Chatfuel vs. Manychat: Which messenger software is better?

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Compare Chatfuel vs. Manychat side-by-side. Understand their key features, pros, cons, and make an informed choice for your chatbot needs.

 
 
Pricing:
$14.39/mo - $300/mo
Pricing:
Free - $15/mo
Best For:
Startups to enterprise businesses
Best For:
Businesses that advertise on Facebook and Instagram
Pricing:
$14.39/mo - $300/mo
Best For:
Startups to enterprise businesses
Pricing:
Free - $15/mo
Best For:
Businesses that advertise on Facebook and Instagram

In this head-to-head Chatfuel vs. Manychat comparison, we aim to help you choose the best option for your business.

Since both are renowned chatbot software designed to streamline customer engagement and improve your marketing strategy, it can be difficult to decide.

We aim to answer all your questions and help you make the best choice.

Let’s dive deeper into their features, pros, and cons.

Chatfuel vs. Manychat: At a Glance

CriteriaChatfuelManychatWinner
SMB Guide’s Rating8/108.2/10Manychat
Real-Time Messaging and Canned ResponsesManychat
Live Chat AI and NLPChatfuel
Customizable Chat WidgetsManychat
Visitor Tracking and AnalyticsChatfuel
Multichannel SupportTie
Multilingual SupportChatfuel
Offline Messaging and AvailabilityTie
Handoff and Escalation to Human AgentsTie
Security and ComplianceChatfuel
User Experience and User InterfaceIntuitive interfaceEasy to user interfaceTie
Integrations and Compatibility10+ integrations10 popular integrationsManychat
Customer supportKnowledge base and emailLive chat and emailTie
Pricing$14.39/mo – $300/moFree – $15/moManychat
ScalabilityTie

Chatfuel: Key Features, Pros, Cons, & Pricing

Chatfuel homepage

Chatfuel is a popular chatbot platform known for its user-friendly interface and robust features. It’s especially known for its seamless integration with Facebook Messenger, allowing businesses to automate responses and engage customers effectively.

Key features include AI-powered bots that can understand and respond to user queries, drag-and-drop functionality to make it easier to build birds, ecommerce integrations for simpler online sales, and comprehensive analytics tools for tracking engagement and performance.

Its ability to create complex conversational flows without any coding makes it highly desirable among non-technical users.

Pros & Cons

Pros

7-day free trial

24/7 customer support

User-friendly interface

iOS and Android apps

Cons

No free plan

Limited functionality

Pricing

  • Start: $29/month ($290/year) for up to 1,000 AI messages, unlimited manual messages, all support channels, and standard support.
  • Grow: $79/month ($790/year) for up to 5,000 AI messages, unlimited manual messages, all support channels and standard support.
  • Pro: $149/month ($1,490/year) for up to 10,000 AI messages, unlimited manual messages, all support channels and priority support.

Manychat: Key Features, Pros, Cons, and Pricing

Manychat homepage

Manychat is a platform known for allowing businesses to create chatbots for Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and SMS.

It’s considered one of the leading platforms for creating Messenger bots because of its simplicity and extensive feature set.

Features and characteristics it’s known for include ease of use, templates, multi-platform support, marketing automation, and chatbot analytics.

Pros & Cons

Pros

Free forever plan

10 popular integrations

User-friendly interface

Powerful automation features

Cons

Manual setup required

No multilingual support

Pricing

  • Free: $0/month, includes Instagram Direct Messages, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, automated conversations for up to 1,000 contacts, basic growth tools and the ability to segment contacts.
  • Pro: $15+/month (scales based on contacts up to $8,835 for 2 million+), everything in the free plan plus SMS text messaging, email, unlimited contact engagement, unlimited growth tools and keywords, advanced campaigns, analytics and insights, integrations, no ManyChat branding, email customer support.
Manychat

Drive more sales and conversions on Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger using automation.

Try for free

Real-Time Messaging and Canned Responses

Chatfuel uses ChatGPT to understand user intent to provide more accurate answers, the same way a human would, only faster.

It relies on keywords to help guide the platform but it doesn’t just spit out a canned response based on the keyword it catches.

It understands user intent for better answers even to more obscure questions.

manychat canned responses

Manychat makes it easy to create as many canned responses as you need, entered with just a quick shortcode that you assign.

Messages are sent to customers quickly.

✅ Winner: Manychat

Live Chat AI & NLP

Chatfuel can access NLP with most languages, but requires a bit of setup. You must integrate it with Dialogflow and set up Janis with a JSON API to manage it.

That is what takes it from scanning for keywords and guessing about user intent, to be able to determine user intent and answer accordingly.

chatfuel NLP

In testing Manychat, I found that it lacked a bunch of features. The templates were in English, but they definitely weren’t written by a native speaker, and would require significant edits.

manychat live chat

✅ Winner: Chatfuel

Customizable Chat Widgets

With Chatfuel, you have limited customization options when it comes to the look and feel. All you can do is add your logo and business name.

You cannot change the colors to match your branding. But, you can freely customize the text in the automatic messages and canned responses.

chatfuel chat widgets

With ManyChat, you can embed a box or button on your website. You can set the colors to match your website’s style.

That said, it’s not an option on the free plan, because it’s considered part of the Growth Tools, which are only available on paid plans.

✅ Winner: Manychat

Visitor Tracking and Analytics

In the Chatfuel dashboard, you can get at-a-glance reports about chat statistics. For a deeper look, you can connect it to Google Analytics via Zapier.

chatfuel dashboard

Visitor tracking and analytics is not available on the Manychat free plan, so it wasn’t something I could test.

Paid users can install the Manychat Pixel on their website, and then a Metrics tab will become available in the dashboard.

Using it, you can track website actions, so you can see earned revenue, sales, buyers, and average payment count, and average payment amount.

✅ Winner: Chatfuel

Multichannel Support

Chatfuel offers multichannel support for Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, SMS, and email.

Manychat offers multichannel support for: Facebook Messenger, SMS, email, and WhatsApp.

✅ Winner: Tie

Multilingual Support

Manychat doesn’t offer multilingual support. Chatfuel makes it easy to create a multilingual chatbot.

✅ Winner: Chatfuel

Offline Messaging and Availability

Manychat’s interface is considered more intuitive and suitable for larger teams staffed with humans. It also is available across a wider range of channels, making it a versatile choice for businesses with broad customer outreach.

It offers an omnichannel approach, which allows businesses to use chatbots across multiple platforms.

✅ Winner: Tie

Handoff and Escalation to Human Agents

Chatfuel allows businesses to take over the conversation from the chatbot at any point. It’s particularly useful for handling complex customer queries that bots cannot address.

Chatfuel also offers the option to automatically switch to live chat when the customer uses certain keywords.

Manychat, on the other hand, provides a seamless handoff to human agents with the FlowBuilder feature.

Businesses can design complex workflows with automated responses and manual intervention when necessary.

✅ Winner: Tie

Security and Compliance

During our Manychat review, we were unable to determine if it offered HIPAA compliance.

There is a blog post on the website about WhatsApp compliance, but nothing we could find would definitively tell us if the Manychat platform offered the necessary security and compliance.

Chatfuel, on the other hand, is both HIPAA and GDPR compliant, as evidenced by a blog post that demonstrates how to build a medical chatbot.

✅ Winner: Chatfuel

User Interface and User Experience

Both platforms offer a strong user experience and user interface. Manychat offers a visual bot builder with various messaging platforms that are highly regarded.

On the other hand, Chatfuel is more focused on customer-centric chatbots. Some users say Chatfuel might be a better choice for those who want a more straightforward, less complicated setup.

✅ Winner: Tie

Integrations and Compatibility

Both platforms integrate with various messaging platforms and offer a multichannel approach.

ManyChat offers an iOS and Android application for mobile use. Chatfuel doesn’t offer mobile apps.

ChatFuel integrations include:

  • Shopify
  • Facebook Messenger
  • WhatsApp
  • Instagram
  • Telegraph
  • Line
  • Your website
  • Calendly
  • ChatGPT
  • Stripe
  • Zapier

Manychat integrations include:

  • Instagram
  • Messenger
  • WhatsApp
  • SMS
  • Email
  • Google Sheets
  • ChatGPT
  • Stripe

✅ Winner: Manychat

Customer Support

With Manychat, unless you’re paying for the Pro plan, you only have email customer support. Paid plans give you access to 24/7 ticket support.

Live chat tech support is an option from 3a to 7p EST Mon-Fri. There’s also a lack of customer support on lower-tier plans with Chatful.

There’s a basic knowledge base with a chatbot to answer FAQs. The Pro plan offers “priority” service.

✅ Winner: Tie

Pricing

Chatfuel pricing ranges from $29 to $149 a month ($290 to $1,490 a year for two months free). ManyChat pricing ranges from free to $8,835 a month based on contact volume.

$15/month is for up to 500 contacts – and the highest end is for more than 2 million contacts. There’s also a custom pricing plan for those who want premium live chat support and 1:1 onboarding.

✅ Winner: Manychat

Scalability

Both platforms are completely capable of supporting businesses as they scale. No matter where you start or how big you grow, you can trust that either platform will work with you.

✅ Winner: Tie

Standout Features of Chatfuel

Chatfuel allows businesses to create conversion funnels. Chatfuel users report that it is better at creating custom fields than Manychat.

Standout Features of Manychat

Manychat offers mobile apps, whereas Chatfuel doesn’t. They also offer 13 tools to help you grow your subscriber base.

Chatfuel vs. Manychat: SMB Guide’s Verdict

While both tools are fairly impressive when it comes to chatbots, our winner is Manychat by a hair. At 8.2 compared to Chatfuel’s 8, it’s clear the tools are quite useful.

Manychat falls short because it lacks multi-language support, and the free version forces you to use its branding. And, for some, the manual setup can be a bit of a pain.

That said, if you don’t have a budget for a tool and you need one, then you can definitely make Manychat work for you.

Manychat

Drive more sales and conversions on Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger using automation.

Try for free

Lucinda has spent the last 15 years working from home as a freelance writer and WordPress designer, and throughout her career, she has worked directly with several digital marketing agencies with clients in the SaaS space, ranging from e-commerce platforms to procurement software.