Kinds of bots and what you can do yourself
The builder assembles simple bots: buttons, menus, saving to a spreadsheet or file, notifications to you. That covers most simple jobs for a small business or a person for themselves.
Kinds of bots
| Bot | What it does | Where it saves data |
|---|---|---|
| Answers questions | Answers frequent questions with topic buttons and hands hard ones to a person. | Nowhere. The bot only answers. |
| Takes orders | Catalog with buttons, cart, customer contact, confirmation. You get a notification. | Google Sheet: each order is a new row. |
| Books customers | Service, date, free time, name and phone, confirmation and a reminder a day before. | Google Sheet, so you can see everything from your phone. |
| Quiz or test | Questions with answer options; shows a result at the end. | A local file next to the bot. |
| Reminders | A person writes “call mom tomorrow at 10”, the bot sends it on time. | A local file next to the bot. |
| Other | Anything you describe in your own words. This includes a bot that passes messages to an agent, but that is already the at-your-own-risk path (see the agent guide). | As you describe. |
What a bot is made of
In the builder you answer only four groups of questions. Here is what stands behind them.
Purpose and language
What the bot does and which language it speaks: Ukrainian, English, or two with a choice at the start. The bot’s name and a few words “in your own words”.
Buttons and commands
There is always /start: a greeting and the main menu. You add Help, Catalog, Prices, Book, FAQ, Contacts, Talk to a person and Cancel. The menu is made of buttons so the person never has to type commands.
Data
Where the bot saves what the person entered: nowhere, a file next to the bot, or a Google Sheet. A sheet is handier if you want to see orders from your phone. For it the agent explains step by step how to create a service account and give it access.
Notifications
Who the bot tells about a new order or question: nobody, you in private, or a work group the bot has been added to. The agent helps you find your chat id for this.
Who does what
| You | The agent |
|---|---|
| Answer simple questions in the builder. | Writes the code, installs the libraries it needs. |
| Create the bot in @BotFather and provide the token. | Asks for the token at the right moment and explains each step in plain words. |
| Open the bot and press Start. | Starts the bot and checks /start and every button. |
| Decide what to allow and check the result. | Writes a short README: how to start, stop and start it again. |
What not to expect
The builder does not cover payments, complex integrations or a large flow of people. You can describe them under “Other”, but the agent will not do it as predictably as a simple menu, so check the result more carefully and do not make a bot take payments without testing.
How much does it cost
A Telegram bot itself is free. You pay for your own agent subscriptions (Claude or ChatGPT) if you have them, and possibly for hosting if you want the bot to work while your computer is off. See Where the bot lives.