Bot platforms provide development tools, including frameworks, API toolsets, and code extensibility, for building and deploying interactive, conversational chatbots that can scale across multiple communication channels and devices, helping companies automate customer interactions and deliver information to users.
Core Capabilities of Bot Platforms
To qualify for inclusion in the Bot Platforms category, a product must:
- Support bot deployment capabilities
- Offer bot development frameworks
- Allow users to define behaviors and program responses
- Provide users with tools for performing maintenance and updating published bots
- Be code extensible
Common Use Cases for Bot Platforms
Developers and businesses use bot platforms to build intelligent, scalable bots for customer-facing and internal interactions. Common use cases include:
- Building conversational bots for customer service, sales, and knowledge base interactions
- Deploying bots simultaneously across multiple communication channels and devices
- Maintaining and updating published bots as requirements evolve over time
How Bot Platforms Differ from Other Tools
Bot platforms are development environments purpose-built for creating and deploying bots, distinguishing them from end-user chatbot solutions. Many bot platforms are built on top of machine learning (ML) software for advanced performance and analytics, and utilize natural language processing (NLP) software to interpret text and enable AI-powered interactions. Code extensibility is a critical differentiator, enabling developers to build highly customizable bots beyond template-based solutions.
Insights from G2 on Bot Platforms
Based on category trends on G2, development framework flexibility and multi-channel deployment capabilities stand out as top strengths. Reduced time-to-deployment for conversational bots stand out as a primary benefit of adoption.