As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve at a breakneck speed, custom chatbots are no longer reserved for big companies with a dedicated team of coders.
In 2025, AI chatbots are being used by businesses across the spectrum to reduce customer wait times, assist with lead generation processes, onboard staff, and more. The best part? You don’t need to learn a scratch of code to create one, thanks to the wide range of free no-code solutions available.
If you’re interested in building an AI chatbot for free, we’ll guide you through how to do this in seven simple steps. We also explain how you can build a low-cost chatbot using ChatGPT, using its Plus plan, for those looking to streamline the process even further.
Why Should Your Company Make an AI Chatbot?
As the AI tidal wave continues to disrupt business practices, embracing technology is the only way to avoid getting swept away. But the good news is that you don’t need to be an AI aficionado to reap the benefits of artificial intelligence in 2025. If you aren’t a software engineer or coding whizz, building an AI chatbot for your company can be a great place to start.
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AI chatbots can unlock boundless potential for companies of any size. Whether you’re building one to handle customer service inquiries, assist with lead generation, or offer internal support to employees, AI chatbots are designed to do the hard work for you, taking pressure off workers and streamlining customer experiences as a result.
Don’t just take our word for it. Recent research from Solvvy also found that 69% of customers would rather use a chatbot if they knew it would resolve issues more quickly than waiting for a virtual agent, making them a no-brainer for busy teams that don’t have the capacity to respond to queries quickly.
Custom chatbots are also able to act as powerful revenue drivers, with research from Outgrow revealing business leaders using AI chatbots increased sales by an average of 67%.
You don’t have to splurge to generate results either, as lots of no-code platforms are completely free to get started on.
How To Make an AI Chatbot For Free in 2025
Thanks to the use of code-free platforms, businesses can make AI chatbots in less than a couple of hours – as long as they know what they’re doing. Bring your AI chatbot to life by following the simple steps below:
1. Define the purpose of your chatbot
First things first, you need to decide what you want your chatbot to accomplish. You’ll probably already have a pretty clear idea of your chatbot goal, but if you’re still unsure some common use cases include:
- Customer service chatbot: These chatbots can answer frequently asked questions (FAQs), access company knowledge bases, and assist with customer account issues like password resets.
- Sales chatbot: Sales chatbots can streamline the sales process by capturing useful customer information, qualifying leads based on specific criteria, and following up with prospects.
- Internal company chatbot: These bots can act as a useful HR resource, by answering employee queries, processing leave requests, providing IT support, and helping to assist with technical issues.
- Employee training chatbot: Chatbots can streamline the training process by providing new employees with recommended training modules, tracking their progress, and answering any questions they may have.
Aside from its primary purpose, it’s also worth considering other important details like its target audience, the tone of its responses, and which specific tasks you require it to perform. While it’s easier to focus on a specific niche, if you operate in a specialized industry, it’s also possible to make an AI chatbot with multiple purposes. I.e., if you manage a retail store, your chatbot could be used to find products, track the progress of orders, and provide users with useful store information.
2. Select a free no-code platform
Now you’ve established your chatbot’s goal, it’s time to choose which platform you’re going to move forward with.
Fortunately, there are lots of free options to choose from. While their features may be fairly basic compared to paid alternatives, they will still be robust enough to deal with the demands of first-time chatbot creators.
Lots of free chatbot platforms have distinct specialisms, so we recommend only considering builders that align with your agent’s intent. We’ve listed a few of our favorites below:
- Tidio – Tidio is a live chat platform that specializes in creating AI customer service and ecommerce chatbots. Chatbots created using its free plan can facilitate up to 100 visitors per month, and Tidio also integrates with ecommerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce.
- Zapier – Businesses can create free no-code chatbots with Zapier thanks to its integration with ChatGPT. Its free plan performs 100 tasks a month and can be used to create a wide variety of chatbots with specialisms from lead capture to research assistance.
- Dialogflow – Dialogflow by Google is a multi-purpose chatbot creator that can be used to create agents with a range of different focuses. The builder utilizes advanced conversational AI and lets free users make up to 1,000 requests per month.
- Botpress – Botpress is another platform that specializes in making customer service and ecommerce chatbots. The no-code builder relies on open-source technology and can integrate with third-party services using APIs.
- HubSpot Chatbot Builder – HubSpot’s chatbot builder lets you create agents for marketing and sales processes. It integrates seamlessly into HubSpot’s CRM system but offers fewer customization options than lots of alternatives.
Willing to splash a little cash on a premium builder? We cover some paid options later in the article too.
3. Start with an opening trigger
Once you’ve logged into your chosen chatbot builder it’s time to decide which opening trigger to use. An opening trigger is a node that initiates the flow of conversation. In other words, it’ll be the introductory message that the user will see when they start a chat.
Your ideal opening trigger will depend on what kind of chatbot you’re making. For example, if you’re building a customer service chatbot your trigger could be as simple as “Hi there. How can I help you today?“, while an opening trigger for internal company chatbots could be ‘Hello. I can help you access training materials, company policies, or your onboarding checklist. Where would you like to start?“
Choosing an opening trigger for my chatbot with Tidio. Source: Tech.co
In short, your opening trigger can be as brief or detailed as you like. You can also align the language with your company’s tone, and use emojis if you want to make the message seem less formal.
4. Design the conversation flow
Now it’s time to flesh out your AI chatbot’s responses. Fortunately, chatbot makers like Tidio offer drag-and-drop builders to make this process less intimidating for beginners.
First, we recommend identifying some common user inquiries for your chatbot, before mapping our appropriate responses or actions for each prompt. For example, if a user asks for assistance with tracking an order you can respond by asking for a tracking number, before retrieving the information with a third-party order management system. Alternatively, if you’re building a customer service chatbot, you can provide helpful responses based on your company’s FAQs, or escalate the query to a live agent if necessary.
Building a conversation flow with Tidio is simple, you just drag-and-drop elements into place. Source: Tech.co
You’re also able to create menu options during this step. These are essentially buttons that provide clear directions and guide users through the conversation flow. Depending on the purpose of your chatbot, common examples of menu opinions include “FAQs”, “Technical Support”, “Learn More About Our Products/Services”, or “Track My Order”.
Your chatbot won’t be able to understand and respond to every user-generated entry. Therefore, you’ll also need to create a fallback message which prompts users to take extra steps. This fallback message could ask a user to re-word their question. select a menu option, or connect them to a member of your helpdesk.
5. Personalize the chatbot
Now you’ve got the conversational flow down, it’s time to add some personal touches to your chatbot. You can do this in a variety of ways, including defining its tone, customizing its appearance, and tailoring the responses to the user, if possible.
When choosing the tone of your chatbot, you can generally opt for a professional, casual, or friendly communication style. However, the tone you choose will depend on the nature of your businesses and the purpose of the chatbot, with professional tones being more apt for healthcare or legal chatbots, and a friendly tone tending to fit customer service or ecommerce chatbots better.
Tidio let me edit the color of my chatbot using a drop-down-menu. Source: Tech.co
When customizing your chatbot’s appearance, you’ll be able to edit chat colors, and typography, and even create a logo, avatar, or friendly icon that aligns with your brand. The ultimate goal of this step is to ensure your chatbot visually represents your brand’s identity, without compromising user experience.
Finally, tailoring responses to individual users is a tried-and-tested way to improve trust levels and boost engagement. You can do this in multiple ways, including greeting users by name – if you have the data to hand – or customizing responses based on user location or previous browsing history.
6. Test the chatbot
Voila! You’ve done most of the hard work. Now all you need to do is test your chatbot to make sure it’s working in the way you intended.
There are several ways to do this, but we recommend starting with simulating conversations. This will involve going through every possible user journey and identifying and resolving potential errors. You should also ensure that all triggers pop up when they are programmed, including fallback responses, and introductory and closing messages.
After you’ve created your chatbot, test it to make sure it’s working as you with. Source: Tech.co
To ensure that menu options work as expected, you should click on all the buttons to see if they trigger the correct processes. Also, if you integrate with third-party software like tracking managers, you should enter user queries that prompt these actions, to make sure they’re working faultlessly.
The feedback you collect during this step can then be used to fix potential errors before the chatbot is available to users.
7. Launch the chatbot and monitor its performance
Once you’re confident your AI chatbot is foolproof, it’s launch time.
Simply deploy the chatbot on your website, social media platform, or wherever else you’re featuring it, and it’ll become available for public use. You’re not out of the woods yet, however, as you’ll need to continually monitor its performance to ensure it continues to deliver value to users.
Tidio let me monitor the performance of my chatbot with analytics. Source: Tech.co
Platforms like Tidio help you track a variety of performance metrics in-house including user satisfaction scores, most frequent scores, first contact resolution (FCR) percentages, and conversation completion rates in-house.
By measuring these factors you’ll be able to have a good grasp on whether your chatbot is meeting its intended purpose. You’ll also be able to use the data to address potential errors and content gaps, before optimizing the responses your chatbots offer.
To make sure your chatbot stands the test of time, we also recommend regularly updating the chatbot with fresh content, and addressing issues raised by users immediately.
How to Create a Low-Cost Chatbot With ChatGPT
If you’re willing to splash a little bit of cash, you’re also able to make an AI chatbot with a ChatGPT Plus subscription. For just $20 per month, upgrading to a paid plan could be a worthy investment, especially if you plan on using the service to streamline other processes within your company.
To make a low-cost chatbot with ChatGPT, you’ll have to connect to a third-party platform like Zapier, Tidio, or Make.com. Then, you can follow the steps that we’ve outlined above, including establishing your chatbot’s ultimate goal, creating a custom conversation flow, and training and testing the chatbot to ensure it works correctly.
The upshot of using ChatGPT over free solutions? You’ll be able to craft useful prompts to guide your chatbot’s behavior. For example, you can enter a detailed description of your ideal chatbot, and let ChatGPT do a lot of the leg work for you.
Chatbots created with ChatGPT will also be able to facilitate more users per month than those made by free builders and handle multiple conversations at once without requiring you to pay any additional infrastructure costs.
If you want to make a personal or business chatbot that works in a similar way to ChatGPT, you can also make a custom chatbot with Open AI’s GPT store. This process doesn’t require any prior coding knowledge either, making it ideal for beginners with little technical know-how.
We distill the process down into simple steps in our guide to creating a custom GPT with ChatGPT.
