7 Best Platforms for a Client Onboarding Bot for Marketing Agencies

Intercom is a well‑established customer messaging platform that has evolved into a comprehensive conversational marketing hub. It offers a suite of tools for live chat, product tours, and targeted messaging, making it a popular choice for agencies that manage multiple client websites. Intercom’s chat widget is easy to embed and can be customized with brand colors and logos, though it requires a developer for advanced styling. The platform’s automation engine, powered by “bots” and “rules,” allows teams to trigger messages based on user behavior, location, and engagement metrics. Intercom’s Help Center integration provides a knowledge base that can be surfaced within the chat, and its “Inbox” consolidates all conversations across channels, enabling a unified view for support teams. For agencies, Intercom can be used to capture leads, qualify prospects, and hand off conversations to sales pipelines. Pricing starts at $39/month for the Essentials plan, which includes up to 2,000 contacts and basic automation. The Standard plan ($99/month) adds advanced segmentation and custom bots, while the Premium plan ($199/month) unlocks product tours and advanced reporting.

Drift positions itself as a conversational marketing platform that emphasizes sales engagement. Its chat widget is designed to capture visitor intent and route conversations to the right sales or marketing team members. Drift offers a “Conversational Intent” engine that uses AI to score leads in real time, allowing agencies to prioritize high‑quality prospects. The platform also supports automated scheduling, so visitors can book meetings directly through the chat. Drift’s “Engage” feature enables pre‑configured bot flows for common scenarios such as pricing requests or demo sign‑ups. The platform integrates with Salesforce, HubSpot, and other CRMs, and it provides reporting dashboards that track lead conversion rates and chat activity. For marketing agencies, Drift can be used to accelerate lead qualification and reduce time to first contact. Pricing is structured around the number of users and starts at $400/month for the Standard plan, which includes up to 15 users and basic bot functionality. The Growth plan ($900/month) adds advanced intent scoring and custom branding options.

HubSpot Conversations is part of the HubSpot CRM ecosystem, offering a unified inbox that brings chat, email, and social messages into one place. The chat widget can be embedded on any website and is fully brandable, allowing agencies to maintain consistent visual identity across client sites. HubSpot’s conversational tools include chatbots that can answer FAQs, capture contact information, and route conversations to the appropriate team. The platform’s integration with HubSpot’s CRM means that every interaction can automatically create or update a contact record, track deal stages, and trigger automated workflows. HubSpot also offers a free tier that includes basic chat functionality, while the Starter plan ($45/mo) adds additional inbox seats and automation features. Agencies can leverage HubSpot’s reporting tools to analyze chat performance and ROI. However, HubSpot’s chat capabilities are tightly coupled with its CRM, which may limit flexibility for agencies that use other systems.

ManyChat is a popular chatbot builder that focuses on social media and messaging platforms, particularly Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct. Its drag‑and‑drop flow builder allows marketers to create interactive conversations without coding. ManyChat supports broadcasting, segmentation, and automated responses, making it useful for nurturing leads and conducting surveys. For agencies, ManyChat can be embedded on websites using a widget, but its primary strength lies in social channel automation. The platform integrates with email marketing services, CRMs, and e‑commerce stores. ManyChat’s pricing model includes a free plan with basic features, a Pro plan ($10/month) for advanced automation and unlimited broadcasts, and a Growth plan ($50/month) for larger contact bases. While ManyChat offers robust social media integration, it lacks advanced knowledge base features and persistent memory for website visitors.

Landbot offers a no‑code chatbot builder that emphasizes conversational UX design. Its visual builder lets users assemble dialogs using blocks, images, and forms, and the platform supports a range of integrations such as Zapier, Google Sheets, and e‑commerce APIs. Landbot’s widget can be embedded on any website, and it offers a free plan with limited bot interactions. Paid plans start at $30/month for the Starter tier, which provides unlimited bots and 3,000 messages per month. The Professional tier ($199/month) expands the message limit to 20,000 and adds advanced analytics and custom branding. Landbot is popular among agencies that want a visual editor for creating lead‑capture flows and simple integrations, but it does not include a built‑in knowledge base or persistent memory for authenticated users.

Tars focuses on building conversational landing pages that convert visitors into leads. Its drag‑and‑drop interface allows marketers to create chatbots that guide users through multi‑step forms and surveys. Tars integrates with popular CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, and Marketo, and it offers a range of pre‑built templates for industries such as real estate, insurance, and finance. The platform’s pricing starts at $49/month for the Starter plan, which includes up to 5,000 messages per month and one chatbot. Higher tiers provide increased message limits, additional chatbots, and advanced analytics. Tars is a solid choice for agencies that need quick turnaround on lead‑capture flows, but it does not offer a knowledge base, persistent memory, or e‑commerce data integration out of the box.