Chatmatic Review

By Joren Wouters Updated on

Chatmatic

Chatmatic is a chatbot platform for Facebook Messenger, Instagram and SMS. But is Chatmatic worth paying for?

You will find out in this review!

 

User Interface

When you log in to Chatmatic, you first see an overview of your chatbots and the latest analytics:

chatmatic-dashboard

Once you selected one of your chatbots, the interface changes. On the left-hand side you have a menu with:

  • Subscribers – here you can see all your users that used your chatbot
  • Triggers – Growth tools to get more users to your chatbot
  • Broadcasts – speaks for itself
  • Workflows – these are your chatbot flows
  • Training – training courses on Chatmatic
  • Settings

When you are going to actually build your chatbot, Chatmatic uses a Visual Flow Builder:

chatmatic-flow-builder

In general, the interface is easy to use and it is easy to set up your chatbot.

The only thing that seems odd to me, is that there is no option to preview the flows before actually publishing them. With this, you cannot double-check a flow if it’s totally working before you are publishing it for the whole world.

  • 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

Chatmatic got enough elements to make your chatbot. It only lacks on Attachment, Lists, Validation and Location Sharing. The biggest drawback of those four is the validation part, because you cannot check whether a user has filled a properly formatted email or telephone number.

But, you got enough elements to make your own chatbot!

  • 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

In Chatmatic, you can see a complete overview of all your users with their according information:

User information inside Chatmatic

Moreover, you can assign custom fields and tags to users. But, you cannot use these custom fields and tags to create user segments. And when you are going to send a broadcast, you can only use tags to condition on.

  • 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

With Chatmatic is possible to send broadcasts and sequences to your users. You can send a broadcast to your complete audience or a part of it (using tags to condition your audience). Moreover, using the Smart Delay feature in Chatmatic, you can send sequences:

chatmatic-smart-delay

Unfortunately, you cannot have a chatbot in multiple languages.

  • 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 Chatmatic, you can recognize keywords of the user and create a certain response with your chatbot:

chatmatic-keywords

But this is also where it stops. You cannot understand the intent of the user or use Entities in Chatmatic.

  • 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

With Chatmatic, it is possible to have a chatbot on Facebook Messenger, Instagram and SMS.

To be honest, I don’t know if you can send worldwide text messages with their SMS channel. I couldn’t find any documentation on this.

  • Website
    Can you publish your chatbot on your website?
  • Facebook
    Can you publish your chatbot on Facebook?
  • Instagram
    Can you publish your chatbot on 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

It seems that Chatmatic has a built-in live chat, however, I couldn’t get it to work.

When I typed something in their live chat, it just didn’t send it to the user in Facebook Messenger.

And this is a huge drawback, because live chat is the most important integration of any chatbot software.

Moreover, Chatmatic provides integrations with Zapier and you can create your own API calls to other applications using their Webhooks feature.

  • 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 an API inside your chatbot flow to send or get data from other applications?

Marketing

With Chatmatic, it is possible to connect your chatbot to Facebook ads, automatically reply to Facebook Comments, create a button for your website and make custom URLs to your chatbot.

There is only one drawback: Chatmatic is partly compliant with the latest Facebook policies. On the one hand, they are compliant, because you can send broadcasts using one of the Messenger tags:

chatmatic-broadcast

But on the other hand, you cannot use the One-Time Notification. And this is a huge drawback for a chatbot platform that is so focused on Facebook Messenger.

For Instagram, I haven’t found any documentation or marketing triggers that you can use to start a conversation.

  • 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

Maybe the most important part: Pricing!

And to be really honest to you: when I first started Chatmatic I felt a little bummed. Because when you click on “Free trial” on their website, this is the next window:

chatmatic-pay-window

Immediately a commitment of 149$ per month. And yes, they provide a free trial, because the first month is free, but you immediately need to give your billing information (which I don’t like).

On this screenshot, it says that the monthly pricing is 149 dollars. But in the dashboard, it says that it is 97$. I really don’t know which one of those two is true, so I hope for the 97$.

But this is still a lot of money. And to my opinion, it is not actually worth it. For this kind of money, you would expect a better user overview, a working live chat, integrations with other software, better AI capabilities, analytics dashboard and compliance with the latest Facebook policies.

Moreover, there is additional pricing if you want to use SMS:

chatmatic-pricing

  • 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?
    97
  • 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

With Chatmatic, you can see the analytics per message in your chatbot flow. For every message, you can see how many times it is sent, delivered, opened and clicked.

Moreover, you can also see the averages for the whole flow:

chatmatic-analytics

In general, these analytics are fine to optimize your chatbot flows, but it would be nice if they added a dashboard where you can see all the analytics for your complete chatbot.

There is one drawback of their analytics: you cannot analyze the user input that the chatbot didn’t understand. Therefore, it is hard to improve the automated 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

Chatmatic does not have any eCommerce integrations whatsoever.

  • 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

Chatmatic provides 4 free templates that you can use to build your chatbot.

Moreover, you can also create templates and share these with others.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to copy your chatbot flows or chatbot elements.

  • 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

With Chatmatic, you can optimize your chatbot by using A/B testing.

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

Support

It seems that Chatmatic offers some training on how you can use their platform, but that training isn’t free.

Moreover, I couldn’t find any tutorials or documentation on how to use the Chatmatic, which is a huge drawback. This can keep you of really understanding how to use the software.

Also, they do provide customer support via their own support desk, which you can access via the Chatmatic dashboard. I cannot decide over the quality of their support, but it does not seem really good. On Facebook there is a page Chatmatic Support, which is rated as 2.3/5 stars and shows the following:

chatmatic-support

  • 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 buy Chatmatic?

My opinion: No, you shouldn’t.

As I already mentioned in the Pricing section, it is way too much money for the features that you get. For 97 dollars per month, you expect a better user overview, a working live chat, integrations with other software, better AI capabilities, compliance with the latest Facebook policies and an analytics dashboard.

And if you are getting stuck and you need some help, I honestly do not know if you can rely on their customer service.

 

Comments (33)

  1. Karen Jones

    I asked for a refund as the software did not function, they said wait for the updates so I did then it still did not work correctly. DO NOT BUY THIS SOFTWARE. Worst support plus they did not deliver what they said they would in the way of training. I will never ever buy from TRAVIS STEVENSON again as he is a total rip off merchant! Be warned!

    1. Joren Wouters

      Thanks for your sharing your experience, Karen!

  2. Allen

    Thank you for this review. What do you suggest in its place?

      1. Bear

        Hey Joren, so what do you recommend or prefer personally given these choices? All 4 of them have good reviews and I can’t decide. Many thanks!

        1. Joren Wouters

          It really depends on your needs. But if you only want to create a chatbot for Facebook Messenger, I would recommend to use ManyChat or SilFer Bots.

  3. Alex Barros

    Thanks. I’m watching the webinar now…

    1. Joren Wouters

      Hey Alex! Which webinar are you watching?

  4. Mario

    I have had Chatmatic for 2 weeks. I hired someone full time to learn the system and handle all of the chatbot services for my agency. Chatmatic has been a complete waste of time. Support takes days to respond. The chat system is buggy, after spending hours on a workflow a bug was encountered twice and then the wait begins for support. Their support is comprised of tons and tons of videos, some are hosted on the training platform, and some redirect you to multiple facebook pages. The training organization is complete garbage. For instance trying to use live chat on a website, Travis directed me to a PDF. The one step that I needed was vague with no example of how the step should be done, instead it literally said “whatever you want here”. When support was contacted again Trent gave a vague answer still leaving me with the function unusable. We have been waiting on support for over 24 hours now as the workflows have stopped triggering no matter what configuration has been used. Want to use Zapier with Chatmatic? Good luck, you’ll need to go through their 14 page PDF document. I hired someone who offers zapier integration and after 2 days he still can not get the system to work cleanly. Chatmatic is underdeveloped, lacks support and the training is a mess. I wish I wouldn’t have even bothered with this waste of time system. I am surprised people even use this after putting so much time into it. Keep in mind I have been successfully doing SEO since 2009, figuring things out is my strong suit.

    1. Joren Wouters

      Thank you for sharing your extensive experience, Mario! Did you also address these issues to Chatmatic?

      1. Mario

        Yes, and Trent (seemingly the only person they seem to have running support) has continued in Chatmatic style dropping breadcrumbs of information whenever he gets back around to my ticket instead of just showing me what needs to be done. A fact I pointed out to him in my initial support ticket that took days for him to respond to. I have workflows created that I spent hours on creating that will not trigger no matter how they are set up. It would be nice if support was readily available instead of needing to way day to address issues like that, that are urgent. Within 20 minutes of using Many Chat everything was working with ease. I asked for a refund and Trent said sorry there is a no refund policy which shows a company that lacks integrity and doesn’t stand being their essentially paid beta test of a product. I paid $500 for the unlimited plan and spent over a month trying to figure it out. You would think they would have the decency to honor a refund considering they offer plans up to 250 subscribers for free and I only had a handful connect as I was only testing. It’s really unfortunate that Travis runs a business this way as he shows off his 2 comma ClickFunnels awards but will rip someone off that doesn’t like his mediocre product.

        1. Col

          Hi Mario
          A bit late in my response and I’m guessing things have moved on for you since November.
          I’m quite new to FB Messenger and bots and got onto Chatmatic through signing for the Lifetime deal in GroovePages. Time will tell on the wisdom of those ‘investments’.
          Just thought that I’d share my dumb-newbie experience of my first Chatmatic workflow.
          I carefully followed Travis’s extensive video training but for the life of me could NOT get my automation to fire using an m.me link … until … wait for it … I realised I had to click the “Get Started” messenger button the first time! DOH!
          They all worked rather well after that!
          It bothers me hearing about the lack of renewal opt-out given Travis’s verbiage around transparency etc. etc. My daughter bought the US$499pa lifetime subscription so I hope we can at least make it earn the US$499 pa to pay for itself!

      1. Eric

        @steve what plan do you have using uchat since your using it for clients?

  5. Mario

    As a correction on my first post, it has been over a month now that I have had Chatmatic, not 2 weeks. As I stated I hired someone to work on this and didn’t realize that much time had passed when I personally started working with it. I bought the plan when he launched the 3 day training event with the $500 yearly unlimited deal just for clarification.

    1. Joren Wouters

      Thanks for the clarification and sharing your experience, Mario!

  6. Col

    Thanks for the Chatmatic review – quite enlightening.
    I’d be interested to know if your assessment has changed much since the update of the platform?
    I find the current UI to be pretty reasonable even for a newbie to FB AI, and the video training is pretty comprehensive now and covers much of what is needed to get going.
    The main training weakness for me was the assumption that the audience is already fully-literate on FB as opposed to just ‘ someone with a FB page’.
    I do suspect the support is still an issue, judging from comments in the members areas, but I somehow suspect when you compare functionality of the likes of ManyChat and Chatmatic, what’s weak on one is strong on the other and vice-versa to some degree, though I have no experience of ManyChat so I base that on reading others comments and reviews.

    1. Joren Wouters

      Hey Col! No, my assessment of the platform did not change since the most recent update. If you are looking for a comparison between ManyChat and Chatmatic, you can find that here: https://chatimize.com/chatmatic-vs-manychat/

      1. Colin

        Thanks for the reply Joren
        Your comparison of CM vs MC seems very thorough and sort of throws CM into the shade really 🙁
        … especially against ManyChat!
        FWIW, I got onto CM through joining Groove(Funnels) lifetime deal, and their promotion of Chatmatic.
        Sadly the CM support has been nothing short of appalling (aka non-existent in my case) and I will be removing my annual PayPal renewal!
        Groove itself still looks like an ok mid/long-term investment but its certainly not (yet) the “killer” all-in-one marketing platform it’s vision seeks to deliver, and it seems slow in getting to that status. Still, Groove was a nominal one-off cost and may yet bear fruit down the track.
        Its “OK” as it is and it is slowly improving, its just needs a lot of polishing to beat the competition in each of the marketing tools it seeks to better.
        Thanks again. Col

        1. Joren Wouters

          Thanks for sharing your experience!

        1. Joren Wouters

          Actually, Chatmatic is already on that page. I haven’t made a review of Uchat, but will certainly look into that!

          1. Emmanuel Ediau

            Is anybody using SegMate? It has been here for a while and recently had a promo and it is one of the options i have been considering? Any experience of SegMate

          2. Joren Wouters

            Nope, I currently have no experience with Segmate…

  7. Susan

    I hate this company, Chatmatic. They keep charging me and I’m not able to cancel. Another $349 zapped out of my paypal account – which I am now going to shut down. So frustrated with this scammer.

    1. Joren Wouters

      Thank you for sharing your experience!

  8. Vibhor

    Don’t buy the software, they have worst support system. Still buggy.
    They don’t reply to you.

    And not even refund the money.

    Made some sales on there workflow system.
    Got 25 sales there,
    Now they kicked me out of the fb group and not even replying to support messages now.

    1. Joren Wouters

      Thank you for sharing your experience!

  9. Marla Weatherborne

    Another chatbot failed product… so sad. Im still getting charged since 2019 and not allowed to cancel!

    1. Joren Wouters

      That’s not good, Marla… And you have reached out to Chatmatic about this?

  10. Terry Lindsay

    Extremely poor customer service. I purchased Chatmatic last June 2021 and the subscription was automatically re-newed without my knowledge on 14th June. I immediately emailed Travis and asked for a refund. I have emailed him another two times with no response.
    very disappointed!

    1. Joren Wouters

      Thank you for sharing your experience, Terry! Are you now using another chat automation platform?

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