What is a bot platform exactly?

We know that bots are useful, cheap and simple and many don’t really need a lot of previous programming knowledge to be created. Everyone today is familiar with bot platform (even if you don’t know they were called bots).

But they also bring new terminology with which we are not so familiar. Have you heard about “bot platforms”? What are they? This is a question that rises up on many people’s head when the term comes in the conversation.

Technically, bot platforms are online ecosystems where bots can be deployed, interact with users, and perform actions on their behalf, including interacting with other platforms.

Probably this is not clear enough yet, so lets try to find more about this.

Syd Lawrence from The Bot Platform, stated that before they created this site, the concept of “bot platform” didn’t even exist. Their idea was to offer a space where people could create their own app messaging bot. The problem is that people didn’t really know where to start. That’s why now they are offering a service to help them actually build the bot.

But that is basically what it is, a space where we can create a Bot in whatever programming language you want to choose. The platform, or channel is there in the process with you (the creator) to work as an intermediary.

The most interesting thing of this phenomenon is how people are getting more and more interested on creating their own bot for their company using those platforms as a basis. The idea of creating a conversation assistant that would connect with their clients and answer the wider range of questions has a huge impact on the market, which explains the raising position of these “creation” platforms.

We should keep in mind that some of those bot platforms are very limited, like Facebook Messenger, which has their own framework to create your bot in C#. This as we just said, is limiting, but also eases the process for those users mentioned before that don’t really have the knowledge to do it on their own.

A bot, as we know, can be very simple (and also not very helpful) or it can be developed to the point that it can give very specific answers and even make jokes (those classic Siri silly questions and surprising answers). That is why is very important to choose the right platform that would allow us to create the bot that we have in mind to meet our necessities, and maybe give us the technical support we might need in the creative process.

Each platform has it advantages and disadvantages, Facebook as we said is very limited with how far you can go with your bot, but it has a huge audience (over a billion). Other platforms like Slack, are more oriented to a specific form of communication (in this case corporate communication to easy the work flow of the employees), so users looking to create a bot to sell products or any sort of communication outside the professional area should not use it.

So if you are considering your own bot, you should keep some ideas in mind to make sure it will be successful. Based on this you will be able to determine which platform works better for us. The most important questions we should ask ourselves are:

What kind of users is this bot oriented to? Future clients? Clients looking for assistance? Co-workers to communicate on professional matters?

Is it going to be a free service? This will also help us define whether we want not invest on the bot’s creation a lot of money and how much.

Which countries do we need it to be available? Again, that will possibly limit the offer of platforms we can use to create it.

How much do we know (at least at the beginning) about creating a bot? Will we need more assistance or are we ready to fly solo?

Also, the information on this online right now is endless, so make sure you look up those articles and tutorials that might help you choose the best platform for your bot.