Kommunicate Review

Kommunicate is live chat and chatbot software for websites. With Kommunicate you can easily ask questions to the user and hand off the conversation to a human.

Also, you can create a chatbot in under 5 minutes. But the question is, should you use Kommunicate to build your chatbots?

Let’s find out!

User Interface

The first time you log in to Kommunicate, they provide a step-by-step setup, so you get started right away:

Then, if you are going to create your chatbot flows, Kommunicate makes use of a kind of Block builder to create your conversations.

On the left-hand side, you can determine your chatbot flows and your chatbot elements and on the right-side, you automatically see a preview of the conversation:

Moreover, in Kommunicate, you can easily test the conversation before it 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

As you could have seen in the previous section, the chatbot elements of Kommunicate are a bit minimal.

It is only possible to use text, buttons, images, delays and a custom payload (code).

But, I think it is still enough to create a good chatbot flow.

• 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

Here is one of the biggest disadvantages of Kommunicate: it is not possible to create custom fields and tags (with your chatbot).

For example, it is not possible to ask for the email of the user and automatically store it in an “email” custom field.

Therefore, it is not possible to create user segments, because we have no user information to segment on.

The only thing that is possible is that you can see a complete overview of your users that interacted with your chatbot:

• 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

Because Kommunicate only provides chatbots and live chat for websites, it is not possible to send broadcasts and sequences (which is logical).

Furthermore, it is not possible to use conditions, which is a bit of a drawback. For example, it would be useful to check if a live chat agent is online, and show a different message accordingly. But this is not possible with Kommunicate.

Moreover, you cannot have a chatbot that handles 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

Kommunicate does pretty well on AI & NLP.

With Kommunicate you can understand the intent of the user by adding keywords:

If that’s not enough for you, you can also use a complete Dialogflow agent with Kommunicate. It must be important to note that you cannot use Kommunicate intents and Dialogflow intents in addition to each other, it’s one or the other.

Also, next to Dialogflow, they provide integrations with other AI systems, such as Amazon Lex and IBM Watson Assistant.

• 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 Kommunciate.io, you can put a chatbot on your website and one on Facebook Messenger (available from the Pro plan).

• 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

Kommunicate has a built-in live chat, which is the most important integration of any chatbot software:

What I think is a nice addition of Kommunicate, is that you can also display your helpdesk articles inside your chatbot:

Moreover, they do provide native integrations with:

• Zapier
• Zendesk
• Agile CRM

Also, you can create your own webhooks with Kommunicate.

• 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

The marketing possibilities of Kommunicate are a bit limited, because it is only possible to have a native widget on your website.

With the website widget, you can determine your own colors and branding:

Also, you can determine a greeting message which displays after certain seconds:

I must admit for a chatbot builder that is focused on websites, you would expect a more advanced website widget. For example, it is not possible to show a different greeting message per page on your website (without coding it yourself).

• 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

Kommunicate has a 30-days free trial that gives you plenty of time to test out their platform.

The first paid plan is the Start plan, which costs $40 per month and comes with unlimited chatbots and 1000 users per month, live chat, integrations with Dialogflow, Amazon Lex and IBM Watson Assistant and basic analytics.

If you want more tan that, you need to go with the Grow plan, which is $100 per month. It comes with all the features of the Start plan, 5000 users per month, WhatsApp integration, integrations with Pipedrive and Agile CRM, templates and more advanced analytics:

I must say that for these prices, you would expect the ability to store data in custom fields, a more advanced website widget and a Facebook Messenger channel with more marketing possibilities. Also, I think it is a drawback you need to pay $400 per month to use the Facebook Messenger channel.

• 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?
  24
• 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

Kommunicate provides two kinds of analytics: Human-agent analytics and Bot Analytics.

The human agent analytics are analytics of live chat agents, such as how fast they responded, how many messages were handled and the average resolution time:

The bot analytics involve how many messages were handed off to humans, how many conversations were handled by the chatbot and the analytics per intent:

What I like about the analytics of Kommunicate is that you can see the messages the chatbot did not understand, which allows you to easily improve the 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

Unfortunately, Kommunicate doesn’t provide any eCommerce integrations.

• 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

Kommunicate doesn’t provide any templates that you can use.

Also, it is not possible to duplicate chatbot flows or chatbot elements.

• Templates

  How many pre-built templates does the chatbot platform provide?
  0
• 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 Kommunicate you cannot do any optimization, such as A/B Testing.

• A/B Testing

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

Support

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

Moreover, they provide customer support over live chat and 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, would I use Kommunicate to build my chatbots?

Only for one specific scenario: if you want to qualify users at the beginning of the conversation and hand them over to a human.

This is where Kommunicate is pretty good at. With Kommunicate it is easy to set up a chatbot in minutes, ask some standard questions to the user and hand them over to a live chat agent.

But it also has some disadvantages:

• You cannot store data in custom fields
• It is not possible to use conditions in your chatbot conversations
• For a chatbot builder that is focused on websites, you would expect a more advanced website widget
• Limited marketing possibilities
• A small number of chatbot elements