Did you know that 46% of customers expect companies to respond to queries within four hours? Yet, the current average response time is about 12 hours. To bridge this gap, you can implement free chatbot solutions on your website to enhance customer service without making huge investments.

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Best Free Chatbot Software

With so many options available in the market, choosing the best chatbot tool can be overwhelming. To simplify the process, our research analysts have created a list of top free chatbot software.

Product	User Sentiment Score	Free Trial	Company Size	Starting Price (premium plans)
	95%	Yes	S M L	$394
	90%	Yes	S M	$30
	80%	Yes	S	$0
	93%	N/A	S M L	$99
	87%	N/A	S M L	N/A

Tidio

Tidio offers a leading chatbot solution for small and medium businesses. Its free plan provides unlimited support agents and integrations. The top features are chatbot templates, a visual chatbot builder and a mobile app. You can tailor the widget without Tidio branding for custom branding options.

The product is suitable for social media managers, customer service managers, digital marketing specialists and consultants.

Customize your chat widget with Tidio.

What Users Love About Tidio

• Visual Chatbot Builder
• Chatbot Triggers
• Customization Capabilities

Market Segment

• Small Business: 92%
• Medium Business: 7%
• Large Business: 1%

Top Benefits

• Customize Chat Widget: You can position widgets left or right on the screen and customize chat visibility across devices and websites. The platform lets you set background colors and images and schedule widget visibility. It also helps personalize welcome messages, resize chat buttons and manage operator permissions in the Tidio panel.
• Engage Several Visitors: The free plan offers over 100 chatbot triggers to engage up to 100 unique monthly visitors.
• Employ Unlimited Live Agents: Accommodate as many support teams as you need with unlimited agent seats.
• Leverage Free Chatbot Templates: Use 35+ pre-built plug-and-play chatbot templates for quick responses, FAQs and sales.
• Customize Branding: You can remove Tidio’s branding even in the free plan and implement your company’s customized branding.

Primary Features

• Chatbot Actions: You can enhance user engagement and communication by sending messages and photos. The platform helps generate questions for gathering information, provide carousels or buttons for selections and add contacts to the mailing list. You can also notify agents, conclude conversations with surveys, tag visitors, email visitor groups, integrate with apps like Zapier, and schedule action delays.
• Automated Response Triggers: The chatbot system automates responses triggered by visitor actions or website activities. These include first-time or returning visits, specific keyword usage, operator inactivity or departure, no visitor contact for a specific time, form abandonment, user-defined actions and more.
• Criteria Customization: Users can tailor chatbot interactions based on various criteria, such as operator availability, visitor language, specific days of website access, their browser or operating system, landing page, contact data presence, visitor status (returnee) and mailing list membership.
• Integrations: Integrate with social media platforms, including Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. It also offers native integrations with Google Analytics, Hubspot, Salesforce and Pipedrive.
• Native Mobile App: The mobile app is available for both iOS and Android devices. It provides features like live visitor lists, visitor details, chatbots and push notifications.
• Visual Chatbot Builder: Construct custom chatbot workflows using nodes as building blocks. Users can create tailored chatbot interactions to design responses and actions that align with their specific requirements and preferences.

Features Not Included With Free Version

• Multisite support
• Multi-language chat widget
• Open API integration
• Chatbot performance analytics
• Lyro AI chatbot
• Dedicated support services

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Landbot

Landbot offers a comprehensive free chatbot solution with advanced features like chat quotas, analytics and team inbox. It’s best suited for start-ups and small and medium businesses. Key capabilities include web chat channels, Zapier and Slack integrations, and personalized chatbot experiences.

Suitable users are social media managers, customer service managers, digital marketing specialists and consultants.

Easily create a new bot without coding with Landbot.

What Users Love About Landbot

• Power-up
• Persistent Menus
• Human Takeover

Market Segment

• Small Business: 74%
• Medium Business: 20%
• Large Business: 6%

Top Benefits

• Engage With Customers: Start conversations and engage with your audience across different platforms with web chat channels.
• Integrate With Third-Party Solutions: Connect with numerous popular platforms, including Zapier, Slack, Sendgrid, Google Analytics and Mailchimp.
• Customize Your Chatbot: Use power-ups and customization options to personalize your interactions. You can set goals, add notes, use bricks, create a persistent menu, enable human takeover and incorporate custom code.
• Enhance Team Coordination: Manage chats and multiple agents from a single, centralized team inbox. This feature promotes collaborative chat management and streamlined communication.
• Access Free Templates: Deploy chatbots for specific functions with pre-built templates. Get a selection of free chatbot templates tailored for various use cases, including lead generation, customer support, HR and recruitment.

Primary Features

• Chatbot Flows: Basic flow operations with variables allow users to create simple chatbot flows that automate conversations and tasks. Variables act as containers for storing user responses or data and supporting formats like strings, numbers, dates or arrays. Create, modify and reuse these variables across different blocks to customize interactions and efficiently manage data within the chatbot.
• Persistent Keyword Creator: Create persistent keywords or buttons that remain visible throughout the conversation. It enables visitors to navigate to specific blocks or external URLs.
• Predetermined Notes: Add critical information directly to the canvas to track ideas and details in chatbot flows. Users can insert formatted text, hyperlinks and media like pictures or GIFs for clarity. These notes are visible only within the builder and don’t appear in the actual bot conversation.
• Organizational Tools: Bricks function as organizational tools like folders, helping users structure their bot flows by grouping blocks or sub-bricks. They also serve as plugins, providing access to new functionalities without needing custom development. Additionally, bricks act as shortcuts that help store and reuse sets of blocks within bots.
• Automated Chat Assignments: Agents can personally take over conversations with visitors. It assigns chats based on the agent’s status — online, busy or offline.
• Chatbot Analytics: Users can monitor completed chats, set and review conversion goals, and access detailed user interaction data. It also provides insights into block-by-block conversion rates and drop-off ratios to optimize chatbot flows based on real-time performance metrics.

Features Not Included With Free Version

• Advanced integration and customization
• Conditions block
• A/B testing
• Global keywords
• Keyword jump
• Goodbye messages
• Landbot AI
• Support services
• Priority assistance
• Personalized onboarding

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Freshchat

Freshchat’s free chatbot stands out for its intuitive user interface, compatibility with most platforms and advanced free features. It caters to businesses of all sizes. Top features include industry-specific bot templates, API responses, custom reports, and feedback and sessions.

Its most suitable users are consultants, customer service managers and social media managers.

Easily create and manage campaigns with Freshchat.

What Users Love About Freshchat

• Conversation Labels
• API Responses
• Bulk Actions

Market Segment

• Small Business: 59%
• Medium Business: 34%
• Large Business: 7%

Top Benefits

• Customize Bot Functions: Equip users with default functions suitable for daily operations and offer the flexibility to define and create multiple custom JavaScript (JS) functions. This capability allows users to declare, define and call their functions, offering enhanced control and customization over the bot’s behavior.
• Access Bot Templates: Get customizable pre-built bot templates tailored for specific industries such as Telecom and Healthcare and businesses like Shopify, WooCommerce and IDfy. Import channel-specific templates into existing bots, ensuring each template and bot is associated with a specific channel.
• Build Chatbots: Support Freddy-powered RegEx creation to develop bots with customized search patterns. By requesting assistance from Freshchat’s AI assistant, Freddy, users can generate tailored Regular Expressions (RegEx). These patterns are crucial for defining search criteria for character strings to validate customer inputs.
• Get Curated Reports: Access a suite of curated reports to analyze various aspects of chatbot interactions and performance:
  • Chatbot Overview: Get bot conversation performance metrics and customer satisfaction scores.
  • Chat Conversation Overview: Gain insights into conversation volume, trends and status across bots.
  • Natural Language Performance Report: Deliver key metrics to assess NLP effectiveness within bots.
  • Chatbot System Performance: Understand the bot’s performance in terms of integrations, highlighting response times and success or failure rates.
  • Support Overview: Track performance across chat and bot conversations, tickets and telephony performance.
  • Team Performance: Analyze agent and group performance for enhanced team efficiency.
• Stay Connected: Sales and customer engagement teams can remain connected with customers on the go with the native mobile app. It offers functionalities to manage conversations, view visitor profiles, receive push notifications, share FAQ articles and trigger CSAT surveys.

Primary Features

• Automated Chat Prioritization: Manage and prioritize customer conversations with default views for quick categorization, including all open, assigned or resolved. Create custom views based on specific criteria like topics, conversation status or agents. This feature aids in historical data tracking and operational oversight.
• Threads Creation: Create and manage structured discussions on specific topics within a conversation. Focus on distinct aspects of customer interactions without interrupting the main flow.
• Conversation Switch: Agents can manage customer interactions directly from the inbox across multiple channels. View and respond to historical conversations from various channels for the same contact, all within a single pane.
• Conversational Bots: Optimize interactions by incorporating this feature in Natural Language settings for a human-like experience. Engage bots in casual conversations, using NLP to identify intents and direct users to Q&As and workflow mappings. Categorize customer intents into actions such as creating tickets, awaiting response and recognizing common courtesies.
• Bot Analytics: Effectively monitor team performance with a range of curated reports and the flexibility to create custom reports using data from various modules.

Features Not Included With Free Version

• Advanced bot templates
• Proactive quality coach
• Parallel conversations
• Task management
• Auto-resolve
• Away or offline experience
• Canned responses
• Live translation

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WotNot

WotNot is a chatbot solution that offers on-premise installation and unlimited chatbots. It offers advanced free features such as 500 conversations per month, a no-code chatbot builder, prioritized feature development, integrations with several solutions and media support. It’s ideal for small to medium-sized businesses.

The platform is best suited for customer service managers, social media managers, consultants and digital marketing specialists.

Get a lead generation bot with WotNot.

What Users Love About Wotnot

• Done-For-You Professional Services
• Unlimited Bots
• On-Premise Installation

Market Segment

• Small Business: 66%
• Medium Business: 29%
• Large Business: 5%

Top Benefits

• Minimize Errors: Identify and resolve errors within the conversation flow with WotNot’s error debugging feature.
• Achieve Greater Control: Get version control for all deployments to maintain different iterations of their bot and roll back to previous versions if required.
• Streamline Navigation: View and navigate through any part of the conversation flow with the minimap feature. It enhances the user’s ability to explore and manage the flow efficiently.
• Build Bots: Develop multilingual bots that cater to a diverse, global audience by offering multiple services.
• Automatically Save Changes: You can automatically save all changes in the bot builder. This helps with keeping records and identifying areas for improvement.

Primary Features

• Bot Management: Create customized chatbots for different platforms, including websites, mobile apps, Facebook Messenger, SMS and WhatsApp. You can develop them through a visual no-code interface.
• Visual Editor: Users can build chatbots by connecting action blocks in a flowchart-like structure and specify each block’s functionalities.
• API Integration: Integrate with third-party apps like Salesforce, Hubspot, Zoho CRM and FreshCRM. It allows users to push and pull data through the service call functionality.
• Conversation Flow Management: This feature automatically refocuses the conversation flow on the canvas, ensuring that users can quickly view and navigate their chatbot’s structure.

Features Not Included With Free Version

• History retention
• Chat interface custom visibility
• Fire javascripts
• Data injection
• Human handover
• FAQ builder
• Outbound bots

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HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM offers free chatbot access along with other tools like marketing, service, sales, operations and eCommerce. Its comprehensive offerings make it suitable for businesses of all sizes. Key features include built-in amp support, integrations, conversational bots, mobile apps and a drag-and-drop editor.

Ideal users include digital marketing specialists, customer service managers, social media managers and consultants.

Build your own chatbot without coding. Source

What Users Love About HubSpot CRM

• Fully Managed Infrastructure
• Built-in AMP
• Drag-And-Drop Editor

Market Segment

• Small Business: 55%
• Medium Business: 40%
• Large Business: 5%

Top Benefits

• Gain Performance Insights: Analyze bot performance using various metrics such as conversation completion rates and visitor interactions with each bot action.
• Get Bot Templates: Leverage pre-built and customized templates to meet specific business requirements. For instance, the Qualify Leads bot gathers essential information about visitors, including reasons for visiting the website. The Meetings bot simplifies the process of scheduling appointments.
• Deliver Instant Responses: Create and store reusable responses, known as snippets, to address common questions from prospects quickly. Use them during live chats or include them in emails to enhance communication efficiency. The free plan permits users to maintain up to five snippets, streamlining interactions while providing timely and consistent answers to FAQs.

Primary Features

• Chatbot Actions: Use a variety of free chatbot actions to engage with customers. These actions include sending simple messages, asking questions, offering email subscriptions, submitting tickets and booking meetings.
• Tickets Bot: Gather details about a visitor’s support inquiry and automatically create a ticket in the conversation inbox to monitor the issue. Users need permission to edit tickets.
• Qualify Leads Bot: Collect data about visitors and their purpose for visiting the website to better understand potential leads.
• Meetings Bot: This bot sends visitors a link, enabling them to schedule appointments directly with users or their teams.
• Facebook Messenger Integration: Automatically capture contact information, facilitate two-way communications, create and manage chatbots, schedule meetings through bots, and report on chat volume.

Features Not Included With Free Version

• Custom bots
• Custom branching logic
• Concierge bot
• Knowledge base
• Support bot
• Offline bot
• Advanced targeting
• Add-to-static list chatbot action
• Trigger a webhook chatbot action
• Run a code snippet chatbot action
• Knowledge-based lookup chatbot action

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Factors To Consider While Choosing the Best Chatbot

The first step in choosing the best free chatbot software for your website is to evaluate your company’s requirements and goals.
Matthew Smith, Marketing Director at Right Hook Studio, told us:

I always recommend that buyers start by clearly defining their needs and goals for using a chatbot. Do you need it for customer service, lead generation, or something else? Once you know the primary use case, you can evaluate free chatbot apps based on their strengths in that area.

For example, if you need a customer service chatbot, look for one with robust natural language processing capabilities to understand complex queries. If it’s for lead gen, prioritize apps with easy integration into your marketing tools and website.”

You can easily evaluate your company’s requirements with SelectHub’s free requirement template. Once you’ve prepared your requirements list, move on to evaluating software features.

Gregory Shein, the owner of Nomadic Soft, recommended looking for these capabilities:

Consider factors such as user-friendliness, customization options, integrations with your existing systems, AI capabilities for natural language processing, and customer support. Evaluate the platform’s scalability, security features, and analytics tools for performance tracking. Additionally, prioritize solutions that offer a range of templates or easy bot-building interfaces to streamline deployment.”

Smith highlighted the importance of testing multiple options to find the perfect fit:

I also suggest testing a few options yourself to get a feel for the user experience. The best free chatbot strikes that ideal balance between powerful functionality and an intuitive, conversational interface. With some due diligence, you can find the perfect fit.”

Additionally, keep in mind that there are different kinds of chatbot software in the market, including generative AI chatbots, open-source chatbots, rule-based chatbots, keyword recognition-based chatbots and menu-based chatbots. Choose the one that aligns with your business needs and goals.

FAQs

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Next Steps

Free chatbot solutions offer a cost-effective way to streamline your customer service processes. While they may have some limitations, they can still provide vital features. If you’re considering these solutions, it’s crucial to analyze their features and ensure they align with your organization’s requirements.

If you need more help with selecting the right chatbot software for your business, consider visiting our free comparison report. It provides details of the top systems in the market, their highest-rated features and user experiences.

What are your tips for selecting the best free chatbot software? Let us know in the comments below!

SME Contributors

Matthew Smith is the marketing director of Right Hook Studio, a company that helps its clients grow their businesses. He has more than 6 years of experience in branding, SEO, PPC, eCommerce and websites. He brings together smart thinking and creativity to help businesses achieve the position they deserve.

Gregory Shein is the founder of Nomadic Soft, which specializes in website and mobile app development using advanced technologies and frameworks. He has more than 8 years of experience in software development. He also consults with individuals and organizations on topics pertaining to software, IT, business and technology.