Flow.ai is chatbot software for multiple channels and multiple languages. Large brands, such as Samsung, create their chatbots with Flow.ai. But is this chatbot software worth it to buy?
Let’s find out!
User Interface
The first time you start with Flow.ai, you go through a step-by-step setup, which is really useful (especially if you are just beginning with chatbots). With this setup, Flow.ai explains the most important features when building your chatbot flows:
And as you can see from the image above, Flow.ai makes use of a Visual Flow Builder:
With the flow builder, you can just drag elements from the right panel and drop them into your chatbot flow.
Moreover, you can also test your chatbot flow in the interface before it actually goes live:
The Visual Flow Builder is really easy to use. Also, it is extremely easy to set up your chatbot and you can even use one of the 16 free templates that Flow.ai provides.
- Visual Flow Builder
- Test chatbot
- Interface easy to use?
- Easy to setup a chatbot?
Chatbot elements
Flow.ai provides ALL the chatbot elements you need:
Literally, they check every element on my list, so they cannot do any better than this.
What I also like about Flow.ai that it shows which elements you can use per channel. For example, it is not possible to use Vertical Lists on Facebook Messenger, but you can use them with your website widget:
- Delays
- Images
- Video
- Audio
- Attachments
- Gallery (Horizontal list)
- Vertical list
- Emojis
- Persistent Menu
- Quick Replies
- Buttons
- Free text input
- Location sharing
- Email validation
- Phone number validation
- Date validation
Users
In Flow.ai it is possible to see a complete overview of your chatbot users.
I must say that this overview is a little bit limited, because you cannot see all the user information of the user (like their email, custom fields and tags):
Moreover, it is possible to add custom fields and tags to a user. It is as simple as asking a question and storing the answer in a custom field.
Also, you can create user segments based on those custom fields and tags.
- Custom fields
- Tags
- User segments
Messages
With Flow.ai it is possible to create (scheduled) broadcasts and sequences. You can also send a broadcast to only a segment of your audience.
Furthermore, you can add conditions to your chatbot flows to create a more personalized experience for your users.
Flow.ai also provides multiple languages, so your chatbot can handle multiple languages at the same time.
And the best part is that it is really easy to translate your chatbot to different languages. Flow.ai even offers automatic translation inside their software:
- Broadcasts
- Sequences
- Conditions
- Multiple languages
- Easy to translate
AI & NLP
Flow.ai provides a built-in AI engine, that allows you to understand the intent of the user and even use Entities.
Their intents and entity builder looks pretty similar to DialogFlow’s one and is really easy to use:
You can just type in training phrases and annotate specific parts of the phrase that function as an entity.
- Keywords
- Intents
- Entities
- Dialogflow integration
Channels
With Flow.ai, you can put your chatbot on 10 different channels:
- Facebook Messenger
- Your website
- Telegram
- SMS (with their direct integration of Twilio)
- Slack (beta)
- Apple Business Chat
- Alexa (beta)
- Google Assistant (beta)
Also, your chatbot can send out emails to your users.
- Website
- Facebook
- Instagram
- Whatsapp
- Telegram
- SMS
- Slack
- Skype
- Email
Integrations
Flow.ai has a built-in live chat, which is the most important integration of any chatbot software.
I must say that this live chat is a bit limited, because you cannot see the user information inside the live chat (such as custom fields and tags):
Moreover, Flow.ai provides some direct integrations with other software:
- Front
- Khoros
- Coosto
- Zendesk
- Freshchat
- Sparkcentral
- Mavenir RCS
- Google RBM
- Telekom RBM
- MessageMedia
Furthermore, they also have a Zapier integration, that allows you to integrate with almost any software on earth.
But if this is not enough for you, you can also create your own webhooks using their Actions code builder:
- Livechat
- Zapier
- Integromat
- Google Sheets
- Webhooks
Marketing
With Flow.ai, you can put a Facebook widget and a native widget on your website.
When using the native widget, you can also determine your own colors and avatars:
Moreover, you can connect your chatbot to Facebook Ads, use the One-Time Notification and create custom URLs to your chatbot.
- Facebook website widget
- Native website widget
- Landing pages
- Facebook Ads
- Facebook comments auto-reply
- Button creator
- Custom URLs for your chatbot
Pricing
Flow.ai provides a free plan that includes 50 sessions per month and gives you limited features.
Their Pro plan costs $19 per month for 100 sessions and 2 team members. It also gives you access to all the features of Flow.ai:
Then, the price becomes more with the number of sessions and number of team members you have:
And this could become pretty costly very fast. For example, if you want 1000 sessions per month and 5 team members, you pay $181 per month:
Also, if you want to use WhatsApp or Twitter as a channel, you need to pay additional costs ($150 for WhatsApp and $100 for Twitter, per month):
So in general, the costs of Flow.ai could become a bit much. Especially for smaller companies.
But is it worth it? Yes, I think so. With Flow.ai you can automatically handle chats from over 10 channels and handle conversations in multiple languages, which is extremely useful for larger companies operating on multiple channels and in multiple countries.
- Free trial
- Free plan
- Price per month19
- Monthly pricing available?
- Money back guarantee
Analytics
The analytics of Flow.ai are a bit minimal.
It is possible to see a dashboard with the number of interactions, messages, sessions, users and sentiment analysis:
What is a big plus, is that you can automatically analyze user input that the chatbot didn’t understand. This allows you to improve the answers of your chatbot:
Moreover, it is possible to connect Flow.ai to other analytic services to improve the analytics capability, such as Chatbase, Dashbot and Google Analytics (only applicable for websites).
- Dashboard
- User input
- User retention
- Sent messages
- Open rate
- Click rate
- Conversion rate
- Fall back rate
- Volunteer users
- Custom dashboards/reports
eCommerce
Unfortunately, Flow.ai provides no direct integrations with any eCommerce software.
- Payments
- Shopify
- WooCommerce
- Buy directly within the chatbot
- Cart abandonment
Templates & Cloning
Flow.ai provides 16 templates that you can use right away to set up your chatbot.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to create these templates yourself and share them with others.
On the other hand, it is possible to duplicate your chatbot flows, so you can easily reuse them.
- Templates16
- Make template
- Share template
- Duplicate chatbot flows
- Duplicate chatbot elements
Optimization
With Flow.ai you can optimize your chatbot by using A/B Testing:
- A/B Testing
Support
Flow.ai provides tutorials and extensive documentation on how you can use their chatbot software.
Moreover, they also have a Slack community and provide support via Slack and their ticket center.
- Tutorials
- Documentation
- Customer support
Conclusion
So, would I use Flow.ai to build my chatbots?
Yes, I would.
Flow.ai has an easy-to-use visual flow builder, uses a lot of chatbot elements, you can add custom fields/tags and create user segments, send broadcasts & sequences, use conditions in your chatbot flows, easily translate your chatbot to multiple languages, has a built-in AI engine to understand the user better, you can put your chatbot on 10 different channels, has built-in live chat and even a Zapier integration.
