Octane AI Review

Update 2023: Octane AI has stopped with their chatbot solution. I recommend using ManyChat instead.

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 😉

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

  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

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

  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

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

  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

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

  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

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

  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 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

  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

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

  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 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

  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

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

  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?
  29
• 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

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

  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

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

  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

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.

• 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?

Optimization

With Octane AI, you can optimize your chatbot flows by using A/B testing.

• A/B Testing

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

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

  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 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.