01 Dialogflow CX vs Dialogflow ES Feature Comparison
Dialogflow CX is much more powerful than Dialogflow ES if you would like to design multi-turn conversation flows. This is possible because Dialogflow CX has been designed from the ground up to design your conversation flow as a state machineA state machine is a concept from computer science which can... More. In fact, I think the word “transition” in the phrase Intent Transition Route is borrowed from the idea of state transitions, which is common terminology when describing state machines.
For example, suppose you want to use slot filling. Slot filling is extremely unpredictable in Dialogflow ES, but Dialogflow CX provides some important features to get around this unpredictability because of its state-machine oriented design.
Feature Comparison
In the table below I provide feature-by-feature comparison between Dialogflow ES and Dialogflow CX.
| Feature | Dialogflow ES | Dialogflow CX |
| Conversation Design | Use input and output contextsContexts are used in Dialogflow ES to manage the state of th... More | Use pages, routes and flows |
| Collect a list of inputs from user | Use follow up intents or mimic follow up intents | Use pages and intent transition routes |
| Store user input | Use contexts | Use built-in session params |
| Slot filling | Basic and unpredictable | Powerful and robust |
| Supports explicit contexts | Yes | No |
| WebhooksYou can use webhooks to add custom business logic in both Di... More | One endpoint per agent | One endpoint per transition route is possible |
| Support for list entityBoth Dialogflow ES and Dialogflow CX support entities and th... More | Yes | Yes |
| Support for composite entity | Yes | Yes |
| Supports Regex entity | Yes | Yes |
| Agent Versioning | Basic | Powerful |
| Free tier | Generous free tier | No, but provides free trial credits |
| Built in integrations | Many 1-click integrations are supported, including many third party apps | Limited support for 1-click integrations |
| Supports Test cases | No | Yes |
| Support for system functionsSystem functions in Dialogflow CX allows the user to add cus... More | No | Yes |
| Supports conditional logic inside console | No | Yes |
| Exception handling when conversation goes off track | Hard, needs a good understanding of the CTFS framework | Very robust, possibly best among all chatbot frameworks |
| Supports Knowledge Base | Yes | No (use route groups instead) |
| Build a large bot with a lot of intentsBoth Dialogflow ES and Dialogflow CX have the concept of int... More | Use the Mega Agent feature (less robust) | Use Flows (more robust) |
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If you are not sure where to start on my new website, I recommend the following article:
Is Dialogflow still relevant in the era of Large Language Models?