Disclosure: This blog post contains links to one or more of our advertisers’ products. We might receive compensation when you click on links to those products. To learn more, visit our advertising policy page.
ManyChat vs. Chatfuel
If you’re trying to run a small to medium-sized business, you will likely run into some challenges along the way. On top of that, you also must ensure that your customers can access your website and other materials with ease. Fortunately, with Facebook’s business-friendly omnichannel features, it’s easier than ever to enhance your customer service by keeping your interaction with customers all in one place.
Thanks to the development of automated chatbots and chat-related business platforms, companies can interact with customers freely, develop targeted ads, and expand their audience all on an easy-to-use platform. Among the more popular options are ManyChat and Chatfuel, but many potential users often struggle with choosing between them. While both have their share of fantastic options, it’s a good idea to carefully analyze the following details to make an informed decision.
Setup Comparison
When creating chatbots, it’s important to be able to gauge the responses that you’ve drafted for your customers. That said, ManyChat’s flow creator allows two separate views so that business owners can follow the progression of chatbot inquiries and make changes as needed. The Basic Builder view makes it easy to read out chat progressions in a linear model while the Flow Builder view populates responses in a single, branching view. Views can be switched and compared so users to critique their flows before publishing them.
Chatfuel has a single view, much like the Basic Builder view. With this option, users can track the linear progression of their chatbot responses as well. Though Chatfuel’s Automations feature is a bit less user-friendly than ManyChat’s Flow tools, the associated user manual should help clear up any confusion.
Contact Organization
Managing contacts is crucial when it comes to developing an individualized approach for the various groups of people who interact with your business. You’ll want to keep track of your contacts in a way that makes it easy to fragment them into smaller groups with similar interests.
With this in mind, ManyChat and Chatfuel offer similar functions in organizing contact lists, but ManyChat’s ease of use makes it easier to master in a short period. Both tools allow users to segment their audiences and send messages and emails that are targeted towards these smaller groups, but ManyChat’s more straightforward methodology makes it a simpler tool to learn and develop to fit your company’s targeting needs.
Marketing and Ecommerce
Both ManyChat and Chatfuel offer countless tools to help foster audience growth and encourage a steadier stream of sales. Each platform also offers pop-up messaging features to encourage customers to interact with your chatbot and comment features that automatically enlist subscribers that submit certain keywords, sort them, and implore them to seek relevant information from your chatbot.
While Chatfuel has a simpler setup when it comes to growth tools, ManyChat offers more possibilities and data collection strategies. Though ManyChat’s tools require a little more experience, they can be used to send automated, custom responses to your prospective customers.
As for e-commerce capabilities, both platforms allow for payments to be made from Facebook Messenger via Stripe. Additionally, Chatfuel accepts native Facebook payments for North American users. Although ManyChat does not get to enjoy this feature, ManyChat does accept PayPal.
Human Interaction
While both platforms offer automated chatbot options, ManyChat goes well above expectations by delivering the most human-like interaction between bots and customers.
Thanks to the many different logic branches available through ManyChat's Flow developer, the bot can answer an impressive range of questions. Responses are written with a more nuanced personal feel, which makes every interaction feel more human when compared with Chatfuel’s more human-to-bot interactions.
ManyChat is also more equipped to pass inquiries to a human support provider when customers ask questions that the bot cannot answer.
Neither ManyChat nor Chatfuel has NLP (natural language processing) support, but Chatfuel offers keyword matching and ManyChat has seemingly endless keyword possibilities you can choose for every single response branch.
Support and Customer Service
Both platforms offer some type of customer service and support solutions, but ManyChat provides more extensive help options. There are video tutorials covering practically anything you’d want to know about using ManyChat’s features, and each video carefully walks users through the steps.
To supplement the tutorials, ManyChat also has a collection of written information in their Knowledge Base, including a list of Frequently Asked Questions and their answers.
Finally, if users still struggle to understand how ManyChat works, ManyChat offers a ticketing system to handle support inquiries. Staff address concerns in a friendly and timely manner.
Finally, while Chatfuel offers support documentation, its organization is not as straightforward or navigatable as ManyChat’s help section. There is a chat option available in Chatfuel as well, and staff will address customer concerns typically within 24 hours.
Pricing
When considering the pricing scales, you should consider more than just the price itself. For example, whether you have a large subscriber base or one that’s practically nonexistent will have an impact on which pricing features matter most.
For example, with a very small subscriber list, Chatfuel’s free version allows users to take advantage of more features but caps at 5,000 subscribers, while ManyChat’s free version has limited features but an unlimited subscriber list.
Users who choose a pro plan will save a fair share of money going with ManyChat, as their prices tend to be between $5-$35 cheaper than Chatfuel for the same number of active users.
Conclusion: ManyChat Comes Out on Top
For businesses focused on rapid growth, ManyChat is the clear winner. Its user-friendliness and generous offering of marketing options allow you to simplify your marketing efforts with the use of automation. ManyChat is more affordable, presents a whole library of help documentation, and allows business owners to employ the use of chatbots to get more work done in a short window of time.
If you’re considering building chatbots for your business with ManyChat but you have any doubts about how to make it better, we are always a click away.
Our 3 in-house ManyChat Messenger Marketing Experts will do their best to boost your business with chatbots.
