (based on their email or phone number). For example, if someone contacts you via Facebook Messenger and later on via Instagram, Manychat can understand that is the same person and merge that contact into one.
- Website
- Facebook
- Instagram
- Whatsapp
- Telegram
- SMS
- Slack
- Skype
- Email
Integrations
ManyChat has a built-in live chat, which is called the Inbox. By using the Inbox, you can hand over the conversation from your chatbot to one of your customer support agents.
What I really like about Manychat’s Inbox is that they also provide an iOS app and Android app, so you can respond to user inquiries on the go.
Manychat also provides Manychat Inbox Pro, which is a more advanced live chat and comes with agent chat analytics, groups of live chat agents and auto-assignment rules.
Furthermore, Manychat provides direct integrations with:
- Zapier
- Make (formerly Integromat)
- Google Sheets
- ActiveCampaign
- MailChimp
- ConvertKit
- HubSpot
- Walletly
- Botsheets
- Janis
Moreover, ManyChat has its own App store which allows third-party developers to create their own integrations with ManyChat. Currently, the App Store has 38 apps, but I think this will grow over the years:
- Livechat
- Zapier
- Make (formerly Integromat)
- Google Sheets
- Webhooks
Marketing
When it comes to Marketing for chatbots, Manychat is one of the best chatbot platforms out there.
You can add a Facebook Messenger widget to your website and send pro-active messages based on the URL that users are on. Moreover, you can also create your own landing pages with your Facebook Messenger chatbot.
Moreover, on Facebook you can:
- Create Ref URLs that go to a specific chatbot flow
- Automatically reply to Facebook Comments
- Send one-time notifications
- Send Recurring Notifications
- Connect a Facebook ad to your Messenger chatbot
- Send Sponsored Messages via Facebook Messenger
On Instagram, you can:
- Automatically reply to Instagram comments
Send replies to Instagram users who mention your Instagram handle in their Instagram Stories
And via WhatsApp, you can send Message Templates.
Basically, ManyChat provides almost all marketing possibilities you need for your chatbot.
The only drawback is that Manychat doesn’t provide a native website widget.
- Facebook website widget
- Native website widget
- Landing pages
- Facebook Ads
- Facebook comments auto-reply
- Button creator
- Custom URLs for your chatbot
Pricing
Manychat provides a free plan that stays free forever. This plan comes with 1000 contacts and has the basic features of ManyChat (enough to make a good chatbot).
If you want more features or have more than 1000 contacts, you can upgrade to the Pro plan, which costs 15$ per month (a really low price):
The price of the Pro plan goes up with the number of contacts your chatbot has. 1K contacts result in $25 per month and 5K contacts is $45 per month.
This plan also comes with a 7-day free trial that you can use to test out the Pro features of ManyChat. Besides that, there is also a 30-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked.
Moreover, Manychat also provides Manychat Inbox Pro and that costs $99 per month. This comes with 3 live chat seats:
If that’s not enough, you can add one extra live chat seat for $39 per month.
- Free trial
- Free plan
- Price per month15
- Monthly pricing available?
- Money back guarantee
Analytics
Manychat provides an Insights dashboard where you can see how many contacts you have per channel:
Furthermore, you can see how these contacts have evolved over time:
Likewise, you can determine your own conversion events inside your chatbot flows and then see how many people reached those conversion events:
And these conversion events are not limited to your chatbot funnels. You can also install the Manychat Pixel (similar to a Facebook Pixel) on your website and track conversions on your website of people coming from your chatbot. For example, when someone clicks on a button in Messenger and then converts on your website, this pixel will track that conversion back to your Manychat account.
Moreover, Manychat also provides flow analytics. For each block inside your flows, you can track to how many contacts this message was delivered, how many contacts opened it and how many contacts clicked on it (if the message contains a button / quick reply):
By using these flow analytics, you can easily improve your Manychat flows for better conversion.
There are only two drawbacks about the analytics in Manychat:
- There is no overview of unmatched user input. If a user filled in a phrase that did not get a response, you cannot get this information in your ManyChat dashboard. This is a disadvantage because it does not allow you to improve the automatic answers of your chatbot.
- It’s not possible to see the flow analytics for a specific time period
But in general: by using Manychat’s analytics you can definitely analyze how well your chatbot is doing and how you can improve your chatbot funnels!
- Dashboard
- User input
- Sent messages
- Open rate
- Click rate
- Conversion rate
- Fall back rate
- Custom dashboards/reports
eCommerce
ManyChat provides a direct integration with Shopify so you can:
- Recover abandoned carts
- Notify customers about orders and shipment updates
- Collect reviews and feedback after purchase
- Generate repeated purchases
It is, however, not possible to buy a product from your Shopify store within the chatbot.
But, you can receive payments within your chatbot and let users directly pay within the chatbot by using the Stripe or Paypal integration.
There is only one drawback: ManyChat doesn’t have a WooCommerce integration. But it is still possible to connect with WooCommerce, but you will need a Zapier or Integromat integration for this.
- Payments
- Shopify
- WooCommerce
- Buy directly within the chatbot
- Cart abandonment
Templates & Cloning
ManyChat provides 19 templates which you can directly install to make your chatbot. These include free templates and templates only available for Pro users.
With ManyChat it is possible to make a chatbot template and share it with others. This is really useful when you are making multiple chatbots who do the same thing (for example, Lead generation).
Furthermore, it is possible to duplicate your chatbot flows and chatbot elements to make your chatbot faster.
- Templates19
- Make template
- Share template
- Duplicate chatbot flows
- Duplicate chatbot elements
Optimization
In Manychat, you can do A/B testing by using the Randomizer element. This element allows you to split the traffic inside a chatbot flow up to 6 different variations:
- A/B Testing
Support
ManyChat provides extensive tutorials on how to make a chatbot and all the features of their platform. They also have proper documentation and good customer support.
What I also love about ManyChat is that they have a large Facebook community (100K+ members) in which you can ask all kinds of questions and learn more about the platform.
- Tutorials
- Documentation
- Customer support
Conclusion
Manychat is one of the best chatbot platforms in the world for creating chatbots on Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram and SMS. Especially if you are just starting out with creating chatbots.
In fact, I use it all the time to create chatbots for my own clients.
Their flow builder is super easy to use, provides all the chatbot elements you need, you can store information about your contacts, have conditions to create personalized conversations, built-in live chat, automatically reply to keywords, you can publish your chatbot on 6 channels, all the marketing possibilities you need, many direct integrations with other applications, very useful analytics and all this for only $15 a month.
When thinking of drawbacks, I can only imagine three:
- It doesn’t provide AI or direct AI integrations, only keyword recognition
- The analytics could be better, for example an overview of unmatched user input and flow analytics for a specific time period
- It’s hard to translate your chatbot to multiple languages
No comments:
Post a Comment