If you are planning on making a chatbot, you may have heard of ManyChat and Chatfuel, as they are two of the most popular chatbot builders on the internet. You can use them to create Facebook Messenger chatbots without writing a single line of code.
However, which one to choose between those two. What benefits does each offer to us? Let us take a look at them.
Interface
Since both of them are beginner-friendly chatbot builders, the interface is one of the most important things to look for when comparing these two.
ManyChat
ManyChat has a really simple and flexible user interface. You can choose from two different types of builders – Basic and Flow.
You can test the chatbot in Facebook Messenger before you release it on your website. The releasing process is extremely easy as well.
Chatfuel
Similar to ManyChat, Chatfuel has two different types of builders – Visual Flow Builder and Block Builder.
However, Chatfuel doesn’t allow you to use both chat builders at once. If you build a flow in the Visual Flow Builder, you won’t be able to see it in the Block Builder and vice versa. This is where ManyChat gets an edge, but it won’t matter if you don’t want to use both the builders interchangeably.
Other than that, here also, you can set up the chatbot easily and test it out before it goes live.
Chatbot Elements
Let us take a look at what types of custom messages you can create in ManyChat and Chatfuel.
ManyChat allows you to use almost every chatbot element that can be used, like images, audio, delay, attachments, etc. The only element that is unavailable is vertical lists since it isn’t supported by Facebook Messenger.
As for Chatfuel, it supports every other custom chat element other than vertical lists, attachments, and location sharing.
Here, ManyChat emerges as the clear winner since it provides more elements.
Channels
When selecting a chat builder, we need to check how many channels we can integrate our chatbot in so that users can select their preferred means of communication.
Plus, it ensures that you provide an omnichannel experience to your potential customers. If someone sends you some response on Facebook Messenger, you will be able to send an email to the user based on the response.
ManyChat supports chatbot integration in your website, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, email, and SMS. However, you can only send text messages only to residents located in the United States and Canada. If you want to send messages to other countries, you will need to use Twilio integration which is available in the ManyChat AppStore.
ManyChat has plans for expanding, and right now, WhatsApp and Telegram channels are in beta. So, we can expect these two channels in the near future.
As for Chatfuel, you can create a chatbot only on your website, Facebook Messenger and Instagram. In this case, ManyChat takes the win.
How to Work with ManyChat
If you’d like to see how you can work with ManyChat in real life, check our detailed tutorial:
Wrapping Up
As we can see from the comparison, ManyChat has a lot of benefits. But at the end of the day, both of these chatbot builders have an excellent user interface and all the essential features. If you don’t care about the features that are not present in Chatfuel, you can use it for a smooth experience as well.
