Comparison PVA & Azure BOT
Power Virtual Agents
Empower your teams to easily create virtual agents
Create powerful chatbots using a guided, no-code graphical interface, no AI expertise needed.
Connect and drive action from of chatbots
Blitzy integrates Power Virtual Agents with the products and services you use every day. We use e hundreds of prebuilt connectors. We build custom workflows using Power Automate. We create complex scenarios with Microsoft Bot Framework.
Extend Power VA with Azure
by easily extending your chatbots with Azure Bot Service. We can connect you to Bot Framework skills and call Azure cognitive services such as speech aids. We show you how to use your existing Bot Framework chatbots alongside Power Virtual Agents.
Measure and improve performance and accuracy
With Blitzy, you can track and continuously improve chatbot performance. We provide AI and data-driven insights available in your dashboard.
Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty
Blitzy gives your customers rich personalized bot conversations. They’re empowered to self-help when they need it, resolving issues 24/7.
Reduce operational costs
Blitzy can show you how to automate common enquiries. This frees up individuals’ time to deal with those more complex issues.
Azure bot (SDK)
Developer Templates
Blitzy knows that a lot of developers want to write as little code as possible on the fringes and focus their skills on more business-critical coding. Azure Bot Service makes this a possibility with bot templates. These are pre-developed frameworks of already created bots that you can use as a foundation for your intelligent enterprise-grade bot.
Scalability
One of Azure Bot Services’ most prominent selling points is how efficient it makes it in scaling your project. This is thanks to its API-driven framework. Once you build your bot on the Bot Framework SDK, you can use RESTful APIs to deploy it across various applications. This is without writing additional code or understanding the nuances of API connections. These apps include and aren’t limited to Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams, Twilio, Slack, Email, and several other endpoints.
Integrations
The great news is, Azure Bot Service has seamless integrations with some of the most imperative platforms in bot development. This is facilitated by REST- APIs. Through Azure Cognitive Services, we build cognizant bots that can perceive language, QnA marker, Speech, Search, and Vision via various integrations such as LUIS and QnA Maker. We can also configure your Azure-built intelligent chatbots to run on one or many channels, including Telegram, Kik, and WeChat.
Multilingual-support
Azure Bot Service supports more than eighteen different languages. This means that building bots that transcend borders, cultures, and nationalities are no longer a distant dream. With Azure, it is here, now.
PRICING
Choose what goes in hand with your roadmap
The Azure Bot Service, the channel-based pricing model, wins hands down, and it’s not even close. Besides offering a free trial version, it also makes its standard channels free of charge.
The premium channels are free for the first 10,000 messages. After that, Azure Bot Service will charge you $0.50 per 1,000 messages.
The Microsoft PVA pricing plan will set you back $1,000 monthly for up to 2,000 agents (chatbot sessions). If you surpass this number of sessions, you can get add-ons for a further 1000 sessions at $450 a month.
What to choose if not sure?
Power Virtual Agent vs Azure Bot service - which should I choose and why?
Your Developers
Availability of developers for the project often determines platform choice for a project. An organisation that has an IT department or seasoned coders with years of experience and competencies could be better off building bots with Azure Bot Service.
An organisation that is a non-IT business developing a bot with novice developers still learning to code could go the power virtual agent route.
Time Constraints
When your business requires the bot by should also play a role in your decision-making.
A Power Virtual Agent can help meet an urgent deadline. It’s agile and well suited to rapid-app development environments.
If there’s no hurry bringing a bot to the market, you can go with the slow but sure Azure Bot Service route.
Budgetary Constraints
It’s evident that Azure Bot Service is the cheaper option. With most of its standard channels being free, this can be tempting.
It’s crucial to put this into the context of recurring payments and the cost of hiring developers. If you’re running a brief one-time project, you may consider paying for PVA since you will only be doing it once.
On the other hand, if you’re making recurring payments, Azure Bot Service is more affordable. But before you jump on to the Azure bandwagon, note that the free channels only support a maximum of three data sources.
Nature of the Project
The type of bot you’re building will also go a long way in determining the platform that you will choose. Are you building a complete functional bot, prototype, or proof of concept?
If the bot you’re building is the production version, a low-code platform may lack some of the functionality and customisability to meet the user requirements. In that case, you could consider going for Azure Bot Services since it leaves the coding to your developers.
On the other end of the spectrum, Power Virtual Agent may come in handy for patching together a quick prototype and proof of concept version of your bot.
Long-term Maintenance
Long-term maintenance is another crucial yet often overlooked factor in bot development. Low code is not the way to go if your bot is a long-term project requiring constant maintenance.
The reason is, low-code development always faces challenges post-development. These challenges include updating and maintaining the apps.
When using Azure Bot Services, the developers who built your bot can help with maintenance by manipulating the source code.
Can I use both Power Virtual Agents and Azure Bot services?
Yes, you can. You can use Microsoft PVA and Azure Bot Services to develop your bot and gain the best of both worlds.
For instance, you can use Power Virtual Apps to come up with your prototype. You can then develop your production version using Azure Bot Services. The opportunities are endless.
HOW TO START
A few sessions to set the strategy...
Define the bot strategy and project setup
Blitzy will set up afew sessions with you and your team to understand the full scope of work. In these sessions we also define important features you might like. These could be things like the bot's personality, its branding and the type of bot.
Mockups and platform setup
We will present you with options like the bot’s appearance, the positioning of the bot on your website, the reaction of dialogues to the bot, different scenarios of interactions, triggers for the bot and connections to APIs or the dataverse.
Development and trials
Blitzy’s team of experts in chatbot development and integrations will work on the final product. We’ll secure development of the bot engine and will collaborate with your team on feedback.
Let's get a coffee? We’d love to chat!
We’re flexible so what works for you? We can pay you a visit, or we can have a chat over the phone. You can also feel free to send us a message to discuss your needs.