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Have not you added a Facebook Messenger chatbot to your team yet? Well, you’re then definitely missing out on lots of opportunities that the world’s most popular social platform brings.
You should not miss out on something that has become quite a norm in the industry. And why would you when such a bot does not cost much? In fact, it can help your business in more ways than you think. It can help you provide 24×7 sales support and customer service.
With a Messenger chatbot, you will be available for customers all the time, engage them better, and close sales any time of the day or night. All this becomes a possibility without spending a lot of money as Facebook chatbot pricing is not steep.
So, back to the moot question, how does a Messenger chatbot cost?
The answer is — the cost often depends on so many different factors. It depends on the chatbot type, the functionalities you need, the type of integration you need, the purpose you need the bot for, etc.
In this blog, we will discuss in detail the cost of a Facebook chatbot and other key factors that may affect the price.
Factors that Impact the Cost of Facebook Chatbot
You should never expect chatbots to come with a fixed cost. The same is also true about a Facebook Messenger chatbot as its pricing often depends on a variety of factors. More importantly, the cost also relies on the kind of business requirements one has.
So before looking to know the chatbot price, the ideal strategy is always to know the factors that often affect the pricing. After all, you should not worry about spending more given how a bot can help save businesses up to 30% on their customer support costs.
Some of the key factors that may affect the cost of a Facebook chatbot may include –
- What features you want in the chatbot – The price of a chatbot often depends on what features you expect in it. And in most cases, this need varies from business to business. But in general, you may need a Facebook bot for marketing, customer support, lead generation or collecting customer data, etc. The need for features decides the complexity of the bot, which in turn, impacts the overall cost.
- What kind of approach do you take – When it comes to building a chatbot, there are basically two approaches – first, either you build the bot yourself ( which is known as the DIY approach), or second, you hire someone to build it for you. When you hire an expert to build a bot, it will definitely cost more, plus the quality will also be a lot better than the do-it-yourself manner.
- What type of internal processes do you want the bot to handle – A Facebook chatbot will have the capability to support various of your other internal processes as well. Like, you can link it with the database for smooth functioning between diverse teams and systems. So, the more processes you want the bot to handle, the more it will affect the cost.
- Whether you want the bot to have AI capabilities – A Facebook chatbot that is built with artificial intelligence technology can mimic the human conversational ability to a great extent and also handle queries of any complexity. Such a bot can work successfully only when it has ML algorithms and predictive analytics technologies and both these often affect the price of a bot.
Facebook Messenger Chatbot Price with Custom Development
Every business is unique so does its requirements. This uniqueness is the reason why custom development seems the best route forward when it comes to building a Messenger chatbot. After all, you know what your business needs and thus you can choose the kind of features your bot should have.
So, the cost of building a bot with custom development also depends on various factors. And rather than worrying about the cost, you should see the bright side. You should know that there were some 300,000 chatbots on Facebook a few years back and this number continues to grow due to some reason.
There are many aspects that have a bearing on the overall cost of custom development of a Facebook chatbot.
1. Freelancer or local developer, or an off-shore partner
For building a Facebook bot, you will have three options at hand – a freelancer, a local developer, or an off-shore partner. Out of the three, hiring a freelance would be the cheapest while taking an off-shore partner on board could be the costliest. It’s therefore important to choose the option that ensures all the chatbot business benefits you deserve. But yes, the quality of the bot will always oscillate between good to excellent among the three choices you have.
- Freelancers often lack the expertise to handle big-scale development projects like building a chatbot. Hiring them may give you cost benefits to some extent but it could seriously compromise the quality of the bot.
- A local development company too does not fare well with implementing sophisticated AI and ML features in a bot and that’s why the best option for complex projects is always an off-shore partner.
2. Beta Version or Proof of Concept Model?
Chatbot development is a long-drawn process as it involves various elements and varying degrees of complexity attached to it. So, the final cost of a Facebook chatbot will rely on all the approaches you take for the development.
Take for example, some clients may prefer a “Proof of Concept” model for the development where they would ideally like to first validate the key elements before giving the nod to final development.
In the same way, some clients may ask for the Beta Version with all the basic features of the chatbot. This gives them a good idea about the final product. Taking this approach helps them be aware of all the chatbot features they would get with the final product.
So, when a chatbot development takes place, adopting one of the above approaches can make the cost shoot up.
3. Basic or advanced AI-powered chatbots
Chatbots can be as basic as they can be advanced. While the basic kind of bot understandably costs less compared to the advanced ones, it also lacks the features to comprehend natural language. They are button-based and come with a pre-defined flow.
With a basic Messenger chatbot, you should not expect it to respond to queries as humans do as they can only answer what is scripted. They have limitations and may not suit all types of business requirements. Obviously, how much does a chatbot cost will depend on its features and capabilities?
On the other hand, chatbots with AI features are intelligent and can easily understand human language. They use Natural Language Processing (NLP) which makes them advanced and capable of performing complex tasks. In a way, they are called conversational AI chatbots and they cost around three times more than the basic types.
4. Ability to Customize
Not all chatbots will give you the ability to customize widget or their various aspects. Some will come with fixed UIs and may not let you tinker with anything. With such a bot, the user can’t change the key user interface ingredients like the color scheme, style, etc.
If you still want a bot that gives you the flexibility of customization, be ready to shell out more then. Similarly, chatbots whose backend development involves some form of complexity may also cost more than others.
The cost of a Facebook bot will rise in proportion to the various integrations and business logic you want it to support. Plus, a bot that needs regular maintenance ( most would do) will cost more.
Facebook Messenger Bot Pricing with Bot Builders
A bot builder is always a great option for anyone looking for a low-cost method to build a Messenger chatbot. In this subscription-based option, you will first make a payment and then get access to a chatbot platform or framework for the development of the bot. And then the vendor will also provide support and maintenance as per the plan.
The pricing of building a Facebook chatbot with the bot builder option will depend on a variety of factors.
- Active chatbot – The price of building a bot will depend upon the number of active chatbots you want to connect with your channels. As per the plan you avail, this number starts from one and could go to unlimited.
- Unique engaged visitors/month – The cost of your chatbot will also rely on the number of unique visitors who interacted with it. There will be a limit to how many unique visitors your bot can engage and the price subsequently rises when the limit is crossed.
- Chat history – With a bot, you can access the chatbot history and analyze the metrics and bot performance as and when you like. However, most chatbot platforms often charge more when you want to enjoy this freedom beyond the fixed days.
- Fallback responses – Chatbot can’t be 100% accurate all the time and there will be occasions when it won’t be able to recognize the user input. To deal with such scenarios, you can always play with the chatbot design and set fallback responses. Doing this however will cost more.
- Appointments scheduling – You’d want a chatbot that gives users the flexibility to do appointment bookings or self-schedule. However, getting this feature means you will have to pay more for the bot.
- ML intent & training – You should be ready to pay more for a chatbot that comes with the option to train the bot for using machine learning, comprehending user conversations, and delivering real-time responses.
- FAQ and keyword builder – A good chatbot should always have the option to be trained with FAQs and relevant keywords to effectively handle customer questions of any type. Such bots however would cost more than others.
- Sentiment analysis – Chatbots that are built using artificial intelligence (AI) technology can analyze the sentiments of users by decoding the emotions in the texts or voices. However, getting this feature in the bot can make the prices go up.
- Offensive word filters – Good bots often come with the ability to filter offensive words from interactions, but they cost more than the normal ones.
- Synonyms – You would want the bot to enable you feeding of words as and when needed to better handle customer conversations. But yes, this synonym feature will cost more.
- Bot reports – A quality chatbot must always be able to generate various types of reports, be it for bot analytics, fallback reports, or custom reports. This feature will cost more.
Facebook Chatbot Building with REVE Chat
REVE Chat is easily one of the best platforms to build a chatbot. It helps you build a bot without writing a line of code. Using this AI-assisted platform, you can build a bot within minutes and change the course of our marketing, sales, or support.
The best part, this popular bot-building platform has prices as low as $44 for chatbot development with all the features you’d expect. Here, you can choose plans that suit your business needs perfectly, be it a monthly plan, yearly plan, or even a two-year plan.
On top of that, it also offers custom development which is suited best when the existing plans may not cover all the features you wish to have. So, you can always talk to our experts, tell them what you need and all is done quickly!
Building a Facebook Messenger chatbot with REVE brings a whole lot of other benefits as well.
- Build your Bot Flow – You can build and customize the chatbot design as per the specific needs of the business.
- Easy Scalability – Now it will be easy to scale the bot and develop it in a manner to handle a higher volume of conversations as and when the need arises in the future.
- Human Handover – Yes, you can build a bot that can easily handle the basic queries of users and routes the complex ones to the agent.
- Bulk ML Training – Enjoy the feature of training the bot by easily importing FAQs and answers so that it can provide quick responses all the time.
- Advanced Reporting – Get the freedom to measure various bot performance metrics like first response time, average resolution time, missed chats, etc.
Build Your Messenger bot with REVE and Take Your Business to the Next Level
Building a chatbot is no longer as complex a task as it once was. Thanks to the arrival of bot builders or chatbot platforms, you can now easily create a bot in minutes using drag-n-drop features.
REVE is a similar platform that eases the process of bot building to a great extent. You can rely on it to create an AI-driven chatbot to support various aspects of the business.
In addition, it has a range of other engagement tools as well such as co-browsing software, video chat, etc which you can use and ensure value for customers at each stage of the journey.
You may even combine the bot with the live chat software and let businesses get the best of hybrid support.
The platform has all that it takes to build a future-ready and feature-rich bot for modern enterprises.
Get the Most Out of Facebook Channel with a Chatbot from REVE
Facebook is too good a platform to miss out on all the opportunities that it brings for your business. REVE could help you make the most of an amazing platform by letting you build a powerful chatbot.
Your business can benefit from our chatbot-building features as well as leverage various tools for customer support.
So, the time is right to start a free trial of our chatbot and see how it could turn around the fortunes of your enterprise.
