The Top 5 Messenger Chatbots 2016 Brought Us

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We get it, chatbots are nothing new. But the industry definitely has matured this year. So, let's have a look at 2016's best messenger chatbots:

This year Chatbots have gotten A LOT of attention, creating buzz that led to the development of the industry. How? Well, first off messaging platforms (Messenger, Alexa,…) have been optimizing their product, allowing developers to build better experiences. The other reason are startups, now launching chatbot builders with no coding skills required (Chatfuel, Vizir, Recast,…), making it really easy to build and deploy a chatbot.

As a result, we’ve had a really good chatbot experience this year, especially on Facebook Messenger. Here’s my personal top 5:

#5 My Workout

Yeah, fitness is also going into bots! My Workout is a fitness coach coming right to Messenger. You start by saying a bit about yourself and what kind of exercises you want to do. Then it sends you reminders, it shows you how to perform exercises, asks for feedback and gives you stats. Maybe not enough to make you drop Freelitics, but still promising.

#4 Smart Notes

This one is simple yet powerful. And it might replace the to-do list app on your smartphone. Just send Smart Notes things you need to do, set a reminder, and it will send you a message when it’s time to tackle it. You can mark your tasks as done and also see all your items if you need to.

#3 TechCrunch

Even if it’s not the sexiest bot around, after using it for a few months now I can tell this is the most useful one. Actually, it made me read TechCrunch again. This chatbot gives you the top articles of TechCrunch everyday at the same time. Through this you can see important news you don’t want to miss in an instant. If you want to know more, you can search articles by keywords and subscribe to specific topics. Bots are going to change news too!

#2 GrowthBot

This is the most powerful chatbot I’ve tested this year. Made by Dharmesh Shah, founder & CTO of HubSpot, this bot simply tells you anything you want to know about a website. It gives you instantly its number of visitors, how much they pay on paid search or how well they do on social networks. Amazing.

#1 eBay ShopBot

This is probably the most promising chatbot of this year. If the global experience could be better, this bot shows how powerful a chabot can be. Right in Facebook Messenger, you can access the whole eBay store! So basically you can buy anything right from Messenger.

What’s your favorite chatbot of this year? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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Photo credit: Sam Howzit via Visualhunt / CC BY