Crayon
Best for: Tracking small number of competitors and revenue enablement
Crayon is a leading competitive intelligence platform focused on helping companies uncover revenue opportunities and identify new growth areas. It’s designed for mid-market and enterprise teams looking to understand and create sustainable advantages in their respective markets.
Crayon collects content on a variety of companies from both online and offline sources and stores them in one place, easily accessible to users conducting competitive research. It uses advanced AI and machine learning (ML) functionality, flagging critical information and displaying actionable insights from millions of sources, saving precious time on research and analysis.
Many industries — including retail, technology, finance, pharmaceutical, and software — use Crayon’s platform to keep up with market trends, drive better sales, and reduce customer churn. However, Crayon may not work for companies who have a large amount of competitors to track, or who need to frequently modify the competitors they are monitoring. It still uses human analysts to process data, so scalability is a challenge. Another limitation of Crayon is its limited use cases beyond competitive intelligence. Without key content sources like broker research and expert calls, as well as advanced AI search capabilities, Crayon cannot support full-scale market or investment research.
Crayon offers the following features for competitive analysis:
- Real-time competitive tracking by collecting data from a wide range of public sources, such as competitor websites, social media, news, product reviews, and more
- Customizable competitive dashboards and battlecards
- Automated data collection and analysis to reduce manual effort and allow teams to focus more on strategy than gathering data
- Allows users to create side-by-side comparisons of competitors’ products and services
Crayon Pros:
- Uses AI and ML capabilities, coupled with human analysts, to source useful data on competitors
- Integrates with multiple business software, including Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Salesforce
- Automated and real-time alerts
- Can tag relevant items with more personalized competitor insights
- Offers in-depth analytics and metrics
- Custom reports and battlecards
- Supports cross-team collaboration and internal sharing of insights
- Intuitive and easy-to-use platform
Crayon Cons:
- Intended for competitive intelligence, not market or investment research
- Scalability is a challenge due to reliance on human analysts
- Does not have an expert call library
- Does not offer SEC filings, earnings estimates, financial reports, and modeling
- Less scalable and modifiable than similar tools
- Lacks industry-specific reports or thought leadership
- Does not host content on its platform; it only provides links to URLs
- Lacks advanced search capabilities, such as keyword and synonym recognition, thematic search, proximity search, and sentiment analysis
- Utilizes human analysts which leads to slower workflow and research process
- No way to track peers’ R&D trends via the platform
If you are looking for a platform that offers additional features and content sets, is more scalable, or that serves a wider variety of use cases, consider the following alternatives to Crayon:
AlphaSense
Best for: Conducting comprehensive market research using premium external content, integrated internal content, and advanced AI features for added speed, accuracy, and scope
AlphaSense is a leading enterprise-grade market intelligence and AI search platform built for robust financial and market research. This platform is designed for research and business professionals looking to implement a comprehensive research strategy powered by automated features and proprietary AI technology.
Consistently ranked as an industry leader by TrustRadius and G2, AlphaSense was also recently named one of Fortune’s Top 50 AI Innovators.
Here’s how AlphaSense enables you to extract insights and answers from both high-value internal and external content with the power of artificial intelligence and generative AI—all on a single platform.
Extensive Out-of-the-Box Content Library
AlphaSense allows you to combine valuable internal content with 10,000+ private, public, premium, and proprietary external data sources into one platform.
Our external content sources include trade journals, news, regulatory documents, earnings transcripts, investor presentations and other company documents, and SEC and global filings. AlphaSense users also have access to two premium and proprietary content offerings. These are:
- Wall Street Insights® – A collection of broker research covering global sector themes, industries, and companies from 1,500+ sell-side and independent firms, available within the AlphaSense platform. Research professionals can even preview the contents of a broker report, saving them wasted time and money on potentially fruitless research.
- Expert Transcript Library – 185K+ proprietary one-on-one call transcripts with industry experts, competitors, customers, partners, and former and current executives, with the ability to conduct your own 1:1 expert calls for less.
In July 2024, AlphaSense acquired expert network company Tegus, bringing unparalleled access to even more insights, and covering more industries and companies than ever before. Learn more about the combined offering at AlphaSense and Tegus.
Enterprise Intelligence
In addition to the external content sources listed above, AlphaSense’s Enterprise Intelligence solution allows you to upload and search through your own internal content. That includes:
- Internal research, notes, and presentations
- CIMs and investment memos
- Reports from industry and market intelligence providers
- Emails, newsletters, web pages, and RSS feeds
In this way, AlphaSense centralizes all your knowledge in one place—the internal and external—and allows you to leverage our industry-leading search, summarization, and monitoring tools to enhance and accelerate your research.
Our genAI capabilities deliver instant, accurate, and secure summarizations with the ability to ask follow-up questions across both your proprietary internal content and hundreds of millions of premium external documents.
AlphaSense meets the highest industry standards—including SOC2 and ISO27001 compliance, regular, accredited third-party penetration testing, FIPS 140-2 standard encryption on all content, and SAML 2.0 integration.
AI Search & Summarization Technology
Our industry-leading suite of generative AI tools is purpose-built to deliver business-grade insights:
Our generative AI chat experience transforms how users can extract insights from hundreds of millions of premium content sources. Generative Search is trained to think like an analyst, so it understands the market research intent behind your natural language queries. Whenever you search for information, Generative Search helps you get up to speed on a company or topic by instantly getting you the answers you need. You can dig deeper into topics by asking follow-up questions or choosing a suggested query. Each answer will always provide citations to the exact snippet of text from where the information was sourced.
This feature allows you to glean instant earnings insights (reducing time spent on research during earnings season), quickly capture company outlook and bull/bear cases from analyst research, and generate an expert-approved SWOT analysis straight from former competitors, partners, and employees. All summaries provide you with citations to the exact snippets of text from where the summaries are sourced—combining high accuracy with easy verification.
Our newest generative AI tool, Generative Grid, applies multiple genAI prompts on many documents at the same time to quickly provide organized answers to research questions at scale, in an easy-to-read table format. This enables clients to summarize documents using pre-built criteria to save time when executing repeatable workflows.
Generative Grid pulls data from both premium external documents in the AlphaSense platform and users’ internal content. From there, users can choose preset templates or create their own to automate routine workflows. Each summary provides a direct citation to the source material it was pulled from.
This unique feature is proprietary to AlphaSense and has the ability to understand both the keyword and search intent behind any of your queries, factoring in search results that include variations in business language. For example, a search for “TAM” will also bring back results on “addressable market” and “market size.”
Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment Analysis, a natural language processing (NLP)-based feature, parses through content and identifies nuances in the tone and subjective meaning of text. It then uses color coding to help readers identify the document’s positive, negative, and neutral sentiments.
This technology assigns each search term a numerical sentiment change score to help track any slight change in market sentiment over time. Users can take advantage of it to make better-informed investment decisions and improve risk management strategies.
Relevancy Algorithm
AlphaSense’s advanced algorithm also eliminates noise (i.e., content with matching keywords but ultimately irrelevant to your specific search objective) and surfaces only the most relevant results based on market research workflows. This algorithm saves you precious time and energy, allowing you to get straight to analysis and other high-level tasks.
Integration Capabilities
Customers can easily integrate content at enterprise scale through our Ingestion API or enterprise-grade connectors—like Microsoft 365/Sharepoint, Box, Google Drive, S3, and more.
Our integration capabilities allow for more streamlined collaboration with members across your organization and improve overall team productivity. Our proprietary AI technology allows you to search across all internal and external company content to find crucial insights, catching what other platforms miss in a secure and automated way.
AlphaSense also offers content processing and content management. Content processing allows company recognition within user documents, while content management features support custom tags, metadata and folder structures to better search through internal content.
Monitoring, Analysis, and Collaboration Tools
AlphaSense is designed to help users find insights faster. In order to do that, we offer a number of tools that extend beyond search and summarization to help users accelerate research tasks.
- Customizable dashboards create a centralized information hub for monitoring key companies and themes, while tailored alerts provide real-time updates.
- Powerful collaboration tools like Notebook+ and commenting features help teams manage and share insights more effectively.
- Table Tools allow you to move faster with spreadsheet-style visualizations directly from company filings, so you can chain together, edit, and optimize tables for analysis.
- Image Search allows you to discover insights buried in charts to quickly capture data without reading through pages of documents.
- Snippet Explorer allows you to effortlessly look at any topic or theme and all its historical mentions in a single view.
- Our Black-lining feature allows you to automatically identify any QoQ changes in SEC filings.
- Automated Monitoring allows you to set up real-time alerts that send instant updates on any relevant market movements, news, emerging trends, and competitor activities. We also generate snapshots of companies and topics regularly that keep you ahead of the curve with actionable insights.
AlphaSense Pros:
- Extensive content database that spans key market perspectives, including broker research, expert calls, company documents, news & regulatory sites
- Incorporates AI search technology, machine learning, and sentiment analysis
- Generative AI features like Generative Search and Smart Summaries for enhanced and streamlined workflow
- GenAI tools can be applied to integrated internal content
- Automated and customizable alerts
- All-in-one research platform
- User-friendly interface
- Internal note-taking, sharing, and collaboration features
- Support for APIs and integrations
- Supports enterprise-level organizations and teams
- Enterprise-grade data production complying with global security standards: SOC2, ISO270001, FIPS 140-2, SAML 2.0
- Excellent customer support team, including 24/5 chat with product specialists, a Live Help button on the website, and regular live AlphaSense Education webinars
AlphaSense Cons:
- Visualization tools are limited at this time
- Collaboration tools are limited to users with AlphaSense licenses
Klue
Best for: Sales enablement and tracking unlimited competitors
Klue is a market and competitive research platform built to automate, streamline, and make it easier to distribute intelligence insights across an organization. Klue enables product marketers and other users to plan, collect, analyze and distribute competitive intelligence information across organizational departments.
Klue features an automated web crawler that keeps users updated on competitors’ product offerings, launches, pricing changes, and marketing strategies. Using AI, Klue verifies and curates insights from its research and provides intelligence into your competitor’s operations. However, Klue’s AI suffers from potential noise in research and does not deliver real-time insights. It also tends to miss some priority insights entirely.
Klue draws data from the web, social media, product launches, press mentions and releases, and reviews. It also allows users to add research insights about their own company and competitors. However, Klue is, at its core, a web listening tool and only provides access to public data. It does not offer access to valuable content sets like global and SEC filings, broker research, and expert call transcripts — all of which are integral for holistic market research.
Klue can perform multiple competitive analysis tasks, including:
- Collecting competitor intelligence from multiple public sources
- Analyzing and delivering market research insights from their online platform using AI
- Using customizable dashboards to help you curate competitor insights, data cards, battlecards, landing pages, and tags
- Sharing critical files and information across your organization using internal tools
- Measuring the impact of competitive intelligence on your business.
Klue Pros:
- In-depth competitor tracking features
- Intuitive battlecard designs
- Supports data visualization and collaboration
- User-friendly and scalable platform
- Integrates with Slack, Salesforce, other CRMs, and professional software
- Offers high security for your company data
- Has a community forum
- Users can set up real-time alerts and notifications for competitor updates
Klue Cons:
- Limited data sources — only public data and user-provided sources
- No SEC filings, earnings estimates, or financial reports
- No on-premise data storage function
- No broker research available
- No advanced search capabilities or sentiment analysis
- Steeper learning curve than other tools
- No expert call transcripts available
- AI lacks robust capabilities; no generative AI capabilities
Semrush
Best for: Search engine marketing, competitor keyword research, content marketing, and SEO
Semrush is an SEO, digital marketing, and competitive intelligence tool enabling users to grow their online traffic organically using keyword research, analysis, and SEO techniques. It can help improve your rankings using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media management, content marketing, and ecommerce competitor analysis.
On the platform, users can perform organic research on competitors to understand keywords they rank for and highlight competitive gaps. Users can also benchmark web traffic against competitors to see where they stand in relation to online lead-gen and website performance.
Digital marketers, SEO professionals, content creators, small businesses, and website owners often rely on Semrush to grow and improve their online presence. However, competitive intelligence research professionals will likely find the platform lacking, as Semrush does not offer access to premium or proprietary content sets that are necessary for gaining a complete market picture.
Some of the key competitive analysis features Semrush offers include:
- Competitor keyword analysis for both organic and paid keywords
- Domain overview tool that provides a snapshot of a competitor’s digital performance
- Detailed backlink profiles for websites, allowing users to analyze competitors’ link-building strategies
- Competitive positioning map feature that visualizes market share in organic and paid search for user’s domain, as well as competitors
- Market explorer feature that allows you to analyze the entire competitive landscape within your industry, seeing market leaders, emerging players, and key trends
- AI-powered tools, helping users optimize their copy for SEO, readability, and engagement
Semrush Pros:
- Market overviews and direct competitor comparisons
- Ideal for SEO and keyword research or comparing digital presence to competitors’
- Highly actionable insights for pursuing competitive gaps
- Provides a wide range of digital marketing tools and services
- Offers detailed insights into competitors’ online marketing activities
- User-friendly interface with easy-to-use features
- Provides in-depth analysis of website traffic and rankings
- Offers customized reports and recommendations for optimization, though deeper customization requires higher-tier plans
- Massive analysis reach — 24B keywords and 808M domain profiles
Semrush Cons:
- May be overwhelming for beginners due to the wide range of features
- Some features are only available on higher-tier plans
- Keyword data accuracy may vary
- No real-time data access
- Only sources data from search engines, social media, and advertising platforms
- No expert calls available
- No broker research available
- No AI search or sentiment analysis capabilities
Contify
Best for: Competitive intelligence across multiple functions, including supplier, risk, media, and opportunity intelligence
Contify is a competitive and market intelligence platform serving customers primarily in the BFSI, pharmaceutical, IT, and consulting industries. Its platform is built on strong AI search and analysis capabilities, and it pulls data from 500,000+ sources including company websites, press releases, social media, regulators, job portals, and news media. However, it does not provide access to proprietary data sources, such as broker research or expert calls.
Contify comes with a variety of features that include: news tracking, market intelligence, competitor tracking, and customer insights. Users can collaborate and share knowledge using the news API, which enables teams and co-workers to collaborate more effectively and make better data-driven decisions.
Contify serves businesses of all sizes and across various industries, including financial services, pharmaceuticals, technology, consulting, and manufacturing. It can track multiple companies at once, making it particularly useful for companies looking to expand their market presence, launch new products, or stay ahead of the competition.
Key areas of search focus by Contify users include patents, innovation, regulatory, M&A deals, supplier, and risk. Contify’s customers operate in highly-technical and highly-regulated sectors, meaning the accuracy, relevance, and reliability of data insights is paramount.
Some key competitive analysis features Contify offers include:
- Customizable competitive and market intelligence, gathering insights on specific competitors from public sources, such as news articles, social media, press releases, blogs, websites, and more
- AI-powered data collection and analysis, which processes large amounts of information, filters out the noise, and delivers the most relevant insights
- 360-degree competitor tracking across multiple domains, such as product launches, marketing campaigns, executive movements, financial updates, partnerships, and M&A activities
- Pre-built and customizable reports that summarize competitive insights for easy consumption
Related Reading: AlphaSense vs Contify
Contify Pros:
- Real-time alerts and customizable newsfeed with industry developments, competitor activities, and customer behavior
- Uses AI and NLP to collect and analyze data from various sources
- Provides a centralized platform for collaboration and knowledge sharing
- Offers a user-friendly interface with easy-to-use features
- Offers intelligence on multiple functions, including regulations, innovations, M&A, industry themes and patents
- Features smart translation feature for over 100+ languages
- Integrates with Microsoft Teams, Slack, SharePoint, CRMs, and other enterprise tools
- Offers 14-day free trial
Contify Cons:
- Many users complain of cost-prohibitive pricing in reviews
- Some users have reported issues with data accuracy and customization options
- Lacks access to broker research
- Lacks expert call transcripts
- Users report steep learning curve due to wide range of features and customization options
Seismic
Best for: Sales enablement and enablement intelligence
Seismic is an AI-powered sales enablement platform that helps users in a customer-facing organization create, manage, and distribute content to their sales teams.
With the Seismic platform, businesses can enhance their sales process by providing relevant and personalized content to their sales teams. Moreover, businesses can also use it to gain insights and analyze their sales processes to determine the effectiveness of their sales strategies. Seismic is ideal for organizations with complex sales processes, distributed sales teams, or large sales volumes.
The key Seismic product is content management. It enables users to quickly create unique and personal sales content and customer experiences. Seismic also supports content automation, sales analytics, and sales coaching. Seismic’s Enablement Intelligence provides data-driven insights and analytics to measure and refine enablement strategies, helping organizations drive business transformation.
Like other tools in this list, Seismic integrates with multiple office software, including Microsoft, Salesforce, WordPress, and CRMs, to promote collaboration across your organization.
Seismic provides access to a wide range of data related to sales enablement, including:
- Sales content usage and effectiveness metrics
- Sales team performance metrics
- Sales pipeline data and analytics
- Customer engagement and behavior data
- CRM and marketing automation data
- Content management and distribution
- Sales content automation and personalization
- Sales analytics and reporting
- Sales coaching and feedback
- Integration with popular CRM and marketing automation systems
While Seismic works well for sales enablement workflows, it is not a dedicated market research or competitive intelligence tool — unlike the other platforms in this list. It lacks critical content sets and certain search capabilities that are necessary for full-scale market or investment research. As such, it will not be the right tool for professionals looking for an all-in-one market intelligence platform.
Seismic Pros:
- User-friendly interface with customizable dashboards and reports
- Content management features to organize and distribute sales content
- Sales content automation to personalize content for individual buyers
- Sales analytics to track content usage and effectiveness
- Sales coaching to provide feedback and training to sales teams
- Includes AI-powered search capabilities to help go-to market teams quickly find the right content
- Has sentiment analysis capabilities
Seismic Cons:
- Pricing may be higher compared to other sales enablement platforms
- AI search is geared toward finding internal assets, not discovering market insights
- Some users have reported issues with integration and customization options
- No broker reports
- No expert call database
How to Choose an Alternative to Crayon
Crayon is a competitive intelligence platform that offers in-depth insights into the market strategy of other businesses. But for some, Crayon lacks key features and data that are integral to improving performance and driving strategy.
If you are in the market for an alternative, consider the following criteria in your search:
- Data coverage: What kind of data do you need access to in order to gain a complete picture in your research? Some platforms will come with premium content sets like broker research and expert calls, while others may only come with lower-value public data. Consider what type and volume of data is necessary for your goals.
- Data quality: When choosing an alternative to Crayon, opt for one with accurate, up-to-date, and reliable data. User ratings and reviews from websites like G2 and TrustRadius can help you make better decisions here.
- Pricing: Consider your market research budget when choosing an alternative. Some tools are more expensive than others, although they serve identical functions. Choose a platform with flexible subscriptions or one that falls within your budgetary limitations.
- User interface and user experience: A market intelligence platform should streamline your workflow and enhance your research process. Make sure that the solution you select is truly benefiting you, whether by saving time, increasing confidence, widening the breadth of your research, or all of the above.
- Additional features: Consider what additional features, other than content sets, are paramount to your process and workflow. Might you benefit from advanced AI search features like synonym recognition and sentiment analysis? Or maybe you need automated monitoring, company tearsheets, or customer analytics? Make sure the platform you choose supports your unique business needs and makes your job easier.
