Heliyos vs Artisan

What Artisan does well

Artisan calls itself an "all-in-one, AI-first platform powered by AI employees", and Ava is its first. Ava finds leads, enriches them, sends personalised messages and books meetings on behalf of your reps, sending in their names from your own domains. The platform consolidates the outbound stack: B2B data with 250 million or more verified contacts, enrichment, intent signals, a sequencer, deliverability and a dialer add-on for reps. Campaign types include cold outbound, signal-based outreach, CRM reactivation of existing and churned contacts, and cross-sell and upsell. A second AI employee, Artie, is now listed on its pages.

Control is better than the "autopilot" framing suggests. Artisan's pricing FAQ answers "Can we control what Ava sends?" with "Approve before sending, lock tone and CTAs, set banned phrases, and coach Ava's writing. Autonomous by default, adjustable by design." Escalation rules decide when a human steps in.

Every plan includes Salesforce and HubSpot sync, Slack reporting, custom webhooks, CSM support in a shared Slack channel and guided onboarding. Scale adds a dedicated CSM and CRM setup; Enterprise adds a forward-deployed strategist, SOC 2 Type II, SSO and audit logs.

Where Heliyos differs

Heliyos is an AI-native OS rather than an outbound platform. Every company you sell to has one customer memory: people, deals, emails, meetings, notes and files, written by workers from live sources and read by the whole team. Taylor (AI account executive) drafts follow-ups and proposals and handles scheduling. Parker (AI platform admin) keeps company, people and deal records current after every email and meeting. Custom workers extend the roster. Each worker runs on its own sandboxed computer with only the tools its job allows.

Review is a product surface, not a campaign setting. Artisan lets you approve before sending and lock tone within a campaign. Heliyos shows every pending action, whether an email, a deal stage change or a shared file, in one Reviews queue with the source thread, transcript or record and the worker's reasoning. The reviewer sees why, not only what.

The scope trade-off is real. Heliyos does not ship a contact database, a sequencer or a dialer. Its surfaces are Watchlist, Inbox (Gmail, Outlook, LinkedIn), Tasks, Meetings, Notes, Ask Heliyos chat, Knowledge, Scouts, AI research columns and Enrichment. It is built for the account after the first conversation.

How they handle a reply from a prospect

When a prospect replies to an Ava campaign, Artisan handles it autonomously by default: Ava answers, qualifies and books the meeting, and your rep gets the calendar invite with a brief before the call and a distilled follow-up after. If you have set approvals, the send waits for you. The unit of work is the campaign, and the goal is a booked meeting.

In Heliyos the reply arrives in the Inbox already attached to the account. Parker updates the contact and deal from what was said, citing the lines. Taylor drafts the response from the whole account history, including the last meeting and open tasks, and the draft waits in Reviews beside the thread. A person approves, and the record and the reply are both right.

• Artisan: reply handled inside the campaign, meeting booked, approvals optional.
• Heliyos: reply handled inside the account, record updated, every send reviewed with evidence.

Setup and time to value

Artisan sells through a 30-minute demo tailored to your ICP and stack, then a scoped plan. Onboarding sessions and CSM support start on day one, and sending infrastructure is sized to your motion. Time to first meeting depends on targeting and campaign design, with a team behind you.

Heliyos is in closed beta with a waitlist. Setup is connecting an inbox and a calendar and adding accounts. Workers begin updating records and drafting follow-ups from the conversations you already have, and the first week is mostly spent in Reviews.

Pricing and who it fits

Artisan uses credit-based pricing in three tiers sized to lead volume, mailboxes and dialer seats: Team (around 2,500 leads contacted a month) for a first serious outbound motion, Scale (around 6,000) for teams scaling across reps and segments, and Enterprise for custom volume. Prices are on request; every tier says "Pricing scoped on your plan". It fits startups, SMBs and enterprises that want outbound running without more BDR headcount and are ready for a scoped contract.

Heliyos prices on usage with no seats. You pay for the work the workers do. It fits founders, revenue leaders and GTM operators at B2B teams who want the account record kept current and customer-facing work reviewed before it goes out.

When to choose Artisan, when to choose Heliyos, when to run both

A short decision guide.

• Choose Artisan if you need net-new pipeline, want data, sequencing and deliverability in one place, and like having a CSM on the rollout.
• Choose Heliyos if your problem is what happens after the meeting: follow-ups, proposals, deal hygiene and a shared record, with review on everything that reaches a customer.
• Run both if Ava books the meetings and Heliyos runs the accounts. Both sync two-way with HubSpot, so a meeting Ava books can arrive in the Heliyos memory with its deal already created and Parker keeping it current.