The latest talk of the businesses is “Chatbots”. Every organization is talking about it and has become enormously popular. Many companies prefer Custom Chatbot Development Bots help you to grow your business let that be a small startup or a big enterprise. With the help of the chatbots, you can easily scale and deal with sales and marketing. Chatbots are capturing a lot of limelight from small startups to large enterprises. And they are also interested in knowing its development cost. So, I have come up with this article which will help you in giving an idea in the cost as well as how to build a chatbot.

How to Choose the Right Chatbot for Your Business?

Before entering into the development of chatbot, there are a lot of things that you must consider.

Your target audience, and the platforms they are found.
Work of your chatbot.
Business needs of your bot.
cost to make a chatbot.
Marketing of your bot.

How to Build a Chatbot?

For you easy to choose the best option, I have listed below the top 3 ways to create the bots for your business.

Ready solutions
Self-service platforms
A chatbot from scratch

Let us understand them in detail which will be easier for you to choose.

1. Ready Solutions

For almost each and everything, there are several ready solutions according to the needs of the business. For example Google Play Store for Android and App Store for iOS. To find the bots, the best places are Telegram and Kik Bot Stores. To search for the chatbots, you can search using the Botlist- a catalog of bots. Some bots which are listed on the Botlist have several purposes and runs on multiple platforms i.e. platform-independent. So, this way you can choose any of the bots that fit your business needs.

Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Chatbots can be found in one central location	Ready-made bots cannot be customized.
You will most probably find a suitable chatbot for your business.	Difficult to find a bot that will satisfy your business needs 100%.
Time-saving as no time and money spent on development.

2. Self-service Platform

If you are interested in building a chatbot by yourself then the self-service platform is the best. There are many ways by which you can build a chatbot by yourself but the one we will discuss is the easiest way i.e. building a chatbot without writing a line of code. Let us understand the most famous self-service platforms one by one.

a. Chatfuel

It is very easy to build a chatbot in Chatfuel because all you need to do is to write use cases and user stories, follow tutorials, and run some testing. Chatfuel allows you to create chatbots for Facebook Messenger and Telegram, configure AI algorithms, and integrate your bot with many third-party services. You can enjoy the free trial till 100,000 messages a month.

b. Motion.ai

Creating a chatbot with Motion.ai is easy - they claim that "if you can draw a flowchart, you can create a chatbot." You can then integrate your chatbots with different messenger platforms: SMS, FB Messenger, Slack, and Smooch. This platform also allows you to create bots for the web and for posting. Motion.ai offers a free trial but is limited to only 2 chatbots with 1000 messages a month. There are three monthly packages, ranging from $ 15 per month to $ 100 per month.

c. MobileMonkey

MobileMonkey is a platform that allows you to create a Facebook Messenger chatbot without coding. The platform is aimed at marketers. With MobileMonkey, you can collect lead data, create surveys, and take action if a potential lead takes too much time to complete the desired action. The MobileMonkey pricing plan starts at $0, but the more you reach the chatbots, websites, and users, the more you'll pay.

Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
They can run your chatbot on various messenger platforms.	Prices depend on your need for bots, messaging, integration, and support.
They provide you with integration for various third-party services.	Mostly, the tools available do not meet your requirements.
They provide tutorials to help you create a bot quickly and easily.
It allows you to create chatbots of any size for any company.
Developing a chatbot on this platform is relatively inexpensive and fast.
You can configure the behavior logic for your chatbot.

3. A chatbot from Scratch

If you decide not to do any of the aforementioned options then you can try Scratch. If you do not have command in programming then you can hire an IT company which is specialized in web and mobile application development services. The chatbot for an existing chat service is simply a server-side application that implements chat via the API. The IT companies can use different technologies to implement this server-side application.

The Time and Cost it Takes to Develop a Chatbot

A very important part of the enterprise-wide chatbot application development process and the answer to the chatbot development costs is knowing how much time it takes for chatbot application development companies to develop them so they can get a rough idea of when to witness unprecedented customer satisfaction charts. So, I have mentioned below the facts that must be considered on the time and development cost of the chatbot using Scratch.

Integration with an app – the time depends on the complexity of the chatbot, but roughly it takes around 40- 58 hours.

Development of communication interface

Command language user interpreter takes around 40-58 hours.
The natural language user interface takes around 125-165 hours.

Business logic

Adapting existing business logic takes 125-165 hours depending on the amount of the logic.
Developing a business logic from scratch takes about 160-195 hours.

The approximate cost of developing a chatbot is between $20,000 and $ 30,000. The cost range includes the design, development, and integration of the entire chatbot application development process. Note: The development time and cost may vary according to your requirements.

Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Experienced developers implement complex and unique functionalities.	It is time-taking if the chatbot is developed using scratch.
Developers use the latest development approaches and technologies.	You need your own server infrastructure (hosting).
A development team can build a chatbot according to your requirements.
Companies provide regular maintenance and continuous improvement.

Ready to Build a Chatbot?

In short, if you just need a simple bot for your business, you may want to look for a ready solution or use a self-service platform. On the other hand, if you require a custom solution with unique or complex functionality, then it’s best to go with a full-service software development team. You can contact JPLoft Solution Pvt. Ltd. for the best web/ app solutions. Don’t hesitate to call our executive at +44-1256-274012 or drop your inquiry at sales@jploft.com or Free Quote at- https://www.jploft.com/contact-us