BotXO Review

BotXO is a chatbot builder for chatbots on websites and Facebook Messenger. The question is: Should you use BotXO to create your chatbots?

Let’s find out!

User Interface

When you are going to create your chatbot in BotXO, BotXO uses a Visual Flow Builder:

Once you click on one of the chatbot elements, a pop-up opens and you can determine the messages that are sent to the user:

And also determine what happens if a user responds to that message (called a Connection in BotXO):

Ultimately, you want to test your chatbot before it actually goes live. This is also possible with BotXO:

What I mainly like about their test feature, is that you can send a test link to people that don’t have a BotXO account, which allows you to let your chatbot be tested by a lot of people (without having a BotXO account).

Overall, the interface of BotXO is easy to use and it is also pretty easy to set up your chatbot.

• Visual Flow Builder

  Create chatbot dialogs with a visual flow builder.
• Test chatbot

  Is it possible to test the chatbot before putting your new flows or changes live?
• Interface easy to use?

  Is the chatbot platform easy-to-use?
• Easy to setup a chatbot?

  Is it easy to set up your chatbot with this chatbot platform?

Chatbot elements

BotXO provides a lot of chatbot elements, they only don’t have Location sharing, attachments and vertical lists.

But these are definitely no deal-breakers, so they perform pretty well on this one.

• Delays

  Use delays between messages in your chatbot
• Images

  Can you send images via your chatbot?
• Video

  Can you send video via your chatbot?
• Audio

  Can you send audio via your chatbot?
• Attachments

  Can you send attachments via your chatbot?
• Gallery (Horizontal list)

  Show a gallery of cards inside your chatbot. A card consists of an image, title, subtitle and button.
• Vertical list

  Show a vertical list of items inside your chatbot
• Emojis

  Can you use emojis inside your chatbot?
• Persistent Menu

  Can you add a persistent menu to your chatbot?
• Quick Replies

  Can you add quick replies to your chatbot where users can click on?
• Buttons

  Can you add buttons to your chatbot where users can click on?
• Free text input

  Can chatbot users freely type text to your chatbot whenever they want to?
• Location sharing

  Can users share their location inside the chatbot?
• Email validation

  When a chatbot user gives their email, can the platform validate it's a correct email address?
• Phone number validation

  When a chatbot user gives their phone number, can the platform validate it's a correct phone number?
• Date validation

  When a chatbot user gives a date, can the platform validate it's a correct date?

Users

With BotXO, you can just ask a question to the user and store the answer in a custom field.

Based on those custom fields, you can create user segments in BotXO.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to assign tags to users, but this is not a huge drawback. You can use a custom field as a tag by setting the value to “Yes” or “No”.

• Custom fields

  Store information from your chatbot users inside fields. For example, you can ask for someone's email and store it inside the "email" custom field.
• Tags

  Add tags to users in your chatbot flows to organize and categorize contacts.
• User segments

  Can you create user segments based on custom fields and tags?

Messages

In BotXO, you can send a broadcast to your complete audience or a part of your audience.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to use sequences with BotXO.

Also, you cannot use conditions in your chatbot flows. This is a huge drawback, because you cannot create personalized experiences for your chatbot users.

Moreover, it is possible to create a chatbot in multiple languages, but you cannot easily translate your chatbot.

• Broadcasts

  Send a message to all or a part of your chatbot users at a specific date and time
• Sequences

  Send messages on a pre-defined schedule with a certain time interval between those messages
• Conditions

  Make checks in your chatbot flow based on if-then logic. For example, if the user has not given their email, ask for their email.
• Multiple languages

  Is it possible to create a chatbot in multiple languages?
• Easy to translate

  Can you translate text to other languages without using a third-party platform and without creating duplicate flows?

AI & NLP

With BotXO, you can understand the intent of the user by using their built-in AI engine.

What I really like about BotXO is that they already provide lots of pre-built intents that you can use with one click:

On the other hand, you can only add and edit intents by uploading them via an Excel spreadsheet, which seems a bit weird to me.

Also, it is not possible to use entities with BotXO, which is a drawback.

• Keywords

  Trigger chatbot flow based on certain words or phrases a user says to the chatbot.
• Intents

  Trigger a chatbot flow by understanding the intent of the user.
• Entities

  Capture specific information from sentences. For example, if a user says "veggie pizza", the chatbot can understand it's not a regular pizza, but a veggie pizza.
• Dialogflow integration

  Does the chatbot platform provide a direct integration with Google's AI Platform?

Channels

BotXO provides four channels you can put your chatbot on:

• Your website
• Facebook Messenger
• Zendesk chat widget (also for your website)
• And Azure

So basically you can put a chatbot on your website and on Facebook Messenger.

This is a bit of a drawback, because you cannot create an omnichannel chatbot experience for your users.

• Website

  Can you publish your chatbot on your website?
• Facebook

  Can you publish your chatbot on Facebook?
• Instagram
• Whatsapp

  Can you publish your chatbot on WhatsApp?
• Telegram

  Can you publish your chatbot on Telegram?
• SMS

  Can you publish your chatbot on SMS?
• Slack

  Can you publish your chatbot on Slack?
• Skype

  Can you publish your chatbot on Skype?
• Email

  Can you publish your chatbot on email?

Integrations

BotXO has a built-in live chat, which is the most important integration of any chatbot software:

Moreover, they have an integration with Zapier, which allows you to connect your chatbot with almost any software application on earth.

Lastly, you can create your own webhooks in BotXO.

• Livechat

  Direct integration with live chat, either via a built-in live chat functionality or a third-party live chat platform.
• Zapier

  Direct integration with Zapier, one of the largest integration platforms in the world.
• Make (formerly Integromat)

  Direct integration with Make (formerly Integromat), one of the largest integration platforms in the world.
• Google Sheets

  Direct integration with Google Sheets, to store or retrieve data from sheets.
• Webhooks

  Can you call a webhook inside your chatbot flow to send data to other applications?

Marketing

BotXO marketing possibilities are really limited.

They only provide a native website widget, where you can set the styling of the widget:

It is not possible to set a greeting message for your website users, which is a big drawback (because this is a really good way to attract more chatbot users).

• Facebook website widget

  Embed your chatbot as a Facebook Widget on your website.
• Native website widget

  Embed your chatbot as a native widget (your own branding & colors) on your website.
• Landing pages

  Can you create a simple landing page to drive users to your chatbot?
• Facebook Ads

  Start a conversation with your chatbot when someone clicks on a Facebook Ad
• One-Time Notification

  Send one-time notifications via Facebook Messenger for a topic that a chatbot user has opted-in for
• Facebook comments auto-reply

  Automatically reply with your chatbot to users who comment on your Facebook Posts
• Button creator

  Add a button to your website to drive users to your chatbot
• Custom URLs for your chatbot

  Generate a simple URL that can be shared anywhere to send users to your chatbot

Pricing

I was shocked when I saw the prices of BotXO. When I first used BotXO and looked at their features, I expect them to be in the $10-$50 per month price range. But that wasn’t the case, it was 10 times that.

BotXO provides a 14-day free trial which allows you to test their platform. When the 14 days have expired, you need to choose one of their plans.

Their Essential plan costs €500 per month and comes with 1 chatbot, unlimited chats, 1 user and the conversational Web SDK (no idea what that is):

If you want to expand to more chatbots, you need to go with the Business plan, which costs €800 per month for 3 chatbots, all the features of the Essential plan, the Analytics API, and the Conversational AI API.

There are two drawbacks of the pricing of BotXO:

1. It is unclear what the “Conversational Web SDK”, the “Analytics API” and the “Conversational AI API” mean. I have no idea what they do and why I need them.
2. It is really expensive for the features they provide. For this price, you would expect far more advanced chatbot features such as an advanced live chat, more channels, the possibility to condition in chatbot flows, more marketing possibilities, an option to edit intents in the software, entities in AI & NLP, and an analytics dashboard (see next section).

• Free trial

  Does the chatbot platform provide a free trial?
• Free plan

  Does the chatbot platform provide a free plan?
• Price per month

  What is the lowest price per month for creating a chatbot on this platform?
  500
• Monthly pricing available?

  Is it possible to pay monthly?
• Money back guarantee

  Is there a money-back guarantee in case you are not satisfied with the platform?

Analytics

The analytics of BotXO are really minimal.

They only provide a “dashboard” where you can see all the interactions people had with your chatbot:

But this is just a table with when the conversation happened, which chatbot flow was triggered and what message was sent.

There is no graph with the number of messages and users in a specific time period. Also, it’s hard to analyze the user input that the chatbot didn’t understand, which is a disadvantage, because that allows you to easily improve the answers of your chatbot.

• Dashboard

  Dashboard that provides general analytics of your chatbot.
• User input

  Get the input from users that your chatbot didn't understand.
• Sent messages

  The number of messages that were sent by your chatbot.
• Open rate

  The percentage of chatbot users that opened a message inside your chatbot.
• Click rate

  The percentage of chatbot users that click on a button inside your chatbot.
• Conversion rate

  The percentage of users that converted through your chatbot. For example, the percentage of users that gave their email address
• Fall back rate

  The percentage of interactions where the chatbot did not know an answer to a question.
• Custom dashboards/reports

  Can you create your own dashboard or reports?

eCommerce

Unfortunately, BotXO doesn’t provide any direct eCommerce integrations.

• Payments

  Collect payments inside your chatbot
• Shopify

  Direct integration with Shopify to get products, order information and cart data.
• WooCommerce

  Direct integration with WooCommerce to get products, order information and cart data.
• Buy directly within the chatbot

  Ability for chatbot users to buy products or services directly from a chatbot
• Cart abandonment

  Trigger messages in the chatbot when a user abandons their cart on a website or inside the chatbot

Templates & Cloning

BotXO provides 4 templates that can help you to get started with building a chatbot.

Unfortunately, you cannot create these templates yourself and share them with others.

On the other hand, you can duplicate your chatbot flows, so that you can easily reuse them.

• Templates

  How many pre-built templates does the chatbot platform provide?
  4
• Make template

  Can you make templates yourself?
• Share template

  Can you share self-created templates with others?
• Duplicate chatbot flows

  Is it possible to duplicate chatbot flows, so you can easily reuse them?
• Duplicate chatbot elements

  Is it possible to duplicate chatbot elements, so you can easily reuse them?

Optimization

BotXO doesn’t provide any optimization, such as A/B Testing.

• A/B Testing

  Can you optimize your chatbot flows by performing A/B tests?

Support

BotXO provides video tutorials on Youtube and documentation on their own website.

Besides, they provide customer support via email.

• Tutorials

  Does the chatbot platform provide tutorials on how to use its platform?
• Documentation

  Does the chatbot platform provide documentation on how to use its platform?
• Customer support

  Does the chatbot platform provide customer support?

Conclusion

So, should you use BotXO to create your chatbots?

No, I wouldn’t recommend that.

On itself, the platform isn’t that bad, the price is just way too high. For €500 per month, you would expect far more advanced chatbot features, such as an advanced live chat, more channels, possibility to condition in chatbot flows, more marketing possibilities, an option to edit intents in the software, entities in AI & NLP, and an analytics dashboard.