A conversation, not a form
The user sends a part number. If it matches several brands, the bot asks which one, then asks for retail or wholesale prices. Every step is a short numbered choice, so it works on any phone with no learning curve.
Automotive retail · Auto parts price comparison service
A Telegram bot that compares auto-part prices across stores in seconds
Buyers send a part number and get offers from several stores with price, stock, phone and address, without leaving Telegram.
- parts in the searchable catalog
- 1M+
- from part number to price list
- 3 taps
- retail and wholesale pricing
- 2 tiers
The challenge
What the client needed
The client ran a parts search service for buyers in a big city: one catalog with more than a million parts from many stores. They wanted buyers to find a part and compare offers without opening a website or calling around, right inside a messenger they already use.
The hard part is the data. Every car-parts brand uses its own numbering, so the same number often belongs to several brands. A plain search returns a confusing mix, and a wrong part means a return and a lost customer.
On top of that, the bot had to serve both retail buyers and trade customers with different prices, promote the client's other channels, and show the business how people actually use it.
The approach
How I solved it
State that survives every message
A multi-step dialog needs memory between messages. I kept per-user session state in SQLite, keyed by Telegram user ID: fast, reliable and no extra service to run.
A clean layer over a big catalog
The million-row catalog lived in the client's MySQL database. I wrapped all queries in a dedicated data-access class over PDO, so the bot logic stayed simple and every query was parameterized and safe.
Secure, cheap, measurable
Telegram webhooks require HTTPS, so I put the bot behind Cloudflare for SSL without managing certificates on the server. Periodic promo messages and an analytics integration showed the client how people used the bot.
See it in action
The product
The outcome
What the client got
- Buyers find a part and compare offers from several stores in one chat, in seconds.
- The brand question prevents a classic mistake: the right number, but from the wrong brand.
- Each offer shows price, stock, phone and address, so the buyer can call the store straight away.
- Retail and trade customers use the same bot and each see their own prices.
- The client gets a marketing channel and usage analytics on top of the search.
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