Differences between Botpress v12 and Botpress cloud

[boyoma]

In terms of limitations, what can be done in self-hosted botpress v12 and the one hosted on the botpress cloud?

What can you do in one and not be able to do in another one?

For example, I’m at the moment using the v12 and a support mentioned SDK is only accessible via v12. What are the incentives (besides server setup and maintenance) for me to jump from v12 to the cloud version?

[sabrina-botpress]

Hi @boyoma

Great question!

If you’re looking to publish your bot quickly, our Cloud product is definitely the way to go. With just one click, you can easily get your bot up and running. We’re constantly striving to make our Cloud product even better.

While not all features are currently available with Botpress Cloud, you’ll still have access to an enhanced studio, our NLU powered by generative AI, better analytics, high availability (with infrastructure taken care of), and no limitations in terms of features (including role-based access control to allow collaboration).

Botpress Cloud features can be found here

Botpress v12 features can be found here

Hope this helps!

[boyoma]

Hi Sabrina, thank you for your answer.

First of all, I would like to say Botpress looks like an amazing product and it is fun to work with. I’ve been using V12 for a week and experience (with the product) is good so far. I’m also very grateful you are offering that version for free, so thank you very much.

I just signed up for the cloud and the experience seems more intuitive with V12 than the cloud. Seems to have some bugs though or most probably I’m not doing the things right. I feel the cloud requires typing lots of code repetitively while V12 is quicker with many builtin codes that can be selected with a click.

This doesn’t work for me:

• So far, I can’t make a simple flow works. After typing Yes or No, it doesn’t transit to the next node.

Few extra points/questions:

• In V12 when you have a choice skill, it automatically lists them in the node, for example Yes and No, and you can just drag a transition to a new node. But the Cloud version is counter-intuitive and cumbersome, you need to type for each choice "event.payload.payload === “Yes”, "event.payload.payload === “No”, etc, then drag the transition.

V12:

Cloud:

• In V12, you can copy transition but I don’t see how to do that in the cloud.

• In V12, intents have contexts but I don’t see contexts in the Cloud.

• Do you have builtin execute code in the cloud like in V12?
  

  

• Do you always need to type the full code (i.e.: event.nlu.intent.name === “bund”) to set an intent in the cloud? In V12, you can just select the intent from a list.

V12:

Cloud:

• It would be wonderful if we had some official tutorials and snippets. Patrick did an amazing job with the rover mars one. It’s very hard to find any tutorials for botpress, or they are old and with plenty of dead links (very frustrating). And it seems there isn’t any active community or maybe everyone is too smart and solve problems on their own. I know you guys are very busy creating this great product, but if you can help us with the foundation, we -the community- will be able to build on that and contribute further.

I apologize for any inconvenience my comment may have caused. But, I was already very advanced in my project in V12 and struggled with one or two elements and didn’t get any support for that (not your fault of course). And you kept sending me to the github forum, but they are barely any responses there. You suggest to try the cloud and here I am, I can’t make a simple thing work and hoping to get some help.

[sabrina-botpress]

Hi @boyoma !

Glad to see you got started with Botpress Cloud! It’s great to have engaged users like you. Thanks for posting your questions in the forum.

To get back to you on the code aspect: Botpress Cloud should be more user-friendly than v12. We hope to shorten the learning curve to build bots so people can create amazing chatbots in less time. New features are coming up - stay tuned.

Now, regarding the tutorials and snippets: I agree with you - Patrick did a fantastic job with the Mars Rover Series. Rest assured that we are 100% planning on adding more videos and documentation. It’s just a matter of time. On that note, do you have any suggestions on the types of videos you would like to see on our YouTube channel?

Just putting this out there, maybe you already know about this, but we do have a live chat when you open Botpress Cloud to help users as they start their building journey. If you have any questions, I’d recommend talking with our team on our live chat to get immediate help!

I’ve emailed you to address all the points in this previous message. The easiest way to tackle your questions will be to book a quick meeting with one of our Solutions Engineers. That way, we can enable screen-sharing and answer all of your questions.

Cheers