Conversational AI chatbots have become a must-have for businesses to engage customers and automate interactions. With the rising popularity of chatbots, several dedicated platforms have emerged that allow you to build them without intensive programming. Two of the leading contenders in this space are Botpress and Voiceflow.
Both platforms aim to make creating chatbots more accessible. But they appeal to slightly different audiences and excel in different areas. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll dive into how Botpress and Voiceflow compare across key factors to consider when choosing a chatbot builder.
Ease of Use
For non-technical users looking to build chatbots quickly, Voiceflow provides more user-friendliness with its visual no-code approach. Its drag-and-drop flow editor andprebuilt conversational components allow anyone to stitch together moderately complex bots without touching any code.
Marketing managers, customer support reps, and other non-developers can comfortably build bots handling multi-turn conversations with some logical branching. But extremely advanced NLP capabilities would still require involvement from Voiceflow‘s team of AI specialists.
On the flip side, Botpress offers clear UI abstractions for developers to assemble, instrument and enhance chatbots with greater custom control via code. Architects can visually compose flows and dialogs while leveraging events, hooks, plugins to inject business logic and data integrations.
So Botpress strikes a balance between GUI-based flow construction and developer empowerment for serious bot customization coded in JavaScript/TypeScript. Those comfortable debugging code will feel right at home with Botpress, but non-coders may still find Voiceflow more approachable.
Ease of Use Advantage: Voiceflow
While both platforms aim for non-developer accessibility, Voiceflow‘s visual programming paradigm requires zero coding knowledge for building moderately smart chatbots. Botpress offers guardrails for devs to code themselves out of any corner case, but non-programmers will benefit from Voiceflow‘s guided no-code experience.
Features
When it comes to out-of-the-box capabilities, Voiceflow really differentiates itself from most chatbot builders. The platform incorporates many advanced AI features without exposing complex configuration options.
Voiceflow Key Features
- Contextual Dialog Manager – Understands conversational context to respond appropriately without getting lost
- Multi-language NLU – Built-in natural language engine supports intent recognition in 7 languages
- Fulfillment Integrations – Over two dozen integrations with APIs like Mailchimp, Google Sheets etc
- Voice Interfaces – Seamless deployment as voice bots on Alexa, Google Assistant and more
These rich features allow fairly smart voice and chat assistants to be built with minimal coding. Voiceflow‘s AI specialists also continually enhance the platform‘s NLP brain.
In comparison, Botpress offers a more blank canvas to customize functionality using JavaScript and community plugins. Developers have full control for custom experiences via code, at the cost of building more from scratch themselves.
Botpress Key Features
- Extensible Architecture – JS SDK provides infinite ways to customize bot behavior
- 200+ Community Plugins – Integrate external APIs, manage data, add intelligence
- Built-in Testing Tools – Graphical tools to simulate and inspect conversations
So Voiceflow accelerates time-to-value with advanced NLU and integrations out-of-the-box. Meanwhile, Botpress relies more on developer skills and creativity to expand capabilities via plugins.
Features Advantage: Voiceflow
While devs may prefer Botpress‘ flexibility, Voiceflow‘s extensive prebuilt features enable building sophisticated chatbots faster with less code. Its array of over two dozen integrations also easily connects bots to external services.
Community Support
Given Botpress‘ open source nature, its community support is more lively and collaborative. The Botpress Discord server has over 9000 members discussing ideas, sharing resources, and assisting each other.
This grassroots community of chatbot developers, designers, enthusiasts and tinkerers helps drive Botpress development more organically via open channels. Anyone can pitch suggestions, vote on roadmap priorities, or fork repositories to contribute features.
In contrast, Voiceflow community relies more on its rich self-serve documentation and customer support team. The ability to contact their specialists for assistance is invaluable, but lacks the same community-run feel as Botpress‘ Discord hangouts. There‘s definitely passion among Voiceflow power users, but engagement channels feel more corporate-structured.
Community Metrics
| Platform | Discord Members | GitHub Stars | Avg Monthly Commits | Contributors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Botpress | 9000+ | 7500+ | 230 | 359 |
| Voiceflow | NA | 1300+ | 30 | 13 |
Quantitatively, Botpress edges out Voiceflow significantly across community activity indicators – Discord membership, GitHub stars, monthly commits, and contributors.
Support Advantage: Botpress
The viral grassroots community momentum behind Botpress via Discord and GitHub surpasses Voiceflow‘s company-led forums. The open source model fosters more organic user-driven progress through peer knowledge sharing.
Customization
Front-end design customization is another area where Botpress‘ open source DNA gives it an edge. Developers can fully customize UI components with React and Redux or style them via raw CSS overrides.
This theming flexibility paired with themable chat UI SDKs facilitates extensive white-labeling to match your brand identity. Support for custom components lets you craft bespoke experiences.
Whereas Voiceflow allows some theming adjustments like colors, fonts and adding logos/images. But its closed source hosted environment limits extreme UI personalization possible by modifying Botpress source code directly.
Customization Advantage: Botpress
Developers get more theming ownership with Botpress for tailoring chatbot interfaces to specific brand needs, without constraints of Voiceflow‘s proprietary building blocks.
Deployment
One huge plus with Botpress is frictionless deployment pathways for your chatbots onto websites or messaging platforms. It offers a couple easy options to embed and integrate bots:
- Shareable Public Pages – Instantly publish your bot via shared public links
- Embeddable Webchat – Inject chat interface into sites with simple script tags
- REST API – Build custom front-ends querying bot backend API
In particular, dropping the web chat embed code into any webpage enables letting customers access your bot in just a few clicks!
Meanwhile, Voiceflow deployment demands some orchestration across servers, databases, and speech integrations. Options like:
- Containerizing via Docker
- Hosting on AWS Lambda
- Managing dedicated servers
Getting Voiceflow bots in front of people takes more ops expertise relative to Botpress‘ embeddable webchat.
Deployment Advantage: Botpress
Botpress makes your chatbots instantly visible by embedding them into websites with no backend infrastructure demands. Voiceflow requires more environments configuration before customers can interact with your bots.
Integrations
When it comes to out-of-the-box integrations, Voiceflow once again outpaces Botpress. Voiceflow offers dozens of prebuilt connectors to popular applications like:
- Intercom – Connect Voiceflow bots with the Intercom platform
- SAP Conversational AI – Extend CAI bot capabilities using Voiceflow
- Google Sheets – Store and retrieve bot data from Google Sheets
Meanwhile Botpress sticks to open web standards instead of tying into proprietary APIs, giving developers flexibility to integrate with any backend. There are community-contributed plugins for common tools like Dialogflow, databases, analytics etc. Or devs can leverage the JavaScript SDK to build their own custom plugins.
Integrations Advantage: Voiceflow
If speed is critical, Voiceflow‘s library of prebuilt integrations accelerates connecting bots to everyday business apps without coding.
Analytics
Understanding your chatbot‘s performance over time is key to identifying areas needing improvement. Both platforms provide analytics dashboards tracking vital engagement metrics:
Voiceflow Analytics
- Sessions, unique users and messages over time
- Intent recognition rates
- Conversation step analysis
- Most frequent utterances
Botpress Analytics
- Daily/monthly active users
- Messages metrics over time
- Session duration distribution
- Top conversations flows
While coverage is broadly similar, Voiceflow provides slightly more fine-grained analytics particularly around intent-level performance. This granularity helps tune the natural language model powering your bot.
But a core distinction is Botpress allows exporting full conversation logs for custom offline analysis. Voiceflow analytics focus on aggregated metrics reported in its console, without raw data access.
Analytics Advantage: Voiceflow
Voiceflow analytics embed NLU metrics to better optimize language tuning, though Botpress allows more custom analysis with full logs exports.
Adoption & Users
Given its longer history originating at Facebook in 2016, Botpress has likely powered more chatbots in production so far. Its open source credibility and developer-friendly approach has seen wide adoption across:
- Enterprise Companies – Dell, Orange, VMware
- SMBs – Over 500 SMB customers
- Developer Agencies – 47 Degrees, Opsive, Gekko Studio
Some sample bots running Botpress:
As a newer startup founded in 2018, Voiceflow has quickly gained steam especially among non-technical citizen developers. Adoption spans:
- Enterprise – Oracle, Unilever, Stripe
- SMBs – Over 8000 business users
- Universities – Stanford, Columbia University
Voiceflow is also recognized in Gartner‘s Conversational AI platforms report.
Some example voice bots built on Voiceflow:
User Base Advantage: Botpress
Botpress‘ longer presence grants it larger production deployment footprint currently, though Voiceflow adoption rising rapidly among non-coders.
Pricing
Botpress wins on pricing flexibility thanks to its free open source tier. Even commercial plans start at just $7/month for the Pro version.
| Botpress Plan | Price | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/mo | Unlimited Bots 5K MAUs/mo |
| Pro | $7/mo | Everything in Free + HIPAA compliance + Email support + More analytics |
| Enterprise | Custom | Priority email support + On-premise install + Everything in Pro |
For Voiceflow, a free trial lets you build simple test bots. But running bots in production and advanced capabilities require paid plans.
| Voiceflow Plan | Price | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
| Free Trial | $0/mo | 50 chatbot conversations/mo Personal projects only |
| Pro | $399/mo | 5000 conversations/mo Team collaborators Advanced analytics & reports Priority support |
| Business | $999/mo | 25,000 conversations/mo Data exports Conversation transcripts Everything in Pro |
Voiceflow pricing reflects investments in its AI research and specialized support. But budget-conscious early stage startups may prefer Botpress‘ generously featured free tier.
Pricing Advantage: Botpress
Botpress‘ permanently free open source plan enables startups to commercially deploy chatbots at zero cost – crucial for early stage ventures.
Verdict: Voiceflow for Non-Coders, Botpress for Customization
In summary, Voiceflow‘s visual programming shines for non-developers wanting to build advanced chatbots fast. Its conversational AI capabilities outclass Botpress out-of-the-box. But Botpress delivers unmatched customization potential through code for developers seeking total control.
Industry analyst and Founder of Voicebot.ai Bret Kinsella commented:
"If you are making fairly complex voice applications and want to get to market quickly with custom landing experiences, Voiceflow is going to be your choice. If you really want to control your destiny and custom code everything, then Botpress with its open-source framework may be your preferred platform."
So if you prioritize speed-to-market and leveraging cutting-edge language AI, Voiceflow is likely the best bet. But for unparalleled customizability with vibrant community support, Botpress has distinct advantages that technical teams can exploit.
Factoring in your internal team skills, use case complexity, and customization needs should guide your platform decision. At different stages of growth, businesses may even utilize both tools in conjunction to empower non-developers and developers alike in scaling conversational experiences.