Alex RaineyAlex is an experienced CTO and founder who largely focuses on all the technical areas of My AskAI, from AI Engineering, Technical Product Management and overall Platform Development.
Table of Contents
- Factors That Impact the Chatbot Implementation Cost
- Type of Chatbot Development
- Chatbot Complexity
- Number of Supported Platforms and Integrations
- Scalability
- Customization
- Ease and Speed of Development
- How Much Does It Cost to Build a Chatbot?
- In-house Development Chatbot Pricing
- “Good-to-go” Third-Party Chatbot Pricing
- So How Much Does it Cost To Develop a Chatbot?
Created time
Mar 19, 2024 11:07 AM
Author
Tags
Image
Publish date
Mar 19, 2024
Slug
chatbots-pricing
Featured
Featured
Type
Article
Ready to Publish
Ready to Publish
Many businesses are now familiar with how to use chatbots for customer support and have seen their significant benefits—24/7 support, scalability, and omnichannel capabilities.
Yet, some still question if it's worthwhile to invest in a customer support chatbot.
To make a wise decision, businesses must conduct a cost-benefit analysis to see if chatbots are a good investment. And to do an accurate analysis, knowing the chatbots' current price is crucial.
At present, it’s possible to create chatbots without spending a dime. But for high-quality ones, get ready to spend at most $10,000.
To help you see if chatbots are right up to your business’s budget, we studied how much a chatbot costs in 2024 and explored factors that can affect its market price.
Factors That Impact the Chatbot Implementation Cost
Here are some factors that influence the cost of chatbots:
Type of Chatbot Development
There are two common ways to deploy customer support chatbots. You can either hire a developer to create your in-house chatbots from scratch or pay a third-party chatbot provider on a monthly or annual basis.
Hiring an in-house chatbot developer is typically costly because a developer’s average salary is around $40 to $50 per hour. Furthermore, you might also need to pay a graphic designer for the bot’s aesthetics. This option is definitely pricey, but it’s the best option if your bot needs lots of customization to meet your business needs.
On the other hand, a subscription to a chatbot provider is usually much cheaper. For instance, MyAskAI allows you to create customizable chatbots for as low as $13.30 per month.
Chatbot Complexity
AI chatbots trained through machine learning and natural language processing are currently the standard chatbots for businesses. Compared to simple rule-based chatbots, AI chatbots are more capable of “talking” to customers because of their ability to understand conversation context and write in human-like speech. Hence, they’re more suitable for handling complex customer queries and concerns.
Because AI chatbots are more advanced and complex, their cost is much higher than that of bots that only give pre-written responses. Small businesses might opt to adopt simple rule-based bots first because of budgetary constraints, but if they aspire to grow, moving to AI chatbots will be more effective and cost-saving in the long run.
Number of Supported Platforms and Integrations
Businesses usually deploy chatbots on their websites. However, it’s important to integrate chatbots into other communication platforms like messaging apps or social media so customers can reach out to the bot through their preferred platforms.
Moreover, chatbots can be integrated into CRM tools, databases, and other productivity tools to streamline customer support processes. At present, many chatbots can be integrated into Zendesk, Intercom, Shopify, and SalesForce.
As the chatbot’s number of software integrations increases, it becomes pricier. This makes sense since integrations make a chatbot more complex and thus require a higher price to develop.
Scalability
The higher the number of users a chatbot can handle simultaneously, the more expensive it is. Usually, third-party chatbot providers use the chatbot’s scalability as the basis for their tiered plans. For instance, their cheapest plan supports only a limited number of customers per month (e.g., 200 conversations per month), but their priciest plans can support thousands of conversations monthly.
Customization
The cost of chatbots is also affected by its level of customization. Some chatbot providers set higher subscription fees to allow customization of the bot’s color, layout, logo, buttons, and tone.
Ease and Speed of Development
If you want to expedite the process of your chatbot deployment, you might need to pay your in-house developer more so he can rush the bot’s development.
However, some third-party software allows you to create chatbots within minutes at an affordable price. You can simply upload training data like your business files, website links, and other resources, and then the chatbot is ready to be integrated into your website. For instance, My AskAI allows no-code chatbot development by simply importing files that the chatbot will use as a reference to respond to queries.
How Much Does It Cost to Build a Chatbot?
Chatbots’ prices vary depending on how they’re created or implemented. Again, businesses can adopt chatbots by paying for the services of a software developer or subscribing to a third-party chatbot provider.
In-house Development Chatbot Pricing
To develop an in-house chatbot, you can get in touch with software developing agencies or freelancers offering chatbot development services. Either way, the cost associated with this type of development depends on the salary of the professionals involved in the production process.
A high-quality in-house chatbot will surely cost you a fortune.
Here’s our estimation of current compensation for different professionals you might need for chatbot development:
- Chatbot software developer: This position is responsible for coding, testing, debugging, and optimizing user interaction. The average salary is around $54/hr or $112,501 annually.
- Graphic designer: Responsible for designing the bot’s aesthetics and layout. Salary is around. The average salary is around $22 /hour or $60,000 annually.
- Data Scientist: This position is responsible for preparing and managing the chatbot’s training data to achieve the performance quality that the business needs. The average salary is $157,000 annually.
Considering our estimation above, expect to spend around $330,000 per year for your in-house chatbot development. This summed cost can increase as you hire additional professionals to improve and customize your bots.
Note that hiring the professionals mentioned above means that they will be regular employees of your business, responsible for your chatbots' continuous development, maintenance, and improvement. They might also perform other responsibilities outside the scope of chatbot creation.
Meanwhile, if you opt to have a custom in-house chatbot made by a team of developers from an agency, the expected cost would be $5,000 - $15,000 or higher, depending on the chatbot’s complexity and features.
Note that creating an in-house chatbot will take weeks or months to finish. You can increase your payment to your developers if you want to rush the creation of your chatbots.
You can also choose to create your own chatbots instead of paying agencies. After all, many tutorials claim that they’re quick and easy to produce. However, you should not build your chatbots if you don’t have the technical expertise to do so. It could result in spending more money to achieve the same level of accuracy that experienced professionals can provide.
“Good-to-go” Third-Party Chatbot Pricing
An easier approach to creating chatbots is to avail of subscriptions from third-party providers that produce ready-made chatbots for businesses.
In this setup, you have to pay the chatbot provider every month (or every year) so you can use their customizable chatbot products that you can embed on your website, messaging platforms, and other customer support channels.
Chatbot providers offer different subscription prices for their products. The good news is that many of them offer free chatbots for small businesses, which are great for those with a low volume of daily customer queries. But, of course, these free chatbots can support only a limited number of conversations and app integrations. Some chatbot providers that offer free products include My AskAI, Tidio, Zapier, and HubSpot.
Now, if you want fully functional chatbots, you need to avail yourself of paid subscriptions from these providers. Small businesses and startups can benefit from a monthly chatbot subscription of around $15 to $1000.
For instance, My AskAI’s Essentials pricing plan costs only $13.30/mo (if paid annually) and provides you with a chatbot with these features:
- Unlimited site searches
- Custom branding and answers
- App integrations (e.g., Notion, Google Drive)
- Email assistant
- Basic analytics
On the other hand, large businesses must use Enterprise chatbots, which can provide massive-scale support for thousands of customers daily, unlimited app integrations, and custom APIs.
Providers usually set custom prices for their enterprise plan so businesses can afford a large-scale chatbot that is right up to their budget. An enterprise plan might cost at least $2,000/mo, depending on the functionalities you want to add to your chatbots.
So How Much Does it Cost To Develop a Chatbot?
We hope that our chatbot cost breakdown helps you perform a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether chatbot integration is a wise decision for your customer support.
Apparently, it’s much cheaper (and easier) for startups and small businesses to get chatbots from third-party providers like My AskAI, as they will only cost around $0 to $1000 per month.
Large businesses might have to spend at least $2,000 per month for large-scale enterprise chatbots.
However, acquiring chatbots from agencies or developers is ideal if you want fully customizable bots, albeit at a higher price.
It’s essential to consider an affordable chatbot cost to ensure a maximized ROI for its implementation. Sign up to My AskAI today and start deploying no-code chatbots that deflect up to 75% of customer queries for as low as $19/mo.
Written by
Alex Rainey
Alex is an experienced CTO and founder who largely focuses on all the technical areas of My AskAI, from AI Engineering, Technical Product Management and overall Platform Development.
