Agentency vs IBM watsonx Assistant
Agentency
agentency.comIBM watsonx Assistant
cloud.ibm.comSide by side
| Figure | Agentency | IBM watsonx Assistant |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $15.17/mo | $140/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 9 | 4 |
| Spec score · Chatbot Builders | 8.4 (#69) | 9.3 (#2) |
| Actions | Agents can check product stock, book appointments, create support tickets, qualify leads and track orders. | Actions represent customer tasks and contain steps for individual exchanges in a conversation. |
| Deployment channels | multichannel | multichannel |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Human handoff | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | Named integrations include Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress and custom API; the site also says workflows can connect through Zapier and its API. | Available integrations include web chat, phone, Facebook Messenger, Genesys Bot Connector, Microsoft Teams, Slack, SMS, WhatsApp with Twilio, and Search. |
| Knowledge-base answers | Yes | Yes |
| Security | The maker says traffic is encrypted in transit, workspaces are isolated, accounts support two-factor authentication and scoped API keys, and customer data is not sold. | The service supports TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3, with TLS 1.3 as the default. |
| Support | The website says its team usually replies to email questions within one business day. | Lite and Trial accounts receive Basic support with self-service resources but no technical product support. |
Plans
Agentency
- FreeFree
- Starter$19 a month
- Standard$99 a month
- Pro$249 a month
- Agency$499 a month
- Starter$15.17 a month
- Standard$79.17 a month
- Pro$199.17 a month
- Agency$399.17 a month
IBM watsonx Assistant
- LiteFree
- TrialFree
- Plus$140 a month
- Enterprise with data isolationPriced on request
In their own words
IBM watsonx Assistant
IBM watsonx Assistant builds branded chatbots for live conversations across devices, applications, and channels. It uses natural-language understanding and machine-learning models customized from customer data to answer in real time. Actions organize customer tasks into steps within a conversation, while a Watson Discovery integration can search corporate data collections for answers. Integrations include web chat, phone, Facebook Messenger, Genesys Bot Connector, Microsoft Teams, Slack, SMS, WhatsApp with Twilio, and Search. Web chat can pass conversations to live-agent integrations including Genesys Web Messenger, NICE CXone, Salesforce, and Zendesk. The assistant is available as a managed IBM Cloud service or on premises with IBM Cloud Pak for Data. Lite is free, and the free Trial lasts 30 days. Plus costs $140 a month for the first 1,000 monthly users; additional users cost $14 per 100 active users per month, and phone voice adds $9 per 100 users per month. The v2 API requires Plus or higher. IBM is upgrading eligible instances to watsonx Orchestrate; existing resources remain operational.