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Most buyers should pick respond.io.
Respond.io fits teams that need a shared inbox for messages, calls, email and lead management. Its pricing page lists plans from $79/month billed annually, or $99 month to month. Yellow.ai suits organizations prioritizing AI agents across voice, chat and email; its free plan allows 500 chat sessions monthly. Yellow.ai does not publish paid prices, so get an enterprise quote before switching. Its free tier is not a like-for-like replacement for respond.io’s inbox plans.
01Side by side
| respond.io | yellow.ai | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Pricing page: $79/month annually; $99 monthly | Paid price not published |
| Free plan | No free plan; 7-day trial | Yes; 500 chat sessions/month |
| Best for | Teams managing shared conversations and leads | Organizations automating customer and employee interactions |
| Core strength | Team inbox with lead management | AI agents across voice, chat, email |
| Learning curve | Not published | Not published |
| Integrations/data | CRM syncing; integration count not published | Homepage lists 150+ integrations and 15+ LLMs |
| Team/seat costs | Starter includes 5 users; extras $12/month | Free caps at 2 agents; paid seat pricing unpublished |
| Support | Review support subscore: 4.5/10 | Review support subscore: 5/10 |
respond.io Choose respond.io if
- Choose respond.io if you need a shared inbox for customer conversations.
- Choose respond.io if you want published prices before contacting sales.
- Choose respond.io if your team needs lead management alongside messaging.
yellow.ai Choose yellow.ai if
- Choose yellow.ai if AI agents are your main priority.
- Choose yellow.ai if you want to explore a free, capped plan.
- Choose yellow.ai if you need its listed 150+ integrations.
02Pricing compared
Respond.io is the more straightforward price comparison: Starter costs $99/month month to month or $79/month billed annually ($948/year). Growth is $199/month or $159/month annually ($1,908/year); Advanced is $349/month or $279/month annually ($3,348/year). Starter includes five users and 5,000 AI credits. Growth and Advanced start at 1,000 Monthly Active Contacts, with 10,000 and 20,000 AI credits respectively. Yellow.ai lists a free plan with 500 chat sessions per month, up to two agents and 1,000 User360 records. It charges $0.99 per resolution after the first 500 monthly sessions. Yellow.ai’s paid Enterprise price and billing terms are not published, so ask for a quote. Respond.io’s extra costs include $12 per additional 100 Monthly Active Contacts on Growth and $15 on Advanced; Meta charges WhatsApp fees separately.
03Features and depth
These products overlap on AI conversations, but they are built around different jobs. Respond.io combines a team inbox for messages, calls and email with customer profiles, CRM syncing, lead management and automation. Its listed tools include WhatsApp Business and Messenger calls, VoIP, workflows, broadcasts and analytics for ads, agents and channels. Growth includes AI Agents and workflows; Starter is positioned around shared conversations and basic reports.
Yellow.ai puts agent building first. Its homepage describes building agents with natural-language prompts, connecting systems and choosing from 15+ LLMs. It supports voice, chat and email, plus images, voice, documents and video responses. Yellow.ai also lists conversation analytics, automated testing and 150+ integrations. Its free tier has 500 monthly chat sessions and a two-agent limit; the Enterprise plan lists unlimited sessions and 35+ channels. For a team that needs a shared customer inbox with lead context, Respond.io is the closer fit. For enterprise agent deployment, Yellow.ai’s feature set is more directly aimed at that use.
04Ease of use and learning curve
The available product details point to different kinds of setup, not a clear winner on ease. Respond.io packages customer conversations in a team inbox and separates basic shared-inbox use from Growth features such as workflows, broadcasts and AI Agents. Its annual Starter price includes five users; adding users costs extra.
Yellow.ai says agents can be built with natural-language prompts, and it lists automated testing and analytics in one interface. But its paid Enterprise price is not published, and the published details do not establish how much implementation work or technical support a deployment needs. Its free plan gives teams a way to explore with one AI agent, 500 monthly chat sessions and a two-agent limit. Neither product’s information here is enough to promise a quick migration; compare your channels, workflows and system integrations before switching.
Questions people ask
Who is the leader in conversational AI?
There is no single leader established by the information here. Respond.io focuses on a shared inbox, lead management and customer conversations; Yellow.ai focuses on enterprise AI agents across voice, chat and email. Compare them against your use case, required integrations and budget rather than treating one as the category winner.
Who are Yellow.ai’s main competitors?
The information here does not provide a complete competitor list or establish market rankings. Respond.io is one alternative in this comparison, but it is not a like-for-like match: its offer centers on a team inbox and lead management, while Yellow.ai centers on enterprise agent automation.
Why is all customer service AI now?
It isn’t all AI. These two products both offer AI capabilities, but Respond.io also sells a shared inbox, calls, email and lead-management tools. Yellow.ai is more explicitly an enterprise agent platform. Teams should assess whether automation solves a real workload problem before paying for it.
Who are the top AI competitors?
There is no ranking in the published information. In this comparison, Respond.io and Yellow.ai compete where customer conversations and AI agents overlap, but their core offers differ. Respond.io lists published plan prices; Yellow.ai’s paid Enterprise price is not published, so compare quotes and requirements.