Continually Review

For writing this review about Continually, I used the criteria of my post “How to choose the best chatbot software“.

User Interface

When starting with Continually for the first time you will see an example of how a chatbot will be presented on your website. And you can choose from multiple examples, such as “Welcome Message”, “Book a meeting” or “Basic Lead Capture”. This is a really nice feature, because you immediately see how the chatbot will be looking on your website:

After the first screen, you will go to the dashboard. The dashboard is a good overview of all the things you need when building a chatbot. There are multiple pages:

• Getting Started – You probably only use this the first time, but really useful
• Leads – All the people that interacted with your chatbot
• Bots – The bots that you made with Continually
• Live Chat – Speaks for itself, live chat of course
• Landing Page – The landing pages for your chatbots
• Apps – All the integrations that are provided by Continually
• Install & Settings – Speaks for itself

What I really like about the interface is that on the left side you have an overview of the things you need to do to get started, but also other things you could do. In the blink of an eye, you notice all the possibilities of their software.

For editing the chatbot, Continually makes use of a visual drag and drop interface. The benefit of this interface is that you have a good overview of the sequences in your chatbot. But this also could become a drawback. When you have a lot of options and sequences, you will probably lose sight of the overall picture.

Moreover, on the right of the screen there is a preview of the chatbot, so you automatically what happens when you change something in 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

Continually provides enough elements to build your own chatbot. There are only a few elements they do not provide, but certainly no deal-breakers.

What could be a little bit of a deal-breaker is that the user cannot ask questions when they want to. And do not understand me wrong, it is possible to type in answers in Continually, but this is only limited to predetermined questions. A user can’t ask a random question in the middle of a conversation. It is only possible to ask a question, when the chatbot maker decided that the user can ask a question. This is great when you want that the user stays in a certain flow, but it could also be a drawback, because the user cannot ask more advanced questions and cannot decide when to ask a question. Up to you, which you prefer more 😉

• 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

Continually is a really good example of a lead-capturing chatbot software. It has a really structured overview of all the leads you get through the chatbot and you can also filter on the date, type of lead, the status of the lead, through which chatbot the lead was obtained (if you have multiple chatbots) and what kind of appointment there is:

Moreover, when you click on one of the leads, you will get a lot of information about the lead itself. Continually automatically captures the location of the lead through their IP-address and other important information which were obtained through the chatbot are also saved:

With Continually it is also possible to add custom fields to users, such as the answer that they provided to a certain question. What is a drawback of the software, is that you cannot use these fields for segmentation. What you could do, is use targeting. With their targeting feature, you can decide when the bot will appear. For example, you can say that the chatbot only appears on certain pages or after a certain number of page visits:

• 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

The most important thing about Continually are the sequences (also called campaigns). It is really good for making sequences, letting the user in the flow and eventually get lead information.

Furthermore, using conditions is possible. When a user provides an answer to a question, you can let him go through a certain sequence based on their answer. Also, you can use custom fields of users to send them in a certain flow (which is a kind of segmentation).

Unfortunately, sending broadcasts is not possible, which is a disadvantage, but also logical, because you can only use this software on websites.

Furthermore, it is possible to make a chatbot in any language, but you cannot use multiple languages in one chatbot, so this is a disadvantage.

• 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

In Continually, there is only support for keyword-matching. But this keyword-matching could become a big mess because of their visual drag and drop interface. When you have a question with a lot of different answers, you get a lot of different flows in which you lose sight of the overall picture. For an elaborate example of the big mess of a keyword-matching functionality, I recommend you to read my review of Landbot.

What is also important to keep in mind is that users cannot ask questions whenever they want. The maker of the chatbot decides when the user can ask a question, so this is also a possible disadvantage.

So in short, it is not possible to use AI & NLP functionality with Continually. And they also don’t provide a DialogFlow integration.

• 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

Continually does one channel extremely good: Websites. But the disadvantage is that this is the only channel they are active on. When you want to provide an omnichannel experience to your customers, this is not possible with Continually.

• 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

Continually has pretty good integrations. They have a live chat integration, which is the most important integration any chatbot software needs. Moreover, they have integration with Zapier, which allows you to connect with every software on earth. Besides, they have a lot of direct integrations with other software:

• MailChimp
• Campaign Monitor
• ActiveCampaign
• MailerLite
• AWeber
• Sendfox
• Moosend
• Hubspot
• Drip
• Constant Contact
• Mailjet
• Fullstory

Also, they provide the Continually JS API, which allows you to create your own webhooks.

• 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

Continually can only be used on websites, so they do not have any connections with Facebook. It is possible to put a widget on your website and you also have a specific landing page for your chatbot.

• 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

Continually has a free plan which stays free forever. This includes 1000 page views per month, all standard features and 1 user seat.

When you sign up for a paid account at Continually you automatically get a 14-day free trial.

The first paid plan is the Essentials plan which comes with 10.000 page views per month, 3 user seats and almost all the features of the platform. This plan is €17 per month if you choose to bill annually.

The second plan is the Business plan (€45 per month), which has exactly the same features as the previous plan, but now you can have 50.000 page views per month and 5 user seats.

The last plan (Enterprise) is €400 per month and comes with unlimited page views, unlimited user seats and even more features, such as a Salesforce integration and priority support:

• 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?
  17
• 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

I always say: When a chatbot does not have an analytics feature, don’t buy it. Well, this software does not have analytics.

But, they do provide an integration with Google Analytics. Problem solved, right? Well… not quite. Because they only provide tracking for three events:

• Widget / welcome message displayed
• Sidebar opened
• Email address captured

Important analytics like the open rate, click rate, fallback rate and so on are not captured with this software. The biggest disadvantage here lies in that you don’t know when customers leave the chatbot, so it can become hard to know how to improve it.

• 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, Continually does not provide integrations with e-commerce platforms at all. This is a huge disadvantage, especially for chatbot software that is focused on websites.

• 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

Continually provides 5 different templates, which are all free.

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

You can, on the other hand, duplicate your chatbot flows and chatbot elements, so you can easily reuse them.

• Templates

  How many pre-built templates does the chatbot platform provide?
  5
• 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

Also, optimization (like A/B testing) is not possible using Continually. Also a big drawback for chatbot software that is focused on websites, where optimization is really common.

• A/B Testing

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

Support

Continually provides a knowledge base with articles on how to build a chatbot. They also provide customer support through their own ticket center.

• 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

Continually is chatbot software especially for lead capturing through websites. They have an extensive lead feature built-in their software, in which it is easy to have a complete overview of all the leads you got through the chatbot. Also, they have a clear dashboard and visual drag and drop interface in which you can build your chatbot.

But there are also disadvantages:

• Minimal analytics
• Not possible to segment your users
• There are no eCommerce integrations
• The user cannot ask a question whenever he wants

Especially the first and the last feature are important. With analytics, you can easily improve your chatbot and provide a better experience for your customer. Besides, we live in a world where the customer is king. The customer determines when he wants to ask a question, but this is not possible with Continually.