AI Chatbot for a Website: Checks Before You Install
How to choose - - Priya Raman
The task: put a bot on a website that answers visitors from the site's own content, and hands the conversation to a person when it cannot. All three vendors below promise some version of both. The pricing pages show how differently the promise is built.
What a website chatbot is made of
Four parts decide whether a bot is useful, and each can be checked on the vendor's own pages before anything is installed.
- Training source. The bot reads a sitemap, a list of URLs, uploaded files, or a help center. This sets how much of the site it can answer from, and how it learns about changes.
- Handoff. What happens when the bot has no answer: a ticket, a live chat, an email, or nothing.
- Data. Where the visitor conversations are stored, for how long, and who can read them.
- Limits. What the plan counts: messages, resolutions, pages, bots, seats.
Three vendors, three ways of counting
The catalog has cards for Botsonic, Wonderchat and Chatfuel. Their pricing pages (Botsonic, Wonderchat, and Chatfuel's own) do not use the same units. Figures below are list prices as of October 2026, and the pages say usage limits apply.
| Tool | Learns from | Handoff | What the plan counts | Entry price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Botsonic | Uploaded data and a sitemap; Starter takes up to 5,000 sitemap URLs | Ticket or live agent handoff to Zendesk, Freshdesk or Salesforce is listed for Enterprise; the Zendesk handoff is also a $199 a month add-on | Messages: 1,000 a month on Starter | Starter: $19 a month, or $16 billed annually |
| Wonderchat | Webpages, documents, help center content; the Free plan stores 50 webpages | Human handover is listed on every plan, including Free | Resolutions: about 10 a month on Free, about 1,000 on Basic | Free at $0; Basic $124 a month billed yearly |
| Chatfuel | Built around WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook conversations | A shared team inbox, not a website widget | AI credits: US$20 a month included in Business | Business: US$18 a month billed yearly |
Messages are not resolutions
The table hides the largest difference. A message is every turn in a chat. A resolution is something else: the Wonderchat pricing page counts them, but the page gives no definition next to the numbers. Ten visitor messages could be one resolution or ten, and the answer decides the bill. Short, frequent questions and long support chats price differently under the two models. Without the vendor's definition in writing, the monthly cost cannot be estimated, so ask for it before a trial, not after.
Handoff is a feature with tiers
Wonderchat's home page says its agent can hand off to a human when it is unsure of an answer. Botsonic's table puts ticket and live agent handoff in the Enterprise column and sells the Zendesk connection as a separate add-on. The same word, "handoff", covers a flag in a dashboard and a live transfer into a help desk.
Chatfuel's page does not use "live chat" at all. It describes a shared inbox where a team follows up when automation needs a person. For a bot that lives on WhatsApp that is fine. For a website visitor who is waiting, it is a different experience.
Questions to put to the vendor
The pages above leave these open, or answer them only in a privacy policy:
- Where are conversations stored, and for how long? Wonderchat's home page says it is GDPR compliant and SOC 2 certified. It does not say where data lives or how long it is kept.
- Does visitor text train the vendor's models or only the answers shown to that site?
- What does the bot say when it finds nothing on the site: a guess, a refusal, a link to a person?
- Can answers show their source page, so a wrong one can be traced back to a wrong paragraph?
- What happens at the limit: the bot stops, messages are billed extra, or the plan upgrades itself? Botsonic lists extra messages as a paid monthly add-on, which suggests overage is bought rather than blocked, but the pricing page does not spell out the rule.
Which approach for which site
Take a small shop with a Zendesk help desk. Its first question is not which bot answers best but which plan lets the bot pass a conversation into Zendesk. On Botsonic that points to Enterprise or the paid add-on; on Wonderchat the Free plan already lists human handover, though the page does not say into which help desk. Check that row first, then run ten real questions from the contact inbox through the bot before it goes live.