How OmniClew compares.
Most ways of answering a website’s visitors either return pages to read or generate an answer on the spot. OmniClew publishes answers that were checked before deployment.
Against an AI chatbot
A chatbot generates each answer when the visitor asks, and OmniClew publishes answers that were checked before deployment.
- Accuracy: a chatbot can be confidently wrong, and OmniClew shows only verified answers with a quote from the source.
- Cost: a chatbot costs money for each question, and OmniClew costs nothing per question.
- Hosting: a chatbot sends visitors’ questions to a server, and OmniClew runs in the visitor’s browser.
- Coverage: a chatbot answers almost any question, and OmniClew answers the questions its content covers and stays silent on the rest.
- Auditability: a chatbot’s answers cannot be reviewed in advance, and every OmniClew answer can be.
Against Chatbase, CityBot and similar tools
Chatbase, CityBot and similar products use a language model to generate each answer at the moment a visitor asks. OmniClew publishes answers that were reviewed before deployment. The comparison with an AI chatbot above applies to them.
Against site search
Site search ranks pages, and the visitor reads them to find the answer. OmniClew returns the answer and highlights the passage in the source. When no answer is confident enough, OmniClew shows relevant documents, which is what site search would have returned.
Against search tools that run in the browser
Tools that run in the browser, such as Pagefind or Lunr, return matching pages, and OmniClew returns answers. OmniClew also adds a build step that writes and verifies the answers, finds contradictions, and calibrates when to stay silent.
Against a command palette
A command palette such as Ctrl+K in a web application needs the user to know what the commands are called. OmniClew accepts the visitor’s own wording, and it answers questions instead of running commands.
Against an FAQ page
An FAQ page contains the questions someone thought of in advance, in the organisation’s words. OmniClew builds an FAQ from the entire website, including PDFs, and finds each question’s answer from visitors’ own phrasing. An FAQ page is still useful, and OmniClew uses it as a source.
When to choose something else
Choose a chatbot with a language model at runtime if you need to answer long-tail questions, combine several documents, or hold a conversation, and you accept the cost and the risk of wrong answers. OmniClew is built for websites where a wrong answer is expensive.