6 ms·

Show HN: BotEngine – Easy tool for creating chatbots

• konradkpl 9y ago
  Imho the most intuitive user interface for bot creation software: http://wstaw.org/m/2017/07/11/Screen_Shot_2017-07-11_at_16.22.25.png http://wstaw.org/m/2017/07/11/Screen_Shot_2017-07-11_at_16.2...
  • mbel 9y ago
    That UI looks much more usable than the chatbot itself. As a user I would probably prefer to traverse the tree and see multiple options at the same time than to pretend I'm having a chat.
    • konradkpl 9y ago
      Sounds like a normal FAQ list with nested items, I think bots will achieve better customer service ;)
• yenoham 9y ago
  OT but I really like the website - do you mind if I ask who created it?
  • hordeallergy 9y ago
    While we're off topic, show the language some love: http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/super http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/super
  • ajaskiewicz 9y ago
    Thanks! Actually our dev team created also a website
• water42 9y ago
  >BotEngine allows you to create a chatbot for any service. except for the ones that are not implemented. would be interested to try this out once it has telegram support.
  • ajaskiewicz 9y ago
    We'll have integrations with LiveChat and Slack very soon. I'm adding telegrams and post pigeons to our to-do.
    • jachee 9y ago
      You should probably add Discord, as well.
• cgrs 9y ago
  Is it free 100%? Or has it some premium paid features?
  • ajaskiewicz 9y ago
    100% free
  • konradkpl 9y ago
    > For now it's free ;) https://www.producthunt.com/posts/botengine#comment-490613 https://www.producthunt.com/posts/botengine#comment-490613
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• Everula 9y ago
  nice! any integration with Intercom in plans? Also, found a small typo here http://prntscr.com/fuckqw http://prntscr.com/fuckqw
  • ajaskiewicz 9y ago
    Probably, but not in the nearest future. We'll have LiveChat (livechatinc.com) in a few weeks (probably even this month). Thanks for the info about the typo!
  • chinshaw 9y ago
    Hey Everula, I'm going to be launching something similar with Intercom support soon, and would love to talk to you about your use case and how I can help you. You can email me at calhinshaw@gmail.com! https://www.responseautomator.com/ https://www.responseautomator.com/
• option_greek 9y ago
  Is there a way to just get the user response and forward it to a webhook ? (and of course send a reply received from the webservice)
  • ajaskiewicz 9y ago
    Yup -> https://docs.botengine.ai/key-concepts/interactions?id=webhook https://docs.botengine.ai/key-concepts/interactions?id=webho...
• frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  Why SaaS?
  • ajaskiewicz 9y ago
    Why not?
    • frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
      Let me rephrase. Why not on-prem?
      • ajaskiewicz 9y ago
        It’s because in SaaS it is easier to test it, to develop it, to gain new users etc. + we know this model very well :)
        • bpicolo 9y ago
          Not to mention on-prem means support becomes much more difficult
• wiradikusuma 9y ago
  how does it different than other (seemingly similar) offerings? e.g. api.ai, wit.ai, chatfuel, manychat. i've used wit.ai, it's buggy (randomly missing stuff after you save them) and api.ai (so far ok).
  • ajaskiewicz 9y ago
    The first thing - it's very intuitive and simple, second - BotEngine will be the only tool integrated with LiveChat and third - we'll focus on machine learning.
    • chinathrow 9y ago
      > BotEngine will be the only tool integrated with LiveChat How come?
      • ajaskiewicz 9y ago
        We're building the integration and it will be available soon.
    • sklimczak 9y ago
      https://www.livechatinc.com https://www.livechatinc.com says there are over 20,000 businesses using LiveChat, so there's actually a market for chat bots someone creates. It's nice to build things for fun, but even better if someone uses it in real life.
• anotheryou 9y ago
  A bit off-topic, but I want custom bots per person via facebook or mail for something like: ››You still owe me back book XY. Type "snooze" to be reminded again in 7 days. Or be reminded again tomorrow. Type "done" if you got this reminder despite having done it (same as "snooze", but I'll manually review if I should remove the reminder)‹‹
  • ajaskiewicz 9y ago
    Nice idea! We'll think about it :)
• pantulis 9y ago
  Really cool. Is it possible to publish the bot to a website as a JS widget?
  • ajaskiewicz 9y ago
    We're currently working on that, it should be available this month
  • aPoCoMiLogin 9y ago
    On page "product tour": https://botengine.ai/product-tour/ https://botengine.ai/product-tour/ there is an example how you can use it as javascript widget.
• zerop 9y ago
  I have lots of text about a particular topic (50K Articles crawled from internet about travel experiences). Now I want to create a chat bot whose chats/answers are from this given text. Basically I want to feed my text to this bot service and creates a chat bot for this given text. Is anyone aware of how do I do this.. Not sure If I made it clear..
  • ajaskiewicz 9y ago
    Actually it's not possible to make it using only BotEngine. I'd suggest you to create a microservice which you'll use to suggest content from these articles. BotEngine could connect with this service using webhooks.
  • bottombutton 9y ago
    I saw a demo recently where someone used Microsoft Bot Framework for what you described. Can't find the video at the moment, but might be worth looking into. [https://dev.botframework.com/ https://dev.botframework.com/]
  • jdc0589 9y ago
    you need more than just this. 1) you need to get all your articles in some sort of search index. Sounds like you will want, at minimum, full text search on article content, plus maybe search of some extracted metadata (depending on if you can get something consistent easily). 2) a little API for serving up search results. 3) integration with something like this BotEngine thing for controlling the front-end/user interface to your data + search backend.
  • garazy 9y ago
    Had exactly the same problem - if you can get them into a question/answer format https://qnamaker.ai https://qnamaker.ai works for us.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• victormustar 9y ago
  No pricing? imo you lose users /w pricing page
  • mod 9y ago
    Off-topic: is /w short for without? I've never seen that before.
    • tintor 9y ago
      /w - with, /wo - without
      • tomc1985 9y ago
        isn't it w/ and wo/ ? I read /w as short for /whisper
        • banderman 9y ago
          Isn't it w/ and w/o?
          • tomc1985 9y ago
            yeah actually
  • ajaskiewicz 9y ago
    No pricing because it's free for now ;)
    • OJFord 9y ago
      Then brag about that. I've spent ages in the past getting annoyed at hard to find pricing pages; even if I eventually discover it's free it's still an off-putting on-boarding process.
      • 9y ago
• matthoiland 9y ago
  Props for a fresh, clean design. The docs are fantastic, easy to read, and doesn't contain verbose technical bloat. Overall excellent design and UX execution.
  • ajaskiewicz 9y ago
    Thanks a lot!
    • igammarays 9y ago
      I second that. Who did your design? I'm looking for a great designer, can I get a referral for yours? isa at flutesystems.com
      • ajaskiewicz 9y ago
        Actually our developers who created also the whole tool ;)
• phatbyte 9y ago
  Honest question: Are chatbots really used or is just a nice-thing to have? When I visit website and the chatbot pops up it really feels like it disrupts MY browsing, I immediately turn it off. I really wanted to if chatbots can translate into new sales.
  • ajaskiewicz 9y ago
    A chatbot in customer service is a time saver. I know a lot of people working in customer service and they have to answer the same questions over and over and over again. The thing is that if a bot is not able to resolve an issue, the conversation is automatically transform to a human being.
  • dmgawel 9y ago
    I'm happy that I'm not the only one who closes tab when something uninvited pops up. At the same time I wouldn't agree it's a chatbot-related issue. It's rather poor UX design. I'm realist and IMO chatbots are not ready for handling pre-sales or sophisticated support cases. However I see a huge potential in dealing with conversations that follow known scheme. Let it be cinema reservation or flight change - they look very similar in most cases. That's where chatbots might come in. For example in my company (LiveChat) we're experimenting with handling app onboarding by chatbot. Results are very promising :-)
• adventured 9y ago
  You guys desperately (I'd like to type that 37 times in a row for emphasis) need a serious, one-click to start, interactive product demonstration (without requiring my email first). I should be able to instantly step into serious business use examples catering to multiple industries (eg whatever industries you guys might choose to target first), so you can show me what it can actually do. I clicked on product tour, entered a name, and then got this ridiculousness: Me: Johnny Cash Bot: That's interesting Bot: Ready for an adventure? Me: No Bot: Oh no, why? It will be fun! Bot: Are you sure? :( Me: (pre-scripted) ok, I can try Bot: Great, so let's try again. Bot: Do you want to do something relaxing or should we go crazy? --- That's where I quit. Unintentionally creepy bot is slightly creepy. Am I talking to a serious product bot, or is this get trashed and sleep on my couch party bot? Wild and crazy times ahead. Potential customers should be able to dive right into a conversation with your bot tech. You should be extremely eager to show me what it can do in a live conversation and you should have stellar pre-built examples for that purpose all available from one click on the home page. My take away from my experience, is your bot tech can't do much so you're not immediately getting into showing off its capabilities (I don't know if that's the case or not, but if this were any other site, that would be my take away from it, and I'd never return).
  • ajaskiewicz 9y ago
    Thanks a lot for your valuable feedback! This is the early beta version of our product and we really appreciate our users' opinion. We'll work on that product demonstration.
• protomyth 9y ago
  Is anyone using Inform (or some other interactive fiction programming language) for bot programming? This project reminds me of some of the old tools for adventure games, so I’m wonder if anyone went to one of the interactive fiction tools.
• jedisct1 9y ago
  As a user, why would I want a chatbot instead of up-to-date documentation with a search engine that works?
  • konradkpl 9y ago
    Many users prefer LiveChat, rather than browsing the documentation or using the search engine. Additionally, documentation and search engine don't provide private information, e.g. the status of your order.