POP Review

By Joren Wouters Updated on

POP

POP is chatbot software for building chatbots on Facebook Messenger and your website. It is primarily focused on running campaigns inside Facebook Messenger. But is this chatbot software worth it to buy? Let’s find that out!

For this review about POP, I used the criteria of how you can choose the best chatbot software.

Introduction to POP

Before conducting this review of POP, I had some contact with them.

POP is chatbot software that is mainly focusing on running campaigns inside Facebook Messenger. And with campaigns they practically mean chatbot flows.

This means that they are not really focused on the question-answering side of chatbots. But this doesn’t mean that it is impossible to provide answers to questions of your users 😉

Well, let’s dive in!

User Interface

When you log in to POP, the first thing you see is the Inbox containing all the messages that were sent to the live chat:

pop-inbox

On the left side, you have a menu with:

  • Send – For setting up your broadcasts
  • Campaigns – Here you can create your chatbot flows
  • Audience – Your audience and the statistics of your chatbot
  • Automations – Containing all the marketing tools, such as automatically reply to comments
  • Help – Troubleshooting if you have a problem

When you are actually going to create a chatbot, the interface is like a blank canvas in which you just can start typing:

pop-interface-blank

To be honest, it took me some time to get used to this interface. This is because it’s hard to see the complete overview of your chatbot flow. Here is an example, this is a flow containing a button:

pop-example-flow

But what happens after you click on the button? The interface doesn’t let you see this, until you are actually clicking on the button yourself:

pop-flow-after-click

On the one hand, this doesn’t give you a great overview of your complete flow. But on the other hand, it shows you how your users would flow through your chatbot flow, which is actually pretty nice.

What is a great feature of their interface, is that it is really easy to have a flow within a flow.

If you see the example above, the “Multiple choice question (artists)” is a separate flow that is used within my current flow. When the user has gone through that flow, it automatically returns to my current flow. This is really nice and a feature I have not seen yet in many different other chatbot software.

So it may take you some time to get comfortable with the interface, but once you have it is really easy to use and really flexible. Also, POP provides 40 templates that you can install right away to build your chatbot. And you can test all of your chatbot flows inside Messenger before they actually go live.

  • 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

POP has all the chatbot elements you need to build your chatbot. They only don’t provide Delays, Vertical Lists and Date Validation, but those are no deal-breakers.

So they perform really well on this one!

  • 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

In POP it is really easy to analyze your audience, by clicking on the “Audience” tab:

pop-audience

This gives you an overview of all your subscribers with their additional information.

In POP, you can easily add custom fields and add tags to your subscribers. Also, it is possible to make user segments and assign your subscribers to one of your 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

With POP, you can send broadcasts to all your subscribers or a part of your subscribers (by selecting a segment). Also, it possible to schedule those broadcasts for a specific date and time.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to send sequences with POP. And this is a drawback, especially for a chatbot software that is focused on using campaigns inside Facebook Messenger.

Moreover, it is not possible to use any conditions in your chatbot flows.

On the other side, it is possible to make a chatbot in any language, but it is not easy to translate your chatbot to different 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

With POP it is possible to recognize keywords and give a good response to your users:

pop-keywords

Because POP is primarily focusing on running campaigns, they provide less attention to the AI part of chatbots. Therefore, it is not possible to use any AI or NLP, such as grabbing the intent of the user or using entities. Moreover, they don’t provide a DialogFlow integration.

  • 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

POP makes it easy to put your chatbot on Facebook Messenger and on your website (using a Facebook Messenger widget).

But those are only the channels that POP serves. So, if you want to provide an omnichannel chatbot experience to your users, you cannot use POP, which is 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

POP has a built-in live chat integration, which is the most important integration any chatbot software needs.

Moreover, they have a Zapier integration, which allows you to connect your chatbot with almost any software on earth.

Unfortunately, they don’t provide integrations with Make (formerly Integromat), Google Sheets or the possibility to create your own webhooks.

  • 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

POP does really great on marketing.

You can:

  • Put a Facebook Messenger widget on your website
  • Connect your chatbot with Facebook ads
  • Send One-Time Notifications 
  • Automatically reply to Facebook comments
  • Create “Send to Messenger” buttons and put them on your website
  • Have custom URLs to specific chatbot flows

So, they have all the tools you need to make sure your audience is coming 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

POP comes with a free plan that comes with all the features of the platform up to 100 subscribers.

When you exceed those 100 subscribers, you need to pay. But the pricing of their plans is actually really cheap:

Up to Price
5.000 subscribers $29
10.000 subscribers $49
15.000 subscribers $69
20.000 subscribers $89
30.000 subscribers $109

And all these plans have all the features of the platform. These prices are even less than ManyChat and Chatfuel, which I consider as one of the cheapest chatbot software for Facebook Messenger.

So a lot of value for a really small price.

  • 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

As I said before, POP is really focusing on running campaigns inside Facebook Messenger. Therefore, their analytics are really focused on campaigns and so on the number of subscribers your chatbot has, which is shown in a dashboard:

analytics-dashboard-pop
Source: POP

Moreover, you have a separate dashboard containing the statistics of your broadcasts:

pop-broadcast-analytics

These show the number of messages you sent, the total views of your messages and the average open rate.

So these statistics are mostly focused on the number of subscribers and a bit minimal, but enough to analyze how good your chatbot is doing.

A drawback is that you cannot analyze the user input that the chatbot did not understand. This could allow you to improve the answers of your chatbot, but as said before, this is not something that POP is focusing on.

  • 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

POP doesn’t provide any integrations with eCommerce software.

  • 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

POP has 40 templates that you can install immediately to create your own chatbot.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to create your own templates and share them with others.

What is possible, is that you can duplicate your own chatbot flows, so you don’t have to duplicate everything manually.

  • Templates
    How many pre-built templates does the chatbot platform provide?
    40
  • 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 POP, it is not possible to do any optimization, like A/B Testing.

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

Support

POP provides tutorials on how to use their platform, and extensive documentation.

Moreover, they provide support via email and live chat.

  • 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 I buy POP to create my chatbots?

Yes, I should.

POP has a great interface, many chatbot elements, you can assign custom fields and tags, make user segments, send broadcasts, have a built-in live chat integration, a Zapier integration and various marketing possibilities for a really small price.

There are only three situations in which I should not use POP:

  1. If you want to create an omnichannel chatbot experience and not only want to use Facebook Messenger
  2. If you want to improve the answers of your chatbot by making use of AI & NLP
  3. And if you want to create sequences, because this is currently not possible with POP

But for the rest, POP is great chatbot software for building your chatbots.

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