AI chatbots can be an excellent asset to companies both big and small. Using artificial intelligence, they can handle customer service requests and use natural language processing to both understand and provide answers to customers. But for businesses that want to make use of chatbot software, one of the biggest questions is how much it costs to develop a chatbot. In general you can expect to pay $60-145 per hour for AI Chatbot developers depending on their skill and location.
How Much Does Building a Chatbot Cost?
There is no way to give a set cost for developing an AI chatbot, but there are various factors to take into account. The type of chatbot to be built makes a difference, and so does whether you choose to use a bot builder tool or hire a developer who will custom-build your chatbot from the beginning. To work out an idea of how much chatbots cost to develop you need to explore these different factors and consider your budget.
Types of Chatbots
Different types of chatbots may command different prices from developers. Some of them are more complicated to develop or less common, so they don’t have an easy template to follow. A messenger chatbot is one of the most common types of chatbot that people build and use. How complicated the chatbot is to develop will affect the price.
The number of platforms that the chatbot is required to support will make a difference to the final cost too. If the chatbot needs to cover multiple platforms, it’s going to cost more. Another type of chatbot is automated chatbots embedded on apps. These are often used for customer service requests, helping to free up time for human customer service representatives by answering common questions. AI-based chatbots can cost more to develop.
Who to Hire to Build Your Chatbot
Hiring the right people to develop a chatbot is important. Some of your options include hiring an agency offering development services or hiring a freelance developer. Developing your chatbot in-house could also be an option, and still incurs a cost that you should take into account.
Another option for paying for a chatbot is to use a service provider on a pay-as-you-go basis. These chatbots, such as Google’s DialogFlow, are paid for on a per-month and per-text request basis. However, this model still requires you to hire developers to build the app.
Custom Development vs. Bot Builders
When you develop an AI chatbot, you have the option of building a custom bot from scratch or using a bot builder tool. There are pros and cons to each of these options. Bot builders can be cheaper but might limit your capabilities. Custom development when you work with a developer allows you to have more flexibility to create what you need.
How to Calculate Chatbot Development Price
To work out how much you might be paying for an AI chatbot, you need to take the above factors into account. However, the best thing to do is get a quote from a developer. This can be on a per-project or per-hour basis or might be based on the features you need. In general you can expect to pay $60-145 per hour for AI Chatbot developers depending on their skill and location.
