15 best conversational AI platforms

The current digital landscape is one where humans and machines dance together in a symphony of communication. One of the biggest influences that have contributed to this unique amalgamation of ‘what is human and what is machine’ is the unprecedented rise of conversational AI platforms. They have transformed the way we interact with computers and revolutionized the very fabric of human-machine conversations.

Whether it’s ordering a pizza, troubleshooting a tech glitch, or simply seeking a friendly chat, Conversational AI platforms have become the invisible conduits through which we navigate our digital lives. With their remarkable ability to comprehend, interpret, and respond to human language, these platforms have ushered in a new era of existing in the digital space itself. It is one that transcends traditional boundaries, enabling us to connect, collaborate, and conquer with unparalleled ease.

In this curated exploration, we delve into the realm of Conversational AI Platforms, uncovering the best among them that have captivated the imagination of both users and developers alike.

What are conversational AI platforms?

Conversational AI refers to technologies that can respond to and hold conversations with their users. As the name suggests, conversational AI platforms are expected to mimic the cadences and flow of human communication from a service-provider perspective. A large volume of data, machine learning and natural language processing is required to train any Conversational AI tool in recognizing speech and text inputs to coming up with the best possible output.

These platforms, which were once restricted to digital assistants, have now traversed into the territories of digital ownership and user-ship of consumers. Name a service and there is probably a conversational AI platform that can get it done for you, may it be automation of administrative tasks, customer service or building websites and chatbots.

The primary goal of these platforms is to create and initiate human-like conversations with the purpose of meeting the users’ whims and fancies. Conversational AI has evolved into advanced tools that can answer users with relevant information and assist in completing tasks diligently and efficiently.

How did we pick our list of top conversational AI platforms?

The process involved into picking our list of top conversational AI platforms was based on meticulous research, analysis and evaluation of a few features highlighted below:

1. The platform’s capability in working with natural language processing (NLP) and understanding in terms of advanced features such as sentiment analysis, entity recognition and responses to intent. Essentially, a platform’s NLP understanding determines its ability to handle complex human conversations and identify the flow, purpose and intent of what is being asked or said.
2. Flexibility and scalability are equally important as any AI platform should be a dynamic system. It should be able to evolve and grow based on the changing needs of users. This includes customization and integration as well as its ability to function with varying user loads.
3. Thirdly, we were concerned with developer tools and documentation. While this is a heavily technical angle to evaluate the effectiveness of a conversational AI tool, a good platform needs to be user-friendly not just in appearance, but with ease of use and accessibility of APIs, SDKs and transparent documentation.
4. Customer reviews and feedback is a fail-safe method to rank any technological innovation. We did not hold back from reading several reviews about these platforms and gauge their performance in the real world.

A quick guide to the best conversational AI platforms

Following are thorough elimination process, these were the platforms that emerged as the best of what conversational AI has to offer currently. This might be a good time to drop a disclaimer about the ranking of tools. Considering the ever-changing nature of AI in general, these tools are not listed in any particular order.

1. IBM Watson Assistant

Developed by the DeepQA project under IBM, Watson Assistant is a question-answering computer system named after the founder and the first CEO of the company, the industrialist, Thomas Watson. Initially developed to answer questions posed by the American quiz show Jeopardy, it went on to win the show in 2011.

Today, the Watson Assistant has progressed beyond just answering questions to advanced information retrieval, representation of knowledge systems, automated responses, and open-domain application of NLP. As IBM themselves claim, the computing system can now ‘see, hear, read, talk, taste, interpret, learn and recommend’.

Key features:

• Watson Assistant has an intuitive interface that can solve problems and respond to user requests when and where they require assistance. These solutions and responses are not only unique to consumer queries but the situation as well.
• It can be easily integrated with back-end systems, CRM Platforms and HRMS tools to make sure that service is individual based, fully functional and easy to understand, comprehend and execute.
• Due to its low-code builder use case, it is susceptible to quick and easy improvement. Regardless of the expertise of the user, IBM’s Watson Assistant has something for everyone, may it be efficiently ensuring workflow, responding to queries or designing real-life and virtual structures.

Pricing: The platform offers three different plans for users: Watson Lite for beginners, which is free of cost, Watson Plus starting at a subscription fee of USD 140/month for organizations and Watson Enterprise for customized subscriptions.

2. Amazon Lex

Designed for building conversational interfaces, Lex is a conversational AI platform launched as a part of Amazon’s AWS service. It is powered by the same conversational engine that is used to operate the infamous Amazon Alexa voice assistant. While functioning as a conversational AI tool, it makes the process of building chatbots absolutely simple.

All a developer needs to do is specify the basics of the flow of the conversation and the tool builds a dynamic chatbot to fit all your needs and demands. Lex is also well-recognized for its engaging, life-like responses and interactions. Its chatbots can be easily optimized to fit mobile devices, web applications, and social media platforms.

Key features:

• Lex has the capacity to design easily accessible, user-friendly AI that grasps intent and context behind conversations across several conversations with a single click, thus eliminating the need for deep level understanding of natural and technological programming languages.
• It can design omnichannel conversational tools without the need for highly developed technological infrastructure. A good enough device and a few precise, clever commands is all you need!
• Lex can be used to automate basic user tasks with specific chatbots of specific demands so as to increase productivity and connect and integrate with other enterprise tools. Lex is particularly designed to integrate other AWS services such as Amazon Cognito, Lambda, CloudWatch and Mobile Hub, making it the perfect tool for monitoring and security.

Pricing:Amazon Lex only charges based on the number of text or speech requests to the platform. Each text request is priced at USD 0.00075 and speech requests at USD 0.004. Additionally, the services offered can be customized to fit one’s needs.

3. ChatGPT

ChatGPT is an advanced conversational AI platform developed by OpenAI and introduced in November 2022. Combining the capabilities of a chatbot with the power of Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) models, ChatGPT offers an impressive language understanding and generation system. It is based on OpenAI’s foundational GPT models, specifically GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, and has undergone extensive fine-tuning using supervised and reinforcement learning techniques for optimal conversational performance.

During its prototype launch on November 30, 2022, ChatGPT gained recognition for its articulate and detailed responses across a wide range of knowledge domains. However, an important limitation to note is its occasional tendency to confidently provide inaccurate information.

Key Features:

• If you are a marketing manager or a copywriter struggling with a social media headline, you need not look too far. As we have all learnt, ChatGPT is perfectly capable of writing the best copies, generating your next best-selling e-book or helping you with your daily blog targets.
• A less well-known feature of ChatGPT is its ability to translate texts quickly and accurately bail you out of a sticky situation or convince someone in their own language or vice versa.
• It also has the ability to analyze and classify texts, answer trivia questions, provide multimodal input support and recommend solutions, suggestions and answers to queries.

Pricing:ChatGPT is generally free to use. However, they have recently introduced an advanced, paid version to a limited audience where pricing is based on the number of tokens used.

4. Google Dialogflow

Offered by Google Cloud, Google Dialogflow is a comprehensive Conversational AI platform that provides lifelike virtual agents that are at the forefront of conversational AI technology. Dialogflow is available in two editions: Dialogflow CX, which offers advanced capabilities, and Dialogflow ES, which provides standard features. As a user-friendly tool, Dialogflow harnesses the power of Google products like Google Cloud Speech-to-Text and Google’s expertise in machine learning.

It is primarily used to develop actions for various Google Assistant devices, enabling developers to create text-based and voice-conversation interfaces in multiple languages. Dialogflow serves as a natural language processing (NLP) platform, allowing companies to build conversational applications for customer interactions across different platforms and languages.

Key Features:

• Google’s Dialogflow is equipped with a visual flow builder which contributes to reduced development time by allowing users to see, edit, share, understand and analyze their work. It is particularly important for collaborative work.

• Its omnichannel implementation feature follows a ‘single creation, deploy everywhere’ approach. It integrates without any trouble with all your platforms, web, mobile and social media.
• Models built using Dialogflow are capable of delivering satisfactory, human-like experience and are capable of holding multi-turn conversations that are powered by the deep learning technology used to power Google’s assistant.

Pricing:Google Dailogflow follows a similar pricing arrangement to ChatGPT. Users are only charged based on the services they avail of the platform. Additionally, new users are also given a credit of $600 free of cost.

5. Meta Messenger Platform

Messenger Platform, developed by Meta, is designed to enhance communication between businesses and their customers through the popular messaging service. With Messenger Platform, your business’s Facebook Page or Instagram Professional account can seamlessly engage with individuals who express interest in your products or services on social media. Importantly, conversations are initiated by the person, ensuring genuine interactions.

Utilizing Messenger Platform comes at no cost to you, providing a cost-effective solution to optimize customer engagement and support. Here’s how it works: when a person sends a message to your business Page or Instagram Professional account while logged into Facebook, Instagram, or via a Meta plugin on your mobile app or website, the Messenger Platform enables your account to handle the incoming message. It has two levels of access: standard and advanced (still in the experiment stage).

Key features:

• Messenger Platform’s Human Agent feature automates responses to clients and businesses in situations where standard messaging window is inapplicable (closed business hours, for example).
• Handover protocol is another cool feature whereby the platform decodes when automated responses need to be shifted from one platform to another without human intervention.

• Messenger is capable of managing both high-volume and low-volume messaging pages with ease, although it is currently only available for Meta’s professional or creator’s social media accounts (Facebook and Instagram).

Pricing: Since the platform is still in its development and experimental stages, it is free for everyone to use.

6.Oracle Digital Assistant

Oracle Digital Assistant empowers businesses to create engaging conversational experiences across text, chat, and voice interfaces. It provides a platform for developing conversational interfaces or chatbots, allowing users to interact with applications and data in a natural and conversational manner. With Digital Assistant, developers can build digital assistants by assembling various skills.

These skills can be prebuilt by Oracle or third parties, customized, or based on available skill templates. When a user interacts with the digital assistant, it intelligently routes their request to the most suitable skill to fulfil their needs. Skills encompass a multilingual natural language processing (NLP) deep learning engine, a robust dialogue flow engine, and integration components to connect with backend systems.

Key Features:

• Oracle Digital Assistant has its own AI-powered voice which can be used to communicate with business applications through commands. Additionally, the feature is built to adapt to business and research-specific jargon and can give and comprehend expressive interactions.
• It offers a unified conversational experience that allows for effective, hassle-free integration with enterprise applications and provides a transparent chatbot architectural framework for third-party, on-premises applications.
• It is open, secure and promises scalability. With its multichannel support, it enables users to start conversations on one platform and finish it on another. This is further facilitated by its integrated authentication profile which ensures secure conversational access across platforms without signing out of any of them.

Pricing:Oracle Digital Assistant has a competitive pricing system to fit the needs of the users starting with $54 for the lowest subscription and $340 for its public bandwidth subscription.

7. LivePerson

LivePerson’s Conversational AI Cloud is a transformative Conversational AI platform that allows brands to establish personalized and meaningful connections with customers, delivering tangible business outcomes. By harnessing the power of AI and machine learning, LivePerson leverages natural language understanding derived from billions of conversational interactions to drive intent discovery and AI automation.

Through the Conversational Cloud, brands gain access to innovative tools and deep consumer insights, enabling them to create intent-driven conversational experiences based on customer intent. This approach significantly enhances customer satisfaction and improves brand efficiency. It enables brands to understand consumer intent through intent discovery, facilitating a continuous connection throughout the customer lifecycle.

Key Features:

• LivePerson Conversational AI Cloud ensures asynchronous efficiency across platforms while also maintaining its curiously human-like facade in terms of personalization offered by the platform.
• The platform’s conversational cloud can be accessed from anywhere at any point of time, making it perfect for the newly emerging work from home and hybrid workspaces. It also allows multi-device access at a time.
• It is integrated with several third-party services through comprehensive and secure API and SDKs, thus allowing for the creation of automated workflow and administrative requirements.

Pricing:As the platform offers several services, there is no single, determined amount for each of them. You are free to choose the services you require, and the payments are dynamic and susceptible to change.

8. S.A.P Conversational AI

Serving as the conversational AI layer of the SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP Conversational AI offers an end-to-end, low-code solution for building and deploying chatbots. The platform allows businesses to train, build, test, connect, and monitor AI-powered chatbots through a single intuitive interface. These chatbots can be seamlessly integrated into both SAP and third-party solutions, simplifying user experiences and streamlining business tasks.

The platform utilizes high-performing natural language processing (NLP) technology and incorporates low-code features, enabling faster development and deployment of chatbots. SAP Conversational AI empowers businesses to enhance access to information, deliver personalized and human-like conversations, and automate tedious tasks, ultimately improving user satisfaction.

Key Features:

• S.A.P’s technology allows you to train and analyze your bot using world-class natural language processing (NLP) technology to enrich key data in any language.
• The platform supports the building of adaptable bots in multiple languages using skills and set up triggers, requirements, and responses directly in the Bot Builder.
• Connect your bot to S.A.P solutions, external communication channels, or back-end systems, and integrate a fallback channel for seamless transfer to human agents. Also, S.A.P Conversational AI helps monitor and improve the user experience with usage metrics and training analytics.

Pricing:SAP Conversational AI has two versions, the community edition and the premium edition. The former is free of cost while the latter is on a pay-as-you-go scheme depending on the services that are provided.

9. ConvyAI

ConvyAI is a robust Conversational AI platform that specializes in creating omnichannel enterprise bots to optimize interactions between customers and brands. With its human-like experience, it enhances customer satisfaction and makes services available 24/7, contributing to business growth. The platform acts as an orchestrator for various components involved in the customer journey, valuing and making conscious decisions based on front-end systems, CRM, and other tools.

Its deep layer of analytics enables monitoring and improvement of services. Leveraging past conversations and real-time customer journeys, ConvyAI delivers advanced automated services. The no-code builder allows personalized routing logic, directing customers to the desired human agent, whether in contact centers, branches, or remote shops.

Key features:

• ConvyAI enables the integration of all aspects of customer service and satisfaction in the form of conscious, context-specific decision-making and uses deep analytics to monitor and ensure that the services are running smoothly while also promoting dynamic continuous improvement.

• Authentic, automated services are designed and executed using the platform’s ability to understand and analyze input data from past conversations.
• It also employs a no-code builder for personalized routing logic, allowing for tailored interactions with human agents in contact centers, branches, or remote shops.

Pricing:No pricing information is given on the platform, so we suggest getting in touch with the sales team.

10. ManyChat

ManyChat was primarily built to help businesses to automate and integrate Facebook Messenger and SMS to drive business growth. With ManyChat, users can quickly build and deploy chatbots on Messenger, catering to various use cases such as sales, marketing, and customer service. The platform offers a range of features that empower businesses to enhance their marketing and sales efforts.

The platform offers a visual drag-and-drop interface to simplify the process of connecting messages and actions within the chatbot. ManyChat’s user-friendly interface is another plus as it allows business platforms to create their own dynamic and interactive conversational experiences without any complex coding. It allows for integration to third party tools such as Stripe, PayPal, Shopify and Active Campaign.

Key features:

• Built specifically for sales and marketing, ManyChat allows users to increase sales, predict performance, drive customer engagement, generate and nurturing leads and personalize messages.
• Its user-friendly platform and interface contribute to quick automation for various platforms to nurture healthy relationships with clients. What’s even better is that users rarely require any formal coding experience.

• ManyChat is effortlessly scalable and promotes integration to third-party services and websites. Whatever tool you require, may it be Google Sheets or MailChimp or HubSpot, the platform connects with them automatically.

Pricing:ManyChat offers three pricing schemes. The basic plan is free of cost and is meant for beginners. The Pro and Premium subscriptions are $15 per month and custom designed respectively.

11. Bard

Google Bard is an experimental conversational AI chat service developed by Google. It aims to provide a similar functionality to ChatGPT but with a key distinction – Bard retrieves information from the web. Unveiled by Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai on February 6, Bard initially utilized Google’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) at launch, which had been introduced two years earlier.

Powered by Google’s advanced large language model (LLM) called PaLM 2, Bard benefits from enhanced performance and efficiency compared to its predecessor, PaLM, which was released in April 2022. The utilization of a lightweight model version of LaMDA in the initial release allowed for scalability and improved accessibility to a larger user base.

Key features:

Since Bard is still in experimental stages, a lot of its features have only been announced. Some of these include:

• Bard is currently available in Japanese and Korean, besides English, however, the platform is expected to support 40+ languages based on large language models used in Google Assistant.
• Bard’s inputs are expected to become more visual to cater to the needs of all of its users. Thus, prompts will see an increase in written text and visual imagery.

• Google has also announced a few new features including source citations, dark theme and export feature to run codes generated on the platform on their partner platforms such as Replit.

Pricing:Since Bard has not exited the experimental stage, there is no fixed pricing on the product. Currently it is easily accessible to everyone for free.

12. Microsoft Azure Bot Service

Microsoft Azure Bot Service is a comprehensive platform for building, testing, deploying, and managing intelligent bots. It is powered by the Bot Framework, which offers a modular and extensible software development kit (SDK) for creating bots that can leverage AI services and interact with users through natural language understanding and speech recognition.

Developers can utilize the Bot Framework SDKs in C#, JavaScript, Python, or Java (kindly note that the Python and Java SDKs are being retired with final long-term support ending in November 2023). The framework also provides command-line tools (CLI) to facilitate end-to-end bot development, along with the Bot Connector Service, which serves as a bridge between bots and various communication channels.

Key Features:

• Azure Bot Service’s easily accessible platform allows users to create, test and publish chatbots without any experience in machine language learning and coding, as well as contributes to automated identification of the future needs of the bot.
• The platform’s Power Virtual Agents feature also enables collaboration between different users and enables a fertile ground for fusion development defined by Garter as ‘multidisciplinary digital business teams that blend technology and other types of domain expertise’.
• Azure’s chatbots are designed to engage with customers in various languages across several channels and platforms including collaborate corporate software and social media.

Pricing:Microsoft Azure Bot Service offers two packages to the users, namely, Standard and Premium channels. The former is free of cost while the latter costs about $0.51 per 1,000 messages.

13. FeedYou

FeedYou is a versatile Conversational AI platform that offers tailored solutions for different business needs. With its powerful AI technology, FeedYou enables automated chatbot communication that can be configured to support three distinct functions: HR, sales, and customer support.

For HR teams, FeedYou provides tools to streamline the recruitment process, while the sales module helps maximize business turnovers. The customer support module focuses on delivering exceptional experiences to clients. The chatbot employed by the platform is capable of conducting employee surveys, facilitating transactions, and engaging in human-like conversations.

Key Features:

• One of the key features of FeedYou is its accuracy in responding to queries, regardless of whether it is academic, affective, context-specific or context-free. Additionally, their virtual assistants ensure automated, relevant responses to clients in a timely manner.
• It is perfectly capable of handling routine questions, giving the user an opportunity to focus on more complex and niche-specific tasks.
• FeedYou’s virtual assistants connect with all of the users’ systems using simple, user-friendly APIs.

Pricing:FeedYou offers custom pricing to all its clients on the basis of the services requested. It is best to get in touch with their sales team before providing or accepting a quote.

14. Yellow AI (Enterprise Conversational AI and Chatbot Platform)

Yellow AI is a leading Conversational AI and Chatbot platform, driven by a vision to revolutionize customer interactions with brands. Founded by three friends who shared a passion for transforming customer engagement, Yellow AI has emerged as a global leader in the field. Their mission is to deliver autonomous, human-like experiences that accelerate enterprise growth.

At the core of Yellow AI’s offering is their generative AI-powered Dynamic Automation Platform. This platform enables the creation of dynamic AI agents that deliver personalized conversational experiences, resulting in higher customer satisfaction and employee engagement. With a customer-centric approach and innovative solutions, Yellow AI’s team of experts strives to generate actionable outcomes for enterprises, their customers, and their employees.

Key Features:

• Yellow AI’s Enterprise Conversational AI is powered by zero-shot learning Yellow AI NLP that has demonstrated higher intent accuracy, is fluent in over 135 languages and comes pre-trained in a billion conversations.
• It offers 150+ predesigned templates and integrations for all your enterprise needs and is thus perfectly suitable for e-commerce, live chat, video activation, payment gateways and CRM.
• The platform’s DocCog feature is an innovative cognitive knowledge system that extracts vital information from the given context and automates all queries and its support is available in several languages including English, German, French and Spanish.

Pricing:Since the platform offers several services, its pricing system can be dynamically designed by the user based on the services they require.

15. Replicant Thinking Machine

Replicant is a cutting-edge Conversational AI platform that offers a remarkable virtual assistant experience for businesses. With their virtual assistant, known as “The Replicant Thinking Machine,” Replicant has transformed the way customer queries are addressed through voice conversations. Say goodbye to traditional call centers as Replicant’s voice assistant delivers exceptional performance.

Responding to customer calls in less than a second and accurately identifying the right context 94% of the time, Replicant’s virtual assistant can handle over a thousand calls within a span of just six weeks. This impressive feat is made possible through their advanced technology and innovative features.

Key Features:

• Replicant’s Thinking Machine is designed to listen and imitate human speech patterns and contextual responses with a 96% accuracy rate.
• The platform is capable of handling over 30+ languages in terms of recognition of variants, dialects, slang over voice, text and chat.
• Replicant has an efficient Large Language Model or the LLM layer that is responsible for training the Thinking Machine without any code or development. The LLM layer also enables flexible, complicated conversations with decreased handle times to cut down escalations and mishaps that usually occur with virtual agents.

Pricing:Depending on the services requested by the client, Replicant’s subscriptions can be custom designed by the clients themselves.

Why Should You Consider Using a Conversational AI Platform?

Conversational AI platforms are at the forefront of revolutionizing how humans interact with technology. Here is a brief look at how they function:

• Conversational AI platforms leverage artificial intelligence and natural language processing to enable seamless interactions between humans and virtual assistants, chatbots, or voicebots.
• Machine learning, deep learning, and neural networks are utilized to continuously improve the platform’s language understanding capabilities.
• Dialogue management systems help maintain context and carry out interactive conversations, adapting responses based on previous interactions and context shifts.
• Integration with backend systems and databases allows the platform to retrieve information and perform actions to fulfill user requests.
• These platforms provide developers with tools and interfaces to design and build conversational experiences.
• These tools may include visual flow builders, natural language understanding models, and analytics dashboards for performance tracking and insights.

By combining these elements, conversational AI platforms create engaging and personalized experiences that simulate natural conversations between humans and machines, enhancing customer service, automating tasks, and improving overall user satisfaction.

And that’s all folks,

The world of Conversational AI platforms is buzzing with innovation and possibilities. With a myriad of options to choose from, businesses are empowered to create interactive and engaging experiences for their customers. Whether it’s the seamless integration with messaging platforms, the power of natural language understanding, or the ability to automate tasks and streamline operations, these platforms are revolutionizing the way we interact with technology.

From the mighty ChatGPT to the versatile ManyChat, and the cutting-edge Google Bard to the powerful Microsoft Azure Bot Service, these platforms offer a diverse range of features and functionalities to suit various business needs. So, if you’re looking to level up your customer service, boost sales, or enhance user experiences, the world of Conversational AI has got you covered.

Finding the right Conversational AI platform is like discovering the perfect chatbot companion – it should be intelligent, intuitive, and tailor-made for your requirements.