Chat Widgets for Rasa
Updated: Aug 31, 2022
Here’s a quick review of the available web chat widgets designed for use with Rasa:
- Botfront Rasa Webchat
- Weni Webchat, fork of Botfront Rasa Webchat
- Rasa Chat Widget
- Chatbot Widget by Jitesh Gaikwad
- Scalable Minds Chatroom, archived July 2021
- FYP-Webapp by Chris Rahme, last update June 2021
- Android FYP-Mobapp by Chris Rahme, last update June 2021
- Android App by Dishant Ghandi, last update March 2021
The official Rasa docs include a page on connecting your own website which currently references the closed source Rasa Chat Widget.
Summary
Here’s a summary of the features of each of the widgets:
| Criteria | Botfront | Rasa | Chatroom | Chatbot Widget |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open Source | ||||
| Active Devel | ||||
| Buttons | ||||
| Image | ||||
| Video | ||||
| Carousel | ||||
| Markdown | ||||
| Message Delay | ||||
| Speech Input | ||||
| Channel | Socket | Socket | REST | REST |
| UI Widgets | Excellent | Good | Good | Excellent |
Active Development
The Botfront and Chatbot Widget stand out here. You can see the closed PR activity to see that it’s under active development.
It’s harder to judge the development activity on the Rasa Chat Widget since the repo is not publicly available. There are changelog entries included with Rasa X. If you search for chat you’ll find widget related changes (but also Rasa X changes). There’s also no release history.
The Chatroom widget has been archived. The last update was April 2021.
Open Source
The Botfront, Chatbot Widget and Chatroom widgets are open source while the Rasa Chat Widget is not. Related to this is the lack of documentation for the Rasa Chat Widget. There’s a reference page here.
Channel Support
Both the Botfront and Rasa Chat Widgets use the socket.io channel which is preferred. The Chatroom and Chatbot Widget use the REST channel.
Components
Botfront and Chatbot Widget have the longest list of supported components includes buttons, images, video and carousels. It also supports a message delay feature. Chatroom supports buttons and it also supports speech to text.
I think the Rasa Chat Widget supports buttons but I can’t find any documentation on supported widgets.
Unique Features
- Botfront Rasa Webchat - Supports a good list of chat widgets and is the only actively developed open source widget choice.
- Chatbot Widget - Supports even more widgets than botfront.
- Rasa Chat Widget - One really nice feature is the Storybook page that allows you to try the widget out against your bot.
- Scalable Minds Chatroom - It’s the only widget that supports speech to text so you can talk to your bot (your site must use https).