Octane AI is a chatbot builder for Shopify Brands that want to run eCommerce campaigns on their website, Facebook Messenger and SMS. With Octane AI, you can automatically send abandoned cart messages, order confirmations, shipping updates and more.
But should you use Octane AI to build your chatbots?
Let’s find out!
Disclaimer: With Octane AI it is also possible to build product quizzes for your website, but I won’t cover that in this review 😉
Table of Contents
User Interface
As said before, Octane AI is mostly focused on eCommerce campaigns for Shopify Brands. That’s why when you are going to build your chatbot, you don’t have to start from scratch, but you can choose from a number of pre-built flows:
For example, you can choose to send automatic messages in Facebook Messenger when somebody abandoned their shopping cart:
And when you click on one of those messages, you can decide the contents of the message yourself or you let Octane AI optimize the message for you:
That’s it! In just 3 steps, you’ve set up an abandoned cart message campaign in Facebook Messenger. And they have much more campaigns, such as:
- Browse abandonment (somebody doesn’t add something to their cart)
- Order confirmations
- Shipping notifications
- Marketing opt-ins
With SMS as a channel, you can also create these kinds of campaigns, but you have less campaigns to choose from:
Besides that, you can also create “Custom Flows”. These are messages that are automatically sent after a trigger (for example, when someone becomes chats with your chatbot for the first time):
Moreover, it is also possible to set up “Questions”, which is a set of questions you can ask your user:
As you can see above, it is really simple to set up your chatbot campaigns and it is really easy to use the interface. Also, you can test all your chatbot flows inside Facebook Messenger before they go live.
The only drawback, in my opinion, is that it is not possible to make custom flows (as you would do in ManyChat or Chatfuel) yourself. Almost all of the flows inside Octane AI are in some way pre-built by Octane AI. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but for some users (who want to customize more), it might not be the perfect fit.
- Visual Flow Builder
- Test chatbot
- Interface easy to use?
- Easy to setup a chatbot?
Chatbot elements
Octane AI provides enough chatbot elements to create a good chatbot.
They only lack some elements, such as Delays, Vertical Lists and Location Sharing, but these are certainly no deal-breakers.
- Delays
- Images
- Video
- Audio
- Attachments
- Gallery (Horizontal list)
- Vertical list
- Emojis
- Persistent Menu
- Quick Replies
- Buttons
- Free text input
- Location sharing
- Email validation
- Phone number validation
- Date validation
Users
Octane AI automatically groups your users in four groups (called “Lists” in Octane AI):
And if you click on one of those lists, you can see the users in that list with some user information:
Furthermore, you can ask questions to the user and save the answer in a field. But it is not really a custom field, because Octane AI doesn’t allow you to name a specific field when using the Questions feature of Octane AI. So when using Questions, I really don’t know where the values go unless you are using the Email/Phone field.
Moreover, you can also create your own User Segments by setting up specific targeting for Lists:
- Custom fields
- Tags
- User segments
Messages
With Octane AI, you can send SMS broadcasts that send one message to all of your SMS subscribers:
Also, by using the “Custom Flows” feature of Octane AI, you can create some kind of sequence by automatically sending a message after a certain trigger (as shown in the User Interface section).
Unfortunately, is it not possible to use conditions or have a chatbot in multiple languages.
- Broadcasts
- Sequences
- Conditions
- Multiple languages
- Easy to translate
AI & NLP
Octane AI allows you to automatically respond to questions of users by using keyword recognition:
Unfortunately, it is not possible to understand the intent of the user or use entities with your chatbot.
- Keywords
- Intents
- Entities
- Dialogflow integration
Channels
With Octane AI, you can put a chatbot on:
- Your website
- Facebook Messenger
- SMS
It is important to note that you can only use SMS in the United States and Canada.
- Website
- Facebook
- Instagram
- Whatsapp
- Telegram
- SMS
- Slack
- Skype
- Email
Integrations
Octane AI provides a really simple built-in live chat:
It does not provide a lot of functionality, but you can use it to reply to questions of your users (when the chatbot does not understand them).
Besides, Octane AI provides direct integrations with other eCommerce software applications, such as:
- Justuno
- Klaviyo
- Privy
- Recharge
- Yotpo
- Livechat
- Zapier
- Integromat
- Google Sheets
- Webhooks
Marketing
With Octane AI, you can put a Facebook Messenger widget on your website:
This widget is really simple, you can determine the color, the greeting and on which devices you want to show it. Unfortunately, it is not possible to show different greeting messages per website page.
Besides the website widget, you can also create three kinds of pop-ups:
- Welcome pop-up
- Exit-intent pop-up
- Add to cart pop-up
And you can also use Octane AI to build your own shop quizzes (but I will not cover that in this review).
Moreover, you can connect your chatbot to Facebook Ads, automatically reply to comments on your Facebook posts, use the One-Time Notification and create buttons.
- Facebook website widget
- Native website widget
- Landing pages
- Facebook Ads
- Facebook comments auto-reply
- Button creator
- Custom URLs for your chatbot
Pricing
Octane AI provides a 14-day free trial on all of their plans, which gives you plenty of time to decide whether the platform is the right fit for you.
Their first Starter plan costs $29 per month and comes with 250 users, shop quizzes, Facebook Messenger and SMS channels, pop-ups and live chat:
If that is not enough, you can also go with their Pro plan, which costs $199 per month and comes with 1700 users, all of the previous features and A/B Testing.
Also, if you want to use SMS, you pay around $0,015 per sent message.
I think the pricing of Octane AI can be a bit expensive for some companies, so I would definitely recommend starting with their 14-day trial and analyze the extra sales coming through this. Because I also have seen that abandoned cart campaigns (for example) can have a really high Return On Investment, which will cover the extra costs invested in Octane AI.
- Free trial
- Free plan
- Price per month29
- Monthly pricing available?
- Money back guarantee
Analytics
Octane provides a lot of analytics, way too much to cover all in this review. But I will cover the main ones.
They provide a dashboard that shows a lot of stats, such as how many revenue you got and the number of Messenger/SMS subscribers you have:
Also, you can see a breakdown of the most profitable campaigns, and see the number of clicks, orders and revenue:
Furthermore, you can also easily improve the answers of your chatbot, because Octane AI provides an overview of all the phrases your chatbot did not understand:
- Dashboard
- User input
- User retention
- Sent messages
- Open rate
- Click rate
- Conversion rate
- Fall back rate
- Volunteer users
- Custom dashboards/reports
eCommerce
Octane AI is a chatbot builder specifically built for Shopify webshops. They provide a direct integration that directly connects to your Shopify webshop. By using that integration, you can send:
- Abandoned cart messages
- Order confirmations
- Shipping updates
And much more.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to accept payments with Octane AI.
- Payments
- Shopify
- WooCommerce
- Buy directly within the chatbot
- Cart abandonment
Templates & Cloning
Octane AI does not provide any templates. But this is also logical, because with Octane AI everything is in some way pre-built, so you don’t need to use them any way 😉
Moreover, it is not possible to duplicate your chatbot flows or chatbot elements.
- Templates0
- Make template
- Share template
- Duplicate chatbot flows
- Duplicate chatbot elements
Optimization
With Octane AI, you can optimize your chatbot flows by using A/B testing.
- A/B Testing
Support
Octane AI provides (video) tutorials and documentation so you can get started with their platform.
Also, they provide customer support through live chat and email.
- Tutorials
- Documentation
- Customer support
Conclusion
So, should you buy Octane AI to create your chatbots?
Yes, I think you should.
But only if you want to do one thing: run eCommerce Messenger/SMS campaigns for your Shopify store. That is where they are really good at.
They have an easy-to-use interface, you can set up your chatbot in minutes, automatically reply to questions, send broadcasts and sequences, put a chatbot on 3 channels, they have a built-in live chat and they provide good analytics to improve your chatbot.
That being said, Octane AI is not for everyone. If you want to create your own custom flows and don’t want to rely on default messages too much, Octane AI is not the right fit for you.
