How to pick
one you will not
regret.

There is no single best one, and any page that gives you a ranked list is ranking on something it has not told you. The right question is which one fits your site, your budget and your customers — and the eight checks below settle that faster than a comparison chart does.

Expect a monthly fee plus a once-off setup fee. Ours runs from R299 a month with R250 setup, up to R2 500 a month at the top self-serve rung. Be careful comparing against a dollar price: it changes with the exchange rate whether or not anybody tells you.

Talk to the supplier’s own one and try to break it. Ask something slightly off-topic, ask for a price, then ask for a person. A good one answers, admits what it does not know and hands over. If the only demo on offer is a video, you have learned something useful already.

You should not. On WordPress and Wix it should be an install from inside the platform with nothing pasted into your site. On anything else it should be one line of code in your page template. If a supplier needs access to your site to do it, ask why, and ask what happens when you want it removed.

Same day, for a productised chatbot. The build is automation, not a project — Live in 30 minutes, Mon–Fri 08:00–16:30 SAST. Outside that window, 08:30 the next business day. Anything longer usually means a person is doing by hand what should have been built once and reused, and you are paying for their calendar rather than for the product.

It can be, and the responsibility is yours rather than the supplier’s. POPIA governs how personal information is collected, stored and used regardless of what collects it. Ask where the data sits, how you get it out, and who you complain to — a supplier under the same regulator you are makes all three simpler.

An international platform is usually more mature and has a bigger marketplace. A local one bills in rands, works South African hours, is governed by the same regulator you are, and writes the way your customers do. If your customers are here, the second list is worth more than the first for the money involved.

Almost always the monthly message allowance and the model behind it, not the features on the brochure. Work out roughly how many conversations you get a month, buy the rung that covers it, and move up when you actually run out rather than because a table made the top row look better.