Looking for some opinions here. Chatbot from scratch or use an existing service?

I have to work with a messenger chatbot. The company has been using chatfuel, so I'm trying to work with it but it's kinda buggy in some parts. Have any of you created a messenger bot from scratch? I flipped through the documentation and it seems like a pain in the ass, but it's obviously more flexible than using a third party service.

So yeah, I'm trying to weigh the convenience of the third party vs its limitations compared to coding my own. What's your take on it?

I am put to the task of creating a Chat Robot in ChatFuel.

Cool, I thought at first.

Cool is not what I would call it at this point..one week later.

The size is a factor at play, for sure, it needs to point to 27 cities and give individual information, handle e-mails, phone, automate e-mails.. a bunch of stuff.

Now, I am located in Sweden.
{{city}} as a set user attribute acknowledges Gothenburg and geolocation thusly worked fine for my boss. But not for me, and won't work for any other city.

So..Global AI calling for static blocks it is... 27 blocks...

For two languages.. 54 blocks...
Static pointing to the first answer for every individual block multiplies this by a factor of two. 108 static blocks. Fine.

I have since realized that my ChatFuel-Luddite ways were limiting the expected performance of the end result and learned that most other set attributes in ChatFuel work fine. Yay.

So we set up everything the last 54 blocks need to do with user attributes and to my surprise it works, really well at that. The answer from a user that is a correct city puts you into a block that is a series of questions using user attributes, both {{first_name}} and {{last_name}}, asks for e-mail and phone, displays an image and stuff like that.

Now.. as I attempt to copy these blocks..

THEY JUST POOP OUT CHUNKS OF THE ORIGINAL BLOCK. IT'S INCONSISTENCY IS STAGGERING. IT NEVER REALLY COMPLETES THE DUPLICATION, NO ERROR MESSAGE OR ANYTHING.

Which then reminded me of when my boss asked why everything was botched earlier in the project, at that point I copied the entire bot as a fallback and worked with my change in the copy first for safety reasons, didn't work, copy wasn't entire.

Wasted fucking hours on this.
I'm glad my boss is cool, and the job is easily worth it. I actually think that the design aspect of ChatFuel is nice, and the people behind it are kind in the facebook group and all. I don't think they're trying to be mean. But holy shit.

This has been a mental anguish that levels pissing bleach filled with fire ants.

" You could've easily solved this with APIs and third-party geofencing services ", yeah, but their services won't stack for the customer, nice attempt though.

Deep breaths.

Once the initial pain is gone, once the blood has dried from under your nose, once blindness sets in.. that is when you truly see the transcendant quality that is ChatFuel.