Nowadays, many applications are using chatbots and virtual assistants. IT teams to end consumers utilize new chat-based techniques to interact with computer systems. There are also many intelligent chatbot APIs that enable you to build your own AI chat-based programs.

Before diving into chatbot APIs, what exactly do we mean by chatbots? Why are they used, and in what applications?

What Are Chatbots?

In technical language, chatbot software uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to interact with any user naturally. Companies often utilize such AI-driven messaging in websites, help centers, and mobile interfaces. For instance, say you need to buy new shoes, so you visit a retail store’s website. Here, a chatbot could help you select the shoes of your choice in a conversational format. Overall, chatbot software is well-programmed to perform tasks automatically using natural language inputs.

Why Should You Use Chatbots?

Chatbots are advanced options that help create better communication between human and computer systems. In a way, you could say chatbots are advancing the old question-answer system. Since chatbots use Natural Language Processing (NLP), they enhance user experience and engagement for end-user enterprise applications. Chatbots could also reduce a company’s customer service costs. The vital thing to realize is that chatbots require human involvement to be trained.

How Do Chatbots Work?

Getting a chatbot to work is a relatively complex procedure in which there are two main tasks. The first task is to understand the user request, and the second task is to respond to user requests appropriately. Developing chatbot applications will require a few different strategies, like artificial intelligence, semantic understanding, and machine learning. To create a chatbot on a preexisting chat interface, you will likely need to plug into that network’s chatbot API.

15 ChatBot APIs

To develop any chatbot, you have to figure out what your requirements will be. There are various chatbots API available to help you, and many chat-based networks provide APIs to their platform.

1: Facebook Messenger API

This API is freely available and easy to use. It enables developers to make tools to send and receive messages over Facebook Messenger. With this API’s help, you can even make chatbots that can automatically communicate with people on messenger.

Pros:

• The Facebook messenger API helps developers create chatbots that can interact automatically with a group of people and in chats.
• Bots that use the API can handle various other specific requests.
• You can use API to develop bots that can generate posts for groups, like the posts, send notifications.
• Facebook Messenger API can also help you make a bot to answer real-time questions and perform various actions described in the comment box.
• It is free and straightforward to work with. Much documentation is provided.

2: Slack Bot API

Slack is another messaging application used by various teams for communication management. The API helps you to develop Slack chatbots that can communicate with customers and perform tasks automatically. You can also execute some programs on your server using the Slack bot, and it’ll respond with the output. There’s a lot you can do with the Slack bot. Even large companies, like Atlassian, Microsoft, IBM, and others have created Slack bots.

• Pros:*
• Using Slack API, you can develop chatbots to converse with users.
• Slack API allows designing a chatbot with a name, personality traits, and face to whom users can talk.
• You can make chatbots that directly send messages, post messages, and upload files.
• You can even integrate the bots with Facebook also.
• Slack API also facilities you with user-friendly documentation to build bots.
• Aid your brand recognition by hooking into a large bot marketplace.

Cons:

• Although the free version of Slack bot API is available, it has limited features.
• To gain access to more facilities provided by Slack bot API, you have to choose a paid version.

3: Wit.ai API

It is an open-source project that is part of the Facebook incorporation. This API makes use of NLP to develop bots that can converse with humans. Human beings can also text to these bots. You can also use Natural Language Processing with this chatbot and train them on new words and lingos.

Pros:

• The bots created using this API are quite intelligent enough to talk to users.
• The bots made using this API can support various local and international languages.
• With the help of API, you can create chatbots based on both voice and text.
• You can integrate these bots into any messaging platform.
• With the help of a guide, you could start making bots in less time.

Cons:

• Sometimes, bots are not able to understand the user requests.
• It is difficult to control the conversation flow.
• The stories provided by it are in the beta version.

4: Dialogflow

The Dialogflow platform is made available by Google. It is a platform that uses NLP for designing and integration purposes. Using Dialogflow, you can easily integrate an interface into a mobile application, voice response system, and website application. The platform also facilities users with many ways to integrate with products. You can either input text messages, voice recordings, or other audio forms. The response medium of the platform can be text or speech.

Pros:

• It allows you to use both voices as well as text commands.
• It comes with pre-built agents like Flight details, Restaurant menu, Currency conversion, etc.

Cons:

• It provides minimal flexibility.
• You can provide one webhook for the project.
• It doesn’t offer very good customer support.

5: Amazon Lex

Amazon Lex is a service from Amazon that allows building conversational chatbots and integrating them into any application. The platform helps in making interfaces that can converse through text and voice. With Amazon Lex APIs, you can create super-intelligent conversational chatbots.

Pros:

• It makes use of advanced deep learning and natural language processing.
• It facilitates features similar to Amazon Alexa to develop sophisticated chatbots.
• Amazon Lex uses speech to text conversion and tries to understand text content to make applications.
• You can increase the productivity of the contact center or enhance operational efficiencies by using the platform.
• The platform automatically scales up to manage infrastructure.

Cons:

• It doesn’t support various languages.
• The deployment channels available to use are less.
• Data preparation in the bot is quite difficult also.

6: Brainshop.ai API

The chatbots made using the Brainshop.ai API provide artificial intelligence support and customized bots. The chatbots developed using API can easily integrate with applications. It allows your applications to converse with your customers in a friendly manner and helps them to understand more about your product. Brainshop.ai bots can understand human words and respond in natural language.

Pros:

• The Chatbots made using this API are quite similar to Cortana and Siri.
• Bots created with the API’s help have an active “brain” to use when training bots.

7: Botlibre

Botlibre is a free-to-use platform that supports artificial intelligence, live chat, and other bots. It is an open-source platform. Botlibre lets you create chatbots for your applications, websites, social media, IoT, and you can also connect the chatbot to Twitter, Facebook, Slack, KIK, SMS, etc.

Pros:

• You can integrate the bot with Twitter, WhatsApp, Skype, email, and various other mobile applications to enhance productivity.
• Using Botlibre, you can control data and enable privacy.

8: Notify.eu

Notify integrates with text message service, mails, and push notifications to work faster and better. You can use the API in almost any environment and easily integrate with applications like Firebase, MailChimp, SendGrid, Slack, etc. One of the best parts of Notify is that it comes with a real-time reporting UI where you can check all your messages’ status.

Pros:

• It is very flexible and saves lots of money for development purposes.
• It saves development time in areas of management and reporting.
• You can integrate it with Firebase, Mailchimp, and Slack.
• It provides users with message delivery feedback also.

10: Freshchat API

You can use the Freshchat API to communicate with customers across various channels. This API provides multi-channel messaging, chatbot automation and team collaboration on customer conversations. Freshchat API lets you create chatbots for customer support and engagement as well as for lead generation.

Pros:

• It can be used for various purposes, such as handling chats, emails, calls, and even social media.
• The Freddy AI feature can summarize customer conversations and craft relevant responses using a company’s database. It can also transcribe a call and rephrase or expand a text using the appropriate tone.
• Quite easy to integrate.

Cons:

• Some bugs are reported by its users.
• Can be expensive for small businesses.

11: Microsoft Bot framework

The Microsoft Bot framework facilitates enterprise-grade artificial intelligence bots. It is an open-source framework that allows the development of bots having cognitive abilities, suitable for simple bots that can listen, speak, and understand. It will enable you to connect Slack, Facebook Messenger, SMS, Email, etc. The bots created using Bot Framework can also use Azure cognitive services for training. You can develop secure and scalable bots to integrate with IT systems.

Pros:

• The bots can be made using REST APIs as well as an SDK.
• BotFramework has a strong developer community.

Cons:

• Various robust facilities are available only in the paid toolset by Microsoft.

12: Hangouts Chat API

Google provides a Hangouts Chat API to create chatbots for Hangouts. The API offers all the features to make resourceful bots. Such bots use hangout platforms to communicate with customers. It also lets you access other Google data like Gmail, Maps, Youtube, etc.

Pros:

• The API facilitates the user by posting messages and performs tasks automatically.
• It’s free to use.

Cons:

• The bot cannot keep track of messages well.

13: Telegram Bot API

Telegram is a famous message application used for private communication purposes. Using the Telegram API, you can develop bots to work on the Telegram platform and perform various tasks. The chatbot can send messages and connect with other APIs like a weather API, Youtube API, etc. Bots can be very interactive, plus you can also set some slash commands. There are many bots already available on Telegram, like Gmail bot, Wiki Bot, Music Bot, and others.

Pros:

• A Telegram bot API could offer customized notifications and news.
• The API can help you to accept payments or make various games.
• You can create tools like translation and forecasting of weather.
• It is a freely available API.
• It also provides samples of documents to make bots.

Cons:

• Telegram doesn’t provide multiple selections to send data to multiple people.
• The messages sent using the API are not encrypted.

14: ChatBot API

Chatbot API supports both advanced AI and machine learning to develop super-intelligent bots. It also allows you to integrate the bot with other messaging platforms. The Chatbot API helps to make stories related to bots that can answer various questions. Bots built using the API can interact with images and rich messages.

Pros:

• By performing various interactions, the bot gets trained.
• Using the API, you can easily keep an eye on the bot’s activities and give essential suggestions for improvement.
• The chatbots made with the API can integrate with Slack, Facebook, and LiveChat.

Cons:

• It only provides a 14 days trial version of API.
• The cost per month is quite high.

15: Crispchat

The new release of Crisp can collect emails and phone numbers. If you have a Twilio account, you can integrate it with Crisp to start a conversation using SMS. It also allows you to integrate the bot with other messaging platforms. Using the SDK, you can develop inline forms also.

Pros:

• If a chat agent requires an extended processing time to respond, you can play a crispy bird game.
• It is compatible with single-page apps.
• Crisp provides you video and audio call functionality also.

16: NativeChat

NativeChat is a cloud-based platform for developing chatbots for various channels. You can quickly build chatbots for your applications. The chatbots make use of natural language processing for interaction purposes. The chatbots also use cognitive flow services to respond. NativeChat is useful for automating repetitive tasks.

What Are the Benefits of Using Chatbots?

Why would you want a chatbot in the first place? Well, there are a few advantages to building a chatbot. Many consumer-facing companies use chatbots to enhance customer satisfaction. A significant advantage is that users never have to download or update an application. There are a few other reasons to use chatbots:

• Chatbots can provide customer service on social networks, websites, and various applications.
• Chatbots can help users solve issues. They can perform tasks like online shopping, resolving queries, etc.
• Chatbots can be very helpful to promote any brand or company.
• Chatbots enable 24/7 service, helping you honor customer service agreements.

The only thing you have to do is to type a message or speak. For instance, take the Pizza Hut chatbot — all that is required is a few text messages to initiate an order. Isn’t it a fantastic idea for UX?

Conclusion

Due to advancements in artificial intelligence, more and more companies are using chatbots. Chatbots are providing so many benefits to their potential users as well as to the consumers. But the development of a chatbot is not an easy task. It requires many steps and cognitive technologies. Thankfully, chatbot APIs could make a developer’s life easier by providing advanced functionality, along with documentation, data, and services. You can use a particular API to develop a suitable chatbot for your company, project, or business.

In the list as mentioned above, we have discussed many chatbot APIs. Many chatbot APIs are free-to-use as part of a social chat platform. Other APIs are more standalone services, open-source or productized solutions, that enable you to quickly create bots and integrate them into chat, email, SMS text, and other environments. We hope you will find a suitable API to achieve your project’s goals. Before beginning your project, try to study them in-depth once to gain deeper insights.