Obi4Wan Review

Obi4Wan is chatbot software for building a chatbot for your website, what they call “Obi Bots”. Next to this, they also provide Obi Engage (Webcare software), Obi Brand Monitor (for monitoring your brand) and Obi Insights (Research & Brand Insights). This review will only focus on Obi Bots, the chatbot side of Obi4wan. So, is Obi Bots worth it to invest in? Let’s find out!

Short answer: It is a good addition to their platform, but not a standalone solution on itself.

I based my review on my ultimate guide on choosing the best chatbot software.

User Interface

If you log into Obi4Wan, the first thing you will is their dashboard:

The dashboard gives you a great overview of your chatbot analytics and the tasks you need to do.

With Obi4Wan, you make a chatbot in 5 steps:

1. Actually create the chatbot
2. Build the chatbot flows
3. Train the chatbot
4. Test the chatbot
5. Deploy the chatbot on your website

These steps are all envisioned in the dashboard and gives you a clear overview of which tasks you still need to perform.

When building the flows of your chatbot, Obi4Wan uses a Visual Flow Editor:

This interface is easy to use and it is pretty easy to set up your chatbot. You can also test your chatbot in the interface itself by clicking the green button in the right corner.

• 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

Unfortunately, Obi4Wan does not provide many elements in building your chatbot.

With Obi4Wan, it pretty much comes down to a user asking questions and the chatbot answering them.

When building your chatbot, you can only send three things:

• A reply
• A question
• A confirmation question (Yes/No question)

So regarding the chatbot elements, Obi4Wan is pretty limited.

• 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

As said before, with Obi4Wan you can only ask questions to your chatbot and the chatbot answers them.

But these answers cannot be saved to custom fields. It is for example not possible to ask a user if they want “White wine” or “Red wine” and then save that answer in a custom field called “Interest”.

Besides, it is also not possible to add tags and make customer segments.

• 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

Obi4Wan also lacks with Messages. It is only possible to ask questions to the chatbot and the chatbot will answer them.

So broadcasts, sequences, and conditions are not possible.

What is possible is to specify different knowledge base items. So it is possible to make a whole knowledge base within Obi4Wan:

You can also make a chatbot in three different languages: English, German and Dutch. But it is not possible to translate your chatbot from one language to another.

• 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

This is were Obi4Wan performs pretty well.

They have a built-in NLP engine which trains your chatbot on the training phrases you specified.

In Obi4Wan it is possible to make Intents, so you can grab the intention of your user:

It is also possible to make entities. With Obi4Wan you can make two kind of entities: a Synonym or a Regex:

I must say that I was not able to make the synonyms work in Obi4Wan, so that is a bit of a drawback.

• 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 Obi4Wan it is only possible to make a chatbot for your website.

So it is not possible to provide an omnichannel experience to your customer, which could be a potential drawback.

• 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

Obi4Wan has integrations with two different live chat software: Freshchat and Zendesk. That is great, because a live chat integration is the most important integration you need. The drawback of this integration is that with Obi4Wan you always need to have another software package in order to give live chat to your users.

But this is also where it stops. Obi4Wan does not provide any other integrations.

• 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 Obi4Wan it is possible to put a native website widget on your website:

You can completely customize this widget to your preferences, by defining the typing delay, width, height and the colors of the widget.

But this is the only thing they provide. With Obi4Wan, it is not possible to make landing pages, connect it to Facebook Ads, use a One-Time Notification, automatically reply to Facebook comments, create buttons or create custom URLs to your chatbot.

• 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

Currently, Obi4Wan provides a 60-day trial in which you can use all the features of their chatbot software, so this gives you plenty of time to determine whether this is the right fit for you.

But this is the only thing I can say about the pricing of Obi4Wan. Obi4Wan does not provide any pricing information on their website. If you want to know the pricing, you need to request a quote via their website. So I think they provide a custom price per client.

• 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?
• 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

As you can see above in the Dashboard image, you can see the total users of your chatbot, the average sessions per user, the return on investment (no idea how they calculate this), number of handled sessions, number of completed sessions and the number of not handled sessions.

So the analytics of Obi4Wan are pretty basic. And you cannot analyze the input of the user, which is a potential drawback. If you want to improve your chatbot easily, the best way to do is by analyzing the user input, but this is not possible with Obi4Wan.

• 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?

Templates & Cloning

Obi4Wan does not provide any templates or the possibility to make templates yourself.

Also, it is not possible to duplicate your 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?

eCommerce

Obi4Wan doesn’t have 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

Optimization

With Obi4Wan it is not possible to do any kind of optimization, such as A/B testing.

• A/B Testing

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

Support

Obi4Wan provides some documentation and tutorial on their platform, but these are pretty limited.

Moreover, they do provide customer support over 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 Obi4Wan?

I will be honest with you, I will not recommend this software to you when building your chatbot. This software lacks too many features, such as sending images/videos, assigning attributes to users, adding tags to users and sending broadcasts and campaigns. Moreover, I do not know how much this software costs, because the price is custom-made per client.

So when should you use it then? I think Obi4Wan is good software if you only want to give answers to questions with your chatbot or if you already using one of the other software platforms of Obi4Wan.

By the way, I spoke with the co-founder and CTO of Obi4Wan and he said there will be changes to the platform soon! So, I think most of the problems will be fixed in the future, and when they do, I will change my review 😉