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Octane AI Review - Summary

What is Octane AI?

Octane AI is focused on direct-to-consumer (D2C) ecommerce brands and provides Facebook Messenger and SMS chatbots primarily for Shopify store owners. Although Octane AI is great for this particular niche, it’s not for all ecommerce stores and is not an ‘all-in-one’ chatbot solution.

With Octane AI, you’ll gain access to chatbot tools for both Facebook Messenger and SMS marketing, from which you can run abandoned cart campaigns, answer customer questions, create conversational FAQs, send receipts and shipping notifications, and help your audience identify products to purchase.

Our conclusion after vetting Octane AI in-depth is that it’s a cool and upcoming ecommerce solution for a very particular group of Shopify storefront owners. The platform has some ecommerce specific tools that many chatbots are lacking, but the tools are extremely expensive for the overall value provided. Bottom line, make sure Octane AI is exactly what you’re looking for because there’s a lot that other ecommerce chatbots are capable of that Octane AI is not, and vice versa.

Channels: Facebook Messenger, SMS

Pricing - Octane AI:

Overall Rating - Octane AI:

What You’ll Learn
Octane AI Features
Integrations and API
Octane AI Pricing
Pros and Cons - Octane AI
Octane AI Review - Final Analysis
Octane AI Competitors and Alternatives
Frequently Asked Questions - Octane AI

Octane AI Features

  • Facebook Messenger bots: Octane AI is mainly a Facebook Messenger chatbot that you can use with your Shopify store. Through Messenger, Octane AI allows you to send abandoned cart messages, receipt and shipping notifications, automatically answer questions and set up custom campaigns.
  • SMS text messaging bots: With Octane AI, you can use SMS messaging to send broadcast messages to customers.
Octane AI review - Octane AI automated responses
  • Automated responses: Create conversational responses to the most common customer questions, such as “Where’s my order?” “How does sizing work?” and “Can I talk to someone?”
  • Follow-up drip campaigns: Send follow-up messages at specified time intervals to targeted audience segments. Follow-up messages can also consist of shipping alters, new products, deals, announcements, and data collection.
Octane AI review - Octane AI Click-to-Messenger ads
  • Facebook Messenger ads: Start conversations with Messenger ads and send promotional messages. You can use this tool for lead generation, promotions, sales automation, quizzes, and showcasing products.
  • Audience segmentation and targeting: Create customer segments and retarget them based on their responses in your Messenger bot.
Octane AI review - Octane AI web and SMS
  • Website pop-up and lead capture tool: Octane AI enables your Shopify store to create a pop-up that allows you to do things like generating leads, subscribe users to Messenger for discounts, shipping updates, and back in stock notifications.
  • Customer support: Octane AI has a help center where you can ask questions and receive posts and/or articles from Octane AI’s knowledge base. Additionally, Octane AI provides its users with live chat agents on its website and video masterclasses with Octane AI’s founder and CEO.
Octane AI review - Octane AI analytics dashboard
  • Analytics: Octane AI’s analytics allow you to monitor revenue, customer behavior, and engagement with your chatbot. Specific metrics you can track via the Octane AI analytics dashboard includes:
    • Average cart value
    • Open rates
    • Sales growth
    • Abandoned cart rate
    • Sales conversations
    • Customer FAQs
    • Recovered revenue
  • Order tracking: Send customers receipts, shipping updates, and notifications.
  • Cart abandonment campaigns: Send automated abandoned cart messages through Facebook Messenger.
Octane AI review - Octane AI abandoned cart messaging

Octane AI Integrations

Octane AI has a good amount of integrations, and many of the most valuable are ecommerce focused, such as:

  • Shopify and Shopify Plus
  • Gorgias
  • Yotpo
  • ReCharge
  • Privy
  • Klaviyo
  • Yext
  • Demandware
  • Zapier

 

Octane AI review - Octane AI integrations

To gain access to Octane AI integrations, you’ll need to upgrade to the Pro pricing plan.

Octane AI API and SDK

Octane AI does not currently have an API or SDK library available.

Octane AI Pros and Cons

Pros - Octane AI

  • SMS and Facebook Messenger channels: Many Facebook Messenger tools don’t also have SMS. There are a lot of advantages to having both Messenger and SMS marketing tools on the same chatbot platform.
  • Built for ecommerce: Octane AI claims to have the most ecommerce specific flows of any Messenger platform, including Abandon cart, browse abandonment, welcome series, win backs, post-purchase flows, and anything else you want to build.
  • Easy setup: With Octane AI, you can have your first Facebook Messenger chatbot up and running in under 10min. We recommend taking a bit more time before setting your Messenger bot free, but you could realistically get started pretty quickly.
  • Analytics: Octane AI has good analytics for tracking revenue from Facebook Messenger and SMS marketing campaigns.

Cons - Octane AI

  • Pricing: Octane AI pricing is somewhat deceitful. On the surface, it appears the platform is priced to where most startups even would be comfortable with the monthly cost. However, when you realize that the cost doesn’t factor in the number of contacts you have or the number of SMS text messages sent per month, and you start playing with the pricing calculator, you’ll see that the actual monthly cost is hundreds of dollars higher. Ultimately, for a tool that only works on Facebook Messenger and SMS, the platform becomes quite expensive compared to other competing products, whether that’s AI-powered chatbots, or chatbots for SMS marketing. Furthermore, to get access to the features that the large majority of businesses considering Octane AI would want, you’ll need to be on the Pro or Enterprise plan.
  • Not suitable for a website or live chat: It’s never a good look when you use one of your direct competitors' products on your own website. Although Octane AI is built more for use on Facebook Messenger and SMS, you could place your Messenger bot on your own website. Octane AI, however, uses Intercom on its own website.
  • No iOS or Android app available: Octane AI does not have a mobile application to keep up with conversations and monitor performance while you’re on the go.
  • Only beneficial for Shopify users: Outside of Shopify, there are no success stories with Octane AI on other major ecommerce platforms, nor does Octane AI suggest using the product on other ecommerce platforms.
  • No API available: Octane AI does not currently have an API.
  • Not built for teams: If you plan on entire teams using Octane AI, you may be out of luck. There are no collaborative features and the inbox isn’t designed for non-automated conversations.

Octane AI Pricing

Octane AI has a 14 day free trial period, but no free plan available. Pricing varies based on active Messenger contacts and the number of SMS messages you send. So, keep in mind that this is where pricing starts for each plan, and pricing will go much higher once you add your contacts.

The Basic plan starts at $9 per month and includes unlimited Facebook messages, automated campaigns, and automated customer support. This is for merchants just starting out but includes all the features you should need to get started with Facebook Messenger marketing. SMS text messaging, as well as audience segmentation and targeting, however, are not included in the Basic plan.

The Pro plan starts at $209 per month and includes SMS at an additional cost of $0.02 per message. This plan is for fast-growing merchants and includes tools to grow and support your customer base through both Facebook Messenger and SMS. The Pro plan includes better support, onboarding help, customer segmentation and targeting, custom flows, security features, analytics, and integrations.

So, on the surface Octane AI looks pretty affordable. But if you play with their pricing calculator, as we did, you’ll quickly find that pricing for the majority of companies will be much more expensive.

In the screenshot example below, you’ll see that pricing for 50K monthly Facebook Messenger contacts, and 25K SMS text messages per month ($0.02 per SMS message) changes the pricing quite a bit. Here, the Basic plan is $700 per month, and the Pro plan is $1,400 per month.

Octane AI review - Octane AI pricing
Octane AI review - Octane AI features and pricing

Lastly, the Enterprise plan is for high-volume merchants using Shopify Plus or another comparable enterprise-level ecommerce platform. For pricing details on the Enterprise plan, you’ll need to request a demo with Octane AI. But to give you an idea of what Octane AI’s Enterprise plan pricing might look like, when we max out the Messenger contacts and SMS messages per month on the pricing calculator, we end up with the following:

Basic plan: 145K monthly active people + 145K SMS messages per month = $1,650 per month.
Pro plan: 145K monthly active people + 145K SMS messages per month = $4,750 per month.

Octane AI Review - Final Analysis

For a chatbot that only works on Facebook Messenger and SMS, Octane AI is a lot more expensive than most competing chatbots for ecommerce that can provide additional value across more channels.

What Octane AI does have going for it though, is its ecommerce specific toolset and integrations. Octane AI has found itself a niche in the ecommerce chatbot category, and for now, that’s how it justifies its high price point.

Ultimately, unless you fit directly into this niche and don’t mind using a different chatbot for live chat and/or customer support, you may want to consider using another chatbot for ecommerce that fits all of your needs. There are plenty of other options with more features, more channels, and at a lower price point.

Octane AI Competitors and Alternatives

At Chatbots.org, we’ve reviewed and ranked hundreds of chatbots and chat platforms. We also rank these chatbots by category.

Here’s how Octane AI stacks up against the competition (#1 being the best) in the “Best Chatbot” categories the platform qualified for:

 

Chatbots for Sales

Octane AI: #17 out of 25.

Read More >>

Chatbots for Ecommerce

Octane AI: #10 out of 24.

Read More >>

Best SMS Marketing Services

Octane AI: #9 out of 16.

Read More >>

Chatbots for Marketing

Octane AI: #4 out of 31.

Read More >>

Best AI Chatbots

Octane AI: #21 out of 29.

Read More >>

Octane AI Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Octane AI has 3 different pricing plans: Basic, Pro, and Enterprise.

  • Basic plan = $9 - $1,650 per month
  • Pro plan = $209 - $4,750 per month
  • Enterprise plan = Need to contact Octane AI

For the Enterprise plan, it’s safe to assume you’ll pay no less than $5,000 per month.

The top competitors and best alternatives to Octane AI consist of the following:

You can get to work with Octane AI in four steps:

  • Create an Octane AI account
  • Select what you want your chatbot to do
  • Customize you chatbot
  • Integrate the chatbot with your Facebook Business page

When your Octane AI chat goes live, you can then monitor engagement on your dashboard, send messages, polls, and other types of content to your followers.

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