BotFlo Web App vs BotFlo CLI Tools

BotFlo CLI Tools is a collection of Python scripts which can help you with chatbot lifecycle management. In other words, it provides you with tools which can accelerate nearly every step of your bot building process.

These are mostly based on the online BotFlo app (and even share some of the code base).

Differences

Here are the main differences between the two

CLI

The CLI Tools, as the name indicates, are command line tools. This means you need to run them as Python scripts on your local machine. The BotFlo web app has a more user friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) to accomplish the same tasks.

Open source

Since it is just a collection of Python scripts, the CLI Tools are open source. You can read and modify the code as you wish. The code is also quite simple and does not do any fancy stuff.

On premise

If you can install PyCharm on your local computer, you can use all the BotFlo CLI Tools on premise. This means your data stays on premise.

Lifetime Access

Since the BotFlo web app is a subscription service, you might be making multiple payments to use it. The CLI Tools is a one time payment – and you then get lifetime access to not only all the current tools, but also any future tools I might add

Service Account JSON file

This is a big reason to prefer the CLI Tools.

While it is technically possible to build apps which connect to your Dialogflow account, it requires that the app developers get permission from Google to do it. That is exactly as it should be, except that Google has a history of pulling the rug from under established apps.

Some folks get around this by asking the bot maker to upload the service account JSON file, but that is not considered best practice.

The BotFlo CLI Tools don’t face this problem at all, since the service account JSON file is only downloaded to your local computer.

Reasons to choose BotFlo CLI Tools

Here are some reasons to choose CLI Tools over the online app

Larger agents

Since everything runs on the command line, it is possible to create and manage much larger Dialogflow agents using CLI Tools

Early Access

In the future, I will be releasing CLI Tools first and only moving them online later. So you will get early access to these tools.

ES to CX Migration Scripts

It is technically harder to create fully online apps which can help with ES to CX migration. These will be added to the CLI tools

Custom NLU

If you want to addd your own custom Natural Language Understanding (NLU) logic to the existing tool, obviously you can do it because you have access to the source code.

Language agnostic

This is related to the point before. Currently the tools which use NLU (such as Autotrain) are based on the English language because that’s the only language for which I know the grammar rules. You can customize this to any language you want if you have access to the source code.

What is included?

This is an introductory offer and might change in the future.

Price: $299

Includes:

Access to BotFlo CLI Tools

60 minute video consultation to help you set up the tools on your local computer