DavidAgents

DavidAgents · How we compare

Ingredients, walls, headcount —
and one real head-to-head.

Every buyer weighs five alternatives: build on a framework, rent a vendor’s agent, stitch point products, hire more people — or buy an all-in-one CRM with AI bolted on. Here is the honest map: what each is genuinely good at, where it runs out, and the full head-to-head against the CRMs we actually get compared to.

① Agent SDKs & frameworks② Enterprise agent suites③ Single-purpose AI products④ Agencies & headcount⑤ All-in-one CRM platforms vs GoHighLevel & Zoho ↓ The matrix ↓

① Agent SDKs & frameworks

LangGraph · CrewAI · AutoGen · OpenAI Agents SDK · smolagents

What they give you

Excellent primitives: graphs, tool calling, handoffs, streaming. The Lego.

Where it runs out

Everything around the agent is your problem — identity, memory, approval gates, CRM, comms, data plane, monitoring, and the year of glue code between them. You are not buying a product; you are signing up to build one.

Our verdict: Great for teams building their own platform. We ARE that team, five layers later.

② Enterprise agent suites

Agentforce · Copilot Studio · Now Assist

What they give you

Deep integration inside their own walls, enterprise sales motion, compliance paperwork.

Where it runs out

Their agent works their data in their cloud at their per-conversation price. Cross-vendor work — the actual shape of your business — is somebody's roadmap slide. Your data trains their moat, and leaving is a migration.

Our verdict: Strong if your company lives inside one vendor. Companies don't.

③ Single-purpose AI products

AI SDRs · AI support bots · AI schedulers · AI coding tools

What they give you

Fast start on exactly one job, often genuinely good at it.

Where it runs out

Ten point products = ten identities, ten data silos, ten bills, zero shared memory. The handoffs between them — where the value lives — never exist. It's SaaS sprawl again, now with agents.

Our verdict: Fine as ingredients. We productized the whole kitchen — and AgentsFast delivers all of it, multitenant, in minutes.

④ Agencies & headcount

Automation agencies · BPOs · another ops hire

What they give you

Humans understand nuance, own outcomes, and can be held accountable.

Where it runs out

Linear cost, business-hours availability, knowledge that walks out the door, and no audit trail on the routine 80%. Agencies hand you a deliverable and leave; the drift starts the next day.

Our verdict: Keep humans for judgment. Stop paying human prices for the routine — and keep every action on a ledger.

⑤ All-in-one CRM platforms

GoHighLevel · Zoho · HubSpot-style suites

What they give you

Real breadth at SMB prices: CRM, calendars, funnels, campaigns — now with AI add-ons ("AI Employee", Zia agents) bolted on top.

Where it runs out

The AI is a feature inside builder tools. You (or the agency you hire) still configure every workflow, script, and journey — and the AI meters by minute, token, or seat. The "employee" answers the phone; it doesn't read the whole customer story, send the follow-up, or own the outcome.

Our verdict: The closest field to us — so we run the full head-to-head below, pricing fine print included.

The head-to-head · vs GoHighLevel & Zoho

They added AI to the tools.
We staffed the CRM.

The all-in-one CRMs now sell an “AI employee.” Look closely and it's a receptionist: it answers what comes in, from a script, on a mini-class model, metered by the minute. AgentsFast is the other thing — ChatGPT-class intelligence employed inside your CRM: agents with real phone lines and mailboxes that read the whole customer story and then go do the work.

The inbound / outbound line

Answering the phone saves a lead. Calling back is what makes the money — the quote chase, the no-show rescue, the reactivation, the review ask. GoHighLevel's “unlimited” AI tier is inbound-only; the moment your AI picks up the phone to start a conversation, the per-minute meter runs. Our agents work the pipeline outbound on their own initiative — every send and call screened against your consent rules first. That's not a feature difference. It's the difference between a receptionist and an employee.

The brain difference

Latency-tuned mini models answer fast because they think small. We put frontier Claude models on every conversation — the same class of intelligence you talk to in Claude or ChatGPT — and for voice we run an ultra-fast Cerebras inference lane, so frontier-quality answers land at conversation speed. The runtime is model-agnostic: the right model for each task, budgets and fallbacks per agent, never locked to one vendor's brain.

The gate nobody else has

TCPA damages run $500–$1,500 per text. Their AI sends and leaves you the liability; ours refuses first: Praetor screens every call, text and iMessage — agent-initiated or human — against 51 jurisdictions' calling rules, a consent ledger and instant opt-outs before any carrier sees it. Deterministic engine, no LLM in the decision path, tamper-evident audit, re-proven daily on our live wall. Meet the gate →

  AgentsFast GoHighLevel Zoho
What the “AI” actually is A staffed team — a manager you talk to like ChatGPT, plus agents with real identities that execute work end-to-end. Five AI features (Voice, Conversation, Reviews, Content, Funnel AI) you wire into workflows you build. Zia agents you assemble in Agent Studio, each living inside the app it was built for.
Who does the work Your agents do — follow-ups, bookings, calls, drafts. Humans approve the consequential moves. You do — the AI fills steps inside automations you (or your agency) configure. You do — per-app agents answer within their lane; the handoffs are yours to build.
Inbound calls Answered by an agent that knows the caller — their history, their open deal, their last email — and books, routes, or hands to a human mid-call. Voice AI answers, qualifies against a script, books a slot. This is the product. Telephony via integrations and separate apps.
Outbound calls & follow-up The game-changer. Agents place the follow-up call, chase the quote, rescue the no-show, reactivate the stale lead — on their own initiative, inside your consent rules. Revenue is made outbound. Their “unlimited” AI tier is inbound-only; outbound rides the per-minute meter, inside call workflows you build. Not the product.
The brain on the line Frontier Claude models on every conversation — the same class of intelligence you talk to in ChatGPT or Claude — with an ultra-fast Cerebras inference lane for voice, so frontier answers land at conversation speed. Model-agnostic runtime: the right model per task, never locked in. A mini-class model tuned for latency — quick answers from a prompt sheet, not reasoning over your customer. Zia's own LLM plus per-app assistants — frontier models mean your own OpenAI/Anthropic API key, metered per token.
Agents with a computer Every agent runs on its own pod with a real computer — filesystem, browser, shell. They don't just call pre-built actions; they write code, build things, and mint custom integrations to any platform with an API, in real time. Prompts inside workflows. No filesystem, no browser, no code. Zia agents choose from a catalog of pre-built actions. If the action doesn't exist, neither does the capability.
SMS & carrier paperwork Real texting lines with carrier registration (10DLC) filed for you at setup — the paperwork that stalls most SMB texting for weeks. Flat SMS tiers, caps printed on the plan. Texting works once YOU complete carrier registration; conversations meter by token. Via integrations.
Email Real mailboxes for you and every agent — webmail, shared calendars, and deliverability we monitor domain-by-domain (DMARC, TLS policy, reputation). Campaign sends through their relay; mailboxes are not the product. Zoho Mail exists — as another per-seat app.
Email campaigns Described in chat, run by an agent: consent-lawful segments (unsubscribes are law, re-checked every send), designed templates you approve on a preview card, one-shot or recurring programs, stats charted on your live dashboard. The Managed tier staffs an Email Campaign Agent that runs the whole desk. A genuinely strong email builder — and you run it: the list hygiene, the sends, the follow-through are yours. Campaigns — another app, priced by contact count; Zia drafts copy, you do the rest.
Invoicing & text-to-pay Your agent drafts a real invoice on YOUR OWN Stripe account — the money goes straight to you — emails it or texts the pay link, gets woken the moment it's paid, journals the customer's record, and follows up. Anything over $2,000 asks the owner first. Invoices and Text-2-Pay exist — inside workflows you configure; reconciliation and follow-up are yours. Invoice and Books — more apps, more seats; nobody chases the payment for you.
Reviews & reputation Your agents ASK for the review — at the moment an invoice gets paid or a job wraps well — inside hard rules: each contact asked once ever, never after a complaint, every ask screened and journaled. Nobody else does the asking for you. Reviews AI responds to reviews you already received; getting them is your campaign to build. Routed to another app; the asking, timing, and judgment are yours.
Meetings Conference software is built in: every booking mints a video room on your own link — no Zoom, Teams, or Meet subscription. If nobody on your team claims the meeting, an agent hosts it. Reschedules run propose-and-accept both ways. Calendars and booking pages — the video call itself is your Zoom, Meet, or Teams subscription. Bookings and Meeting — two more apps, two more connections, before anyone talks.
The office around the CRM Team drive, e-signatures, wiki, projects, social scheduling — one flat $50/mo add-on for your WHOLE team, no seat meters — and your agents work INSIDE them: they edit the docs, file the tasks, queue the posts. Every agent conversation archives to your own drive as readable files — your logs, your property. Not the product; you keep paying for the rest of your stack. The famous 50-app suite — each app another seat-metered line item, and the AI doesn't span them.
Your data, queryable A private data lake per business: your agents build real ETL (they have computers) and pull ANY system's data in; your dashboard — an agent-built page, not a template — charts it live, and campaigns, invoices, and calls land there automatically. Migrating? Your old CRM imports with a full rehearsal first and a 72-hour undo after. Dashboards over GHL's own data. Imports are CSV mapping — no rehearsal, no undo. Analytics — another seat-metered app; DataPrep for ETL — another one; the assembly is yours.
Your Monday brief Every week your manager writes you an honest review of everything the team did — work finished, conversations handled, money moved, what failed, what's waiting on you — in chat and in your inbox. You read it; nobody compiles it. Dashboards you check; the reporting habit is yours to build. Zia Reports answer questions you ask — the asking, weekly, is still you.
Proof of who did what Every agent action carries a provenance chain — which human or agent asked, sealed link by link and tamper-evident. Click any message and walk its whole lineage, owner to outcome. Edits don't hide; the chain says exactly where. Activity logs. Per-app audit logs; the cross-app story is yours to reconstruct.
Praetor — the compliance gate Every outbound — call, text, iMessage, agent-initiated or human — passes a deterministic engine first: 51-jurisdiction calling rules, a consent ledger, instant opt-out, a hash-chained audit trail. No LLM in the decision path. It's what makes autonomous outbound safe to run. Compliance is your configuration and your liability — their AI texts, you hold the TCPA exposure. Field-level controls exist; outbound judgment is still yours.
Your human team Joins free. Pricing never meters your headcount. Unlimited users per location. $14–52 per user per month — every hire is a line item.
How the AI is priced Included. Flat plans and flat service tiers — never metered by tokens or usage; pay up front, generous caps you can read before you buy. An add-on: $50–97/mo per location or pay-per-use tokens and ~$0.16/min voice — and agencies retail the receptionist at $200–400/mo. Sticker says $14–52/user — the real bill is seats × headcount × apps, plus Zia credits, plus your own token-metered API key for frontier models.
The creative department Full AI, not chat-only: your agents generate the images, the videos, and the documents — and run your social calendar, campaign scheduling and analytics included. Content AI drafts copy; the social planner is yours to fill. Zia writes text; Social is another app; design happens somewhere else.
Websites & storefronts Built custom by your agents — designed, written, and published for your business, not a template with your logo swapped in — with webchat, booking, and a storefront. Funnels and websites from template libraries — genuinely their strength, still hand-assembled. Sites and Commerce — more apps, more seats.
Day one Tell the manager what you need. The stack is live in minutes; the SMS paperwork files itself. Buy a snapshot from an agency, then configure. Pick your apps, import, configure — or hire a partner.

Competitor columns describe their published products and pricing as of August 2026.

Ten more products. One flat bill. And the staff comes with them.

 AgentsFastGoHighLevelZoho
Team chat — your Slack, built in; humans and agents in the same channels ✓ — Cliq — another app; no agents in the channels
Full e-commerce: storefront, inventory, fulfillment, point-of-sale ✓ order forms in funnels Commerce + Inventory — more apps; nobody runs the register
Social studio — agents generate the media, fill the calendar, read the analytics ✓ a planner you fill Social — another app; the calendar arrives empty
Team drive with real-time document co-editing ✓ — WorkDrive — another app; Zia won't edit your docs
E-signing with real signing certificates — the green check in Adobe ✓ basic contracts, no certificate trust Sign — another app
Company wiki your agents read and write ✓ — Learn — another app; nobody writes it for you
Project management your agents file into ✓ — Projects — another app; nobody files the tasks
Video conference rooms on your own links ✓ your Zoom/Teams Meeting — another app; nobody hosts for you
Support ticket desk ✓ — Desk — another app; you staff it
Call-center console — live queues, agent presence, listen-in for your human team ✓ call reporting inside workflows Voice — another app, per-agent pricing
Business mailboxes & shared calendars ✓ campaign relay only Mail — another app

Notice the pattern in Zoho's column: the app exists; the employee doesn't. Every row is another seat-metered app that arrives empty and waits for your team to work it. Ours arrive staffed — agents edit the docs, file the tasks, write the wiki, fill the social calendar, staff the desk, host the calls, run the register. And the bill: everything above rides the base plan or one flat $50/mo apps add-on for your whole team, however many people that is — the same list at Zoho for a five-person shop runs $150–300/mo before the CRM. GoHighLevel mostly doesn't have it at any price.

AgentsFast

$150/mo

manager + 3 agents, everything included

  • Flat pricing — never metered by tokens or usage; generous caps
  • Frontier Claude included — no API key, no token meter, ever
  • AI phone inbound AND outbound, real lines, carrier paperwork: included
  • More agents +$125/mo per pack of 3 · full office suite +$50 flat, no seat meters · your human team joins free

$150 is the bill. That's the point.

GoHighLevel

$97–$497/mo

platform — the AI is all extra

  • AI Employee add-on: $50–97/mo per location — or per token, per message, per execution
  • “Unlimited” AI tier is inbound-only, with fair-use terms
  • Outbound voice ~$0.16/min — 1,000 follow-up minutes ≈ $163/mo, every month
  • Agency retail $200–400/mo · carrier SMS registration is your paperwork

Realistic bill with outbound AI actually on: $350–600+/mo — and it still answers from a script.

Zoho

$14–52 × seat

per user · per month · per app — a 5-person shop is ~$200/mo before any AI

  • Every employee is a line item, in every app they touch
  • Zia rides the upper tiers + credit packs; frontier models mean YOUR OpenAI/Anthropic key — metered per token
  • Phone is a telephony integration: per number, per minute, on your bill
  • Outbound AI calling: not available at any price

Realistic bill to approximate this column: $300+/mo in seats, credits, API keys and telephony — outbound gap included.

The API-key tax, spelled out: on other platforms, “good AI” means bringing your own OpenAI or Anthropic key — every conversation metered per token, every busy month a bigger bill, on top of the seats and the software. AgentsFast runs frontier Claude on every conversation and the meter simply doesn't exist.

Where they're ahead today, honestly: an ads launcher and an agency white-label marketplace. Both are on our runway — and neither changes which column does the work.

The economics

Per-seat pricing taxes growth. Per-conversation pricing taxes success.

The suite model meters every conversation; the SaaS-stack model meters every employee; the agency model meters every hour. Ours meters none of them, through either door: on AgentsFast a flat subscription covers the whole stack and your AI team, and on the single-tenant model you own the platform outright and run it on your infrastructure. The better your agents get, the better your economics get — which is the correct direction for that curve to point.

Capability by capability

Fifteen capabilities. One column that’s a company.

● first-class & proven on our live wall · ◐ partial or build-it-yourself · ○ absent / not their job

Capability DAS Frameworks Ent. suites Point products Why it matters
Agents with governed identity ● ◐ ◐ ○ directory-governed principals, scoped roles, instant revocation
Managers, org chart, work queues ● ○ ○ ○ an organization, not a bot list
Durable memory that compounds ● ◐ ◐ ○ survives restarts + model swaps; hygiene cycles built in
Human approval gates + decision ledger ● ◐ ◐ ○ HITL on consequences, replayable after the fact
Cross-vendor agent federation ● ◐ ○ ○ open-protocol mesh; identity carried end-to-end
Per-tool, per-agent authorization ● ○ ◐ ○ policy on every tool call, ledgered grants
Company stack included (CRM→billing) ● ○ ◐ ○ the whole floor plan ships in the box
Omnichannel comms with consent gates ● ○ ◐ ◐ voice/SMS/email/chat through one governed broker
Progressive lead condensation ● ○ ○ ○ cross-channel identity joins merge duplicate leads into one story — consent trail intact, agent acts on it
Real-time data plane + agent learning loop ● ○ ◐ ○ every event lands once; dashboards, memory, evals share it
Model agnosticism (frontier ↔ local) ● ● ○ ○ per-agent routing, budgets, degrade chains
Customer-owned deployment ● ● ○ ○ your cloud, your rack, your keys — or air-gapped
Continuously re-proven behavior (public wall) ● ○ ○ ○ hundreds of live end-to-end checks, public at /proof
Flat, ownable economics ● ● ○ ◐ no per-seat, no per-conversation meter
Time-to-first-value in minutes ● ○ ◐ ● the AgentsFast door: the whole stack, multitenant, live in minutes

The unfair advantage: we’re not selling a comparison.

Everything in the DAS column is on duty for our own company right now, pinned by a public wall of live end-to-end checks. Frameworks demo notebooks. Suites demo sandboxes. We hand you the receipts.

See the live wall Explore the product lines Talk to us