Chatbot Cost: Affecting Factors, Development Options, and Cost Estimation to add Chatbot in Your App

What can be better than having a chat assistant available virtually in your app to answer user queries? For some time, chatbots have become common, and businesses are considering heavily integrating them into digital products. It is because of the role of chatbots in enhancing the customer experience by providing instant support and assistance.

According to an estimate, B2B customers have applied more chatbots to their digital platform as compared to B2C. Yet, there are a lot of businesses, especially B2C ones, who are willing to take advantage of the benefits of integrating chatbots into their digital products.

However, chatbot pricing is a major concern. They want the solution: How much will it cost me to have a chatbot in my app? If you are also wondering the same, then you are at the right place.

Through this blog, we want to help you understand chatbot pricing, or what you can call chatbot integration cost in your app. By the end of this blog, you will have a clear idea of the factors affecting chatbot development costs and the cost of available development options. Let us move ahead.

How Much Does a Chatbot Cost? Asking a Chatbot Itself

Before actually heading to the real factors and cost estimation part, how about asking the question to the chatbot itself? We headed to the leading chatbots, ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.

Asking for Chatbot Pricing from ChatGPT

While asking the ChatGPT about the cost of chatbot integration in the app, here is the result:

ChatGPT talks extensively about the factors without giving a rough estimation. The major factors suggested by the ChatGPT are complexity, functionality, development time, maintenance and support, and development team rates. It also suggests that consulting the best chatbot app development agency can be the best option to get a rough estimation. Let us head to another version of the chatbot, CoPilot.

Asking for Chatbot Pricing from CoPilot

After ChatGpt, let us ask the same question to another popular chatbot and see what their suggestion is. Here are the results:

CoPilot answered the question differently. Instead of talking about the factors affecting the development cost, it talks about the methods that a business can avail of to develop a chatbot for their app. It offers a range of options revolving around in-house development, agency development, and SaaS-based solutions. The cost estimation can vary from $0 to $10,000 per month.

Analysis

Both chatbots gave us a genuine answer. The major focus was on the factors and the development options. And, to a great extent, as one of the leading mobile app development companies that has been integrating AI-rich chatbots for businesses, we do agree with the answers.

With this, it becomes clear that a chatbot can provide a wide range of solutions to the queries of users, and planning to integrate one of these kinds into your application is a great idea. Let us talk about the factors affecting the chatbot pricing and the development options available for you in some detail.

Key Factors Affecting the Chatbot Cost Estimation Significantly

You have seen earlier that chatGPT chatbots talked about the factors affecting chatbot development costs. And it is something really important while determining the chatbot integration pricing. Let us mention these factors for you in detail before heading to the development options and the rough estimation.

Complexity of Chatbot Functionalities

If you have seen some basic chatbots, especially before the introduction of smart AI-based chatbots, they used to answer mostly FAQs. They had a fixed set of FAQs that users could choose from and get fixed answers to.

However, now that chatbots integrate smart natural language processing technologies, their functionalities are becoming more diverse. Take the example of designing chatbots, where users can enter the type of images they want to generate, and chatbots generate those for them.

Or asking chatbots about a specific launch date of a product to get an idea of how old the product is on an e-commerce site where customer service chatbots can enhance the customer experience. So, the more you add functionalities, the more the prices go up.

Level of AI and ML Integration in Chatbots

Let us imagine a scenario. Imagine that you want to add a chatbot to your eCommerce website to enhance your customer experience. Here you have two available options for determining the levels of AI and ML:

1. Letting the chatbot collect the queries asked by your customers and then physically adapting the chatbot to the latest and new queries.
2. Making a chatbot advanced enough in terms of AI and ML where the chatbot can collect the data as well as train itself and adapt to the most updated queries.

Of course, the cost of the second option will be higher as compared to the first one; hence, the level of AI and ML integration in the chatbot does affect the overall cost.

Level of Customization in your Custom Chatbot

Ok, so if you are planning to build a chatbot dedicatedly, then you must have decided to integrate it in a custom way. For developing custom chatbots, hiring a custom app development agency is most suitable for your business. In terms of customization, you can plan your own:

• Branding, Looks, and Feel of the Chatbot
• Language and tone
• Multi-Language Support
• Accessibility options
• Security and privacy

All of the elements you desire to focus on in your custom chatbot development alter the price, affecting your overall budget.

Integrations with Existing Systems

It might be possible that you have an existing app and want to integrate a chatbot into it. In this case, you also must have some of the existing systems. For example, in your eCommerce app, you might want to add a chatbot.

So, it should read the existing orders and history of the customers flawlessly in case a customer asks to get the purchase bill from the chatbot itself. In technical terms, there might be a requirement to integrate your chatbot with ERP or CRM systems. The more complex integrations you demand, the more budgeting it requires.

Project Timeline and Resources Available

Another important factor affecting chatbot development pricing is your requirements related to the project timeline and resources. For example, if you want to build, integrate, and make your chatbot live in your app in a very short time, then your app development partner has to put more resources into it. And, as more resources are deployed to your project, the cost alters.

Chatbot Development Integration and Deployment Approaches with Cost Estimation

So, as we have enough information about the factors affecting chatbot pricing, it is time to look at the approaches that you can choose to build and integrate your chatbot. We will also lay down some rough cost estimations of the available approaches to give you a general idea.

In-house Development

When you decide to go with hiring an in-house development team instead of hiring dedicated developers from an app development company, you have to focus on so many things other than the business. To build your chatbot by yourself, you will need human resource talent and developers. Designers. Project managers and infrastructure specialists. Here is a general estimation:

Human Resource Talents
	Human Resource Assistant: $35,000 – $50,000 per year
	Human Resource Coordinator: $45,000 – $65,000 per year
	Human Resource Manager: $70,000 – $100,000 per year
	Human Resource Director: $100,000 – $150,000+ per year
Developers
	Junior Developer: $50,000 – $80,000 per year
	Software Developer: $80,000 – $120,000 per year
	Senior Developer: $100,000 – $150,000+ per year
Designers
	Junior Designer: $40,000 – $60,000 per year
	Graphic Designer: $50,000 – $80,000 per year
	Senior Designer: $70,000 – $100,000+ per year
Project Managers
	Junior Project Manager: $60,000 – $80,000 per year
	Project Manager: $80,000 – $120,000 per year
	Senior Project Manager: $100,000 – $150,000+ per year
Infrastructure Specialists
	Junior Infrastructure Specialist: $60,000 – $80,000 per year
	Infrastructure Engineer: $80,000 – $120,000 per year
	Senior Infrastructure Specialist: $100,000 – $150,000+ per year

It looks very costly, right? It is for sure, which is why you should know about in-house development vs. outsourcing. But do not worry. You have one more development approach, which is the most popular and suitable one.

Outsourcing to a Chatbot Development Company

The best suitable option for you, at least according to what most entrepreneurs do, is to outsource the chatbot integration, development, deployment, maintenance, and support projects to a development partner.

These development partners offer you diverse pricing models, such as hourly rates, fixed-price contracts, or milestone-based charges, as your chatbot development takes the lead. Further, additional costs may include ongoing maintenance and support. Below is a rough estimation:

Hourly Rate	$50-$200 per hour
Fixed Contract	$5,000 to $100.000
Milestone Based Rates	Varies per milestone, typically ranging from a few $1, 000- $10,000

Building a Cost-Effective Custom Chatbot with RipenApps

As you have acquired major information about the factors affecting chatbot development cost and have a rough idea about chatbot cost estimation, let’s zoom into the RipenApps offering in the chatbot landscape.
We offer top AI-based chatbot development services to startups and established businesses.

You are free to determine how advanced you want to build your chatbot, how you want it to integrate with your existing systems, what its look and feel will be, and nearly everything else. Not only this, we unlock a high level of flexibility that promises scalability to your chatbots as your business grows.

So why not build your chatbot at cost-effective pricing with us?