Provided herein are system, methods and computer program products for using a bot server for initiating and controlling bot instances, specifically conversation bot instances at client devices for interacting with users associated with the client devices. The bot server may communicate with a remote cloud service providing bot services for initiating and operating the bot instances to retrieve logic metadata used to control the bot instances and may use this metadata to initiate and control one or more bot instances at the client devices to interact with the associated users. In particular, the bot server may be deployed at a network edge in close network proximity to the client devices.