Three Good Reasons to Build a Chatbot Instead of Native App

Is there a tool your small business needs to help manage workflow, some mobile hard systems? Maybe you have a dream magical ability for your phone, but don’t have a software development studio or big budget to make it a reality.

First inspired by the simple elegance of SkeddyBot, I’m currently building my first full feature chatbot to help manage pickups for our residential composting service. From here on out, it’s official: any time I need an app for anything, I will first ask is this something I accomplish with a bot instead? Here are three good reasons to consider this yourself.

Platform Agnostic

Don’t build separate apps for each OS, go through the hurdles of getting them accepted into their stores (or sideload them for personal use), just to keep them current with future updates. Let Telegram do all that! It doesn’t just cover native app requirements, your bot will even be available through web browsers.

Eliminate 98% of Styling Decisions and Work

Padding? Margin? Colors? Borders? Nope, that’s all done for you already. This doesn’t mean you can’t make things look nice — with all these design decisions eliminated, you’ll be amazed how much you can do with text formatting, spacing, and emojis. 😎

One Less App

I’m always looking for ways to swipe less. One of my current tools for digital minimalism is to limit the number of apps regularly available on my phone. Chatbots help me keep tasks under one roof. For instance, thanks to GmailBot an email app isn’t regularly needed. I’m taking this idea very seriously. When my current project is complete there is a wish list of bots to work on, most of which will be built to allow me to delete more apps from my phone.