Chatbot Cost Calculator | How Much Does It Cost To Build An AI-Based Chatbot?

The fact that chatbots can save as much as 30% of customer support costs has led to the entry of chatbots across various industries.

While the cost to build a chatbot or chatbot cost-benefit analysis is a matter of discussion, tech giants and startups have begun acknowledging chatbots’ potential. With 24*7 customer service, these chatbots are transforming the business and customers’ interactions.

Probably the biggest reason, why there are growing internet searches for “AI chatbot pricing” and “how much does it cost to build a chatbot”. If you too searching for the same, then this article is a must-read for you.

In 2022, the global chatbot market witnessed a valuation of $4.7 billion. Projections indicate a substantial surge, with expectations of the market soaring from $5.4 billion in 2023 to a remarkable $15.5 billion by 2028. This impressive growth signifies a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.3% throughout the forecasted timeframe.

Despite the massive benefits that chatbots bring, some organizations are still reluctant to develop chatbots for their businesses. Although there can be multiple reasons behind it, the most obvious one is the cost to build a chatbot. In this post, we will go through everything that relates to AI chatbot pricing and answer your question; How much does it cost to develop a chatbot?

Factors Affecting AI Chatbot Development Cost

Every business is unique, and so are its chatbot requirements. For this very reason, a business first needs to do a chatbot cost-benefit analysis before moving further with the development process. Here, we will take you through the factors that directly affect the cost to build a chatbot.

1. Business Goals

The most dominant factor that can determine your decision for AI chatbot development is your business requirements. Moreover, the inclusion of various features depends on your business goals, which means you can add features that suit your ultimate aim. 

Determining your business goals can help you do away with features that won’t bring any profits. This allows you to do a better calculation about chatbot development cost. You also need to bear in mind the more complicated your features are, the more will be the AI chatbot pricing and time needed to develop it.

2. Types Of Chatbot

The planning stage includes deciding on the type of chatbot you wish to have for your business. Only then can you get an estimate of the cost.

• Messenger Chatbots: Messenger chatbots are chatbots based on messengers like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Telegram. 
• Website Chatbots: Website chatbots are used for customer support and answering queries. The chatbot improves customer loyalty by supporting customers instantly. 
• Transaction Chatbots: Transaction chatbots support eCommerce transactions, including providing discounts, coupons, receipts, shipments, etc.
• Lead Generation Chatbots: Lead generation chatbots involve prospecting and lead capturing to boost business growth.
• Internal Company Chatbots: Internal company chatbots automate routine processes like day-offs, changing shifts, and others. 

3. Data Analysis

To make chatbots learn how to answer extraordinary questions, data analysis, and machine learning come to the rescue. Data analysis enables chatbots to pick speech structures from previous conversations, analyze them, and use them to answer customers’ questions. 

Additionally, it can allow you to make a chatbot development cost breakdown and determine the cost of the development process. 

Before we proceed further, let us have a glance at some of the most amazing facts about chatbots.

• By 2024, the chatbot market size would have increased to $1.34 billion. 
• Chatbot's market value was $703 million in 2016.
• Facebook holds more than 300,000 active chatbots.
• 48% of consumers like connecting with a company via live chat more than any other mode of communication.

Now let us move further to learn the other aspects that share a close relationship with the cost of chatbot development. 

What Is The Exact Cost Of Build A Chatbot For Your Company?

Are you planning to develop a chatbot yourself? If yes, you must know chatbot development on your own is a time-consuming and costly process and will include complex tasks and processes.

However, with a chatbot development company, you can speed up the development process (as you don’t have to invest time in hiring an entire development team) and keep the AI chatbot pricing in check. Keep the stress at bay while a remote company works on your chatbot project.  However to sum up. we would like to say that AI chatbot development costs around $40,000 to $100,000.

How Much Does It Cost To Build AI Chatbot?

Most business owners think that developing a chatbot will cost them a fortune. However, it is just a myth that surrounds the chatbot cost calculator process. 

The cost of chatbot development varies from company to company. But, if you are really looking for an answer to how much a chatbot costs, then here’s your answer.

Most software companies charge from $15,000 to $30,000. And if you want to develop chatbot with more trending technologies like NLP, machine learning, and artificial intelligence technologies, they may range from $40,000 to $100,000.

Cost Of AI Chatbot Development Industrywise

Industry	Cost To Develop Chatbot
Healthcare	$35,000 - $70,000
Automotive	$30,000 - $60,000
Retail & E-commerce	$35,000 - $65,000
Travel & Tourism	$20,000 - $50,000
Real Estate	$25,000 - $55,000
Banking & Finance	$40,000 - $70,000
Logistics & Transportation	$35,000 - $60,000
Education	$45,000 - $75,000

Note: The cost to develop the AI chatbot solution mentioned above is just the approximate cost as per the company standard rates. It may vary according to the on-demand features and technologies.

Cost To Develop AI Chatbots According To Types Of Chatbots

Worldwide, hundreds of thousands of companies are creating various chatbots in an effort to improve customer service. This section describes the many kinds of chatbots, their purposes, and which chatbot programs would be most helpful to your business including Voice bots, hybrid chatbots, ChatGPT-like software, etc.

Types of Chatbots	Cost to Develop(Approx.)
Voice Bots	$20,000 - $35,000
Hybrid Chatbots	$43,000 - $60,000
Social Messaging Chatbots	$30,000 - $45,000
Menu Based Chatbots	$20,000 - $49,000
Skill Chatbots	$25,000 - $62,000
Keyword Based Chatbots	$35,000 - $50,000
ChatGPT Like Software	$45,000 - $75,000

In-House Or Hiring An Agency: Which One To Choose?

The answer to the question; How much does it cost to develop a chatbot is impacted mainly by the managerial decision of whether to form an in-house team or hire an external agency. Both options come with a set of advantages and disadvantages.

Building an in-house chatbot development team means your organization will have to pay salaries to the employees along with payment for ongoing chatbot support and maintenance. This will increase the cost to build a chatbot as you have to pay your employees and build a team to carry out the entire project.

On the other hand, hiring a chatbot development agency will require you to pay pre-agreed AI chatbot pricing.

This allows you to negotiate the price and ask for an additional discount in case your business only needs particular features in the chatbot.

Both these have their own pros and cons, but if you are worried about How much does it cost to build a chatbot, then remote development is an economic development option.

Chatbot Development Process We Follow

Wondering how we at RisingMax keep the AI chatbot pricing down. Well, the answer is in our customer’s need-centric chatbot development process that we follow. With this agile development approach, we are keeping the cost to build a chatbot as competitive as possible.

1. Chatbot Software Platform

You will get a robust and modern multi-channel chat marketing automation platform that will enable smooth communication between your organization and its customers.

2. Chatbot Development And Setup

It involves initial chatbot development and setup to make chatbots answer frequently asked questions and gather important information about the prospects who visit your website.

3. Chatbot Support And Maintenance

Once the chatbot is up and running, there may be times when you will need to bring in some tweaks or updates. You will have to pay a  certain amount of fees if you have hired an agency. Alternatively, you can spend some dedicated hours in a week to identify the issues and work on them. However, it will consume your team’s working hours, which could otherwise have been used in accomplishing some other tasks. 

Making an intelligent chatbot pricing comparison between the two options can give you a clear idea.

4. Costs Summary

As mentioned earlier, every project is different, and the requirements determine chatbot pricing models.

However, it isn’t easy to bring forward fixed AI chatbot pricing.

If your organization is planning to develop its first chatbot, then a chatbot cost-benefit analysis is a must.

In simple words, add only the basic features at first, and then add additional ones as per the need.

With all this in-depth analysis of your project any chatbot development can precisely answer your question; How much does it cost to develop a chatbot? Allowing you to skip the searching phase and move directly with the chatbot development.

Following the given pattern will reduce the initial costs, and you can keep on analyzing the development process at every stage.

5. Price Breakdown

Once you have decided to hire a team that will develop a chatbot for you, the process begins getting more manageable. Admittedly, you should also know the aspects for which you are paying the cost. Right?

The price breakdown is something that you should know. Various aspects are:

1. Technological infrastructure
2. Support and maintenance
3. Number of times your chatbot triggers every month to engage a unique visitor

What Is Included In Additional Charges in Chatbot Cost Calculator

When you ask a chatbot development agency about how much a chatbot costs the pricing of their project is based on a number of specific aspects like landing pages or campaigns. The more the quantity, the more the price. 

Depending upon the client’s business project, the chatbot development company will share a customized AI chatbot pricing plan to suit unique business needs.

Align the current state of IT with your business strategy by hiring the most trustworthy Chatbot Cost Calculator Development Company

Book Free Consultation

Main Chatbot Features That Determine Chatbot Development Cost Breakdown

If you have decided to develop a chatbot but don’t know the features you must include, there is no point in deep discussions. Often while engaging with a development company, businesses first analyze how much does it cost to build a chatbot. In order to keep the development cost down, they end up excluding some important features that are important for business.

Let us have a look at the features that you cannot miss integrating with your chatbot.

1. Conversation

Having a clear conversation pattern is necessary for the users and the companies. The order of messages should be logical and in line with what the customers ask. If the answer is not what is demanded, the customers may lose interest and loyalty to the respective organization. 

Furthermore, chatbots should be developed in such a way that there are least grammatical errors. The users get a negative impression and fail to stick to it in the long run. 

2. Payment System

The main motive for developing a chatbot is to engage customers and improve sales. To make it happen, you should stay active and maintain at least one payment method. 

A well-framed payment system allows an easy flow of payments from customers to the company in a secure manner. Consequently, the companies can meet the ultimate goal for which they are running their business. 

3. Geolocation

With online mapping, you can attract new customers by pinpointing your business’ location on the map. The features will, for instance, allow users to reach a store they’ve never been to before. 

It attracts customers to visit your business place and buy what you are offering. Furthermore, users can place an order via chatbot, pay through an integrated payment gateway, and receive the order. 

The geolocation feature is highly suitable for food delivery businesses as users share their geolocation after placing an order with a courier. The results are higher as compared to building a delivery app from scratch and making it grow.

4. Personalization

Providing a personal touch while interacting with users raises a feeling of being valued amongst the users. As a result, users feel more connected to the organization and give positive feedback about the bot.  

5. AI Implementation

Artificial Intelligence allows chatbots to learn on their own without human intervention. It involves machine learning algorithms. When the bot receives a query, it searches for similar queries in an extensive database. Furthermore, it generates a response using the analyzed data. 

You will be amazed to know that bots begin to perform better with time and every correct response.

6. Natural Language Processing

Natural language processing, in simpler words, is responsible for smooth communication between users and bots. Voice assistants like Siri and Google Assistant are classic examples of NLP. 

Benefits Of A Chatbot For Enterprises

The chatbot development cost breakdown gets justified due to the massive benefits that it brings to the organization. Here are its benefits!

1. Reduced Operational Costs

The number of incoming calls constitutes a significant part of a company’s operational costs. When you have a bot in place to answer customer queries, you can save on the costs associated with increasing call volumes. 

Besides, users interact with bots initially, and when they interact with customer care executives, it does not take much time. 

2. Cost-effective

With bots, an organization can stay available throughout the day for its customers and answer their queries. You can attain and retain customers while ramping up your business growth. 

And the best part is that the fact always justifies the total cost to build a chatbot. 

3. Improved Resource Allocation

Chatbots reduce the need for human intervention when interacting with the users in the first place. Organizations can then employ those resources in other business functions. The interplay of all the positive factors impacts the chatbot pricing models indirectly. As an outcome, enterprises get to save their money by putting their human resources and engaging them with other business verticals. 

4. Increased Revenue

Chatbots are also helpful in updating customers about upcoming discounts and offers. Customers get attracted and begin buying more from that particular brand name. It results in increased revenues and profits.

5. Increased Customer Engagement

Customers, in modern times, prefer engaging with bots rather than humans to get their queries answered. Increased customer engagement then leads to increased revenue for businesses.

Conclusion: How Much Does Chatbot Cost?

So, you have read the entire post, and we hope that we have answered the question; How much does it cost to develop a chatbot?

With that said, keep in mind that choosing the right chatbot for your business can be overwhelming, and you may risk your website’s ability to capture and convert leads.

Now you know that how much chatbot costs and the benefits that chatbots can bring, it is time to integrate them with your business.  

You can always make a smart chatbot pricing comparison before you plan to hire a chatbot development company. 

As per Gartner, chatbots will power 85% of all customer service interactions by the year 2020. 

Surprisingly, the fact has proved to be accurate, and 2020 saw a significant transformation in the world of Chatbots. However, to develop an outstanding Chatbot, you need to look for a company that can do it perfectly. 

RisingMax is your go-to AI chatbot development company that holds the right domain expertise and knowledge to develop a chatbot that matches your organizational goal.

Connect with the most professional IT consulting company NYC today for a smarter tomorrow for your business!

more than any o