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best ai chatbots

The Top 6 AI Chatbots for SMBs in 2025

AI chatbots are changing how businesses educate their prospects, nurture their leads, and provide customer support. They are prevalent tools. In fact, 88% of consumers say they’ve had at least one conversation with an AI chatbot in the past year.

If you’re looking for the best chatbot for your business, check out our list on this blog post. Note that there’s no single superior chatbot for all businesses — ultimately, the best one is one that will address your specific needs.

Best AI Chatbots Best for Pricing Free trial or free version available?
1. Microsoft Copilot Microsoft Office users Paid plans start at $30 per user per month Free version
2. ChatGPT Content ideation Starts at $20 per month Free version
3. Perplexity Research Starts at $20 per month Free version
4. Google Gemini Google Workspace users Google AI Pro plan starts at $19.99 per month Free version
5. Kommunicate Customer service Starts at $33.33 per month 30-day free trial
6. Ada Automated omnichannel customer service Contact Ada for pricing N/A

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1. Microsoft Copilot: Best for Microsoft Office users

microsoft copilot

Pricing: Paid plans start at $30 per user per month; free version available

Pros:

  • Available on Microsoft Bing search engine and other Microsoft Office apps
  • Comes with a free version

Cons:

  • May not be the best option for non-Microsoft Office users

Microsoft Copilot uses natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to answer a user’s question and provide summarized information.

At the end of its response, you also get a list of follow-up questions related to your initial prompt. You can also ask it other follow-up questions.

This AI chatbot is available on different Microsoft apps, including Bing. You can access Microsoft Copilot before you start your search or even through the search results.

Copilot is also available on the following Microsoft apps, making it an excellent AI-powered assistant that can improve your productivity:

  • Word
  • Excel
  • PowerPoint
  • Outlook
  • OneNote

2. ChatGPT: Best for content ideation

chatgpt

Pricing: Starts at $20 per month; free version available

Pros:

  • User-friendly

Cons:

  • You may need to upgrade to the paid version to get the most out of the AI chatbot

ChatGPT is probably the most popular AI chatbot. Launched by OpenAI in 2022, it gained one million users in only five days.

Today, people and organizations use ChatGPT for different purposes. For marketers, though, it stands out for content ideation.

To get the best results from ChatGPT for this content marketing task, provide context in your prompts. That way, it generates topics relevant to your business and customers.

Some of the details you can include are:

  • Nature and location of your business
  • Brief description of your customers
  • Primary keywords
  • Content type you’re looking for

Bonus use case: You can also ask ChatGPT to generate a rough outline of your content to help you get started.

3. Perplexity: Best for research

perplexity ai

Pricing: Starts at $20 per month; free version available

Pros:

  • Provides links to sources, making it easy to fact-check its results
  • Free version grants you unlimited quick searches

Cons:

  • Can appear too cluttered and overwhelming for simple research

Perplexity is an AI answer engine and chatbot that’s best used for research. You can input your question or prompt in text, document, or audio format. By default, it provides citations and links to its sources of information, making it easy for you to fact-check its output.

At the end of its response, this AI chatbot provides a list of related questions to guide you through your research. You can also input your own follow-up questions.

perplexity related section

You can perform five types of searches on Perplexity:

  • Quick search: A quick search shows you basic answers from a limited number of sources. Think of it as getting background information about a topic.
  • Pro search: Pro search provides a more comprehensive result, gathering information from three times more sources than a quick search. It interacts with you to refine the results based on your unique search needs.
  • Deep research mode: It autonomously performs searches across hundreds of sources and provides you with a comprehensive report.
  • Reasoning search mode: This type of search is suitable for expert-level research and analysis across different subjects. You get a synthesized, but in-depth report on a topic. You can download the report as a PDF as reference.
  • Multimodal search: This search type lets you perform search using various data formats, such as text, documents, image, audio, or video.

Perplexity’s free version gives you unlimited quick searches and three pro searches per day. You can review your past research and conversations with the chatbot, making its free plan far from being a limited version of the paid ones.

If you have more research-intensive tasks and need more than three pro searches, consider upgrading to the Perplexity Pro, which costs $20 per month. It gives you hundreds of Pro searches in a day.

You’ll also get access to other AI models with the paid plan, including GPT-4.1, Claude 4.0 Sonnet, and Gemini 2.5 Pro.

4. Google Gemini: Best for Google Workspace users

google gemini

Pricing: Google AI Pro plan starts at $19.99 per month; free version available

Pros:

  • Functions as a helpful assistant for Google Workspace users

Cons:

  • Available only in select countries

Formerly known as Google Bard, Google Gemini is an AI chatbot that can function as a virtual assistant for Google Workspace users. This chatbot is powered by AI models with the same name, Gemini.

You can start using it with a text or voice prompt, or by uploading an image or file from Google Drive or your local drive. Gemini is integrated into Google Workspace apps, such as Google Docs, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Sheets, and more, so you can use it as a virtual assistant as you perform your tasks in the Google ecosystem.

google gemini on google drive

Ask it to locate a file in your Google Drive or give you a background on the files available on a specific folder. It can summarize an email thread on Gmail for you, too.

5. Kommunicate: Best for customer service

kommunicate ai chatbot

Pricing: Starts at $33.33 per month; 30-day free trial available

Pros:

  • Can be trained with your website content and documents
  • Integrates with popular customer relationship management (CRM) platforms

Cons:

  • Accuracy and tone rely on training data

If you’re looking for a chatbot that can improve your customer service team’s response times, consider Kommunicate.

Kommunicate uses generative AI and NLP so you can provide 24/7 support to your customers. This AI chatbot can handle routine and common questions. For more complex queries, it can automatically transfer a conversation to a human agent.

You can train Kommunicate with the following:

  • Your website content
  • Knowledge base articles (from your customer relationship management platform)
  • Documents (PDFs, spreadsheets, and Word documents)

You can also customize Kommunicate to ensure that it provides correct responses and remains on-brand with your voice.

6. Ada: Best for automated omnichannel customer service

ada ai chatbot

Pricing: Contact Ada for pricing

Pros:

  • Personalized customer service

Cons:

  • Reliance on AI-powered customer service may result in impersonal interactions

Ada uses its proprietary natural language understanding — which is trained on billions of customer service interactions — to understand an inquiry’s context and personalize conversations.

This multilingual chatbot can understand and respond to more than 50 languages and integrate with CRMs. You can sync it with your knowledge base, so it can automatically generate content based on your library of information.

FAQs on the best AI chatbots

Find answers to your questions about AI chatbots here!

What is an AI chatbot?

An AI chatbot is a program that uses AI, machine learning, and NLP to interpret a user’s input, understand their intent, and provide a helpful response.

Businesses like yours can use AI chatbots as sales assistants and after-sales support tools, because they can understand our language and respond to inquiries without the help of another human.

What are the different types of AI chatbots?

The most common types of chatbots are the following:

  • Rule-based chatbots: Rule-based chatbots ask users to select predefined questions. It then provides an answer based on the question selected by a user.
  • Independent chatbots: Using AI and machine learning, independent chatbots respond to queries based on keywords entered by users.
  • NLP chatbots: Also known as contextual chatbots, NLP chatbots use a combination of rule-based and independent chatbots. They provide human-like conversations with users to address the users’ concerns in the fewest steps possible.

How do chatbots work?

Each chatbot type works differently. Some chatbots have predefined workflows based on the common questions a business receives. These chatbots have canned responses to questions and variations of the question.

For example, let’s say you’re in the roof-building business. Some common questions you get are how long you’ve been doing business and the price range of your services.

You can train your chatbot to answer the following questions with “We’ve been in the business of building reliable roofs for our community for 15 years.”:

  • How long have you been in the roofing business?
  • Do you have extensive experience as a roof builder?
  • How long have you been building roofs?

Other chatbots use NLP to understand a user’s questions to provide answers. These AI chatbots can analyze different words and phrases and generate a response. ChatGPT is an example of such a chatbot.

ChatGPT and similar chatbots use machine learning to generate unique responses instead of responding with canned answers. These chatbots don’t need hours-long training, either.

What should I look for in a chatbot?

Before identifying the features you must look for in a chatbot, it’s important to determine your needs and how you’ll use the chatbot.

Will you use it as a customer support and sales tool? Or will you use it as a marketing assistant tool? Once you have identified your primary use for your AI chatbot, consider the following chatbot features:

  • NLP capabilities: If you need a chatbot integrated into your website to guide visitors to shop or address their concerns, consider chatbots with NLP capabilities. If your buyer’s journey isn’t very complex, you can also opt for a chatbot with which you can train and create workflows.
  • Customization: Do you need a chatbot that you can personalize for your business? If you need to personalize your chatbot, look for one with a content management system so you can incorporate your brand’s colors and font into the chatbot.
  • Integration: Ensure the chatbots you’ve shortlisted can integrate with your existing martech stack. If you currently have a CRM platform and use a chatbot to generate leads, make sure your chatbot and CRM can seamlessly communicate with each other.
  • Analytics and reporting features: If you’ll use an AI chatbot to generate leads or provide customer support, look for analytics and reporting features to monitor your efforts. Is your chatbot successfully leading your prospects to sign up as leads? Do your customers get their after-sales service concerns addressed through your chatbot? A chatbot’s analytics can help you answer such questions.
  • Price: Finally, shortlist chatbots that fit your budget. If you’re a small- to medium-sized business, consider chatbots that fit your company’s size, budget, and the number of queries you receive. Note that some chatbots have subscription plans based on the number of users from your team or the number of queries you’ll receive.

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Find the best chatbot for your business with WebFX

When executed correctly, an AI chatbot can efficiently provide customer service or streamline your internal processes. If you need help looking for and setting up the best chatbot for your needs, let WebFX help.

We’re a full-service digital marketing agency with over 29 years of experience helping our clients grow their bottom line. Our team of 500+ experienced digital marketers are passionate and dedicated to creating results-driven strategies for you, including chatbot marketing, and AI and GPT integration.

Let’s work together and grow your business. Contact us online or call us at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist!

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