HiQBot connects six messaging channels to a single inbox: website chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram and LINE. A multi channel chatbot is an AI agent that answers customers on more than one of those channels. All six land in one inbox. Any of the six can also run as a live chat channel, going straight to your team with no AI in front of it.
Most platforms in this category publish a flat list of logos and send you to a pricing page to work out what you actually get. The table below does that job here instead.
If you are deciding how many to connect first, start with what omnichannel customer service means for a small team.
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Every channel lands in the same inbox. Any of them can also run as a live chat channel, with seats for your team.
| Channel | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Website chat | One tag on your site. The agent answers on its own, and a person can take the thread over. |
| Sign up inside the dashboard. Coexistence mode means the number your team already uses keeps working. | |
| DMs, and also comment automation, publishing and post insights. | |
| Messenger | Messages to your Facebook Page land in the same queue as everything else. |
| Telegram | Connects through a bot on your own Telegram account. Usually a two-minute job. |
| LINE | Messages to your LINE Official Account, which is how most businesses in Japan, Thailand and Taiwan are reached. |
The line worth reading twice is the WhatsApp one. On most platforms WhatsApp sits behind the mid tier, because it is the channel people pay more for. Here it is included from the start, next to Instagram, which is the pairing a small shop actually sells on. If you run a dining room, that pairing is also what takes restaurant bookings without anyone watching the phone.
Connecting a channel is the easy half. The part that decides whether your week gets better is what the omnichannel inbox does next.
Every connected channel feeds one queue. A WhatsApp message and an Instagram comment sit in the same list, each tagged with where it came from, so nobody has to remember to open a second app before they log off. When a new conversation comes in with an email address or phone number that already belongs to a contact, HiQBot adds it to that contact in the built-in CRM, so your team sees the history in one record.
The agent takes the first pass on all of it. When a thread needs a person, it goes to someone free and on shift, and the whole conversation goes with it rather than a summary. That is covered properly on the live chat handoff page.
One honest caveat. The unified inbox always shows you every conversation from every channel in one place. Live chat seats, routing and assignment are the team side of it. If you are one person, the sales agent can run on autopilot while you check the closings and bookings. If you have someone answering messages, live chat and routing are what you want.
You sign up inside the HiQBot dashboard rather than being sent off to Meta's Business Manager to work it out alone. Coexistence mode matters more than it sounds: the number your team already answers on keeps working the way it does today, so you are not asking customers to save a new one or abandoning your message history to switch.
One thing to know before you budget. Meta charges your own WhatsApp account per message, at a rate that depends on the country and the message category, and HiQBot does not resell or mark those up. Your subscription here and your Meta usage bill are two separate things. Plenty of vendors leave that vague until the first invoice lands. Connecting the number is covered step by step in the WhatsApp Business API setup guide.
The WhatsApp Business API page goes into the setup in detail.
This is the one most comparisons get wrong. Nearly every platform in this category treats Instagram as a DM pipe. HiQBot handles DMs, and it also runs comment automation, publishing and post insights.
Comment automation is the part that earns its keep. Someone asks the price under a post, the agent replies in the thread and moves the conversation into DMs where it can qualify them properly. That is a real path from a public comment to a booked call, and it runs while you are asleep. There is more on it on the Instagram comment-to-DM automation page.
LINE is the channel most Western platforms either skip or price into an enterprise plan. If you sell into Japan, Thailand or Taiwan, it is not a nice extra. It is closer to what WhatsApp is in Brazil or India: the app people already have open, and often the only one they will message a business on.
Businesses reach customers there through a LINE Official Account, which behaves differently from a personal account. Customers add you, and after that you can answer them directly. HiQBot connects that Official Account into the same queue as your WhatsApp and Instagram threads, so a Bangkok customer and a Manchester customer land in one list and neither one waits longer because your team forgot which app to check.
The tools that do LINE well are usually priced for large support organisations, and the tools priced for small teams tend not to do LINE at all. That gap is the reason this section exists.
How a LINE Official Account chatbot worksTelegram connects through a bot on your own account and is usually the fastest of the lot to switch on. Messenger picks up the messages sent to your Facebook Page, which for a lot of local businesses is still where enquiries quietly pile up.
Not every conversation should meet an AI first. A channel here can be set to live chat instead, and then it behaves like a dedicated live chat inbox: the message arrives, it is assigned to whoever is free and on shift, and a person answers it. Nothing runs ahead of them, and there is nothing to read back through afterwards.
You set it per channel, so you can run the website widget on the sales agent, take WhatsApp straight to your team, and keep a VIP or partner channel on live chat only. A short AI intake can still sit in front of a live chat channel, collecting the name, the account and the reason so the rep opens a thread that already has answers in it.
It changes what you pay, too. Credits are drawn by AI replies, so a live chat channel your team answers does not draw them. With intake switched on, the conversation draws a single credit at the moment it is handed to a person, and nothing after that. Live chat channels need a seat for someone on your team to answer from.
All six channels work whether one person answers them or a whole team does. The agent can handle them on its own, with you checking the closings and bookings. Add live chat and routing once a person is answering messages from a shared queue too, and the AI can resolve support as well as sell, with tickets behind it. A bigger team adds more seats, more credits, and WhatsApp calling from the inbox.
Channel access does not change mid-plan, so the table above is the whole answer. Message allowances and seat counts do differ by plan, and those are on the pricing page.