Parloa vs Kore.ai: An honest comparison for 2025

Trying to pick the right conversational AI platform can feel like you’re drowning in buzzwords and sales pitches. You’re looking for a tool to make your customer service better, but the market is packed with options that promise the world and often deliver a reality of long setup times, confusing features, and costs that are anything but clear. It's easy to get stuck in a loop of demos, feeling more confused than when you started.

This guide is here to cut through that noise. We’re putting two of the big enterprise players, Parloa and Kore.ai, side-by-side to give you a clear comparison. We’ll get into what they’re good at, where they fall short, and who they’re really for. We’ll also show you a more modern, nimble alternative for teams that want serious power without the classic enterprise headaches.

What is conversational AI?

So, what's conversational AI, really? In simple terms, it's the tech that powers those smart chatbots and voice assistants that businesses use. These AI agents are built to chat with customers and employees in a way that feels natural, almost human.

They use clever tech like natural language processing (NLP) to figure out what someone is typing or saying and then give a helpful answer. The whole point is to automate conversations on your website, in messaging apps, or over the phone, making everything a bit faster and smoother for everyone involved.

What is Parloa?

Parloa bills itself as an "AI Agent Management Platform" made for big contact centers. It has a heavy focus on voice, with the goal of making phone calls with an AI feel as easy as talking to a person.

The platform is designed to handle everything from mapping out a conversation to testing it, launching it, and tweaking its performance over time. It has a low-code, drag-and-drop builder for creating dialogue flows, which is great for teams who like to see their workflows visually. A big win for Parloa is how well it plays with the Microsoft Azure ecosystem, making it a natural choice for companies already using Microsoft’s cloud services. It’s built for large organizations that need a powerful, secure, and voice-focused solution and are okay with a hands-on, partner-led setup process.

What is Kore.ai?

Kore.ai is a big, no-code platform that wants to automate pretty much everything, from customer service chats to internal employee workflows.

A key selling point is its "model-agnostic" approach, meaning you aren't tied to one specific AI model and can swap in different ones as needed. Their main hub, the Experience Optimization (XO) Platform, is where you build and manage all these AI agents. Kore.ai really stands out with its huge library of ready-made solutions for industries like banking and healthcare. It's also great at handling complicated, back-and-forth conversations that need to connect with your internal systems. It’s aimed at large companies that need a super-customizable platform for complex tasks and want the freedom to choose their own AI models and how they deploy them.

Parloa vs Kore: How fast can you get started?

Let's be real, nobody wants to wait months to see if a new tool is actually working. How quickly you can get an AI platform up and running is a huge deal, and this is where the traditional enterprise approach of Parloa and Kore.ai can start to feel a bit slow.

How Parloa handles setup

With Parloa, you're usually not going it alone. They use a partner-led model, which means you’ll work with certified consultants to get everything configured. While having experts on hand is nice, it almost always translates to longer timelines and extra service fees on top of your license. For a platform this size, you should probably expect a setup process that takes anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months.

How Kore.ai handles setup

As another enterprise-first platform, getting started with Kore.ai is a major project. It's not something you can just sign up for and start fiddling with. The process requires technical folks to handle the configuration, connect it to your current systems, and get your team up to speed. The platform is incredibly powerful, but that power comes with a steep learning curve and a big upfront investment of time.

The agility gap

For most support and IT teams today, a multi-month setup just isn't going to fly. They need tools that are quick, intuitive, and can be managed without a whole team of developers.

A more modern approach, like the one you get with eesel AI, flips this on its head. Instead of long-drawn-out projects, eesel AI is designed to be completely self-serve, letting you go live in minutes, not months. You can connect your help desk, like Zendesk or Freshdesk, with a single click, no messing with APIs. Better yet, you can safely test your setup by running a simulation on thousands of your past tickets. This gives you a clear, risk-free look at how much you could automate before you ever switch it on for your customers.

A view of the eesel AI Copilot in Zendesk, showing how it can draft replies for common issues like password resets, a key aspect of the Parloa vs Kore debate on agility.

Parloa vs Kore: Features and customization

Having a ton of features is one thing, but if you can't actually control them, what's the point? The ability to tweak how and when your AI steps in is what makes the difference between a helpful assistant and a frustrating robot.

Parloa's feature set

Parloa really shines with its tools for designing and fine-tuning voice agents. Its visual builder is fantastic for creating clear, predictable conversation flows, which is super important for voice support where you can't have any confusion. The downside of this structured approach is that it can be a bit rigid. If you want to make big changes to your workflows or the AI's personality, you might have to loop in your implementation partner, which can slow you down.

Kore.ai's feature set

Kore.ai is a beast when it comes to automating complex workflows that dig deep into your company's backend systems. If you need an AI that can solve tricky, logic-heavy problems, Kore.ai has the muscle. The flip side? It can be seriously complex. The sheer number of settings can be a lot to take in, and getting the most out of it often requires someone who knows the platform inside and out.

Why total control matters

Honestly, a giant list of features doesn't mean much. What teams really need is intuitive control over how the AI behaves. You want to be able to easily define its tone of voice, its personality, and exactly what it should do in different scenarios.

This is where eesel AI puts its energy, offering total control through a fully customizable workflow engine. You don't need to be a developer to use the simple prompt editor to shape the AI's persona or set up custom actions. And unlike the rigid, all-or-nothing automation you see elsewhere, eesel AI lets you be selective. You can start small, picking just the simple tickets to automate while your team handles the rest. It gives you the confidence to scale up automation when you're ready.

This workflow illustrates a ticket's journey with an AI agent in Zendesk, highlighting a key difference in the Parloa vs Kore discussion around customizable workflows.

Parloa vs Kore: Pricing and value

Let's talk about the part everyone dreads: the price tag. Opaque, "contact us for a quote" models make it nearly impossible to figure out your budget or calculate if the tool is even worth it. You're left guessing until you're deep in the sales funnel.

Parloa pricing

You won't find a price list on Parloa's website. Like a lot of enterprise software, it’s a custom quote model where the final price depends on things like your call volume, how you plan to use it, and how much help you need with setup. It’s also worth noting that some users have mentioned potential extra fees for custom tweaks, which can add up.

Kore.ai pricing

Kore.ai plays by the same rules. Its pricing isn't public and is built for large enterprise deals. Your total cost will be a mix of the software license, setup fees, and maybe ongoing costs for support. It's standard for the enterprise world, but it doesn't offer much predictability for a business trying to plan its budget.

The case for transparent pricing

Nobody likes surprise fees or a bill that changes every month. A pricing model that charges you for every ticket the AI solves can end up punishing you for being successful. Businesses, especially growing ones, need things to be predictable.

That's a core idea behind eesel AI's transparent and predictable pricing. There are no secrets. You know exactly what you’re paying from the get-go.

Plan	Monthly Price (Billed Monthly)	Key Features
Team	$299	Up to 1,000 AI interactions/mo, train on docs, Copilot
Business	$799	Up to 3,000 AI interactions/mo, train on past tickets, AI Actions
Custom	Contact Sales	Unlimited interactions, advanced security, custom integrations

Best of all, eesel AI has no per-resolution fees. Your bill doesn't shoot up just because you had a busy month. It also offers flexible month-to-month plans you can cancel anytime, which is a level of freedom you just don't see in the enterprise AI space.

Parloa vs Kore: Picking the right platform for your team

Alright, let's break it down. When it comes to Parloa vs Kore, who's it for?

Parloa is a solid, secure, voice-first platform that makes a ton of sense for large companies, especially those already using Microsoft's tech stack. It’s best for teams who want a structured, guided setup led by experts.

Kore.ai is an incredibly flexible and customizable platform for automating tricky business processes across your whole company. It’s the right call for enterprises with the technical know-how to use all its features and who need a tool that can handle just about any workflow.

Both are heavy-hitting enterprise tools, but they follow a traditional playbook that requires a big investment of time, money, and people.

For teams that want enterprise-level results without all the friction, there's a better way. A tool like eesel AI gives you the best of both worlds: powerful, customizable AI that you can set up yourself in minutes, with clear pricing that grows with you, not against you.

Get started with a smarter AI agent

If you're ready for an AI platform that works with the tools you already use, learns from your own data, and starts delivering value on day one, maybe it's time to give eesel AI a look.

Start your free trial today and see how quickly you can get your support on autopilot.