Which AI agent should qualify your leads? If they arrive through your website or WhatsApp, pick a chat agent that asks your qualifying questions and books the meeting; if you also need email follow-up or calls, you're shopping for an AI SDR agent that also emails, or AI sales agents that cover voice.
That one fork decides most of the shortlist. The rest comes down to which channels you need covered and how you'd rather be billed, because pricing in this category ranges from a free plan on a chat tool to a yearly contract on a revenue platform. Start with where your leads land.
Match the agent to where your leads arrive
| Where leads come in | What you need the agent to do | Type of tool to look at |
|---|---|---|
| Website forms and live chat | Ask three to five questions, score the answer, book a call | Chat tool with an AI agent, or a no-code bot builder |
| WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook | Reply in the app, qualify, book, follow up | Social messaging AI agent, or a bot builder with a WhatsApp add-on |
| High-value B2B website traffic | Spot who is visiting, start the conversation, route to the right rep | AI SDR on the website, or a visitor identification platform |
| Form fills that go cold | Email and follow up for days until the lead replies | AI agent platform built for inbound follow-up |
| Calls as well as chat | Qualify by voice, route hot leads live | AI sales agents that cover voice |
Read the rows by channel, not by company size. A two-person agency with all its leads on WhatsApp needs an agent that lives in WhatsApp, whatever its headcount, and a large B2B team with quiet web chat may get more from email follow-up than from a chat widget.
Chat and messaging agents for inbound leads
Landbot
A no-code builder for WhatsApp and website chatbots and AI agents that capture leads, qualify them and book meetings.
Tidio
Live chat with Lyro, an AI agent that handles jobs such as lead qualification and order updates without a person stepping in.
Chatfuel
Built for social inboxes, this AI agent replies, qualifies, books and follows up across WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook chats.
Intercom Fin
Intercom's AI customer agent, which has a sales version that qualifies and converts leads inside the Intercom workspace.
Piper by Qualified
An AI SDR agent from Qualified that chats with buyers on your site, emails inbound leads and schedules sales meetings.
AI SDRs and follow-up agents
Conversica
Inbound follow-up is the focus here: AI agents start conversations with new leads and web form fills, qualify them and keep chasing.
AiSDR
An AI sales rep that researches prospects, writes the outreach and books meetings with the qualified ones.
11x
A team of AI sales agents covering outbound plus inbound voice and chat qualification and lead routing.
Warmly
Identifies anonymous website visitors, then sets AI agents on them to turn the interest into qualified pipeline.
Artisan
Its AI BDR, Ava, handles replies, qualifies the interested leads, deals with objections and books meetings.
The pricing models you'll be choosing between
Each vendor here bills in its own way, and the model shapes your cost far more than the headline rate. From the pricing pages read this month, there are four broad models.
Seats plus outcomes. Some chat platforms charge for each person on the team and then again each time the AI resolves something. Intercom bills Fin per outcome on top of seat prices. That's fair if the agent is closing real conversations, but it means a busy month costs more, and you'll want a clear definition of what counts as an outcome before you sign.
Per person contacted. AiSDR, for one, charges for each person its agent prospects rather than per seat. You pay for activity, not results, so the quality of your target list matters more than anything in the software.
Plans with channel add-ons. The chat and bot builders sell plans and charge extra for channels. Landbot lists WhatsApp as a paid add-on to its lower plans, which matters if WhatsApp is your main channel. Check that the channel you need sits inside the plan you're pricing.
Annual contracts. At the top end, revenue platforms that identify website visitors sell yearly contracts. Warmly lists its visitor de-anonymisation plans as yearly. These make sense for B2B teams with steady, valuable traffic; for anyone else the commitment is the risk.
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In figures, from the vendors' own pricing pages this month, the category runs from a free plan on two chat tools to entry chat plans of about $18 to $36 a month. Beyond that, the bill is driven by volume or commitment: outbound AI SDRs charge per contact, and visitor identification platforms sell annual contracts. Per-outcome fees sit on top of seats where they apply.
Two of the ten list a free plan, one lists a free trial, and the other seven don't mention either on the pages read. Four don't publish a price at all, so expect a sales call.
What changed in the category this year
The biggest shift is that "chatbot" and "AI SDR" have stopped being separate markets. Chat tools now ship AI agents that qualify and book, and AI SDR vendors now cover website chat and inbound leads as well as outbound email. The overlap makes shortlists harder, because two very different products will both claim to qualify leads.
Consolidation is the other story. Drift's old domain now redirects, and Salesloft's site carries a separate Drift login, so anyone still on Drift should check where its roadmap now sits before renewing. If you're comparing the outbound side in more depth, the list of AI SDR tools goes further into prospecting agents.
Mistakes that waste good leads
Qualifying on the wrong questions. Most teams copy their old form into the agent. Budget, timeline and company size sound sensible, but buyers dodge budget questions in chat. Ask what they're trying to fix and by when, then let the agent infer the rest.
Making the agent the gatekeeper. A qualifying agent should speed good leads up, not block borderline ones. Send anything uncertain to a person with the transcript attached rather than dropping it.
Ignoring the channel your buyers prefer. If your customers message on WhatsApp and your agent only lives on the website, you'll qualify the minority who bother to visit. Pick the channel first and the tool second. If you're already on one bot builder and it doesn't cover the channel you need, the round-up of Landbot alternatives shows what else is out there.
Not checking the calendar handover. Qualification is only worth something if the booking lands in the right rep's diary, with the answers attached to the CRM record. Test that end to end before you look at anything else.
Run this test before you choose
Give yourself an hour and a trial or demo account. Write five fake leads that mirror your real mix: one perfect fit, one clearly wrong, one vague, one who asks about price straight away and one who replies in the channel you care most about. Send each through the agent.
Then score what happened. Did the perfect fit get a meeting without friction? Did the wrong one get a polite exit rather than a sales call? Did the vague one get one clarifying question or a wall of them? Did the price question get an honest answer or a dodge? Did every lead land in your CRM with the answers attached? A tool that gets four out of five right on day one is worth a longer pilot; one that gets two isn't.
What I'd pick for each kind of team
A small business with leads on the website and social: a chat tool with an AI agent and a free plan, so you can prove the questions work before you pay. Add a social messaging agent if WhatsApp or Instagram is where most enquiries start.
A B2B team with steady inbound and a sales team to feed: an AI SDR agent that sits on the website and follows up by email, so no lead waits for a rep. Price it on outcomes or per person contacted rather than seats, if you can choose.
A team where calls matter as much as chat: AI sales agents that cover voice, or pair a chat agent with a calling tool. The AI outbound calling software list covers the voice side.
A larger B2B company with lots of anonymous traffic: a visitor identification platform with AI agents, on an annual contract, once you're confident the traffic is worth it.
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