Extend your Online Support Using the Best Chatbot Development Frameworks
Author : John Prabhu 6th Sep 2019
Be it any social media platform – Facebook, Telegram, Hangouts, Slack, etc. Over a period of time, the usage of chatbots has increased gradually and even on many websites/apps such as Amazon, Uber Eats, and other B2B and B2C businesses. Chatbots can easily understand the user intent with the help of machine learning over a period of time and thus minimizes the errors and offers personalized assistance. It helps in scaling up your business to a greater extent and makes your support available 24×7. So, let’s have a look at the best chatbot development frameworks available for us.
CHATBOT TECH TRENDS IN 2019
Let’s get deeper insights from the trends of chatbot technology before looking at the solutions available for developing them.
In research, the experts of Business Insider have found that by 2020, 80% of the companies want chatbots for their business. Adobe’s research found that 28% of leading companies leverage AI for their marketing efforts and 31% are planning to implement this strategy in the next 12 months.
Lauren Foye forecasted that using chatbots, banks will automate up to 90% of their customer interaction by 2022. Research conducted by Relay showed that 58% of businesses using chatbots are B2B focussed and 65% of businesses using chatbots are engaged in web software.
Recent research work by Spiceworks concluded that 40% of large enterprises have 500+ employees on-board are planning to use one or more AI-based chatbots over corporate mobile devices. Opus Research predicts that 4.5 billion dollars would be invested in chatbots by 2021.
A survey conducted by Drift showed that 27% of US adults are willing to buy basic goods via chatbots, and 13% of US adults have at least purchased an expensive product using chatbots. A survey by Edison showed that 16% of US residents have smart speakers such as Google Home or Alexa.
1. Pandorabots – Free & Open-source-based Website to Develop and Publish Chatbots
Pandorabots is an open-source framework for chatbot development with AI rich features. It makes the best use of both Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML) and Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity (ALICE) – a chatbot for natural language processing.
Recently, Pandorabots brought in new innovations that help you visualize the Artificial Intelligence Markup Language.
Pandorabots supports the following SDKs for chatbot development:
2. Microsoft Bot Framework – A Framework with Open-source SDKs, Tools, and Services
Microsoft Bot Framework is a wonderful platform that helps you develop, connect, publish, and manage chatbots. The chatbots built on this framework comes with agile learning and are interactive and smart to deliver the best user experience.
You can use already built and existing models to effectively communicate with your users on apps such as Facebook Messenger, Microsoft team, Skype, Kik, Cortana, Slack, and websites.
Microsoft Bot Framework supports the following SDKs for chatbot development:
- C# (.NET Core, WebAPI)
- JavaScript (Node.js, TypeScript)
- Java
- Python
Also, you can solve real-life problems by integrating your bot with Microsoft Cognitive Services. Thus, this chatbot Framework gives life to your ideas and turn them into reality.
3. Botpress – Dual-license Open-source Bot Development Platform
Botpress is an enterprise-grade solution to develop, deploy, manage, and scale the chatbots. Though it is intuitive and simple, it is as flexible as a bot that is built from scratch. It operates just like the way WordPress does to build websites.
Botpress supports the following SDKs for chatbot development:
- JavaScript
- C++
- TypeScript
- Haskell
- Dockerfile
One of the most unique attractions of Botpress is that it helps you to develop your bot locally and deploy it on a cloud hosting provider of your choice.
4. ChatterBot – Free Cloud-based AI Chatbot Platform to Build Bots
The free chatbot building tool – ChatterBot is driven by Node.js. It is basically a Python library, acts as a conversational dialog engine and uses machine learning. Moreover, it is language independent and this feature enables the usage of any language of choice to train the chatbot.
The functioning of bots developed using ChatterBot is very simple. Higher the inputs received by the bot, the higher is the efficiency and accuracy of the chatbot to process the output. The bot continuously learns by itself in the process and it is easy to get used to it.
ChatterBot supports the following SDKs for chatbot development:
- Python
- Django
- MongoDB
5. Dialogflow (Google-owned) – An End-to-end, Build-once Deploy-everywhere Development Suite
As Dialogflow is powered by Google’s machine learning algorithm, you can build voice or text-based conversational interfaces for apps and chatbots. Also, you can connect to users on Mobile apps, Alexa, Messenger, Google Assistant, websites, etc. using Dialogflow. Since Dialogflow runs on the Google Cloud Platform, it can be easily scaled to serve millions of users.
Dialogflow supports the following SDKs for chatbot development:
You can use the above-mentioned SDKs to detect the agent API and intent. When it comes to fulfillment, you can download and use the Node.js SDK.
In addition, it supports more than 20 programming languages and is highly user-friendly. Hence, it is a great chatbot framework for developing NLP-based applications.
6. RASA Stack – An Open-source Conversational AI Framework
RASA Stack is a machine learning-based open-source chatbot development framework. The two major integrants that support this particular framework are Rasa Core and Rasa NLU. Based on the entities and the intents of the inputs, the former functions whereas, the latter is the natural language processing of the chatbot.
RASA Stack supports the following SDKs for chatbot development:
- Python
- JavaScript
- CSS
- Haskell
- Jupyter Notebook
7. Wit.ai – A Free Text or Voice-based Bot Building Tool by Facebook
With Wit.ai, you can develop a voice interface for smartphone apps, enable automation in wearables, etc. and is not limited only to the development of bots.
Wit.ai supports the following SDKs for chatbot development:
- Python
- Node.js
- Ruby
- Golang (Google Go)
8. Botkit – Open-source Bot Making Toolkit
Botkit one of the leading bot developer tools. Botkit.ai helps you build your bot with the help of a visual conversation builder and allows you to add plugins as per your needs. It works on a natural language processing engine from LUIS.ai plus includes open-source libraries.
By leveraging visual conversation builder, it aids in the development of chatbots for various businesses regardless of the industry. Also, it allows you to download and add plugins of your choice to further customize it. Node.js is an excellent resource to get started with Botkit.
There are more than 10,000 bots developed and in use with the help of Botkit. It works and integrates with the following platform. Using Botkit, thousands of bots have been built and are in use.
It works exceptionally well with platforms such as Heroku – a cloud platform as a service (PaaS) company, Cisco Spark – a complete collaboration suite for teams, Glitch – a simple tool for creating web apps, Twilio – a cloud communications platform as a service (PaaS) company.
Botkit supports the following SDKs for chatbot development:
9. IBM Watson – A Suite of Enterprise-ready AI Services, Applications, and Tooling
Leveraging 1 billion Wikipedia words, the IBM Watson framework is built to provide seamless and proper communication with the bot users. Having ML at its core, it easily responds to the natural language inputs across various platforms such as messaging apps, mobile devices, websites, and robots.
Regardless of the industry, you can set up a chatbot using IBM Watson Assistant for your business in minutes. You can get started with the Watson Assistant for free with 10k API calls each month.
IBM Watson supports the following SDKs for chatbot development:
Choose your Framework. Let us Build your Bot.
All the above-mentioned frameworks would help you choose the best chatbot framework for your messaging apps & websites. There are unique advantages and disadvantages to each of these frameworks. Upon fully understanding your requirements, we can suggest the best chatbot development framework for your requirements.
Our expert developers have hands-on experience in delivering industry-leading services to your chatbot requirements. No matter whether you want a chatbot for your website or your dedicated messaging app, we have got you completely covered. You can schedule a meeting for requirement discussion by dropping an email at media@techaffinity.com stating your requirement, and we will get in touch with you shortly.