The best chatbot software in 2027

Do you want to install chatbot software on your website that answers visitors at any hour, or a live chat so your team can talk to them in real time? This ranking reviews ten tools that do one, the other or both, from a free inbox to a shopping assistant built for online stores. Each review describes the tool, the audience it targets, its limitations and its price when published, based on the vendor's site as consulted in October 2026.

The 10 best chatbot software in 2027

1. Intercom: for support teams that want ticketing software and an AI agent, Fin, combined in one tool.
2. Tidio: for online stores that want an AI agent able to recommend products, with a free plan.
3. Crisp: for multichannel customer service with an AI agent, from a vendor that keeps data in the European Union.
4. LiveChat: for a full-featured live chat on your site, with an AI agent and an assistant for your support staff.
5. iAdvize: for e-commerce sites that want an AI shopping assistant, billed by conversations and catalog size.
6. Botpress: for handing AI agents tasks such as refunds or account updates.
7. Landbot: for building qualification and appointment booking flows without code, on your site and WhatsApp.
8. tawk.to: for live chat and a shared inbox, with no subscription.
9. Dydu: for chatbots, voicebots and callbots designed by a French vendor, with data hosted in France.
10. Botnation AI: for building a chatbot on your own for your site, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger or SMS, with prices published in euros.

Why does picking the right chatbot matter in 2027?

Since August 2, 2026, a chatbot must in principle disclose that it is an AI. The European regulation on artificial intelligence (the EU AI Act) makes the transparency obligation in its Article 50 applicable from that date. This article requires providers to design AI systems that interact directly with people so that those people know they are dealing with an AI, unless this is obvious to a reasonably attentive person. The information must be clear and recognizable, and given at the latest at the first interaction.

The CNIL, France's data protection authority, points out that a conversational agent often processes personal data, if only to keep a record of the conversation. If the software sets a cookie before the visitor opens the chat window, prior consent must be collected; if it sets the cookie only when the chatbot is activated, and solely to make it work, that consent is not required. Conversations are kept only as long as their purpose requires, and when visitors type freely, the CNIL recommends asking them not to share sensitive data and purging such data regularly.

These technologies are spreading: according to Insee, France's national statistics institute, one third of companies with 10 or more employees that used AI in 2024 relied on technologies that generate spoken or written language, the ones that grew most in a year. The software you choose handles part of these obligations for you, or leaves them to you: a welcome message that discloses the AI, when the cookie is set, how long exchanges are kept, handover to a human agent.

How did we rank these chatbot tools?

We built the ranking solely from vendor websites, consulted in October 2026: home page, pricing page and, when we found one, features page. We tested no tool on a paid plan, and no partnership ties Sorank to these vendors. Four criteria separated the candidates.

1. Reliability of automatic answers. Which sources the AI agent answers from, what it does when it does not know, and how it hands the conversation to a human, with or without its context.

2. Channels covered. Site widget, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, email, SMS, phone.

3. Tools for the team. Shared inbox, conversation routing, tickets, customer profile and writing assistance for support staff.

4. Readability for a French buyer. French-language site, where data is hosted, published prices and billing unit (seat, conversation, outcome, workspace).

Resolution rates, customer counts and review scores published by vendors are not used here: none of them can be checked from the outside.

The 10 best chatbot software: tool by tool

1. Intercom

Intercom pairs two products: customer support software with an omnichannel inbox and tickets, and Fin, an AI agent the vendor describes as natively built into that software. Copilot assists support staff in the inbox, and the same ticketing system serves both customer requests and collaboration with other departments.

Fin starts from your help content, then trains on your procedures and internal rules. Simulations replay full conversations before going live, and the agent runs on phone, email, chat or Slack. Fin can also plug into support software you already use, such as Salesforce, HubSpot or Freshdesk.

Best for: support teams that want tickets and an AI agent in the same tool, or that keep their current software and only want to add Fin to it.

Strengths: Fin is billed per outcome, with nothing owed if it cannot answer or if the customer asks for a human, and a conversation counts as one outcome at most; 14-day free trial with no credit card.

Limitations: no French version of the site. The bill combines per-agent seats and usage fees: Fin outcomes, WhatsApp conversations, SMS, email campaigns and phone. Copilot, beyond a small free monthly quota, and the Pro add-on are paid options.

Pricing: prices published in dollars on the site.

2. Tidio

Tidio combines live chat, tickets, automations and Lyro, its AI agent, and puts the focus on what conversations bring in: sales, leads and bookings, tracked in a single report. Lyro answers only from your data, says "I don't know" instead of guessing, and passes complex cases to your team. Connected to your store's inventory, it recommends products in real time; it also recovers abandoned carts and collects leads mid-conversation.

Lyro answers on live chat, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, in dozens of languages including French, and also handles incoming emails. Flows, no-code sequences triggered at key stages of the visit, are used to collect data or answer quote requests. Tidio installs for free on Shopify, WordPress or Wix and advertises more than 120 integrations.

Best for: online stores that want an AI agent able to recommend products and to measure what their conversations bring in.

Strengths: site and pricing page in French; Free plan, free forever; Lyro can also be added to Zendesk, Salesforce or other support software.

Limitations: the bill follows three counters: conversations handled by the team, Lyro conversations and visitors reached by Flows. Lyro's product recommendations require buying a paid quota of Lyro conversations, and the first 50 free Lyro conversations are a one-time quota.

Pricing: Free plan; paid plans published in dollars on the site, with a 7-day free trial.

3. Crisp

Crisp presents itself as "the French customer service platform with AI". Its AI agents are built in four steps: you import your documentation (the tool also crawls your site and accepts PDFs and articles), you write a scenario or start from a template, you choose where the agent steps in (chat widget, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram or incoming emails), then you review its exchanges to refine it.

Around the agent, Crisp brings together a collaborative inbox for every channel, a chat widget, a support CRM that keeps each contact's data and history, and a knowledge base indexed in Google like a website. The vendor states that data stays in the European Union and that its AI is fully hosted by Crisp.

Best for: companies that want multichannel customer service with an AI agent, paid per workspace, with data kept in Europe.

Strengths: flat price per workspace, with several seats included in each plan; Free plan with chat widget, shared inbox and mobile apps; 14-day trial with every feature, no credit card.

Limitations: the Free plan includes no AI credits, and credits in paid plans correspond to an approximate number of automated conversations. The omnichannel inbox (WhatsApp Business, Instagram, SMS), the multichannel AI chatbot and the knowledge base start with the Essentials plan; the ticketing system and white label, with the Plus plan.

Pricing: Free plan; paid plans published in dollars on the site.

4. LiveChat

LiveChat is made up of a chat widget, visible to your visitors, and an app for your support staff. The widget is set up in a few clicks (colors, position, language, welcome message) and routes conversations by department, for example product pages to sales and the FAQ to support. In the app, agents see what the visitor is typing before it is sent, along with their contact details, activity on the site, carts and recent orders.

On the automation side, an AI agent answers frequent questions from your knowledge base and your rules, then hands requests that need a person to the team, with context. Copilote, a free AI assistant, helps agents across the app, and an AI toolkit offers reply suggestions, chat summaries and text enhancement.

Best for: e-commerce sites and B2B companies that want a full-featured live chat on their site, backed up by an AI agent.

Strengths: site and pricing in French; more than 200 integrations advertised, including WordPress, Squarespace and Mailchimp, and connections to Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce; 14-day free trial with no credit card.

Limitations: price per person, lower with annual billing than with monthly billing. The Starter plan is limited to one agent, 60 days of chat history and tracking of 100 visitors; SMS and Apple Messages for Business start with the Business plan.

Pricing: the French pricing page specifies that all prices are in US dollars.

5. iAdvize

iAdvize designs, for e-commerce, an AI Shopping Assistant that anticipates visitors' questions, recommends the right products and guides them through to purchase. Engagement Widgets step in at key moments of the visit, and the Shopping Panel combines product discovery, quick answers, add to cart and cross-selling.

The assistant is configured to reflect your brand with AI Builder, and Shopper Insights tracks metrics, revenue contribution and conversation quality. Connected to your tools, it can create a support ticket, track an order or sync a customer record without leaving the conversation.

Best for: e-commerce brands that want a sales assistant on their site, with a price based on their conversation volume and catalog size.

Strengths: site and prices in French, in euros; pricing based on the number of conversations and product references (SKUs), with no per-user billing; ISO 27001 certification, an information security standard, and GDPR compliance highlighted in the Enterprise plan.

Limitations: the tool is designed for e-commerce. Tools for human agents (Support Desk: AI writing assistance, co-browsing, proactive support) are an add-on at €80 per user per month, and the site mentions no permanent free plan.

Pricing: Essentials at €290 per month billed annually (€385 monthly), Starter at €520 (€690 monthly), Growth at €1,330 (€1,770 monthly), with the page advertising savings of up to 25% with annual billing. Price checked on October 10, 2026, VAT treatment not stated. The vendor advertises a 30-day free trial with no credit card, and the Enterprise plan is custom.

6. Botpress

Botpress builds customer support AI agents that act on requests: refunds, account updates, order corrections, multi-step processes. When the agent reaches its limits, the ticket goes to a human with the conversation history, account information and the troubleshooting steps already tried. You can keep your current support software, with no migration, or use Botpress's own.

There are two ways to build an agent: Botpress Studio, with nodes and visual flows, or Botpress Viber, which builds, tests and publishes the agent from a description written in plain language. The agent connects to your tools through integrations, HTTP requests or MCP tools (a protocol that links an AI agent to external services), and is published on web chat, WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, Messenger, Slack, or through Twilio for voice and SMS.

Best for: support teams whose requests require actions in other systems, such as refunding a customer or changing a plan.

Strengths: billing per conversation, with no per-user cost, and an amount of AI usage included in paid plans; Free plan with 100 conversations, 3 seats and 3 AI agents; SOC 2 certification, an audit framework for data security, GDPR compliance and security testing carried out by KPMG, according to the vendor.

Limitations: at 95% of the quota, a pack of 100 conversations is added automatically, and this top-up cannot be turned off. The plan comparison table puts the voice channel in the Enterprise plan.

Pricing: Free plan; paid plans published in dollars on the site.

7. Landbot

Landbot is used to build AI agents and chatbots for WhatsApp and your site without code, for sales, support and appointment booking. On a single canvas, you combine structured steps, such as buttons or validated fields, with AI blocks that answer open questions from your content.

Three use cases are detailed: qualifying leads against your criteria, resolving repetitive questions then handing over to the team inbox with the transcript attached, and booking an appointment inside the conversation. Collected data flows to HubSpot, Salesforce, Google Sheets, Slack, Mailchimp, Stripe, Zapier or webhooks (automatic data transfers to your other tools).

Best for: marketing and sales teams that want to qualify visitors from their site or WhatsApp and book appointments, without writing code.

Strengths: Free plan with no credit card and no expiry date; published billing rules, with alerts at 80% and 90% of the quota; the vendor states that it does not use your conversations to train models and describes itself as a European platform, compliant with GDPR and SOC 2.

Limitations: no French version of the site. The Free plan includes no AI conversations; the HubSpot, Salesforce or Pipedrive integrations, webhooks and removal of Landbot branding start with the Professional plan, where WhatsApp with your own number is a paid option.

Pricing: Free plan; paid plans are shown excluding taxes, in euros or dollars as you choose, on an English-language pricing page.

8. tawk.to

tawk.to offers a free inbox that brings together live chat, tickets, knowledge base, AI assistance and CRM. Site chat, email, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, SMS and Telegram land in an inbox shared by the whole team, with unlimited members. Conversations are assigned manually or automatically by channel, department or availability, and any message can become a ticket.

Each conversation feeds a contact record, linked to deals, appointments and tickets. The product also includes stage-based deal tracking, automations that give instant AI answers day and night, a self-service knowledge base, bookings and a widget in your brand colors, put online with a code snippet.

Best for: companies that want free live chat on their site and a common inbox for all their channels.

Strengths: French-language site; software presented as 100% free, with unlimited team members; vendor support advertised 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year round.

Limitations: the site does not specify which sources its AI answers rely on, or how they hand over to a human agent. The page explaining why it is free mentions third-party agents able to answer on behalf of your company: the paid Hired-Agent service, which the page quotes at $1 per hour.

Pricing: software presented as free; a letter from the founder explains this model on the site.

9. Dydu

Since 2009, Dydu has offered a no-code platform for designing chatbots, voicebots and callbots on your own. Its agents rely on natural language understanding and generative AI. Callbots answer the phone at any hour, pre-qualify requests, take calls outside opening hours and place outbound calls for reminders or appointment booking.

The chatbots hand over to a human agent, through Dydu's live chat or an external tool, and can access customer data once connected to a CRM. They deploy on a website, a mobile app, WordPress, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Shopify, ServiceNow, Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp, for customer service as well as employee support (HR, IT, legal).

Best for: organizations that want a conversational agent in writing and on the phone, for their customers or their employees, with dedicated support.

Strengths: data hosted in France and GDPR compliance advertised; a dedicated contact at every phase of the project; one platform for text, voice and phone, with an in-house live chat.

Limitations: prices not published, the site invites you to request a demo; it mentions neither a free trial nor a self-service plan.

Pricing: prices not published.

10. Botnation AI

Botnation AI lets you deploy an AI chatbot on several platforms in a few minutes, from your own data. The vendor, active since 2016, says it uses technology developed in-house, independent of the services of the GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft), with data hosted on its platform under French and European jurisdiction. Flows are built by drag and drop, without code, and published on the website, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, by SMS or as a voicebot.

The site breaks chatbots down by use: leads (capture, qualify, enrich), e-commerce (recommend, follow up on abandoned carts), FAQ, customer support with transfer to a human, recruitment and marketing. You can start on your own in about ten minutes or hand a custom project to the vendor's experts.

Best for: companies without technical skills that want a chatbot on their site and messaging apps, with prices in euros.

Strengths: prices published in euros, excluding taxes and with no commitment; unlimited chatbots and collaborators, with live chat, webhooks, Google Sheets, Mailchimp, Gmail, Zapier and Stripe included in the price; sign-up with no credit card.

Limitations: AI features (custom AI fed with your documentation, OpenAI models, SMS sending) consume credits paid on top of the subscription. Each plan caps the number of users, and each user beyond the plan is billed.

Pricing: Gratuit at €0, Basic at €39 per month (500 users), Pro at €59 per month (1,000 users), Entreprise on quote; prices excl. VAT, price checked on October 10, 2026. Extra credits start at €25 per 1,000, and a user beyond the plan costs €0.05 per month.

Comparison table of the 10 chatbot tools

Prices checked on October 10, 2026 on the vendors' sites; the other information in the table comes from the same pages. Only two vendors, iAdvize and Botnation AI, display prices in euros on a French version of their site: the right-hand column therefore describes what makes the amount you pay vary.

Software	What sets it apart	Channels besides the site	French-language site	What makes the bill vary
Intercom	Ticketing software and Fin AI agent combined	Phone, email, Slack, WhatsApp, SMS	No	Agent seats, Fin outcomes, usage (WhatsApp, SMS, campaigns)
Tidio	Lyro agent that recommends products	WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, email	Yes	Team conversations, Lyro conversations, Flows visitors
Crisp	Price per workspace, data in the EU	WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, email, SMS	Yes	Plan (seats and AI credits included), extra seats
LiveChat	Full-featured live chat with AI agent	Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, email, SMS, X, Apple Messages	Yes	Number of people, plan
iAdvize	AI shopping assistant for e-commerce	Not specified	Yes	Conversations, product references, Support Desk add-on per user
Botpress	Agents that issue refunds or change an account	WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, Messenger, Slack, voice and SMS via Twilio	Yes	Conversations per month, automatically added packs, AI usage
Landbot	No-code flows and appointment booking	WhatsApp, Messenger	No	Conversations and AI conversations per month, WhatsApp, extra seats
tawk.to	Free shared inbox	Email, WhatsApp, Messenger, SMS, Telegram	Yes	Free software; paid Hired-Agent third-party agents
Dydu	Chatbot, voicebot and callbot, data in France	Phone, Teams, SharePoint, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp	Yes	Prices not published
Botnation AI	Prices published in euros, AI developed in-house	WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, SMS, voice	Yes	Users per month, AI credits

Other tools to know about

Software	What the tool does, according to its vendor
Zendesk	Customer service platform with AI agents and a ticketing system that brings together email, messaging, calls and social media.
Smartsupp	Live chat, chatbots and AI tools for websites and online stores, with a free-forever plan.
Inbenta	AI agents that automate customer experience and employee experience across all channels.
Lime Connect (formerly Userlike)	Platform that brings together chat, messaging and AI for sales and support.
Chatwoot	Open source customer support platform with AI: live chat, email, WhatsApp and Instagram, with self-hosting available.
Chatbase	Customer experience AI agents that handle complex requests and reduce ticket volume across all channels.
Voiceflow	Platform for building and deploying chat and voice AI agents for customer service.
JivoChat	Live chat for websites, free for up to 5 agents.
HelpCrunch	Live chat, chatbot, knowledge base, pop-ups and email marketing.
Olark	AI chat agent that answers questions, qualifies visitors and brings in a human at the right time.
Gorgias	AI agent and support software designed for e-commerce, with Shopify data in every conversation.
LiveAgent	Customer support software with tickets, live chat and knowledge base.

Zendesk, Gorgias and LiveAgent, which are ticketing software first, appear in this table: the ranking covers chat and conversational agents on your site. If you would rather work on your site's conversion with a team, see the best CRO and conversion agencies; for an online store, see the best e-commerce agencies.

What should you check before you choose?

1. What does the AI agent rely on to answer? Ask whether it answers only from your content, which sources it accepts (site, PDFs, help articles, catalog) and what it does with a question it does not know. Tidio states, for example, that Lyro answers "I don't know" in that case.

2. How does the conversation pass to a human? Check that the human agent receives the history and the information already given, as LiveChat and Botpress describe, and that the visitor can ask for a person at any time.

3. Which unit drives the bill up? Depending on the tool, you pay per support agent (LiveChat), per AI agent outcome (Fin at Intercom), per conversation (Botpress, Landbot), per workspace (Crisp), by number of users (Botnation AI) or based on your conversations and catalog (iAdvize). Estimate your monthly conversation volume before comparing.

4. Does the tool help you follow the rules? The welcome message must be able to state that the visitor is talking to an AI, and the chatbot's cookie may only be set without consent when the chat window is opened. Also ask how to set the retention period for conversations and delete sensitive data a visitor may have entered.

5. Where are conversations hosted? Crisp advertises data in the European Union, Dydu hosting in France, Botnation AI French and European jurisdiction, and Landbot describes itself as a European platform. For the others, ask the vendor.

Where does this ranking stop?

No AI agent was fed your content or put in front of your customers. A chatbot's accuracy depends on the documentation it receives: only a trial with your help pages, your catalog and your visitors' real questions measures it. Our reviews describe the vendors' sites, consulted in October 2026: home, pricing and features page when one existed. For some, that page was missing from our reading, and two sites exist only in English: a tool that describes few of its features online may look less complete here than it really is.

Your need counts for more than the rank. Answering support questions, advising a shopper, qualifying a lead, booking appointments or picking up the phone are different jobs. Start from what your chatbot has to accomplish, then read the Best for line of each review.

Quotas move. Included conversations, AI credits, seats and channel options make a chatbot's bill vary from one plan to the next. We will revise this page regularly; check every price and every quota on the vendor's site before you commit.

How do you bring to your site the visitors your chatbot will greet?

A chatbot works for the people who have already reached your site. It informs them, qualifies them and points them to an agent or to the cart. Drawing them in requires being visible elsewhere: on Google, and in the answers ChatGPT or other AIs give a buyer looking for a solution. To compare possible sources of visitors, see the 50 best customer acquisition channels in 2026.

That visibility work is what Sorank automates. After a technical audit of your site and of your presence in AI assistants, the platform finds your keywords, writes then publishes articles optimized for AI assistants, and tells you, prompt by prompt, when an AI cites you. The GEO software page details these features. To talk it over with the team, book a call.

Conclusion

Three profiles emerge from these reviews. A support team that wants its tickets and its AI agent in one tool, with an agent billed per outcome, will look at Intercom first. An online store that wants to start with a free plan, then let AI handle product advice and cart follow-ups, will find the Lyro agent at Tidio. A company that cares about a per-workspace price, a French-language site and data kept in the European Union can start with Crisp.

Whichever tool you pick, use the free trial to feed the agent your own content and ask it the questions your team receives every week. Then check three settings: the message that discloses the AI, the moment the cookie is set and the handover to a human agent. If a live chat with no subscription is enough to get started, tawk.to, presented as 100% free, lets you begin with no budget.