Top 5 Parloa alternatives for customer service AI in 2025

Conversational AI is supposed to make customer service instant, personal, and available 24/7. But let's be real, picking the right platform can feel like a massive commitment, especially when so many tools are built for giant corporations with equally giant budgets.

You’ve probably heard of Parloa, a big name in the AI agent world. It’s a powerful tool, no doubt, but a lot of teams are looking for something that’s easier to manage, more transparent with its pricing, and doesn't require a six-month implementation project to get off the ground.

If that sounds familiar, you're in the right place. We've done the digging to bring you a straightforward comparison of the five best Parloa alternatives for 2025. Let’s find the one that actually fits your team.

What is Parloa?

Parloa is an enterprise-level AI platform built to automate customer conversations, mostly for large contact centers. It's heavily focused on voice automation and comes with a whole toolkit for designing, testing, and managing AI agents. With deep ties to the Microsoft Azure ecosystem, it’s designed for big, corporate setups that need tight control.

Why look for Parloa alternatives?

While Parloa works well for huge enterprises, its approach can be a real headache for teams that need to move a little faster. Here’s why so many people are looking for a different solution:

• The setup is a marathon, not a sprint. Getting started with Parloa often means bringing in certified partners for a long implementation process that can drag on for months. If you need to show results this quarter, not next year, that’s a major roadblock.

• The price is a mystery. Parloa doesn’t list its prices publicly. You have to get on a sales call just to get a ballpark figure, and it often leads to six-figure contracts that are out of reach for many businesses. It’s a slow process that makes budgeting a guessing game.

• You can't just do it yourself. The platform is designed for complex, partner-led projects. That’s fine for a massive company, but it means your own team can't easily build, test, and tweak your AI agents. You’re often waiting on someone else to make simple changes.

• It can be a bit rigid. The platform’s structured, governance-first style is good for keeping things consistent, but it can feel restrictive. If you need to connect to a bunch of different knowledge sources or create custom AI actions without a huge development project, you might hit a wall.

How we chose the best Parloa alternatives

We focused on platforms that solve the most common headaches you run into with enterprise-first tools. Here’s what we looked for:

• Speed to launch: How quickly can you go from signing up to having a working AI agent? We picked platforms you can get running on your own in a few hours or days, not months.

• Clear pricing: Is the pricing model straightforward and predictable? We looked for platforms with public pricing and no weird, hidden fees.

• Customization and control: How much say do you have over your AI’s personality, actions, and knowledge? The best tools put you in the driver's seat.

• Easy integrations: How well does the AI learn from the tools you already use every day? We favored platforms that connect smoothly to help desks, internal wikis, and other documents.

Parloa alternatives at a glance

Here’s a quick rundown of how the top alternatives compare.

The 5 best Parloa alternatives in 2025

1. eesel AI

eesel AI is our top choice for teams that want the muscle of an enterprise-grade AI agent without the slow, complicated, and pricey setup. It’s designed from the ground up to be self-serve, letting you connect your tools, customize your workflows, and go live in minutes. You’re in control from start to finish.

Pros:

• Insanely fast setup: Forget waiting for sales calls and mandatory demos. You can connect eesel AI to your help desk in one click and have a working AI agent up and running in minutes. It plays nicely with all the major platforms like Zendesk, Freshdesk, and Intercom.

• Powerful simulation: Before the AI ever talks to a real customer, you can test it on thousands of your past tickets. This gives you a surprisingly accurate forecast of its performance, so you can launch knowing it’ll actually work.

• Complete workflow control: A simple prompt editor lets you define your AI's tone, personality, and exact instructions. With AI Actions, you can teach it to do more than just answer questions, like looking up order details or triaging tickets based on your own business rules.

• Learns from all your knowledge: eesel AI connects to everything. It trains on your past tickets, help center articles, and pulls knowledge from places like Confluence, Google Docs, and even public Slack channels to give full, accurate answers.

• Transparent, predictable pricing: eesel AI has simple monthly or annual plans without any per-resolution fees. You know exactly what you’re paying each month, and you can cancel whenever you want.

Cons:

• It’s a champ at handling chat and email through your help desk, but it’s not built for complex, old-school phone systems.

• Some of the more advanced features, like managing multiple AI agents in one workflow, are reserved for the custom enterprise plans.

Pricing:

• Team Plan: $299/month ($239/month billed annually) for up to 1,000 AI interactions. Includes AI Copilot, Slack integration, and training on your website and docs.

• Business Plan: $799/month ($639/month billed annually) for up to 3,000 AI interactions. Unlocks the autonomous AI Agent, training on past tickets, AI Actions, and bulk simulation.

• Custom Plan: Custom pricing for unlimited interactions, advanced actions like API calls, and dedicated support.

Best for: Customer support and IT teams who want a fast, flexible, and powerful AI platform they can actually manage themselves, without getting locked into a massive enterprise contract.

2. Synthflow

Synthflow is a very approachable platform for building AI voice agents with a simple drag-and-drop editor. It’s a solid choice for teams that don't have a developer on standby and want to get started with voice automation quickly.

Pros:

• It’s a true no-code platform, which means anyone on your team can design and launch a voice agent without writing a line of code.

• The pricing is clear and mostly based on usage, so it's easy to figure out your costs.

• Features like voice cloning and wide language support are great for creating a more personal touch.

Cons:

• It's all about voice. You won't find the deeper help desk integrations for tasks like ticket sorting, helping agents, or drafting replies.

• While it's easy to use, it can be less flexible if you need to connect to complex backend systems.

Pricing:

Synthflow has a few tiers that mix a base fee with usage costs.

• Starter: $29/month for 50 minutes.

• Pro: $375/month for 2,000 minutes (then $0.13/min).

• Growth: $750/month for 4,000 minutes (then $0.12/min).

• Agency: $1,250/month for 6,000 minutes (then $0.12/min).

• Enterprise: Custom pricing for high volumes, with rates as low as $0.08/minute.

Best for: Small businesses or marketing teams that need a simple way to automate calls for things like qualifying leads or setting appointments.

3. Retell AI

Retell AI is a platform built for developers who want to create extremely realistic AI voice agents. Its claim to fame is its incredibly low response time, which lets people talk to the AI naturally, and even interrupt it, without things getting weird.

Pros:

• The sub-second response time makes conversations feel incredibly smooth and human.

• Its API-first approach gives developers total control over the tech stack, letting them choose their own language models (LLMs), voices, and phone service providers.

• The pay-as-you-go pricing is transparent and scales easily as you grow.

Cons:

• This is not a no-code tool. You'll need developers to build, integrate, and maintain it.

• The platform is hyper-focused on the voice component, so it doesn't have the other tools you'd need for a full customer service setup inside a help desk.

• Finding a clear price list can be a bit of a scavenger hunt, as their official pricing page isn't always up, so you have to piece costs together from various articles.

Pricing:

Retell AI uses a pay-as-you-go model. Based on what we could find, pricing is around $0.05 to $0.07 per minute, plus extra costs for telephony (about $0.015/min) and whatever LLM you decide to use.

Best for: Tech companies and product teams with engineers on hand who want to build custom voice AI solutions or embed voice agents directly into their products.

4. PolyAI

PolyAI is all about providing high-end, fully managed voice assistants for big companies. Its technology is pre-trained for specific industries like hospitality and retail and can understand dozens of languages and accents with impressive accuracy.

Pros:

• The voice assistants are very accurate and can handle complicated, rambling conversations without getting lost.

• It has pre-trained models for common tasks like managing orders or booking reservations, which can speed up deployment for large teams.

• They claim high call containment rates, which means fewer calls get escalated to a human agent.

Cons:

• It’s a traditional enterprise tool with no public pricing and a very high price tag. Contracts usually start in the low six-figures per year.

• It's a "white glove" service, meaning you have almost no ability to build, manage, or change the AI yourself.

Pricing:

PolyAI doesn’t publish its pricing. All plans are custom enterprise contracts that you have to negotiate with their sales team.

Best for: Large, global contact centers in industries like retail or hospitality that need a fully managed, top-tier voice solution and have the budget for it.

5. Cognigy

Cognigy is a do-it-all conversational AI platform that handles both voice and chat. It's built for large organizations and offers flexible deployment, including on-premise or private cloud, which is a must-have for some regulated industries.

Pros:

• It's great at managing conversations across voice, chat, and messaging all from one place.

• The low-code visual builder is pretty user-friendly, allowing less technical folks to design conversation flows.

• The option for on-premise hosting is a huge advantage for companies with strict data or security rules.

Cons:

• Like other enterprise tools, it has custom pricing and is not something you can just sign up for and try. You won't find a pricing page on their site.

• It can be overly complicated to set up and manage compared to more streamlined, self-serve platforms.

Pricing:

Cognigy uses a custom enterprise licensing model. You’ll have to talk to their sales team to get a quote.

Best for: Global enterprises with complex security and compliance needs that want one powerful platform to handle all their conversational AI.

A few extra tips for choosing the right Parloa alternatives

• Insist on a test drive. Don't get trapped in a six-month sales cycle just to see if a tool works for you. A platform that offers a free trial or a solid simulation mode (like eesel AI) is confident in its product and lets you see the proof for yourself.

• Check the integrations. An AI agent is only as good as the information it can access. Make sure the platform you choose can easily connect to all your knowledge sources, not just one help center. The ability to learn from internal wikis, Google Docs, and past conversations is huge.

Move faster with modern Parloa alternatives

Parloa is a capable tool for large companies with the budget and time for a big project, but the world has moved on. The best Parloa alternatives today offer more speed, flexibility, and transparency, putting you in control of your own AI setup. The right platform shouldn’t require a team of consultants to get started; it should feel like a natural part of your workflow.

If you’re ready for a modern, self-serve approach to AI-powered customer service, give eesel AI a look. It’s built to help you deliver better, faster support on your own terms. You can get started for free and have a powerful AI agent running today.