Manychat is one of the most popular chatbot platforms in the world. But should you use it to create your chat automations?
In this in-depth Manychat review, I cover Manychat’s features, pros, and cons. I will also share their pricing and when to use it for your chat automations.
Let’s dive in!
Our Verdict
Our Verdict
Manychat is one of the best chat automation platforms for creating chatbots on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and SMS.
It has a super user-friendly interface and visual flow builder, making it easy for users to create chatbots without any coding.
ManyChat offers both free and paid plans, starting at $15/month. It is a popular choice for those new to chatbots or working with a tight budget.
Pros
- Easy-to-use Flow Builder
- Unlimited Custom Fields & Tags
- Integrates with Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, SMS, & Telegram
- Drive Users to Funnels with Growth Tools
- Send Broadcasts, Sequences and Rules
- Built-in Live Chat + Integrations with Zapier and Make
- Built-in AI: Intents, AI Steps & AI Flow Builder Assistant
Cons
- You need to create seperate messages per channel
- It's hard to translate your chatbot to multiple languages
- AI Add-on can be limited


Table of Contents
What is Manychat?
Manychat is a chat automation platform designed to create chatbots on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, SMS and Telegram.
It allows businesses and individuals to automate their conversations, engage with customers and improve their marketing efforts.
The key features of Manychat include:
- Flow Builder: Easily create chatbots using a drag-and-drop flow builder.
- Custom Fields: Store contact data in custom fields and share it with other applications, like your CRM or email platform.
- Growth Tools: Drive traffic to your chatbots by using Manychat Growth Tools. For example, if someone comments on your Instagram post, you can automatically start a conversation.
- Broadcasts & Sequences: Businesses can send out broadcasts and sequences, so you can reach your audience with targeted messages
- Live Chat: Hand over any conversation to a human agent
- Integrations: Manychat integrates with many other tools, such as email platforms, CRMs and Zapier
- Analytics: Track the performance of your chatbot with detailed reports, so you can easily optimize your chatbot
How does Manychat work?
In Manychat, you have several tabs where you can manage your chat automations from:
- Home – General overview of your chatbot and tips on how to get started
- Contacts – Overview of everyone who talked to your chatbot
- Automation – This is where your chat flows and chat automation live
- Live chat – when you hand over a chat from the bot to an agent, here is where you can chat with contacts
- Broadcasting – if you want to send mass messages to your contacts
- Settings – here you control the settings of your chatbot and Manychat account
When you get started with creating your Manychat bot, you can use Manychat’s Flow Builder. Each automation in Manychat consists of one (or multiple) triggers and blocks.
A trigger in Manychat is an event that starts your automation. For example, when someone leaves a comment on a Facebook Post.
Manychat blocks determine what happens after triggering the automation.
Adding blocks to your chat automation is super easy, you can just click and drag them in the flow builder:
In the Manychat flow builder, we have six types of blocks we can choose from:
- Messages, specific per channel (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram and SMS)
- Conditions – to personalize the conversation based on “if-then” logic
- Actions, you can perform actions during your automation. Such as updating fields to new values, triggering integrations, or a live chat handoff
- Start Automation – if you want to start another automation in your Manychat Account
- Randomizer – If you want to randomly assign people to a part of your automation, often used for A/B testing
- Comments – This is great if you are working with multiple people in one Manychat account.
Additionally, the flow builder has nice features that make it even easier to use. For example, you can click on the Auto-Arrange Steps button. This arranges all the blocks in your chat automation:
Or you can use Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V (CMD for Mac) to copy and paste blocks in your automation, even across browser tabs.
Moreover, you can test your chatbot flows on the channel you are building the automation for (WhatsApp, Facebook, etc). Or, you can test them directly in the Manychat interface:
Lastly, you can divide your chat automations into folders. This way, you can keep a good overview of all the chat automations in your Manychat account:
Manychat has one of the easiest-to-use interfaces I’ve ever seen in a chatbot platform. By using the flow builder, you can set up your first chat automation in a matter of minutes!
Flow Builder | |
Ease of use | 5 |
Ease of setup | 5 |
Test chatbot |
Chatbot elements
Manychat offers all the essential elements to create your chatbot. Among these, there are two elements that I would like to point out.
Conditions Element: This element is essential for using logic in your chat automations. By using a condition, you can tailor each conversation to individual contacts, which improves the user experience of your chatbot.
Start Automation element: This element is a game-changer for scalability. It allows you to start another flow within your Manychat account. The advantage here is that you can reference other automations. Therefore, you don’t need to copy and paste duplicate content.
Image | |
Video | |
Audio | |
Attachment | |
Gallery (Horizontal List) | |
Quick reply | |
Button | |
Collect User Input | |
Condition | |
Delay | |
Start automation | |
Split traffic |
Contacts
In Manychat, you can see all the contacts that talked to your chatbot in one overview:
When you click on one contact, you can see their custom fields and tags. Clicking on “Start chat” shows their entire chat history on all channels:
You can add unlimited custom fields and tags to your contacts. Custom fields are used to store specific information about someone, such as their interests, email address or name. Tags can be used to segment your contacts into different buckets, such as “Qualified” or “Customer”.
Additionally, you can also create segments based on a combination of fields and tags.
Contacts overview | |
Custom field | |
Tags | |
User Segments |
Manychat AI Features
Manychat has many AI features you can use in your chatbot:
Let’s cover them one-by-one.
Manychat Keywords
With the keyword trigger in Manychat, you can start an automation when someone messages you certain words:
Then, you can also determine how you match the keyword. For example:
- 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)
By using Manychat keywords, you can automatically reply to questions from users.
AI Intents
With AI Intents, you can not only reply to certain keywords, but understand the intent of the user. So if someone types in a question and it matches with the intent, you can automatically reply to it:
This can save you a lot of time, because you don’t have to manually enter all the keywords you want to match. You can just enter the intent and Manychat AI can automatically reply to it.
AI Step
I think the AI step is the most promising feature of Manychat. With this, you can create your own AI Lead generation assistants with natural language.
With the AI step, you can let the AI handle the conversation for you in a number of steps. And then you can tell the AI:
- What it needs to do at every step
- Whether it needs to collect information
- And if it needs to collect information, to what Manychat fields these need to be saved
And the AI step can also take into account the context of your business. So you can give extra business information and use that information during the conversation.
AI Flow Builder Assistant
Furthermore, Manychat provides the AI Flow Builder Assistant. With this assistant, you can answer a couple of questions and the Assistant automatically creates a complete automation for you:
AI Text Improver
And lastly, Manychat also has the AI Text Improver. With the Text Improver, you can simply give the AI a text and Manychat can rewrite the text for a different goal, change tone of voice or translate it to another language:
Keyword recognition | |
Intents | |
Entities | |
AI Knowledge Base | |
NLP integrations | |
LLM integrations |
Manychat Live Chat
The Inbox is the built-in live chat feature of ManyChat.
By using the Inbox, you can hand over the conversation from your chatbot to one of your customer support agents:
Additionally, Manychat provides an iOS and Android app. You can use it to respond to questions on your phone.
Moreover, Manychat provides an advanced version of their Inbox: Manychat Inbox Pro. This is a more advanced live chat and has extra features, such as:
- Agent chat analytics
- Creating groups of team members
- Auto-assign conversations based on rules
Built-in live chat | |
Live chat integration | |
Auto-Assignment Rules |
Channels
With Manychat you can publish your chatbot on 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 and chat logic. Twilio will receive and send the text messages (Twilio has extra costs).
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 via Instagram. Manychat can see that it is the same person and merge the contacts.
Website | |
Facebook | |
Instagram | |
Whatsapp | |
Telegram | |
SMS | |
Slack | |
Email | |
Merge contacts across channels |
Manychat Growth Tools: Drive Traffic to your chatbot
And this is where Manychat sets itself apart from the competition.
With Manychat, you can use Growth Tools to drive users from your social channels to your chat automations. And Manychat has so many growth tools to drive traffic to your chat automations.
This is one of the many reasons why I am using Manychat for almost all of my clients, because they have the right growth tools to drive users to your chat funnels.
Broadcasts, Sequences & Rules
In Manychat, you can start conversations by using broadcasts, sequences and rules.
With broadcasts, you can send mass messages to your contacts in Manychat. You can compare it with sending an email newsletter, but on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram or SMS.
When creating your broadcast, you can determine the automation you want to send and the target audience based on filters:
Likewise, you can send sequences in Manychat. With a sequence, you can send a series of messages with a certain time in between.
What I 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 what message is sent at what time:

Another great feature of Manychat is the Rules. With a Rule, you can automatically do an action when an event happens.
For example, when someone books an appointment, we can send them a reminder 1 day before it:
Growth Tools on Facebook
On Facebook, you can:
- Create Ref URLs that go to specific chat automations
- Automatically reply to Facebook Comments and start a Messenger conversation
- Send one-time notifications
- Send Recurring Notifications
- Connect a Facebook ad to your Messenger chatbot
Growth Tools on Instagram
On Instagram, you can:
- Create Ref URLs that go to specific chat automations
- Automatically reply to Instagram comments and start conversations in Instagram DM
- Send automatic replies to people who mention your account in their Instagram story
- Connect an Instagram Ad to your Instagram chatbot
Growth Tools on WhatsApp
And lastly, you can use Manychat to send WhatsApp Message Templates on WhatsApp. Message Templates are a specific type of message to start conversations with contacts on WhatsApp.
Basically, ManyChat provides almost all the marketing possibilities you need for your chatbot.
The only drawback is that Manychat doesn’t have a chat widget for your website.
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
Rules Trigger events based on if-then logic. For example, if email is given by the user, send it to your CRM.
Website widget Embed your chatbot as a widget on your website (with your own branding & colors).
Send proactive messages on website Can you send pro-active messages on your website with your chatbot?
Facebook Ref URL Can you create a URL that goes to a specific flow inside your Facebook chatbot?
Auto-Reply to Facebook Comments Automatically reply with your chatbot to users who comment on your Facebook Posts
One-Time Notification Send one-time notifications via Facebook Messenger for a topic that a chatbot user has opted-in for
Recurring Notifications Send recurring notifications via Facebook Messenger for a topic that a chatbot user has opted-in for
Facebook Ads Start a conversation with your chatbot when someone clicks on a Facebook Ad
Sponsored messages Send paid messages via Facebook Messenger outside the 24-hour window
Auto-Reply to Instagram Comments Automatically reply with your chatbot to users who comment on your Instagram Posts
Instagram Story Mention Reply Send auto replies to Instagram users who mention your Instagram handle in their Instagram Stories
WhatsApp Message Templates Can you initiate conversations with Message Templates on WhatsApp?
Integrations
Manychat has direct integrations with:
- Zapier
- Make (formerly Integromat)
- Google Sheets
- ActiveCampaign
- MailChimp
- ConvertKit
- HubSpot
Furthermore, ManyChat has its own App store. It allows third-party developers to make their own integrations with ManyChat. Currently, the App Store has 61 apps to extend the functionalities of Manychat:
Direct integrations | 1-10 |
Zapier | |
Make | |
Make API Calls | |
Webhooks |
Manychat Pricing
Manychat has a Free plan with basic features, and a Pro plan that starts a $15 a month.
Free plan
With the Manychat Free plan, you can get started with the basic features to reach up to 1,000 contacts.
This plan includes Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp as channels. It gives access to the basic features of the Flow Builder and to the basic Growth Tools of Manychat.
This plan is perfect if you want to test whether Manychat is the right fit for your business.
Pro Plan
Manychat’s Pro plan gives you access to almost all the features of the platform.
This plan starts at $15 per month and increases with the number of contacts you have. For example, 1,000 contacts costs $25 per month and 5,000 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.
Also, if you want to use the Manychat’s AI features, you need to pay an extra $29/month.
Manychat Free vs Pro comparison
So, should go with the Free or Paid plan of Manychat?
The free plan gives you access to the basic features of Manychat and allows you to test its platform.
The Pro plan is you want to use all the features of Manychat and actually want to use it for your business.
Here’s a full comparison of the pricing plans:
Free | Pro | |
---|---|---|
Flow Builder | Basic blocks | All blocks |
Available Channels | Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp | Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, SMS, Email, Telegram |
Contacts | Free up to 1,000 contacts | Unlimited contacts (price goes up with the number of contacts) |
Collect User Input | ||
Growth Tools | Basic Growth Tools | Advanced Growth Tools |
Integrations |
Manychat WhatsApp Pricing
In addition to the Manychat Pro pricing, you also need to pay for conversations on WhatsApp.
The first 1,000 user-started conversations are free. But if you have more, you need to pay for these conversations to WhatsApp.
Likewise, you need to pay for business-started conversations as well.
The prices for user-started and business-started conversations differ per country. For example, in the United States you pay $0.0172 per user-started conversation and $0.0287 per business-started conversation.
If you want to calculate the WhatsApp costs, you can use Manychat’s WhatsApp pricing calculator.
Add-on: Pricing of Manychat Inbox Pro
Moreover, Manychat provides Manychat Inbox Pro. Manychat Inbox Pro is an advanced feature of the Manychat Inbox. This includes agent chat analytics, creating groups of team members and auto-assigning members to conversations.
This plan starts at $99 per month and 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 | |
Free plan | |
Price per month | $15 |
Monthly pricing available? | |
Money back guarantee |
Manychat Analytics
Manychat has four types of analytics:
- Manychat Insights
- Automation Analytics
- Conversion Analytics
- Agent Analytics
Below, I will briefly cover them one by one.
Manychat Insights
Manychat has an Insights dashboard that gives general insights into your Manychat account. In this dashboard, you can see how many contacts you have per channel:
And how these contacts have evolved over time:
Automation Analytics (“Flow Analytics”)
Moreover, Manychat also has automation analytics (“Flow analytics”). For each block in your automation, you can see how many contacts it was sent to. You can also see the delivery, open, and click rates (if a message has a button):
By using these flow analytics, you can easily improve your Manychat flows for better conversion.
Conversion Analytics
Also, you can add your own conversion events inside your chat automations. Then, you can see how many people reached those events in a specific period:
And these conversion events are not limited to your chatbot funnels. You can install the Manychat Pixel (like a Facebook Pixel) on your website. It will track conversions from 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.
Agent Analytics
If you sign up for Manychat Inbox Pro, you also get agent analytics. With these analytics, you can see how many conversations where resolved by your agents:
And you can also see how many conversations each agent resolved:
So this is great as well!
There are only two drawbacks to the analytics in Manychat:
- There is no overview of unmatched user input. If a user asked question and 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.
- It’s not possible to see the flow analytics for a specific 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 | |
Flow analytics | |
User input | |
Sent messages | |
Open rate | |
Click rate | |
Conversion rate | |
Fall back rate | |
Agent analytics | |
Custom event tracking | |
Custom dashboards/reports |
Templates
ManyChat provides 35 templates that 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).
Number of templates | 35 |
Make template | |
Share template |
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 | |
Documentation | |
Customer support |
Is Manychat worth it?
So, should you use Manychat to create your chat automations?
Yes, you should.
In fact, I use it all the time to create chatbots for my own clients.
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.
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, built-in AI features, 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.
If you click on the button below, you will also get my discount code to get 1 Month of the Pro plan for free:
Your Discount Code
joren_wouters_edc
And if you want a quick tutorial on how to use Manychat, I got you covered:
When thinking of drawbacks, I can only imagine three:
- You need to create seperate messages per channel. So if you want to create a chatbot on many channels, it’s more work.
- It’s hard to translate your chatbot to multiple languages, because you need to do it manually
- The AI Add-on can be a bit limited. Especially the AI Step, because people need to follow an exact script for the AI to work.
Compare Manychat with others
Frequently Asked Questions
What is ManyChat used for?
Manychat is used for creating fully automated chatbots on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram and SMS. Manychat is mostly used by small and medium businesses, but also by larger brands, like Nike. You can easily create a chatbot by using the Manychat flow builder and connect it to one of your channels.
Can I use ManyChat for free?
Yes, Manychat has a free plan. This plan gives you access to the basic features of the platform, up to 1,000 contacts.
If you also want one month of the Pro plan for free, click on the button below and get my discount code:
Your Discount Code
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Is Manychat safe?
Yes, it is safe to use Manychat. Manychat complies with global security standards, such as the Cloud Security Alliance, ISO/IEC 27001 and SOC 2 Type II. Moreover, they are also an official Meta Business Partner and compliant with the GDPR and California Privacy Act. If you want to learn more about privacy and security at Manychat, click here.
What are the limitations of ManyChat?
Manychat has one limitation: it’s hard to translate your chatbot into multiple language.
What is the disadvantage of ManyChat?
Manychat has one disadvantage: It’s hard to translate your chatbot to multiple languages
Is ManyChat approved by Instagram?
Yes! Manychat is an official Meta business partner. This means they are 100% approved by Facebook and Instagram.
What are ManyChat growth tools?
Manychat Growth Tools are ways to drive traffic to your Manychat automations. Examples include the Comment Growth Tool, Messenger Ref URL, Customer Chat Widget on your website, Website Modals and JSON Ads.
How do I get Manychat cheap?
You can use the free plan of Manychat that gives you access to the basic features of the platform, up to 1,000 contacts.
If you also want one month of the Pro plan for free, just click on the button below and get my discount code:
Your Discount Code
joren_wouters_edc
Is Manychat legit?
Yes, Manychat is legit. Manychat is an official Meta Business partner and one of the largest chatbot platforms in the world. The platform is used by over 100,000 Instagram accounts.
You convinced me. Couldn’t find a proper comparison with so many chatbots on the market. Thank you so much, great work.
Glad that I could help, Tristan!
Can a single ManyChat account handle multiple websites or do you get new accounts for each website?
If handling multiple websites, does the paid membership charge by the cumulative number of members from all websites?
Hey David! Yes, a single ManyChat can handle multiple websites. Also, the pricing of ManyChat is determined by the number of subscribers you have. So if users are logging in with Facebook Messenger on your website widget, this increases the number of subscribers (and so the price). If users are logging in as guest on your website widget, I think it does not influence the price.
Hi I’m from Brazil.
Is it possible in manychat to continue with the same whatsaap number for automation?
And if my client no longer wants to continue with the automation, can he recover the number later on a whatsaap account without losing the contacts and conversations he had on Manychat?
Hey Tiago, good question! Currently, this is not possible and ManyChat discourages it to use the same phone number you used before for WhatsApp.