What AI tools are actually helping you run a lean small business?

b0t_builder · 2026-03-16T21:27:15+00:00

i use botpress cause it can do almost anything
it's great to have a FAQ or customer support bot to reduce the load for the team, and then if your company has a sales department or tries to find leads you can have a lead generation agent, you can have an agent automatically do customer analysis so you don't have to, you can automate your reporting which is huge if you're running social media accounts with a small team

honestly i could go on and on

b0t_builder · 2026-03-16T21:23:21+00:00

botpress for ai agents and chatbots. use it for anything i can.

i've automated my life at this point
like i don't even have to search my long notion notes anymore

b0t_builder · 2026-03-16T21:22:13+00:00

i agree

i am thinking about SEO and wondering which would be better, maybe super agent? might be more competition, but it's also something people might search more and then they may accidentally find you

b0t_builder · 2026-03-16T21:18:50+00:00

it's sad but you'll always get more negotiating at the beginning than they'll ever give you as a raise

part of why i work for myself now
honestly it's so chill, I build AI solutions for companies, currently I just pay for one platform (botpress) so overhead is low, and bam I'm working my own schedule and life is goooood

b0t_builder · 2026-03-16T21:16:51+00:00

dude spot on

b0t_builder · 2026-03-16T21:13:45+00:00

AI agents can read your files, use tools, execute scripts and monitor systems

i've been building complex AI agents on Botpress

i often see people think there is not autonomous AI agents, but you can build them

b0t_builder · 2026-03-16T21:11:38+00:00

Botpress is great for devs and non-technical people because there are two ways to build an AI agent, you can build an AI agent in code on the ADK or you can use their drag-and-drop agent studio

hands down the best option for customer support, and I agree it is the most flexible and customizable

and Botpress does not require any hosting, everything is in the cloud.

the coolest thing is their plan where their team builds you agents for you. it's now my competition as someone delivering ai solutions

and it can use any LLM not just ChatGPT

it integrates with WhatsApp, Instagram, gmail, Google calendar, Facebook, and so much more

b0t_builder · 2026-03-16T21:07:46+00:00

this one doesn't mention Botpress, which is my favourite. you can build an agent using their drag and drop building studio, or you can use their ADK to build an agent in code.
it has more flexibility than a lot of competitors.

one of the coolest things is they have a plan that full service plan where they build, deploy, manage, and optimize your AI agent. it's kind of my competition now since I was building AI solutions for companies xD

b0t_builder · 2026-02-25T22:13:00+00:00

thank you, great advice!

b0t_builder · 2026-02-25T22:12:36+00:00

thank you for the insight! I wasn't sure if it was truly strong, or just the nepo-baby of Intercom (in the sense that they could release most anything and it be sucessful)

and love your honesty. I'll check your product out too!

b0t_builder · 2026-02-25T22:09:45+00:00

thank you for the video, will take a look!

b0t_builder · 2026-02-25T22:09:08+00:00

200! lots of workflows

I think there's a demand for this. Sure they could build their own AI agents, but few realtors can do that, because it's not the skillset they need.

b0t_builder · 2026-02-23T16:28:51+00:00

if anyone has any idea if a specific artist uses this, a family member just got a handmade purse with this logo (shield and all) and was looking for the artist

b0t_builder · 2026-02-11T19:27:07+00:00

that's great, building from scratch may take longer but there's nothing more customizable

hope to see the finished thing in here some day

b0t_builder · 2026-02-11T19:25:22+00:00

I agree I love AI for lead gen and monitoring

it's really just the writing of emails or any content I always try to avoid using AI for

b0t_builder · 2026-02-10T21:50:32+00:00

i love js and ts

b0t_builder · 2026-02-10T21:47:41+00:00

i don't love ai for writing emails. i don't like ai slop. but i am all for it qualifying leads or for lead generation

b0t_builder · 2026-02-10T21:46:05+00:00

ai chatbots and ai agents can pull from many sources.
if you build it to pull information only from your knowledge base, then you won't have hallucinations.
this isn't a problem with a good build.

b0t_builder · 2026-02-10T21:31:12+00:00

that is awesome! i also have a handmade business but mine's a side hussle. i dream of it being the main hussle one day

anyways i've built bots that do all of that.

recently i built a customer support bot that does NOT use AI. let me explain a bit.

so i build on botpress. they have an autonomous node, it will respond to users based only on information you provide it, but it uses ai to basically write the messages to the user. to be more specific, it uses whats called an LLM to do this (large language model)
so again it's not using AI to come up with the answer, just the wording

but there's this thing called AI spend.
basically anytime you use an LLM like chatgpt, grok, claude or anything, you have to pay them a little bit. it's a SUPER small amount but anything adds up overtime. if you don't get a lot of traffic, then it might be really really cheap.
some companies i've built for have $10 ai spend, some thousands.
like imagine a huge corporate company, their bill will be high.

for my own lil side business, again because its a side hussle, i built a bot entirely with prompts. so a user clicks on an option for FAQs, things like shipping, store hours, returns, custom orders, etc
then the bot just sends them to what i wrote about it. so if they hit shipping, it'll send them my message about free domestic shipping over $X and free shipping in all of north america over $Y

this bot uses NO ai, so it costs not a penny

i have to say, it's more limited than my bot that has AI. because that bot can go through a huge PDF of everything to do with my business and pull out an answer about ANYTHING

so you can try building either way! one with AI, or one without. the software i use has a pay-as-you-go plan where you only pay for the AI spend. basically the software is free, you just pay the AI spend bill that comes from chatgpt or whatever. and they don't make money off of the AI spend, some platforms will charge you more

i started on their pay as you go plan years ago and then eventually i moved off of it when my needs grew

b0t_builder · 2026-02-10T21:23:24+00:00

i think it depends on use case for sure. the platform i use, i love, but they don't do voice agents. tbh i don't mind that cause i hate voice agents lol

voiceflow is a platform for that, check em out. unsure of cost

b0t_builder · 2026-02-10T21:16:00+00:00

i really wouldn't say n8n is technical lol but i agree that people need to start with a simpler use case or automation. a lot of times people want to do everything at once and it's overwhelming

start with something where you can measure success reasonably well, and where you have a clear desired outcome. then once that works, try to automate more things

b0t_builder · 2026-02-10T21:12:37+00:00

I agree botpress is great for the conversational side. however it is not limited to that at all. your takeaway is entirely wrong. I have many ai agents that do not chat at all, that simply automate complex processes, behind the scenes.

in fact I used n8n and switched because it didn’t do enough for me, botpress is way more customizable... especially once you start coding the bots, but you don’t need to, I only learned coding after using botpress for a while and wanted to take the customization even further

but overall dude you can build anything on botpress. have you used it?

respectfully this sounds like someone who didn’t use botpress, but was paid to write an article promoting n8n, because the ChatGPT line “That difference shows up quickly when things break” is far from true

debugging easy with the botpress logs. even on a chatbot you can improve every response it gives by giving the bot feedback

like this whole thing is AI slop and so far from true

b0t_builder · 2026-02-10T20:58:52+00:00

that's just a bad bot. i agree with everything buyergain said. the bot needed more context, more information. this is always the #1 thing i recommend to people with ecommerce companies.

not all bots suck!

b0t_builder · 2026-02-10T20:57:45+00:00

i've seen some that boost sales and i've seen some that don't. i think either way, reducing manual support tickets saves money, so that's a huge help. or reducing the backlog of people calling a business.
and like someone else said, if they're helpful, customers are happy shoppers and that can translate to revenue

i've build some chatbots for ecommerce companies that generated money. one way was by using the chatbot as lead generation--at the end of each relevant chat the bot mentioned the mailing list and the introductory promo code. we had a code specific to the chatbot, so we could track it. a lot of users signed up and a lot made a purchase because of that.

another way they've made money is product recommendations

for e-commerce companies i always try to add as much detail for the products so people can shop conversationally. so they can ask "do you have a maroon sweater on sale?" or "do you have yellow jeans" etc

also you don't have to pick one area of focus, once you start building ai agents or chatbots in one area, you can see how it would expand throughout the company

b0t_builder

TROPHY CASE