Instabot Review

By Joren Wouters Updated on

Instabot

Instabot is a chatbot builder for websites and Facebook Messenger. But should you use Instabot to create your chatbots?

Check it out in this review!

User Interface

If  you log in at Instabot, you will first see an overview of your published (on the left) and Draft Bots (on the right):

instabot-dashboard

Instabot is structured in a way that every chatbot can be shown on one or multiple pages on your website. I will cover how you can determine these pages in the Marketing section of this review.

When you are going to build your chatbots for the first time, Instabot shows a step-by-step guide that helps you understand their visual flow builder:

instabot-guide

With their visual flow builder, you can primarily use two types of elements: an element that asks a question to the user (and the user can respond to it) or an element that doesn’t expect a reply (normal text):

instabot-flow-builder

What you can see on the image above, is that Instabot shrinks part of the flow so you can read it more easily. Then, when you click on this “shrunk flow”, the chatbot elements expand and you can see all the details. Really intuitive!

Also, you can test your chatbot flow before it actually goes live inside the interface of Instabot:

instabot-test-chatbot

In general, I think that the interface of Instabot is really easy to use and it is also really easy to set up your chatbot.

In my opinion, the only thing that could be improved is that you can drag and drop the chatbot elements, but this is just a minor thing.

  • 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

Instabot provides enough chatbot elements to create a good chatbot.

However, they also lack some elements, such as Video, Audio, Attachments and Galleries.

Moreover, it is possible that a user can reply to a question with free text, but the user cannot ask a question whenever he/she wants.

This has some limitations, but Instabot still provides enough elements to make a good chatbot.

Also, what I really like about Instabot, is that they provide a date and time picker so users can easily book appointments:

instabot-date-time-picker

  • 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

Instabot provides an overview of all the user that talked with your chatbot:

instabot-users-overview

And when you click on one of these users, you can see more detailed information about them:

instabot-user-information

In Instabot, you can just ask a question to the user and save the response in a custom field.

Moreover, you can also create specific user segments for users that match some conditions.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to use Tags, but this is not a huge deal-breaker.

  • 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 Instabot, you cannot send broadcasts and sequences. But this is also logical because their software is mostly focused on websites.

Moreover, you can also use conditions in your chatbot flows, to create more personalized experiences for your users.

Also, it is possible to create a chatbot in any language, but it is not possible to handle multiple languages at the same time.

  • 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

Unfortunately, it is not possible to recognize keywords and automatically respond to it.

However, Instabot provides some pre-built intents that your chatbot can understand, such as when a user asks for Pricing:

instabot-prebuilt-intents

If this is not enough for you, you can also use the direct Dialogflow integration. With this Dialogflow integration, you can understand the intent with your own intents that you created in Dialogflow. Unfortunately, it is not possible to use Dialogflow’s entities.

  • 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 Instabot you can create a chatbot on your website and on Facebook Messenger.

To be honest, I haven’t used the Facebook Messenger channel, so I don’t know how well this integration is.

Also, you can send simple emails to admins and users with Instabot.

  • 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

Instabot provides a built-in live chat, which is the most important integration of any chatbot builder:

instabot-livechat

Moreover, they provide direct integrations with:

  • Zapier
  • Google Calendar
  • Office 365 Calendar
  • Salesforce
  • Eloqua

If this is not enough, you can also 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 an API inside your chatbot flow to send or get data from other applications?

Marketing

With Instabot, it is possible to put a native widget on your website and to create a landing page that shows your chatbot.

The native widget that you can put on your website is pretty advanced. First of all, you can change the appearance of the widget by changing the avatar, colours and you can even upload your own CSS file:

instabot-chat-widget-settings

Then, you can determine on what pages the chatbot should be triggered and how it must look (only a button or also automatically launching the chat widget):

instabot-widget-triggers

Next, you can determine when the chatbot should be triggered (for example, after a delay) and for who it must be triggered:

instabot-widget-when

Lastly, you can determine if you want to show a certain greeting message:

instabot-teaser-message

Additionally, you can also create a landing page with your chatbot on it:

instabot-landing-page

  • 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

Instabot provides a 7-day free trial on their Standard plan, which allows you to test out most features of their software.

When this free trial is over, you can go with their Base plan, which is $49 per month and comes with 5,000 monthly active users per month, 1 user seat, 1 custom bot built for you by Instabot, unlimited chatbots, analytics, custom fields and a Zapier integration:

instabot-pricing

What is unclear to me is what a “monthly active user” is. Is this a website visitor is is this someone that talked to your chatbot?

If you want more features of 5,000 monthly active users is not enough, you can go with their Standard plan, which costs $149 per month. This plan comes with 10,000 monthly active users, all the features in the Base plan, 5 user seats, Advanced Bot UI options (color changing, custom CSS file), live chat, calendar integration and a Dialogflow integration.

In my opinion, I think Instabot is a bit expensive. If you need to pay $49 per month and you cannot use live chat, this won’t cut it for most businesses. So, if you want to have live chat and a chatbot, you need to pay $149, which is pretty much. Especially, if you compare this with other chatbot builders, there are chatbot builders with more features and cheaper plans.

  • 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?
    49
  • 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

Instabot provides a dashboard in which you can see the analytics of multiple bots. In essence, this is just a simple chart with the number of goals reached and the number of engaged conversations per week:

instabot-analytics-dashboard

Additionally, you can also see specific analytics per chatbot. These analytics shows how many users responded to your questions and what they’ve responded:

instabot-chatbot-analytics

I think these analytics are a bit minimal, but are still enough to improve your chatbot flows.

  • 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

With Instabot, you can accept payments inside your chatbot, using their direct integration with Stripe.

Unfortunately, they do not provide integrations with eCommerce software, such as Shopify and WooCommerce. This is a drawback, especially for a chatbot builder that is so 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

Instabot provides 12 templates that you can use to get started with your chatbot in minutes.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to create these templates and share them with others.

Likewise, it is not possible to duplicate your chatbot flows and chatbot elements.

  • Templates
    How many pre-built templates does the chatbot platform provide?
    12
  • 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 Instabot, it is not possible to do any optimization, such as A/B testing.

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

Support

Instabot provides documentation and tutorials on how you can use their platform.

I don’t know if their documentation is 100% up-to-date, because I cannot find anything about the Facebook Messenger channel. But for most things their documentation is sufficient.

Moreover, they provide support through 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 buy Instabot to create your chatbots?

Yes, I think you should.

But it depends on two things: the number of website visitors you have and the average revenue per user.

Instabot is useful for companies that have lots of website visitors with a high average revenue per visitor. And then, I would recommend using Instabot. With Instabot you can create personalized chatbot experiences per page and also customize the messages using conditions.

Instabot has an easy-to-use Visual Flow builder, you can assign custom fields and create user segments, built-in live chat, use conditions in your chatbot, Zapier integration, advanced website widget, Dialogflow integration,

That being said, Instabot also has some disadvantages:

  • Cannot reply to keywords
  • User cannot type in something whenever he wants
  • Mainly supports one channel: Websites
  • Can be a bit expensive
  • Minimal analytics

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