Artisan AI: Ava the AI BDR, Pricing and Alternatives
Artisan is the company behind Ava, an AI BDR that finds prospects, writes personalized cold outreach, handles the replies and books meetings for your reps. It became famous for its “Stop Hiring Humans” billboards, and SaaStr’s Jason Lemkin is quoted on its homepage saying he replaced his entire outbound team with it.
Under the marketing, it is an outbound platform: a contact database, an email sequencer, a dialer and an AI that runs them.
The quick answer: Artisan’s Ava searches a database of 250 million B2B contacts, enriches and prioritizes leads, sends multi-channel sequences in your reps’ names, tests message variations, answers replies and books meetings. Startups can start free, then pay $250 a month (Intern) or $600 a month (Employee) billed annually, or $280 and $660 monthly. Larger teams get plans sized by sales. Trustpilot reviews average 4.1, with praise for its account managers and complaints about results. If what you need is the follow-up after a lead replies, books or calls, from your own inbox and CRM, Carly does that: free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month.
Artisan at a glance
Checked against Artisan’s website, pricing page and Trustpilot on October 8, 2026. US dollars.
| Artisan (Ava) | |
|---|---|
| What it is | An outbound sales platform run by an AI BDR named Ava |
| Data | 250M+ B2B contacts, enriched from 22+ sources, plus intent signals and website visitor identification |
| Channels | Email and social sequences; call steps queued in a dialer for your reps |
| Sends as | Your reps, from your own sending domains |
| CRM | Two-way sync with Salesforce and HubSpot |
| Price | Free tier; Intern $250 and Employee $600 a month billed annually; Team, Scale and Enterprise by quote |
| Ratings | 4.1 out of 5 on Trustpilot |
| Best for | B2B teams that want cold outbound volume without hiring BDRs |
What Ava does
Artisan describes Ava’s job in four steps:
- Finds and prioritizes leads. Search the 250 million contacts or import from your CRM. Ava enriches each prospect and ranks them by intent signals like funding rounds and leadership hires.
- Runs personalized sequences across email and social, and queues call steps in a built-in dialer so reps can click and dial.
- Tests messaging with dozens of variations per campaign and shifts volume to what works.
- Handles replies, qualifies interested leads, handles objections and books meetings on reps’ calendars, with escalation rules for when a human steps in.
You can run Ava alongside your existing stack, syncing with Salesforce or HubSpot so reps don’t change tools, or let it replace the stack. Artisan pitches it as a replacement for ZoomInfo, Nooks and Outreach in one subscription. You can require approval before anything sends, lock tone and calls to action, and ban phrases.
Artisan has also launched Artie (artie.ai), a separate waitlist product of “AI employees” for other roles: a generalist, an executive assistant that handles inbox and calendar, an engineer, a designer, a recruiter and a marketer. They work over text, WhatsApp, Slack, email and phone. Artie’s site says the company has raised $35 million.
Artisan pricing (October 2026)
Startups
| Plan | Annual billing | Monthly billing | Credits | Leads contacted |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 300 a month | Lookups and list building only |
| Intern | $250 a month | $280 a month | 10,000 a month | About 500 a month |
| Employee | $600 a month | $660 a month | 25,000 a month | About 1,250 a month |
Intern adds HubSpot sync, autonomous campaigns and replies, deliverability monitoring and Slack. Employee adds advanced campaign types and webhooks. A human power dialer is $67 a seat a month annually, or $75 monthly.
Credits power everything: 2 to verify an email, 10 for a phone number, 4 to identify a website visitor, and about 20 per person for a full campaign. On annual plans you get the year’s credits upfront and unused credits do not roll over at the end of the term.
Businesses and enterprises
Team (about 2,500 leads contacted a month), Scale (about 6,000) and Enterprise are priced by sales, sized to lead volume, mailboxes and dialer seats. Every plan includes onboarding and customer success support in a shared Slack channel. Enterprise adds a forward-deployed strategist.
Artisan reviews: what users report
Artisan averages 4.1 out of 5 on Trustpilot. The five-star reviews are mostly about people: customer success managers named in review after review for tuning campaigns and answering fast. Several say the 2026 version is much better than the one they tried a year earlier.
The low scores are about results and scope:
- “Zero results” (2026): a team that used it for a few months saw “about a 0.07% positive response rate,” with almost no meaningful interest.
- June 2026: “pretty much a email automation tool,” adding that LinkedIn automation no longer worked.
- Another review calls it “just a email automation tool wrapped around LLMs” that cannot do LinkedIn outreach or phone calls.
One reviewer with large deal sizes said it was a good platform for a high-volume motion their business simply was not running. That is the honest test: Ava is built for volume outbound.
Artisan alternatives
| Alternative | Best for | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Carly | Follow-up, sequences from your own inbox, calls to new leads and CRM updates | Free workflows; agents from $35/mo |
| AiSDR | An AI SDR (Ami) for email and LinkedIn outbound | $250 to $2,500 a month |
| Conversica | Revenue agents that follow up with leads and customers | By quote |
| Rox | AI agents that work account research and pipeline for sellers | By quote |
| Relevance AI | Enterprise agent workforces, including a BDR agent | Enterprise only |
1. Carly
Carly handles everything after the lead list, from your own accounts. Pair it with the data tool you already use, Apollo for the list and Carly for everything after the reply.
- Sequences from your own Gmail or Outlook that stop the moment someone replies, so outreach reads like it came from you because it did.
- A researched opener for every new prospect. Add a row to your sheet and Carly researches the person, writes a one-to-one email from real facts and sends it.
- Speed to lead. A new inbound lead gets a call from your business number right away, then your booking link by email and a text if they miss it.
- Replies handled. A shared team inbox with AI-drafted replies and intent labels, and a demo no-show gets a rebook email with real open times.
- CRM kept current. When an email shows a deal moved, Carly moves it in HubSpot, Pipedrive or Attio, or marks it lost with the reason. Or use Carly’s own CRM.
Those run as workflows that start on their own, and agents run them for the whole team. Carly connects to thousands of apps. Free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month. Get started here.
2. AiSDR
AiSDR’s agent, Ami, finds prospects from buying signals, sends email and LinkedIn sequences and books meetings, from a $250 self-serve plan to $900 a month and up on quarterly terms. See our AiSDR review and AiSDR alternatives.
3. Conversica
Conversica has sold AI that follows up with leads by email and text for more than a decade, now as “revenue digital workers” for marketing, sales and customer success.
4. Rox
Rox gives each seller AI agents that research accounts, track signals and prepare pipeline work across the CRM and warehouse.
5. Relevance AI
Relevance AI builds teams of specialist agents, including outbound prospectors, for enterprise go-to-market teams. It dropped its self-serve plans in 2026.
FAQ
How much does Artisan cost?
Startups can use a free tier with 300 credits a month. Intern is $250 a month billed annually ($280 monthly) and Employee is $600 a month annually ($660 monthly). Team, Scale and Enterprise plans for larger companies are priced by sales.
Does Artisan replace a BDR team?
Artisan positions Ava as doing the repetitive outbound work, finding leads, writing outreach and handling replies, so reps spend their time on live conversations. Results vary widely in reviews, from strong pipeline to near-zero positive replies.
What is Artie from Artisan?
Artie is Artisan’s newer product: AI employees for roles beyond sales, including an executive assistant, an engineer and a recruiter. It is waitlist-only. For an AI assistant that runs your inbox, calendar and follow-up today, see Carly.
What is the best Artisan alternative?
For follow-up, sequences from your own inbox, calls to new leads and CRM updates, Carly. Keep your data tool for the list and let Carly run everything after the reply.
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Now Carly reaches out to candidates, shares my real-time availability, lets them pick a slot, then sends a Zoom link and drops it straight into my calendar. She sends reminders to both of us before each call, which has significantly reduced no-shows and last-minute confusion.
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