Engati Review

Engati is chatbot software for multiple channels and it has built-in NLP & AI. But is this software worth it to invest in? Let’s find out!

For this review of Engati, I used the criteria in my post “How to choose the best chatbot software“.

User Interface

When you log in at Engati, you see an overview of all your chatbots:

When you are making your chatbot, there are two ways to do it.

The first thing you can do, is creating Smart Responses, which are answers to questions you determined yourself. You can do this by manually filling in a question, by creating an Entity or uploading some tabular input (for example, an Excel file):

Secondly, you can create chatbot flows (called “Paths” in Engati) using their Visual Flow Builder:

Thus, the interface of Engati is really easy to use and it’s easy to set up your chatbot. If you don’t know where to get started, you can also install one of the 195 chatbot templates they provide. Furthermore, it is possible to test your chatbot in Engati before it actually goes live.

• 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

Engati provides all the chatbot elements you need. They only don’t have two elements: Vertical Lists and Location Sharing, but these are certainly no deal-breakers!

• 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 Engati, you can see an overview of all the users that interacted with your chatbot:

And you can also see all the information on one specific user:

With Engati it is easy to create custom fields and assign certain values to it, such as the email of the Interest of a user. Then, you can make specific segments of users based on those custom fields.

It is only not possible to assign tags to users. But this is not a huge drawback, because you can use custom fields as tags, by setting the value of a custom field 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

With Engati, it is possible to send a broadcast to all of your users or a user segment. Furthermore, you can combine broadcasts by sending a sequence of messages.

Also, you can use conditions in your chatbot flows to create more personalized experiences.

Moreover, you can also create a chatbot in multiple languages. But, I am not quite sure if it’s easy to translate your chatbot to a different language. Regarding the NLP of Engati, it easily works if you add a second language, so that’s good. But I do not see an option in Engati to translate custom made chatbot flows, so therefore, I am not quite sure if it’s easy to 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

Engati provides keyword recognition and built-in AI & NLP. And this is a great feature.

As said before, you can set up Smart Responses to make your chatbot smarter. I made the Smart Response “What are your opening times?”

Then, Engati automatically also gives a good response for questions that are similar to “What are your opening times?”, such as “When are you open?” and “What time are you open?”:

So the AI & NLP feature of Engati is absolutely great. You don’t even have to train the chatbot yourself, Engati does that automatically for you.

• 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

If you want to provide an omnichannel experience to your users, Engati is a great fit for you.

Engati provides 11 channels:

• Website
• Facebook Messenger
• WhatsApp
• Slack
• Twitter
• WeChat
• Skype
• Telegram
• Line
• Microsoft Teams
• Mobile applications

Moreover, you can send SMS messages with Engati, but you need their Twilio integration for this. So this also results in extra costs.

• 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

Engati has a built-in live chat, which is the most important integration any chatbot software needs.

Next, they provide direct integrations with Zapier, Google Sheets, Google Calendar, Salesforce and you can even create your own webhooks by using the JSON API.

• 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

This is where Engati falls a little bit short. With Engati, it is only possible to create buttons to your chatbot and put a native widget on your website.

You can completely style the widget to your own website’s branding:

But for marketing, that’s basically it. You cannot create landing pages for your chatbot, connect it with Facebook Ads, use the One-Time Notification, automatically reply to Facebook Comments or create custom URLs to 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

Engati has a free plan that stays free forever. It includes the FAQ with NLP Engine, the broadcasting of messages, analytics, multiple channels and basic JSON API integration. You can use this up to 1000 interactions and have a maximum of 2 chatbots.

If you want more features, you can go for the Professional plan (with a 7-day free trial), which is good up to 10.000 interactions and 5 chatbots. It also comes with more features, such as Advanced branding & colors, Auto popup, advanced JSON API integration and a Zapier Integration:

What is important to point out, is that some important features of Engati only are available in the Enterprise plan, such as the live chat and WhatsApp. To me, it is unknown what the price of that plan is, and it looks like it is customer-specific.

Also, when you want to put your chatbot on WhatsApp, there is some additional pricing what you should keep in mind:

To me, it seems like you can make a chatbot for a really small price (or even for free), but it could become a bit expensive if you want all the features of the platform.

• 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?
  19
• 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

Engati has pretty good analytics.

First, they provide a dashboard with the total number of interactions, number of users, number of average messages per conversations and the most frequent messages:

Next, you can analyze the user input your chatbot didn’t know a good answer to so that you can improve the answers of your chatbot:

And ultimately, you can analyze the user retention:

• 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

Engati has a direct integration with Stripe, so you can handle payments within your chatbot.

Unfortunately, Engati doesn’t provide integrations with Shopify or WooCommerce.

• 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

Engati provides 195 templates that you can install directly to create your chatbot.

It is, however, not possible to create templates yourself and share them with others.

But, you can duplicate your chatbot flows and chatbot elements, to easily reuse them.

• Templates

  How many pre-built templates does the chatbot platform provide?
  195
• 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 Engati, it is not possible to do any kind of optimization, such as A/B testing.

• A/B Testing

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

Support

Engati provides extensive documentation and tutorials to explain how to use their platform.

Moreover, they provide customer support over 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?

Whitelabel Platform

This is not a section I usually include in my review, but I think it is worth pointing out.

With Engati, it is possible to have a white-labeled platform. This means that you can use their platform with your logo and branding on it. This is great for agencies, because now they can act as if they have built their own chatbot software, but this is a white-labeled Engati platform. Here is an example:

Conclusion

So, should you buy Engati to build your chatbots?

Yes, you definitely should.

Engati has an easy-to-use Visual Flow Builder, many chatbot elements, you can add custom fields and segment them, have built-in NLP & AI, supports 11 different channels to put your chatbot on, they have a live chat, direct integrations with Zapier, Google Calendar & Google Sheets, good analytics and even a Whitelabel option.

There are only a few drawbacks:

• Limited marketing tools
• Could become expensive if you want all the features (because of their customer-specific Enterprise plan)
• No eCommerce integrations

Conclusion: great chatbot software!