In the world of digital marketing, funnels and conversions matters to a website. That is why email marketing using platforms like MailChimp and Amazon SES has been the rage for the past several years. But email marketing has waned in the recent years while chatbots has seen unprecedented growth.
With a massive 2.9 billion monthly active users on Facebook Messenger, an 80% Open Rate and a 13% Click Through Rate, Facebook Messenger chatbots exploded on the scene when Facebook allowed chatbots on its messenger.
But finding the right chatbot is daunting with the amount of chatbot brands out there. Current established chatbot brands includes the following:
- Wit.ai
- IBM Watson
- Chatfuel
- Microsoft Bot
- ManyChat
- Pandorabots
Closer to home, we had some lifetime deals for some not-so-famous bots, namely:
- MobileMonkey
- Botletter
- Verloop
- Landbot
- Jumper.ai
- ZoConvert
So, how do we choose? Which chatbot should we buy/subscribe to? Is MobileMonkey worth it? Read on as we seek to answer your questions in our MobileMonkey Review.
MobileMonkey Review: An Introduction
Like yourself, I didn’t know much about Chatbots. The only thing I knew was that Chatbots is hot and my friends were all about them. Personally, I had bought a couple of chatbot apps on lifetime over the past few months without actually exploring them nor their unique selling points
So when MobileMonkey came into the picture three weeks ago, I wasn’t too keen. Why buy another chatbot app, I reasoned. Plus Brizy Pro, BrandQuiz, UserGuiding and Crystal.ai, took a grip on my attention.
But a few days ago, I found myself with a bit time. And surprisingly, the lifetime deal for Mobile Monkey was still valid. That made me explore the interesting world of Chatbots.
I checked out MobileMonkey, Chatfuel, ManyChat, Verloop, Landbot, ZoConvert, Botletter and Jumper.ai over the past three days, while consuming a bunch of articles on Chatbots.
With the information and experience that I gained, I made up my mind on MobileMonkey. Please read on as I hope to help you on yours in this MobileMonkey review.
Understanding Chatbots
Did you know that there are two types of chatbots, namely Scripted Chatbots and AI Chatbots. Chatbots like Wit.ai, IBM Watson and Crystal.ai are AI Chatbots. They are capable of self-learning, emulating human interaction and behaviour but costs a lot of time and money to develop.
In comparison, scripted bots are popular chatbots today. They’re both cost-effective and easy to deploy. You can even personalise and launch your scripted bot on a Chatbot app like ManyChat within a minutes
Fourth Source explains more about scripted bots in the snippet below:
Think of the scripted bot as a guided conversation. For instance, Sephora (a popular makeup retailer in the U.S.) recently launched a bot on the Kik store. Today, the bot engages users with a number of questions about makeup preferences and serves up content and offers relevant to the responses. While it doesn’t sound like a highly sophisticated process – the more the consumer engages with the bot over time, the smarter the bot (and the brand) get about consumer preferences and can serve personalised content and offers. The most important part is that the brand is front and center to the consumer and engaging them with interesting and useful content – hopefully driving them through the sales conversion process.1
In short, scripted bots are like those multiple options type of adventure books and games. With a few clicks, you get to create multiple flows that gives different results to your user. You can even loop back to the beginning of the chat.
This improves user interaction, satisfaction and ultimately, conversion rates on your website. This also reduces customer support costs for your business/organisation.
In this article we will be focusing on scripted bots, as MobileMonkey, ManyChat and the rest of the chatbots we compare MobileMonkey to, are scripted bots.
MobileMonkey Review: Basic Chatbot Functions
But comparing scripted bots itself is hard. Most of the scripted bots mentioned in this article come with different features, execution and user interface. Some even name similar features differently, which adds to the confusion.
Plus, in the various Facebook groups that I’m in, different people are championing different chatbots, presumably because they have invested time and money in these bots.
And these differences puzzled me for a while, until I stumbled upon this article from SEMRush which defines the basic Chatbot functions of a modern chatbot.
This helped me form a framework to evaluate scripted chatbots and hopefully, you too. Here’s the snippet from SEMRush:
The platforms all look a little different in their execution and user interface, but they follow a basic equation.
You create a chat flow first. This will vary depending on who you are talking to and the context in which they are contacting you.
For example, maybe the bot sits on your website and invites people to subscribe to updates anytime you update your blog.
Maybe the bot sits in a re-marketing ad on Facebook, inviting users who abandoned their cart to reach out if they have any questions you can help with.
Whatever the situation, there are several basic functions in the platforms:
Flow: This is what it sounds like – a guided conversation, where you ask questions, users answers, and based on that answer they receive new choices. It is a lot like the old Choose Your Own Adventure books.
Triggers: These are based on things like keywords a user types in. It literally triggers a conversation flow. For example, if a user uses the word “help,” your bot will put them into a conversation flow to help them.
Promotion: These are the options available to help get bot subscribers. Generally, they are things like JSON code that can go into a Facebook ad or a site modal that prompts users to sign up. I have a modal on my site for people that scroll to a certain length, for example.2
MobileMonkey Review: MobileMonkey vs ManyChat vs Chatfuel vs Landbot vs Verloop vs Botletter vs ZoConvert
With this framework, I got down to trying out MobileMonkey as well as leading scripted chatbots like Chatfuel and ManyChat. I also tried out ZoConvert, Verloop, Botletter, Landbot and Jumper.ai.
Off the bat, we removed Jumper.ai from the list as they are a specialized ecommerce chatbot that don’t do Flows, Broadcasts nor Subscribers. Rather, they specialise in delivering simplified checkouts on social media channels.
Let us now look at the comparison table below:
As you can see, the only bot that has feature parity with ManyChat and Chatfuel is MobileMonkey. That was surprising as I expected the others to do better.
But I was wrong. With the evaluation framework, it becomes clear that ZoConvert, Landbot, Botletter and Verloop are lacking when compared to MobileMonkey, what more Chatfuel and ManyChat.
That doesn’t mean they are bad Chatbot apps as some of them specialise in certain features. Let us take a deep dive below and how these bots fare when compared to MobileMonkey
A) Chatfuel – Chatfuel is the leading scripted chatbot for a good reason. It is easy to use, has tons of templates that we can apply and is the only one with integration to Dialogflow (a powerful conversational AI from Google). However, it’s free tier is only limited to five thousand subscribers and features Chatfuel’s branding prominently, other than other limitations.
MobileMonkey lacks in templates and UI/UX and integration to Dialogflow. But other than that, MobileMonkey does pretty well compared to Chatfuel. One advantage MobileMonkey has over Chatfuel, is the integration to RSS feeds without the need for Zapier.
Chatfuel vs MobileMonkey verdict:
The lifetime deal for MobileMonkey makes it a winner here. Unless you need Dialogflow, MobileMonkey does everything you need. Plus, why use Chatflow free and lose visitors who click on the Chatflow branding, when you can get MobileMonkey on lifetime?
B) ManyChat – ManyChat is the granddaddy of scripted chatbots. While it launched around the same time as Chatfuel, ManyChat’s interface is copied by Botletter and ZoConvert.
ManyChat comes with more options for user sign up as well as auto-posting sources. Other than that MobileMonkey (which is a fairly new app), should be able to catch up in due time.
ManyChat vs MobileMonkey verdict:
I like ManyChat’s interface. But the feature parity and lifetime deal for MobileMonkey swings the vote in favour of MobileMonkey.
C) ZoConvert – As much as I want to like ZoConvert, it feels very much an unfinished product. ZoConvert tries to copy ManyChat but lacks in so many ways.
Compared to MobileMonkey, ZoConvert doesn’t have Triggers, Auto Posting, User Segmentation and the ability to take over a conversation. However, if you don’t mind just broadcasting to an unsegmented group of subscribers, ZoConvert does that well.
ZoConvert vs MobileMonkey verdict:
Should you buy MobileMonkey if you already have ZoConvert? Yes, please do. While Umair and team are dedicated to making ZoConvert succeed, ZoConvert has a long way to go before they can match MobileMonkey.
D) Verloop – The Verloop Agency deal was bandied around as better than MobileMonkey. I beg to differ. While Verloop is a nice bot, its ability to create chatbot conversational flows is limited. Plus, Verloop doesn’t do broadcasts, which limits your capability with the bot.
Verloop also feels very much like an incomplete product. With undeletable Bot Recipes, the Verloop chatbot has been frustrating.
Verloop vs MobileMonkey verdict:
If you’ve just bought Verloop, perhaps consider refunding your licenses in favour of stacking up on MobileMonkey.
E) Landbot – Landbot’s focus is on transforming your site into a conversational experience via embedding it on your site. On the plus side, Landbot has a powerful chat flow builder and the ability for human takeover. However, it lacks in almost everything else a modern chatbot should have.
Landbot vs MobileMonkey verdict:
Perhaps keep Landbot on your site to improve conversion rate of funnels. But get yourself some MobileMonkey licenses as your Facebook Page’s chatbot.
F) Botletter – Botletter comes with the least amount of features, with its focus on sending newsletters and drip campaigns via broadcasts. There are no chatbot conversational flows nor the ability to trigger a response. In short, if all you want from your bot is to blast promotional material to subscribers without bothering about an interactive funnel, then Botletter is for you.
Botletter vs MobileMonkey verdict:
I feel sending out interactive sequences that my subscribers could interact with, is better than just broadcasting messages. As such, I might refund Botletter and buy another MobileMonkey license.
MobileMonkey Review: Strengths, Weaknesses & First Impressions
Overall, MobileMonkey fares well when compared to established scripted bot players like ManyChat and Chatfuel. When compared to the other chatbots that had lifetime deals, MobileMonkey fares even better.
I feel that MobileMonkey’s strengths comes from the dynamism of its founder, Larry Kim. Within a year, MobileMonkey has caught up feature-wise with ManyChat and Chatfuel. As such, it won’t be a surprise to see MobileMonkey growing into a major scripted bot player in the near future.
The biggest issue with MobileMonkey, is the dashboard feels cluttered. Perhaps an onboarding tool like UserGuiding would help. Having a UI/UX specialist would also help improve the website and admin dashboard, which can frustrate at times.
Overall, I like MobileMonkey. While it took awhile to get used to, MobileMonkey delivers excellent value for money. Again, the MobileMonkey team could perhaps invest some time and effort in improving the UI/UX of the site, but what sits beneath the cluttered website is a powerful scripted chatbot that is fast approaching ManyChat and Chatfuel as a worthy competitor.
MobileMonkey Review: Conclusion
MobileMonkey is a great chatbot for companies and entrepreneurs wanting to get onboard the world of Chatbots. With a full range of features comparable to market leaders like ManyChat and Chatfuel, MobileMonkey can only get better.
Please grab yourself a copy of MobileMonkey while the lifetime deal is still active, as the lifetime deal provides much value for money to you. We hope that the MobileMonkey review has been helpful to you.
- Brands and Bots – what you need to know – Fourth Source, Brands and Bots – what you need to know, http://www.fourthsource.com/branding/brands-bots-need-know-20801
- How to Use Chatbots in Facebook Messenger for Your Business, The Brave World of Messenger Bots, https://www.semrush.com/blog/the-brave-world-of-messenger-bots/
