Dialogflow vs. Lex vs. Watson vs. Wit vs. Azure Bot

Chatbots are a revolution in customer communication. Nowadays, companies are relying heavily on chatbots to automate and reduce the workload of humans.

At Kommunicate, we evaluated many chatbot building platforms for various use cases such as customer support and service. Below is the list of chatbot platforms that got our attention.

• Dialogflow
• Amazon Lex
• IBM Watson Assistant
• Wit.ai
• Azure Bot Service

We are sharing all the details that we gathered for figuring out the best NLP chatbot platforms. Below is the list of best chatbots platforms and their comparison on features, channels, pricing, language support, etc.

The comparison table below summarizes the comparison of Dialogflow vs. Lex vs. Watson vs. Wit vs. Azure Bot. Feel free to share/download.

Let’s now discuss each of these platforms and attributes in detail.

Dialogflow

Dialogflow, previous known as API.ai, is a Google-owned developer of human-computer interaction technologies based on natural language conversations.

It is a completely closed-source product with APIs and web interface. Dialogflow was acquired by Google in 2016.

Companies are using Dialogflow to build natural and rich conversational experiences. Using Dialogflow, you can let your users interact with your product through voice and text-based conversational interface.

Ease of use

Dialogflow provides a web interface to create bots, which makes it easy for even non-techies to create basic bots. The basic attributes such as Intents, Entities, and Actions are easy to understand and configure.

You could make a basic Q and A chatbot with Dialogflow in a matter of hours.

Integrations

Dialogflow provides integration with Google Assistant, websites, Slack, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Twitter, and many others.

Web Preview

The web demo to integrate into your website is quite basic. If you are looking to add it to your websites and mobile apps, you will either have to develop your own UI and integrate with Dialogflow APIs or use other solutions, such as Kommunicate, which lets you integrate Dialogflow into your products.

Languages

At present, Dialogflow supports 20 languages. See the language support list here.

Cost

Standard edition which is ideal for small to medium businesses is Free.

The enterprise plan starts at $0.002 per request

Amazon Lex

Amazon Lex is used for building conversational interfaces in your application using voice and/or text. It is powered by the same deep learning technologies as Alexa.

Ease of use

Lex provides a web interface to create and launch bots.

Integrations

Currently, the integration support is limited to Facebook, Kik, Slack, and Twilio SMS.

For testing on websites, there is a basic chat UI provided through open source code.

Web preview

Here’s how the basic web chat preview looks:

Languages

Currently, Lex supports only US English.

Cost

You are charged based on the number of text or voice requests processed by your bot.

Voice requests are charged at $0.004/request while text requests are priced at $0.00075/request.

For the first year, 10,000 text requests and 5,000 speech requests per month are free.

IBM Watson Assistant

Watson Assistant is an offering for building conversational interfaces into any application, device, or channel. Watson has support for searching for an answer from the knowledge base and also has the capability to hand over to a human.

Ease of use

IBM Watson Assistant provides a good and easy to navigate user interface. Once you create an account, you will get video tutorials and ready to use samples to quickly get started. First, you need to create a Skill and then go to the Assistant to integrate it with other channels.

Integrations

You can connect Watson with Facebook Messenger, Slack, Voice Agent (Telephony), WordPress plug-in, and also custom applications through APIs.

Web preview

Languages

Most of the languages Watson supports are in beta. Supports 10+ languages (in BETA) including English, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, Chinese, etc.

Cost

There are multiple plans available starting from a free plan for up to 10,000 messages per month. Paid plan starts with Lite at $0.0025/message

Wit.ai

With wit.ai, you can easily create text and voice-based bots and connect them to their preferred messaging platform.

Ease of use

Wit.ai provides UI to setup intents and test it out. Wit.ai is very developer centric and non-techies will have a hard time understanding it.

Integrations

Direct integrations through the web interface are not present, all integrations are through HTTP APIs, and libraries available in Node js, Python, Ruby and Go. Libraries are available here.

Web preview

Not available, you will have to design your own.

Languages

Supports 50+ national and regional languages including English, Spanish, Afrikaans, etc. Find the complete list here.

Cost

Wit is free, both for personal and commercial use.

Azure Bot Service

Microsoft’s Azure Bot Service is used for creating intelligent bots.

Ease of use

The web interface is available to create and publish bots which is fairly easy to understand.

Integrations

The chatbot created through Azure Bot Service can be published to different channels such as Web, Facebook Messenger, Skype and Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams, Slack, etc.

Here is the list of integrations present.

Web preview

Open source web chat widget is available in Github.

Languages

Supports multiple languages such as English, French, German, Spanish, etc

Cost

Azure bot service comes with a free plan of 10,000 messages/month. Post that, pricing is $0.50 per 1,000 messages. Apart from this, they also charge you for resources consumed on Azure functions and Azure web app.

While there are many chatbots and NLP platforms, these are the most popular ones. If you want us to append this list, let us know your favorite chatbot building platforms in the comments.

Thanks for reading!