AhaChat vs ManyChat - Which is the Best Automation for Your Business?

AhaChat and ManyChat are both chatbot platforms that can be used to create chatbots on multiple channels, without using any code.

But which platform should you use? What are the differences between them? And which platform is better?

Let’s find out!

Using the Interface

With AhaChat, you can create chatbots for multiple channels like Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp,...

Each flow in AhaChat starts with a trigger which can be someone messaging you a word or commenting on one of your Facebook posts.

When creating your chatbot, you can use the flow builder of AhaChat. With the flow builder, you can just drag and drop elements and create your chatbot flow:

In the AhaChat flow builder, there are many blocks you can choose from:

1. Conversation – used for sending messages on different channels

2. JSON API – can be used to send HTTP GET and POST requests and interpret responses.

3. Attributes – User to enable bot personalization, advanced flows,

4. Conditions – can help personalize the bots based on an if/then logic

5. Smart delay – You can use it to add a delay to a flow so that it will continue later. This is especially handy for sending follow-ups & reminders.

6. Randomizer - allows you to set up a Randomizer Step inside your Flow.

7. QR Code - allows you to generate QR codes in flow and send QR codes to customers

8. Promo Codes - used to create custom code lists

9. Send Email – allows you to send emails to users who interact with your chatbot

And many other features like Google Sheet integration, integration with CRM platforms

If you click on one of the blocks, a interface will open up where you can edit the contents of that block:

Furthermore, you can see each customer's path in your flow builder and tag these customers (which is a really useful feature)

Also, you can test out your chatbot flows by clicking on the “Test on Messenger” button before you actually put them live.

In general, the interface of AhaChat is really easy to use and it is also pretty easy to set up your chatbot.

Although it is really easy to use, the platform can feel quite overwhelming when first starting with it, because of the many features AhaChat has.

Just like AhaChat, Manychat also offers a flow builder to create chat automations.

Each automation in Manychat consists of one (or multiple) triggers and blocks.

A trigger in Manychat is an event that starts your automation. For example, when someone leaves a comment on a Facebook Post.

Manychat blocks determine what happens after triggering the automation.

Adding blocks to your chat automation is super easy, you can just click and drag them in the flow builder:

In the Manychat flow builder, we have six types of blocks we can choose from:

1. Messages, specific per channel (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram and SMS)
2. Conditions – to personalize the conversation based on “if-then” logic
3. Actions, you can perform actions during your automation. Such as updating fields to new values, triggering integrations, or a live chat handoff
4. Start Automation – if you want to start another automation in your Manychat Account
5. Randomizer – If you want to randomly assign people to a part of your automation, often used for A/B testing
6. Comments – This is great if you are working with multiple people in one Manychat account.

Additionally, the flow builder has nice features that make it even easier to use. For example, you can click on the Auto-Arrange Steps button. This arranges all the blocks in your chat automation:

Or you can use Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V (CMD for Mac) to copy and paste blocks in your automation, even across browser tabs.

Moreover, you can test your chatbot flows on the channel you are building the automation for (WhatsApp, Facebook, etc). Or, you can test them directly in the Manychat interface:

Lastly, you can divide your chat automations into folders. This way, you can keep a good overview of all the chat automations in your Manychat account:

Overall, AhaChat and Manychat are both really easy to use.

I think Manychat is just a bit better, because the interface is easier to understand and less overwhelming.

When you start with AhaChat, it can feel quite overwhelming because of the many features the platform has.

Chatbot Elements

Both AhaChat and Manychat provide many chatbot elements to build your chatbot.

You can collect User Input, create conditional branches (great for creating personalized chatbots) and start other automations (best for scalability).

That being said, I think AhaChat is slightly better because it also offers more technical elements you can use to build your chatbots. This is especially useful if you want to build more advanced chatbots.

Contacts

Within AhaChat, you can see all the users that talked to your chatbot on every channel in one overview:

If you click on one of your users you can see the detailed information of that user, such as their name, custom fields and tags that have been added:

With AhaChat, you can add custom fields and tags to users. Then you can use that user information to condition in your chatbot flows, broadcasts and sequences.

Likewise, you can create your own segments based on custom fields and tags, and use these segments inside your chatbot.

Manychat offers the same functionalities.

In Manychat, you can see all the contacts that talked to your chatbot in one overview:

When you click on one contact, you can see their custom fields and tags. Clicking on “Start chat” shows their entire chat history on all channels:

You can add unlimited custom fields and tags to your contacts. Custom fields are used to store specific information about someone, such as their interests, email address or name. Tags can be used to segment your contacts into different buckets, such as “Qualified” or “Customer”.

Additionally, you can also create segments based on a combination of fields and tags.

AI Features

Both AhaChat and Manychat have keyword recognition.

This means that you can automatically reply if someone asks a question with a certain keyword in it.

In AhaChat, this is called Keywords:

What is also pretty cool is that AhaChat can recognize images, stickers, phone and more using their keyword recognition:

And in Manychat, this is called the Keyword trigger:

AhaChat supports integration with ChatGPT assistant to replace customer responses with flow

Likewise, you can also send something to ChatGPT in your chatbot flow. And while testing this feature, I found that the ChatGPT integration of AhaChat is way better than Manychat’s.

Manychat has an AI Add-on that includes four extra features:

• AI Intents
• AI Step
• AI Flow Builder Assistant
• AI Text Improver

With AI Intents, you can not only reply to certain keywords, but understand the intent of the user. So if someone types in a question and it matches with the intent, you can automatically reply to it:

This can save you a lot of time, because you don’t have to manually enter all the keywords you want to match. You can just enter the intent and Manychat AI can automatically reply to it.

But I think the most promising feature is the AI Step. With the AI step, you can create your own AI Lead generation assistants with natural language.

With the AI step, you can let the AI handle the conversation for you in a number of steps. And then you can tell the AI:

• What it needs to do at every step
• Whether it needs to collect information
• And if it needs to collect information, to what Manychat fields these need to be saved

And the AI step can also take into account the context of your business. So you can give extra business information and use that information during the conversation.

Furthermore, Manychat provides the AI Flow Builder Assistant. With this assistant, you can answer a couple of questions and the Assistant automatically creates a complete automation for you:

And lastly, Manychat also has the AI Text Improver. With the Text Improver, you can simply give the AI a text and Manychat can rewrite the text for a different goal, change tone of voice or translate it to another language:

So both platforms have AI features you can use to create better chatbots!

Live Chat

AhaChat has its own live chat, which allows you to hand over the conversation to a human agent:

Additionally, you can also set up how conversations are assigned to agents. For example, conversations can be randomly assigned or to who are online:

This live chat also comes with an iOS and Android app, so you can answer customer questions while you are on the go.

Manychat also has its own live chat, which also comes with an iOS and Android app:

And Manychat also has an advanced version of their Inbox: Manychat Inbox Pro. This is a more advanced live chat and has extra features, such as:

• Agent chat analytics
• Creating groups of team members
• Auto-assign conversations based on rules

Channels

When it comes to channels you can publish your chatbot on, AhaChat clearly wins.

AhaChat has over 6 channels you can publish a chatbot on:

1. Your website
2. Facebook Messenger
3. Instagram
4. WhatsApp
5. Google Business
6. Zalo (Popular messaging app in Vietnam)

While, Manychat only has 4 channels: Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram

The only benefit for Manychat is that it can merge contacts across channels, which is not possible with AhaChat.

But don't worry, AhaChat has its own multi-channel chat tool called AhaSpot. You can use it as a standalone chat tool combined with automated flows.

Growth Tools: Drive Traffic to Chat Funnels

And then Growth Tools: how can you use both platforms to drive traffic to your chat funnels?

And I must say, both platforms do really well in this category.

With AhaChat, you can send broadcasts to your complete audience or filter down on specific users:

Moreover, you can also send sequences to your users whereby you send messages to them with a certain delay in between:

And you can also use triggers to automate workflows in AhaChat. With a trigger, you can automatically do an action, when a specific event happens. For example, when someone gives an email in any of your chatbot flows, we can send that email to your CRM.

You can add a widget to your website in your own branding, and change the colors, how widget displays:

This widget can be displayed as a small bubble, full page, chat window inside your page or even a pop-up. And you can also send proactive messages to the user depending on the page.

Additionally, you can also send a QR-Code inside your web chat and continue the same conversation on a different channel. For example, if a user starts a conversation and needs to go at a certain time, you can continue the conversation on another channel (such as WhatsApp). This is an amazing and unique feature, which I haven’t seen in any other chatbot platform yet.

On Facebook, you can automatically reply to comments, connect your chatbot to Facebook Ads, use the One-Time Notification, send Sponsored Messages and use Recurring Notifications.

On Instagram, you can also automatically reply to comments, reply when somebody mentions your account in their Instagram story and check if somebody replied to your own Instagram story.

And with WhatsApp, you can send WhatsApp Message Templates.

With Manychat, you can also send mass messages to your contacts with Broadcasts:

Likewise, you can send a series of messages with a certain time interval by using a Sequence:

And set up your own rules:

Likewise, Manychat has all the same features as AhaChat for Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

The only important difference is that AhaChat has a chat widget for your website, while Manychat doesn’t.

Integrations

Regarding integrations, AhaChat performs slightly better than Manychat.

AhaChat has over 20 direct integrations with other applications, such as:

• Bitrix24
• GetFly
• Infusionsoft
• Woocommerce
• Google Sheets
• Gmail
• Mailchimp
• HubSpot
• Mautic
• GetResponse
• Lead Connector (GHL)

And many e-commerce platforms such as Nhanh VN, Sapo, Haravan, KiotViet. If this is not enough, you can also call other APIs inside your chatbot flows, so you can connect AhaChat to other platforms.

Furthermore, AhaChat also has its own Automation software (similar to Zapier and Make) that allows you to connect to all other apps with just drag and drop. AhaMake currently has over 200 apps you can use

In addition, AhaChat allows you to create a website that provides comprehensive information about products and services, aiming to attract customers through the presentation of the products or services that the business is focused on.

Manychat has less direct integrations than AhaChat (around 8), but also integrates with Zapier and Make, so you can connect it to almost any application on earth.

And just like AhaChat, you can also make API calls in the Flow Builder:

Pricing

When it comes to pricing, both platforms are really cheap.

AhaChat provides a free plan that includes 2 chatbots on 2 channels, unlimited users, 2 members and full advanced features.

This plan also comes with a free trial period that lasts forever and includes 500 bot messages per month for all Pro features.. This is great when you want to determine whether AhaChat is the right fit for you.

If you want to create more chatbots or more users, you need to upgrade to the PRO plan, which costs $29 per month. This plan comes with 20 chatbots , 100,000 bot messages, unlimited users, unlimited members and all Pro features:

If you want more chatbots, members or users You can upgrade to the Plus or Unlimited plan.

Manychat has similar free & paid plans.

Manychat’s free plan comes with basic features of the flow builder, some Growth Tools, access to 3 channels (Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp) and you can reach up to 1,000 contacts.

If you need want all the features, you need to go with the Pro plan, which starts at $15/month and comes with 500 contacts. This plan increases with the number of contacts you have. For example, 5,000 contacts costs $45/month:

Manychat also has two Add-Ons:

• AI Add-on, which costs $29/month
• Inbox Pro, which starts at $99/month

Therefore, in terms of pricing, AhaChat and Manychat perform very well, but in terms of features, AhaChat seems to offer more comprehensive features in its free plan and unlimited features in its paid plan.

Analytics

AhaChat provides a basic analytics dashboard that shows how many users talked to your chatbot, how many Marketing message subscribers were:

Besides that, it also provides information on Gender, number of messages sent and received per day:

View the total number of tags assigned and which tags are assigned the most.:

Statistics on the number of new customers and phone numbers collected per day:

Statistics on customer reviews:

Moreover, inside the flow builder, you can see to how many people a certain message was sent:

I think these analytics are pretty basic and don’t really allow you to optimize the chatbot experience. For example, it is not possible to see the open rate or click rate of a message, so you don’t know how successful a certain message or button was.

The same is true for unrecognized input. There is no overview of input that your chatbot did not understand, so it’s hard to improve the answers of your chatbot.

On the other hand, Manychat does way better.

Manychat has three types of analytics:

• Manychat Insights
• Automation Analytics
• Conversion Analytics

Manychat has an Insights dashboard that gives general insights into your Manychat account. In this dashboard, you can see how many contacts you have per channel:

And how these contacts have evolved over time:

Moreover, Manychat also has automation analytics (“Flow analytics”). For each block in your automation, you can see how many contacts it was sent to. You can also see the delivery, open, and click rates (if a message has a button):

By using these flow analytics, you can easily improve your Manychat flows for better conversion.

Also, you can add your own conversion events inside your chat automations. Then, you can see how many people reached those events in a specific period:

These conversion events are not limited to your chatbot funnels. You can also install the Manychat Pixel (similar to a Facebook Pixel) on your website and track conversions on your website of people coming from your chatbot. For example, when someone clicks on a button in Messenger and then converts on your website, this pixel will track that conversion back to your Manychat account.

And if you sign up for Manychat Inbox Pro, you also get agent analytics. With these analytics, you can see how many conversations where resolved by your agents:

And you can also see how many conversations each agent resolved:

So overall, Manychat does way better in terms of analytics!

Templates

AhaChat has over 70+ templates, whereas Manychat has 35 templates to get you started with.

And with both platforms, you can create your own templates and share these with others.

Support

AhaChat and Manychat have many tutorials and documentation on their website to help you with using their platform.

And both platforms offer customer support via a ticketing system and via their communities.

I think the main difference here is that Manychat’s community is bigger, with over 120K people in it. On the other hand, AhaChat only has a community of 26.8K.

AhaChat vs Manychat: Which one is the winner?

AhaChat.

The feedback that AhaChat consistently receives is that their tool is very powerful yet easy to use, can import all subscribers from the time of page creation, their customer support is excellent, and by the way, it’s 10 times cheaper than other alternatives.

But this doesn’t mean ManyChat is a bad platform. In fact, ManyChat is still extremely good, and I think it’s easier to use and also does better on Analytics.