Let’s be honest, we’ve all been there. You’re scrambling to find that one document, Slack message, or email thread that holds the key to solving a problem. As companies grow, information gets scattered across dozens of apps, turning simple questions into frustrating digital scavenger hunts. AI search tools like Glean promise to be the solution. But before you jump in, it’s worth getting the lay of the land.
First things first, let’s clear up a common point of confusion. If you search for "Glean," you’ll actually find two different products. There’s "glean.co"(https://www.trustpilot.com/review/glean.co), a note-taking app popular with students, and "glean.com"(https://www.glean.com), the enterprise AI search platform we’re digging into today. This review is all about the business tool: we’ll look at its features, what real users are saying, and where it might fall short, so you can decide if it’s the right fit for your team.
What is Glean?
Glean is an AI-powered enterprise search platform. The easiest way to think about it is like a private Google for everything inside your company. Its main job is to connect to all your workplace apps, think project management tools, document editors, chat apps, and create one single, unified place to search. Instead of logging into five different systems to find what you need, you can just ask Glean.
It’s designed to index information from all the places your team works, including tools like Slack, Google Docs, Confluence, and your help desk. The big promise is to save everyone a ton of time by making company knowledge instantly discoverable. It uses AI to understand the context behind your search, aiming to give you much more relevant answers than a simple keyword search ever could. By surfacing the right documents and conversations at the right time, Glean helps employees get answers and move on with their day.
Glean reviews: Key features and strengths
To give you a fair picture, let’s look at what Glean does well, based on its own marketing and positive reviews from sources like Gartner. When it’s working as intended, it offers a pretty powerful way to tap into your organization’s collective brain.
Unified search across 100+ applications
Glean’s biggest selling point is its ability to connect to a massive library of workplace apps. It can index data from project management tools like Jira, help desks like Zendesk, and CRMs like Salesforce. This creates a central hub for all your information, which is a huge relief for teams tired of asking, "Wait, where did we save that again?" The idea is simple but powerful: one search bar to rule them all.
AI-powered contextual relevance
Unlike a basic search function that just looks for matching keywords, Glean uses AI to figure out what you really mean. It looks at your role, your team, and the projects you’re working on to personalize your results. For example, if a sales rep and an engineer both search for "Q4 roadmap," Glean will try to show each of them the version that’s most relevant to their world. This contextual understanding is meant to cut through the noise and get you the most useful information first.
AI assistant and agents
Beyond just a list of search results, Glean offers an "Assistant" that can answer questions directly and summarize long documents or threads. This can be a real time-saver when you just need a quick answer without having to read a 20-page document. Glean also lets you build "Agents" to automate simple, repetitive tasks. It’s a cool feature that points toward a more automated future, but as we’ll see, the reality of setting it all up can be a bit more complicated than it sounds.
Glean reviews: Common limitations and challenges
While Glean’s vision is impressive, a closer look at user feedback brings a few common challenges to light. For teams looking for a practical, get-it-done solution, these limitations are worth thinking about. This is where the difference between a pure search tool and a true workflow automation platform really starts to show.
It’s a search tool, not a full workflow engine
According to a detailed review from Slite, Glean is excellent at finding information but stops short of helping you act on it. It’s like a brilliant librarian who can find any book in the library for you, but it’s still up to you to read it and write the report. For many teams, finding a help article is great, but what they really want is for the customer’s ticket to be resolved.
This is a big difference compared to a platform like eesel AI, which is built from the ground up for action. eesel doesn’t just find knowledge; its AI Agent uses that knowledge to autonomously handle support tickets, tag and triage issues, and even make API calls to other systems to get real-time information. It closes the loop between finding an answer and actually solving the problem.
Tricky setup and potential data security concerns
Multiple Gartner reviews mention a "tricky setup" and even "unexpected data disclosure" issues. While Glean states that it respects all existing permissions, connecting dozens of data sources is a complex job. A small misconfiguration could potentially expose sensitive information, and getting it right often requires a good amount of time and technical oversight.
This is where a solution designed for simplicity really stands out. eesel AI is built to be radically self-serve, letting teams go live in minutes, not months. Its one-click integrations are straightforward, and a powerful simulation mode lets you test the AI on thousands of your past tickets in a completely safe environment. You can see exactly how it will perform and what its resolution rate will be before it ever interacts with a live customer, giving you total confidence and control right from the start.
Inconsistent search quality and user experience
For a tool that’s all about search, the quality of the results is everything. Some users report that Glean’s search can be hit-or-miss, especially when dealing with older or poorly-tagged documents. This is a classic "garbage in, garbage out" problem for AI that relies only on document indexing; if your source material isn’t well-organized, the AI’s output won’t be either.
This is why eesel AI takes a different path. It improves its accuracy by training on your team’s successful past ticket resolutions. It learns from what has actually worked for your team, not just from what’s written down in a document somewhere. Even better, eesel AI helps you fix these knowledge gaps by automatically generating draft help articles from those successful resolutions. This ensures your knowledge base is always improving with content that’s actually proven to be effective.
Glean pricing: What to expect
Glean doesn’t publish its pricing online. This is pretty common for enterprise software, but it’s a real drawback for teams that value transparency and need to budget properly.
To get a price, you have to contact their sales team and sit through a demo. The final cost will likely depend on your company size, the number of users, and which integrations you need. This sales-heavy approach usually means you’re looking at a significant investment and a long-term annual contract, which can be a tough pill to swallow if you’re not a massive corporation.
eesel AI’s transparent pricing plans
At eesel AI, we think you should know what you’re paying for upfront. That’s why our pricing is public, predictable, and designed to scale with you. We don’t charge per resolution, so you’ll never get a surprise bill after a busy month. Plus, we offer flexible monthly plans you can cancel anytime, which is a world away from the rigid annual contracts you often see in the enterprise space.
| Plan | Monthly Price (Billed Monthly) | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
| Team | $299 | Up to 1,000 AI interactions/mo, train on docs, Copilot, Slack integration. |
| Business | $799 | Up to 3,000 AI interactions/mo, train on past tickets, AI Actions, bulk simulation. |
| Custom | Contact Sales | Unlimited interactions, advanced integrations, custom security controls. |
Is Glean the right tool for you?
So, after digging through the Glean reviews, what’s the verdict? Glean is a powerful and ambitious enterprise search tool. For a large organization that’s drowning in information silos and has the resources to manage a lengthy implementation, it could be a really valuable asset for helping people find things.
However, its primary focus on search over action, the potential for a tricky setup, and its opaque, enterprise-style pricing make it a tough sell for many teams. If your main goal is simply to find documents, and you have the budget and technical team to back it up, Glean is worth a look.
But for teams who need more than just a search bar, teams who need to automate workflows, resolve customer issues, and get up and running quickly with a clear price tag, a more practical and action-oriented alternative is probably a much better fit.
Go beyond search with eesel AI
If the limitations of a search-only tool sound familiar, you might want to consider a platform that doesn’t just find answers but automates the work that comes next. eesel AI is designed for teams that need to get things done.
With eesel AI, you can go live in minutes with a truly self-serve platform, gain total control over your support workflows with customizable AI actions, and enjoy transparent, predictable pricing without hidden fees or scary long-term contracts.
Ready to see how automation can transform your team? Try eesel AI for free or book a quick demo with our team.
Frequently asked questions
Glean reviews highlight its main strength as unified search across over 100 applications, creating a central hub for all company information. This capability aims to eliminate information silos by indexing data from various workplace tools into one searchable platform.
Yes, Glean reviews frequently mention challenges such as a tricky setup process and the potential for complex data security configurations. Users also report inconsistent search quality, especially when dealing with older or poorly organized source material.
Glean reviews emphasize that its AI search uses contextual relevance, personalizing results based on your role, team, and projects. This allows it to understand intent beyond simple keyword matches, aiming to deliver more useful and relevant information first.
According to Glean reviews, the platform is often considered most beneficial for large organizations drowning in information silos. These companies typically have significant budgets and dedicated technical teams to manage the lengthy implementation process.
Yes, some Glean reviews, particularly from Gartner, have noted "unexpected data disclosure" concerns during setup. While Glean states it respects existing permissions, connecting dozens of data sources requires careful configuration to prevent potential exposure of sensitive information.
Glean reviews indicate its pricing model is opaque, as it’s not published online and requires contacting their sales team for a custom quote. This suggests it’s aimed at large enterprises with substantial budgets, typically involving long-term annual contracts rather than transparent, flexible options.
Glean reviews suggest that while it excels at finding information, it is limited as a full workflow engine. It offers an AI Assistant for summaries and Agents for simple tasks, but it generally stops short of automating complex actions or autonomously resolving issues.
