Otterly.AI and Conductor both let a small team start without talking to sales, but on very different terms. Otterly.AI has a published $29 a month Lite plan and a 7-day trial with no card, while Conductor offers a free 3-week trial of a platform whose prices are not public. DeepSmith is a strong alternative on what happens after the trial: Pro is $99 a month with tracked prompts and publish-ready articles sent to your CMS, with no long-term contract.
If you are weighing Otterly.AI or Conductor for small teams, you are probably asking two things: what can I test before I pay, and what will I owe when the trial ends. Otterly.AI answers the second question on its pricing page, and Conductor answers the first with a longer trial of a much bigger product. DeepSmith sits next to both as a platform that tracks AI answers and also writes the content that closes the gaps, with its prices listed.
Otterly.AI vs Conductor for small teams: the short answer
- Choose DeepSmith if you want tracking and finished articles on one self-serve plan: Pro is $99 a month with 50 tracked prompts and 20 articles, the 7-day trial runs on your real data, and there is no long-term contract.
- Choose Otterly.AI if you mainly need tracking and want a low price you can read before signing up: Lite is $29 a month for 15 prompts, with a 7-day trial that needs no card.
- Choose Conductor if you want three weeks to try an enterprise suite and you are fine asking for a quote afterward, because the pricing page shows allowances but no dollar amounts.
| DeepSmith | Otterly.AI | Conductor | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price (monthly) | $99/mo (Pro) | $29/mo (Lite) | Not published |
| Annual price | $80/mo (Pro) | $25/mo (Lite) | Not published |
| Prompts at entry tier | 50 | 15 | Not published (2,500 AI Search credits a year) |
| Engines at entry tier | 1 (ChatGPT) | 4 (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot) | Not published per plan |
| Free trial | 7 days | 7 days, no card | 3 weeks, no card |
| What the trial includes | Real data and real drafts | 50 prompts, API, MCP, 100 GEO audit URLs | Not stated |
| Content generation | Yes | Not listed | Yes, drafts |
| CMS publishing | Yes | Not listed | No |
| Contract | No long-term contract | Monthly or annual plans | Quote and order form |
| G2 rating | 4.8/5 | 4.7/5 and 4.8/5 (two listings) | 4.5/5 |
Pricing and features as of September 2026, from each vendor's site and public reviews.
Otterly.AI
Otterly.AI is a self-serve AI search monitoring tool built around a daily prompt set. It tracks mentions, citations, position, sentiment and share of voice across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot, which every plan includes. Google AI Mode, Gemini and Claude cost extra.
Lite is $29 a month ($25 billed annually) and is aimed at solo marketers and small teams. For a small team the standout is that the price is on the page and the trial asks for no card. The real limit is that Lite is narrow: 15 prompts, one workspace, three recommendations a week, and no API or MCP access. The next plan, Standard, is $189 a month. Otterly.AI documents no article writing and no CMS publishing.
Reviewers praise the interface, quick setup and responsive support, and some raise the Lite prompt allowance and the price jump. G2 shows 4.7/5 from 54 reviews and 4.8/5 from 42 reviews on two separate listings, checked in September 2026.
Conductor
Conductor is an enterprise SEO and AEO platform made of four connected products: Intelligence for AI search and keyword reporting, Creator for drafting and scoring, Monitoring for 24/7 site checks, and AgentStack for MCP, API and agents. It tracks eight engines, including Claude and Grok, and ChatGPT in two modes.
Conductor offers a free trial with no credit card for Creator, Intelligence or Monitoring, advertised as three weeks. Conductor does not state what the trial includes, such as how many AI Search credits you get. Its pricing page shows allowances for Essentials, Growth and Enterprise but no dollar amounts, and Essentials and Growth each list 2,500 AI Search credits a year.
Reviewers like having AI visibility next to SEO data, and they praise the support. They also say the price and scope can be hard to justify for smaller teams. G2 shows 4.5/5 from 788 reviews, checked in September 2026.
DeepSmith: the alternative with a published price after the trial
The gap for a small team is in what comes after the trial. Otterly.AI gives you a low published price, but it is a monitoring tool, and it documents no way to write or publish the content that would change what you see. Conductor writes drafts, 60 a year on Essentials, and says people should review every draft, but it does not publish to a CMS and it does not tell you the price.
DeepSmith tracks and produces in one platform. The tracking side reports mention rate, citation rate and share of voice with a competitor leaderboard, and shows which of your pages AI actually cites. Opportunity Agents turn those gaps into content ideas, each with the data point behind it. The Writer then turns a planned idea into a finished article that is researched, linked internally and externally, and comes with a cover image and publish-ready metadata. Autowrite can do that on a schedule, and Produced Content publishes to WordPress, Webflow, Strapi, Sanity or Contentful.
Pro is $99 a month ($80 billed annually) with 20 articles, 50 tracked prompts and 5 seats, and it tracks ChatGPT, with Perplexity added on Grow and Gemini on Scale. There are no long-term contracts and no cancellation fees.
What each trial lets you test
Conductor has the longer trial and Otterly.AI has the one with limits you can read. Conductor gives you three weeks across Creator, Intelligence or Monitoring, so you can try drafting and site checks as well as AI tracking. Because it does not state the credits, you will not know how many prompts you can run until you start. Otterly.AI gives you 7 days with 50 prompts, 100 GEO audit URLs, 1,000 API requests, 1,000 MCP requests and 50,000 Agent Analytics events, which is more than the Lite plan itself allows. Some of its sign-up pages still say 14 days, but its changelog and help article say 7, and I'd go with 7.
What DeepSmith does: The 7-day trial runs on real data and real drafts before you pay. Onboarding starts from your website, so your brand brief, competitors, starter tracking prompts and first batch of ideas are already in place, and a small team can judge the article quality as well as the tracking.
What happens when the trial ends
Otterly.AI is clearer here. You pick Lite at $29, or Standard at $189, and you can change plans from the billing tab. Its formal terms say fees are generally nonrefundable once prepaid and that annual billing is upfront, so check the plan length before you pay.
Conductor ends in a sales conversation. Essentials shows a "Try for Free" button, Growth says "Request a Demo", and Enterprise says "Contact Sales". Its published US terms from May 2024 describe fees set in an order form, invoiced in advance, noncancellable and nonrefundable by default, with automatic renewal unless you give 90 days' notice. Those are older terms, so confirm them against your own order form. The Otterly.AI vs Conductor pricing breakdown covers the full tier and contract comparison.
What DeepSmith does: When the trial ends, the price is already on the pricing page, from $99 a month, and you can cancel without a fee. A small team does not need a quote or a contract review to keep going.
What it costs to keep
In Otterly.AI vs Conductor for small teams, Otterly.AI is the clear winner on cost. Lite is $29 a month for 15 prompts on four engines. Adding Google AI Mode and Gemini at $9 each and Claude at $29 brings Lite to $76 a month by my arithmetic, which is still low, though 15 prompts is a small set. Going to 100 prompts means Standard at $189, and covering all seven engines there adds $227 a month.
Conductor's cost cannot be worked out from the public pages. AI tracking uses credits, and third-party research puts the cost per response between 0.1 credits for Google AI Overviews and 2 credits for ChatGPT Search and Gemini. As a rough example, one prompt checked daily on ChatGPT Search uses about 730 credits a year, so 2,500 credits covers a little over three of those. The same prompt on Google AI Overviews uses about 37. The engine mix changes the bill a lot, which is why budgeting for AI credits matters before you sign.
What DeepSmith does: Pro at $99 a month covers 50 tracked prompts and 20 articles, so tracking and production are one known number, and Grow at $199 adds 40 articles and 100 prompts.
From insight to action
Conductor wins on this axis between the two, because Otterly.AI documents no content writing. Otterly.AI turns tracking into ranked recommendations (three a week on Lite, unlimited on Standard and above) and grades pages in its Content Audit. Conductor links its recommendations into the Writing Assistant, which produces outlines and full drafts with a content score, and it can ground drafts in your voice and knowledge sources. Final publishing still happens in your own CMS.
What DeepSmith does: DeepSmith takes the gap from the tracking data to a finished article in one platform. Opportunity Agents propose ideas with their evidence, the Writer produces a publish-ready article grounded in your Deep IQ brand context, and the article goes to your CMS, so nobody has to carry a draft between tools.
Which should you choose
- DeepSmith fits a small team that wants to see where it shows up in AI answers and then publish the content that improves it, on a plan with a published price and no long-term contract.
- Otterly.AI fits a team that needs tracking only, wants the lowest published price to start, and is happy with 15 prompts on four engines until it outgrows Lite.
- Conductor fits a team that wants three weeks to try AI tracking, drafting and site monitoring together and expects to buy through a sales process.
If you want to see tracking and production working from the same data, you can start a free DeepSmith trial and run your own prompts first.
