ManyChat is a popular Facebook Messenger marketing platform that allows businesses to create chatbots, automate conversations, and engage with customers. While ManyChat has many benefits, like enabling better customer service and helping businesses connect with their audience, it also has some drawbacks that businesses should consider before using the platform.
High Monthly Cost
One of the main disadvantages of ManyChat is its high monthly cost. ManyChat has tiered pricing plans based on the number of subscribers a business has. The basic plan starts at $10 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers. The next plan is $29 per month for up to 10,000 subscribers. For businesses with larger audiences, the monthly cost can get very expensive. The highest plan at over 100,000 subscribers costs $999 per month.
For small businesses and those just starting out with ManyChat, the lower tier pricing plans may be affordable. However, the costs can quickly add up as your subscriber base grows. Businesses need to factor in these costs and determine if the features and benefits of ManyChat are worth the monthly price, especially in the higher tiers.
Cost Comparison to Other Providers
When compared to other chatbot and messaging platform providers, ManyChat is considerably more expensive. Here is a cost comparison table of ManyChat’s pricing versus other popular platforms:
| Platform | Starting Price | Max Price at 100k Subscribers |
|---|---|---|
| ManyChat | $10/month | $999/month |
| Chatfuel | Free | $149/month |
| Flow XO | Free | $499/month |
| BotMyWork | Free | $599/month |
As you can see, ManyChat’s monthly pricing is significantly higher than competitors at all subscriber tiers. This pricing disparity puts it at a disadvantage, especially for businesses operating on a budget.
Steep Learning Curve
While ManyChat offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, it still presents a steep learning curve for non-technical users. There are many different settings, tools, and options that users need to understand to fully leverage the platform’s capabilities.
ManyChat has four main sections – Subscribers, Sequences, Growth Tools, and Settings. In the Subscribers section, you can segment contacts, create tags, and view subscriber data. The Sequences section is used to build your conversation flows and bots. This is the most complex area where you craft your automated messaging strategy.
The Growth Tools offer ways to grow your subscriber list, including tools to create opt-in forms, build Messenger ads, and integrate with landing pages. Finally, the Settings section allows you to customize user permissions, automation, and more. Mastering all these different features takes significant time and effort.
Those without a technical background may find it difficult to create advanced conversational experiences in ManyChat. While basic messaging sequences are easy to set up, building more complex chatbot interactions requires coding knowledge. ManyChat does offer Zapier integration to connect with other tools which can help non-coders somewhat. Still, most users report needing to learn CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and API skills to unlock ManyChat’s full potential.
Steep Learning Curve Disadvantages
The steep learning curve creates several disadvantages for ManyChat users:
- Lengthy onboarding and setup
- Ongoing need for technical knowledge and skills
- Difficulty creating advanced messaging experiences
- Reliance on developers and technical team members
- Reduced ability to easily scale messaging strategy
Businesses with small teams or limited technical resources may find ManyChat’s learning curve slows down their ability to leverage the platform effectively. The need for constant coding and development skills can also increase costs.
Limited Analytics and Insights
While ManyChat provides analytics and reporting on subscribers and messages, its insights are fairly limited compared to other platforms. You can view subscriber demographics, behavior flowcharts, and message metrics in ManyChat.
However, other tools like Chatfuel and Flow XO offer more advanced analytics on things like user satisfaction, intent analysis, and content performance. This allows you to better understand how to optimize and improve your chatbot conversations over time.
ManyChat’s lack of robust analytics makes it difficult to track the impact of specific messaging campaigns. Without clear data and insights, businesses may struggle to identify poor performing content, assess user sentiment, and determine ROI.
How Limited Analytics Disadvantages ManyChat
ManyChat’s light analytics capabilities create disadvantages around:
- Identifying effective messaging – Can’t easily see top and bottom content.
- Optimizing user experience – Harder to fix conversation pain points.
- Attributing ROI – Lack of data connects spend to business impact.
- Assessing feature usage – Unable to see unused tools and features.
- Justifying costs – Weak analytics makes it hard to rationalize high monthly fees.
For an expensive platform, ManyChat’s analytics offering definitely leaves much to be desired. Companies that rely heavily on data to inform decisions may find themselves disappointed.
Technical Issues and Bugs
As a software platform, ManyChat naturally comes with its share of technical glitches and bugs. Their engineering team works to squash issues and maintain reliability. However, users still frequently encounter problems.
Common issues seen with ManyChat include:
- Delayed message delivery
- Messages not sending
- Subscriber imports failing
- Slow page load times
- Errors building flows
- Integrations not syncing
- Features not working as expected
These kinds of technical problems can be extremely frustrating and detrimental for businesses relying on ManyChat. Bugs that prevent messages from going out or that show errors can mean lost conversations and engagement with customers. For ecommerce businesses, this directly translates to lost sales and revenue.
How Technical Issues Disrupt Marketing Efforts
ManyChat’s technical bugs can severely disrupt marketing and sales initiatives for companies. A few ways this manifests:
- Customer conversations are dropped leading to poor experiences.
- Promotional content doesn’t get delivered sinking campaign ROI.
- Subscribers don’t receive expected messaging resulting in unsubscribes.
- Errors cause customer data problems impacting segmentation and targeting.
- Issues prevent accurate analytics and insights into strategy effectiveness.
While no platform is perfect, the number and frequency of technical issues on ManyChat is concerning. Reliability is critical for successful automated messaging. Glitches cost businesses money and customers.
Deliverability Challenges
As more companies have adopted ManyChat, deliverability has become an increasingly discussed issue. Deliverability refers to ManyChat’s ability to get messages and content successfully delivered to recipient inboxes.
Over the past year, many users have reported declines in deliverability rates, meaning a smaller percentage of their messages are making it to subscribers. There are a few key factors behind ManyChat’s deliverability challenges:
- Increased volume of users – More businesses using platform increases noise.
- Oversaturation – Users aren’t optimizing message frequency for subscribers.
- Spam triggers – Automated messaging is flagged as spam more often.
- Facebook algorithm changes – Messenger channels penalized to limit noise.
The result is subscriber inboxes getting cluttered with too many messages. When messages are flagged as spam or go unopened, deliverability drops. Facebook’s algorithms also throttle channels that don’t optimize send frequency or provide subscriber value.
How Deliverability Issues Hurt Performance
Declining deliverability rates significantly hurt ManyChat’s value and performance:
- Number of messages delivered decreases
- Open and click-through rates drop
- Unsubscribe rates increase
- Harder to grow subscriber base
- ROI decreases without ability to reach subscribers
Essentially, businesses end up paying for large subscriber bases in ManyChat that they can’t actually reach or engage due to spotty deliverability. This wastes budgets on unused subscriptions that offer no ROI.
Lack of Omnichannel Support
While ManyChat integrates nicely with Facebook Messenger, it lacks omnichannel messaging capabilities. ManyChat does not allow businesses to engage customers on other popular channels like SMS, WhatsApp, email, live chat, etc.
Conversations are confined solely within Facebook Messenger. This limits businesses from connecting with customers on the other messaging platforms they use today. People want the flexibility to message brands how and where they want.
Without omnichannel support, companies suffer from an incomplete view of customer conversations across channels. This also restricts integrating messaging into a true omnichannel customer experience. Messaging becomes a standalone silo instead of part of an integrated strategy.
How Limited Channels Disadvantage Businesses
Here are some of the downsides created by ManyChat’s singular channel support:
- Inability to engage customers on preferred channels
- Missed opportunities to connect with audiences
- Lower open and response rates than other channels like SMS
- No way to track cross-channel customer journeys
- Reduced relevance in omnichannel-centric marketing
Today’s customers demand seamless conversations across platforms. ManyChat’s channel limitations make this customer expectation hard to meet for brands. Competitive tools that allow for omnichannel messaging have a distinct advantage here.
Reliance on Facebook Platform
Tied to the previous point, ManyChat’s reliance on Facebook Messenger also creates risk. Essentially, businesses must build their messaging strategy on someone else’s platform. This means if anything happens to Facebook Messenger, ManyChat is also impacted.
Facebook maintains full control over policy, algorithms, platform changes, and more. For example, Facebook has made algorithm changes over the past two years that have led to deliverability declines for ManyChat users.
There is always the risk that Facebook makes another policy shift that further disadvantages Messenger for businesses. Companies have no control or recourse if this occurs. Their ManyChat investment and strategy could suffer major setbacks from Facebook decisions in the blink of an eye.
Dangers of Relying on Someone Else’s Platform
Here are key risks businesses face by building atop Facebook Messenger with ManyChat:
- Policy or algorithm changes can cripple deliverability and performance
- Platform bugs/issues impact user experience and strategy effectiveness
- UI changes may decrease utility and relevance of messaging
- Unable to resist or work around platform-level decisions
- Facebook could eliminate useful features or APIs
ManyChat does not control the underlying platform. So businesses essentially place full faith in Facebook’s development decisions by relying on ManyChat and Messenger. This dependence gives companies much less flexibility and control.
Should You Use ManyChat?
Given the disadvantages covered, should businesses avoid using ManyChat? Not necessarily. ManyChat still provides value in the right situations.
Here are a few cases where ManyChat may still be a viable choice:
- Early-stage companies on a budget – Lower tier pricing is affordable.
- Basic messaging needs – You don’t require advanced capabilities.
- Already using Messenger – Complements existing investment.
- Simple chatbots – Don’t need complex conversational AI.
- Targeting Messenger-centric audiences – Where subscribers already are.
The disadvantages matter most for larger brands with bigger budgets and more advanced needs. ManyChat can be priced out at scale and lacks some enterprise features.
However, early-stage businesses may be able to overlook certain limitations if cost and ease of use are priorities. Understanding the pros and cons allows companies to make an informed decision if ManyChat is a good fit.
Conclusion
ManyChat deserves its popularity for enabling Messenger marketing automation at scale. But businesses should carefully weigh its disadvantages before committing.
High monthly costs, deliverability challenges, and heavy reliance on Facebook make ManyChat less attractive for larger brands. Limited analytics and omnichannel support also constrain more advanced strategies.
However, for some use cases, ManyChat remains a solid choice. The key is aligning expectations around capabilities and costs to determine if ManyChat’s strengths can overcome its weaknesses.
With a crowded market of competing options, ManyChat is still a viable platform but not necessarily the undisputed leader it once was. Understanding where it falls short helps brands make smart software decisions.