Manychat Review

ManyChat is one of the most popular chatbot platforms in the world, and you can use it to create chatbots on Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS and on your website.

But, can ManyChat live up to its promises?

That’s what we are going to find out in this ManyChat review!

User Interface

When you log in at Manychat, you will see a dashboard with on the left side a menu with different options and on the right side the content of each section. It is a really straightforward dashboard and easy to understand:

When creating your chatbot, ManyChat has the best visual flow builder I have ever seen in a chatbot platform. The reason for this is that the interface looks really clean and it is really easy to use (even if you never created a chatbot before).

Inside the flow builder, each flow starts with a trigger (an event that activates the flow), and from there you can connect blocks to each other by simply dragging and dropping:

A block can be a message, an action, a condition or any other chatbot element that Manychat provides.

Moreover, you can test your chatbot flows directly inside the Manychat interface or on the channel that you are building the flow for (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc):

Furthermore, your chatbot flows can be divided over folders, which allows you to keep a good overview of all the chatbot flows in your Manychat account.

Overall: one of the best interfaces I have ever seen in a chatbot platform and you can set up a chatbot in a matter of minutes!

• 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

Manychat provides all the chatbot elements you need to create your chatbot.

There are just two chatbot elements that I would like to point out.

The first one is the Conditions element. By using a condition, you can use logic inside your chatbot flows and create personalized conversations for your contacts:

Also, you have the Start flow element. With this element, you can start another flow within your Manychat account. This allows you to create a scalable chatbot, because you can just refer to other flows, instead of copy-and-pasting the same flow multiple times.

• 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

Within Manychat, you can add custom fields and tags to users. You can simply ask questions and save the answer of the user to a custom field or add a specific tag. With those custom fields and tags, you can create specific user segments (that you can use inside your chatbot flows).

In Manychat you can view all the contacts that talked to your chatbot in the “Contacts” tab. Within this tab, you can also filter on specific custom fields or tags or see all users from a specific segment (by clicking on that segment on the left):

When you click on one of the individual contacts, you can see all the information stored for that user and by clicking on “Start chat” you can also see the chat history of that user:

• 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

Manychat provides broadcasts, sequences and also subscribing/unsubscribing from sequences.

What I really like about the sequences in ManyChat is that they are really organized. You can see the complete sequence in one overview and you also see which message is sent at which time, a really good feature.

With ManyChat it is possible to make a chatbot in any language, but it is not possible to easily translate this chatbot to different languages (because you need to do this manually and copy all your complete chatbot).

AI & NLP

The AI&NLP of ManyChat is really straightforward. Within ManyChat you can group certain keywords together and make a certain response for them. However, understanding intents and entities are not supported.

How it looks in ManyChat:

What they do provide in their keywords feature, is the possibility of how the keyword is matched. This is a feature not all chatbot software have. You could say that:

• A message is equal to the keyword
• A message contains the keyword
• A message contains the whole keyword
• A message begins with the keyword
• A message is thumbs up (a standard feature in Facebook Messenger)

ManyChat also doesn’t have a direct integration with DialogFlow. But I created a tutorial on how you can connect ManyChat to Dialogflow.

Channels

With Manychat you can publish your chatbot on your website, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS and Email.

This allows you to make an omnichannel chatbot experience for your users. So for example, when someone gives a certain response on Facebook Messenger, you could send an email based on that response.

With SMS, you need to connect your ManyChat account to a Twilio account. Then, ManyChat will handle the chatbot part and all the chat logic, and Twilio will take care of receiving and sending the text messages (additional costs for Twilio apply).

Moreover, you can also merge contacts across channels (based on their email or phone number). For example, if someone contacts you via Facebook Messenger and later on via Instagram, Manychat can understand that is the same person and merge that contact into one.

• 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

ManyChat has a built-in live chat, which is called the Inbox. By using the Inbox, you can hand over the conversation from your chatbot to one of your customer support agents.

What I really like about Manychat’s Inbox is that they also provide an iOS app and Android app, so you can respond to user inquiries on the go.

Manychat also provides Manychat Inbox Pro, which is a more advanced live chat and comes with agent chat analytics, groups of live chat agents and auto-assignment rules.

Furthermore, Manychat provides direct integrations with:

• Zapier
• Make (formerly Integromat)
• Google Sheets
• ActiveCampaign
• MailChimp
• ConvertKit
• HubSpot
• Walletly
• Botsheets
• Janis

Moreover, ManyChat has its own App store which allows third-party developers to create their own integrations with ManyChat. Currently, the App Store has 38 apps, but I think this will grow over the years:

• 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

When it comes to Marketing for chatbots, Manychat is one of the best chatbot platforms out there.

You can add a Facebook Messenger widget to your website and send pro-active messages based on the URL that users are on. Moreover, you can also create your own landing pages with your Facebook Messenger chatbot.

Moreover, on Facebook you can:

• Create Ref URLs that go to a specific chatbot flow
• Automatically reply to Facebook Comments
• Send one-time notifications
• Send Recurring Notifications
• Connect a Facebook ad to your Messenger chatbot
• Send Sponsored Messages via Facebook Messenger

On Instagram, you can:

• Automatically reply to Instagram comments

• Send replies to Instagram users who mention your Instagram handle in their Instagram Stories

And via WhatsApp, you can send Message Templates.

Basically, ManyChat provides almost all marketing possibilities you need for your chatbot.

The only drawback is that Manychat doesn’t provide a native website widget.

• 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

Manychat provides a free plan that stays free forever. This plan comes with 1000 contacts and has the basic features of ManyChat (enough to make a good chatbot).

If you want more features or have more than 1000 contacts, you can upgrade to the Pro plan, which costs 15$ per month (a really low price):

The price of the Pro plan goes up with the number of contacts your chatbot has. 1K contacts result in $25 per month and 5K contacts is $45 per month.

This plan also comes with a 7-day free trial that you can use to test out the Pro features of ManyChat. Besides that, there is also a 30-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked.

Moreover, Manychat also provides Manychat Inbox Pro and that costs $99 per month. This comes with 3 live chat seats:

If that’s not enough, you can add one extra live chat seat for $39 per month.

• 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?
  15
• 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

Manychat provides an Insights dashboard where you can see how many contacts you have per channel:

Furthermore, you can see how these contacts have evolved over time:

Likewise, you can determine your own conversion events inside your chatbot flows and then see how many people reached those conversion events:

And these conversion events are not limited to your chatbot funnels. You can also install the Manychat Pixel (similar to a Facebook Pixel) on your website and track conversions on your website of people coming from your chatbot. For example, when someone clicks on a button in Messenger and then converts on your website, this pixel will track that conversion back to your Manychat account.

Moreover, Manychat also provides flow analytics. For each block inside your flows, you can track to how many contacts this message was delivered, how many contacts opened it and how many contacts clicked on it (if the message contains a button / quick reply):

By using these flow analytics, you can easily improve your Manychat flows for better conversion.

There are only two drawbacks about the analytics in Manychat:

1. There is no overview of unmatched user input. If a user filled in a phrase that did not get a response, you cannot get this information in your ManyChat dashboard. This is a disadvantage because it does not allow you to improve the automatic answers of your chatbot.
2. It’s not possible to see the flow analytics for a specific time period

But in general: by using Manychat’s analytics you can definitely analyze how well your chatbot is doing and how you can improve your chatbot funnels!

• 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

ManyChat provides a direct integration with Shopify so you can:

• Recover abandoned carts
• Notify customers about orders and shipment updates
• Collect reviews and feedback after purchase
• Generate repeated purchases

It is, however, not possible to buy a product from your Shopify store within the chatbot.

But, you can receive payments within your chatbot and let users directly pay within the chatbot by using the Stripe or Paypal integration.

There is only one drawback: ManyChat doesn’t have a WooCommerce integration. But it is still possible to connect with WooCommerce, but you will need a Zapier or Integromat integration for this.

• 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

ManyChat provides 19 templates which you can directly install to make your chatbot. These include free templates and templates only available for Pro users.

With ManyChat it is possible to make a chatbot template and share it with others. This is really useful when you are making multiple chatbots who do the same thing (for example, Lead generation).

Furthermore, it is possible to duplicate your chatbot flows and chatbot elements to make your chatbot faster.

Optimization

In Manychat, you can do A/B testing by using the Randomizer element. This element allows you to split the traffic inside a chatbot flow up to 6 different variations:

• A/B Testing

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

Support

ManyChat provides extensive tutorials on how to make a chatbot and all the features of their platform. They also have proper documentation and good customer support.

What I also love about ManyChat is that they have a large Facebook community (100K+ members) in which you can ask all kinds of questions and learn more about the platform.

• 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

Manychat is one of the best chatbot platforms in the world for creating chatbots on Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram and SMS. Especially if you are just starting out with creating chatbots.

In fact, I use it all the time to create chatbots for my own clients.

Their flow builder is super easy to use, provides all the chatbot elements you need, you can store information about your contacts, have conditions to create personalized conversations, built-in live chat, automatically reply to keywords, you can publish your chatbot on 6 channels, all the marketing possibilities you need, many direct integrations with other applications, very useful analytics and all this for only $15 a month.

Go to Manychat

When thinking of drawbacks, I can only imagine three:

1. It doesn’t provide AI or direct AI integrations, only keyword recognition
2. The analytics could be better, for example an overview of unmatched user input and flow analytics for a specific time period
3. It’s hard to translate your chatbot to multiple languages