7 Must-Have Onboarding Chatbots for Mental Health Practices

Ada Health is a globally recognized health‑tech platform that offers a conversational AI designed to help patients self‑diagnose and triage medical conditions. The Ada chatbot uses a symptom‑based questionnaire to generate risk scores and recommend next steps, making it an attractive tool for mental health practices looking to screen patients for anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders before a live session. Ada’s AI engine is trained on a massive dataset of medical knowledge, enabling it to ask follow‑up questions that refine the assessment. The platform supports integration with electronic health records and telehealth systems, providing clinicians with a consolidated view of patient history. Ada’s enterprise pricing is custom‑quoted, but small practices can start with a free tier that includes basic symptom checkers and a limited number of queries per month. Ada’s strengths lie in its clinical rigor and data‑driven approach, which can be particularly useful for practices that need to comply with health‑care regulations and maintain a high standard of patient safety.

IBM Watson Assistant is a mature enterprise chatbot platform that empowers organizations to build AI agents capable of understanding natural language and delivering contextual responses. For mental health practices, Watson Assistant can be configured to guide patients through intake questionnaires, provide psycho‑educational content, and schedule appointments. The platform offers an intuitive visual dialog builder that allows clinicians to create branching conversations without code. Watson Assistant integrates with IBM Cloud services, including Watson Discovery for knowledge base search and Watson Speech to Text for voice interactions. Pricing for Watson Assistant starts with a Lite plan that includes 10,000 messages per month for free, while the Standard plan begins at $0.02 per message, making it cost‑effective for practices with moderate traffic. Watson’s strengths include robust security features, enterprise‑grade scalability, and extensive documentation. However, the learning curve for advanced customization can be steep, and the platform’s visual builder is less flexible than dedicated no‑code editors.

ManyChat is a versatile chatbot builder that originally focused on social media automation but has evolved into a full‑featured conversational platform. ManyChat’s drag‑and‑drop visual editor lets mental health practitioners design interactive flows for patient intake, appointment reminders, and wellness tips without programming. The bot can be deployed across Facebook Messenger, Instagram, SMS, and web widgets, giving practices flexibility in reaching patients where they prefer. ManyChat offers a free plan with basic features and a Pro plan at $49/month, which includes unlimited flows, email sequences, and advanced analytics. The platform also supports integrations with Zapier, Google Sheets, and other tools for data collection. While ManyChat excels at marketing automation, it offers limited support for clinical knowledge bases and does not provide built‑in fact‑validation or memory persistence beyond the chat session.

Landbot offers a no‑code chatbot builder that emphasizes conversational flows and user experience. Mental health practices can use Landbot to create guided assessments, collect intake data, and direct patients to resources or appointments. The platform’s visual flow builder supports conditional logic, variables, and integrations with Google Sheets, Mailchimp, and many other SaaS tools. Landbot provides a web widget that can be embedded on any site and a mobile app for offline use. Pricing starts with a free plan that allows up to 200 interactions per month and scales to $49/month for unlimited interactions and advanced features. Landbot’s strengths include an intuitive UI, flexible design options, and support for multi‑language conversations. However, it lacks a dedicated knowledge base system and does not offer long‑term memory out of the box, meaning patient context is not retained across sessions unless manually stored in an external database.

Tars is a chatbot creation platform that focuses on building conversational landing pages and lead‑generation bots. For mental health providers, Tars can be used to design intake questionnaires, schedule intake calls, and provide general psycho‑educational content. The platform offers a visual builder with drag‑and‑drop blocks, conditionals, and integration with Zapier, Google Sheets, and CRM systems. Tars’ pricing starts at $49/month for unlimited bots, with a free trial available. The bot can be embedded into websites or shared via a unique URL. While Tars excels at lead‑generation and form‑based interactions, it does not include a dedicated knowledge base or advanced AI features such as RAG or knowledge graphs. Additionally, long‑term memory is not available; each interaction is stateless unless the user data is stored externally.

Drift is a conversational marketing platform that has expanded into customer support and chatbot solutions. Mental health practices can use Drift to engage patients on their website, answer common questions, and capture contact information for follow‑up. Drift’s chatbot builder allows for simple rule‑based flows and integrates with Salesforce, HubSpot, and other CRMs. The platform offers a free trial and a paid plan starting at $400/month, which includes advanced features such as real‑time chat, marketing automation, and analytics. Drift’s strengths lie in its robust sales‑automation tools and deep integration with enterprise CRMs, making it suitable for practices that already use these systems. However, Drift is more geared toward sales and marketing than clinical intake and does not provide a dedicated knowledge base or fact‑validation layer, limiting its usefulness for evidence‑based patient triage.