ManyChat Review

ManyChat is one of the biggest chatbot software platforms for Facebook Messenger. It is an excellent platform to build your chatbot in just a few minutes and a lot of people throughout the world are using it. In this post, I will review all the aspects of the ManyChat software platform!

For writing this review about ManyChat, I used the criteria of my post “How to choose the best chatbot software“.

User Interface

The dashboard of ManyChat is really clean 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 one of the best interfaces I have ever seen in a chatbot platform. The reason for this is that ManyChat has two kinds of interfaces: The Basic Builder and The Flow Builder.

The Basic Builder

With the Basic Builder, the content of your chatbot is more organized and all the messages of a certain flow are presented in order. As the name says it is really basic, but this interface ensures that you can keep your chatbot organized.

 

The Flow Builder

If you want a more visual approach for editing your chatbot, you can also choose for the Flow Builder. The Flow builder is a visual drag and drop interface in which you can connect messages and actions with each other. This kind of builder gives you a more structured overview of the content of your chatbot.

Normally, a disadvantage of such a kind of interface is that it can become really messy when you get a lot of content in your chatbot. But with ManyChat, you can change to the Basic Builder at any time, so you can keep things organized.

 

• 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 an almost complete variety of chatbot elements to build your chatbot. They only don’t have lists, but this is absolutely no deal-breaker, you can always use a Gallery instead. They are really outperforming a lot of chatbot software here!

• 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 is it extremely easy to add custom fields and tags to specific 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 send broadcasts to specific user segments.

Moreover, users can also share their location with a ManyChat chatbot. This could give you more information about where your audience is located.

In ManyChat you can view all the users of your chatbot in the “Audience” tab. This gives you a good overview of all the people that talked with your chatbot:

 

In this overview you can click on each individual user and get all the information of that user, which is extremely useful:

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.

Also, with ManyChat you can use a feature called “Conditions”, in which you can use logic to send users through a certain flow.

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, intents and automatic synonyms 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 it is possible to make a 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).

• 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 integration. Really good, because this is the most important integration a chatbot software needs. They also provide integrations for:

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

By the way, what I really like about the live chat integration of ManyChat is that they also have an iOS app and Android app, so you can respond to user inquiries on the go.

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 a webhook inside your chatbot flow to send data to other applications?

Marketing

It is possible to put a Facebook Messenger widget on your website, create a landing page, connect to Facebook ads, use the One-Time Notification and Recurring Notifications, automatically reply to Facebook comments, create buttons and create custom URLs to your chatbot.

Moreover, ManyChat has a really advanced auto-reply to Facebook comments.

Usually, with auto-reply to Facebook Comments, you make a Facebook post, people comment on it and then you send them an automatic message in Facebook Messenger.

But ManyChat goes further. Next to sending a message in Facebook Messenger, you can automatically like the comment and reply with your own comment:

• 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

Maybe the most important part: Pricing. ManyChat provides a free plan that stays free forever. This plan comes with 1000 contacts and does not have all the features that ManyChat provides (but still enough to make a good chatbot).

If you want more features, you can upgrade to the Pro plan, which costs 15$ per month, which is a really low price:

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

• 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 basic analytics in their dashboard. When you enter the dashboard, the first thing you see is a complete overview of all your subscribers:

 

Furthermore, they also provide analytics for each block in your chatbot. For each block, they provide the number of people the message is delivered to, the open rate and the click rate.

This also holds for sequences. For each sequence, the number of subscribers, the open rate and the click rate are presented:

There are only two drawbacks about the analytics in ManyChat:

1. The analytics are all over the place. There is no one clear, in-depth dashboard with all relevant analytics, but this is distributed over multiple sections (Broadcasts, Sequences, etc.)
2. There is no overview of unmatched keywords. If a user filled in a word that did not get a response, you cannot get this information in your ManyChat dashboard. This is a big disadvantage because it does not allow you to improve your chatbot.

This is a possible drawback of ManyChat. Analytics are an important part of your chatbot because with analytics you can easily improve your chatbot. The analytics of ManyChat are mostly focused on flows and not on giving answers on questions, so it is hard to improve the answers of your chatbot.

Update 2020: ManyChat introduced the ManyChat Pixel. This is a piece of code that you can put on your website to track conversions coming from your chatbot. When someone clicks on a link button in Messenger and then converts on your website, this pixel will track that conversion back to the specific flow. Now you can find out which flows are the most converting!

• 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

It is possible to do A/B testing in ManyChat, but it is not available in the free plan. So you need to upgrade to a “Pro” plan if you want to unlock this feature.

• 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 (80.000 people) 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

In my opinion, ManyChat is one of the best chatbot software for building your chatbot on Facebook Messenger. It has a structured and flexible interface, a lot of chatbot elements, many integrations and lots of possibilities to grow your chatbot. It really outperforms a lot of other chatbot software for Facebook Messenger.

When thinking of drawbacks, I can only imagine two:

1. It does not provide integrations for Whatsapp, Twitter, Slack, Telegram and Skype
   If you want to provide an omnichannel experience, this could be a possible drawback. But I know that for a lot of users, this does not matter. Besides, they do provide e-mail and SMS integrations.
2. It is hard to optimize your chatbot because they only provide basic analytics.

ManyChat is extremely good software to build your chatbot with and given recent events, I think they will extend their platform even further.