In today’s age of information overload, having the right market intelligence tool can be the difference between financial success or fallout. The most helpful tool is one that not only provides you with a wide and comprehensive breadth of information, but that also filters the signal from the noise and surfaces the precise relevant insights you need for your unique business goals. Comprehensive market intelligence tools allow you to spend less time on repetitive manual tasks and more time on higher-level analysis and strategy—in turn giving you the competitive advantage for optimal performance.
Below, we examine Crayon and Feedly, two tools that are designed to aid market intelligence efforts through slightly different value offerings. We will also compare both with AlphaSense, to show how our platform fills in the gaps and meets all of your business research needs.
We will use the following criteria for our comparison:
- Features
- Customer support
- Reviews and ratings
- Pricing
First, here’s a quick overview of each platform:
Crayon
Crayon is a competitive intelligence software that businesses use to track the digital footprint of their competitors, as well as their marketing, product launches, and pricing. Crayon collects insights from both online and offline sources, curating and storing them in an indexed and searchable format.
Crayon gathers the following key competitor data points:
- Partners and investors
- Content and media strategies
- Market strategy
- Human resource strategies
- Product packaging strategies
- Product pricing strategies
- Sales enablement
- Customer support and reviews
- Public relations, news, and events
- Web and online positioning, including branding and web copy
This data is gathered from website updates, SEC filings, customer reviews, support documents, and other publicly available sources. Crayon then utilizes advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) functionality to capture and curate essential information and generate actionable insights, saving precious time on research and analysis.
Crayon provides both real-time data and historical analysis of your competitors, allowing you to track their evolution over time. Moreover, Crayon is designed to seamlessly integrate into your workflow, allowing team members to receive alerts, newsletters, and relevant data across Slack, Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, and other internal tools.
Although many companies across industries can use Crayon’s platform to keep up with market trends, drive better sales, and reduce customer churn, this platform has several important limitations.
Because Crayon still uses human analysts for data processing, scalability is a challenge. Therefore, if you have a large amount of competitors to track, or if your competitors keep shifting, Crayon may not be the right tool for you.
Crayon also lacks certain critical data sources that are necessary for full-scale research, as it only provides access to public low-value data and functions primarily as a web listening tool. This means it has limited usage outside of competitive intelligence. Finally, though Crayon has AI capabilities, they are much less robust than that of their competitors.
Crayon Pros
- Automated real-time alerts
- Can offer more personalized competitor insights
- Cutting-edge AI and ML capabilities for data research
- Offers in-depth analytics and metrics
- Integrates with multiple tools, including Slack and Microsoft Teams
- Collects info from both online and offline sources.
- Custom reports and battlecards
- Intuitive and navigable platform
Crayon Cons
- No expert call library
- Less scalable than similar tools due to use of human analysts for data processing
- No way to track peers’ R&D intelligence on the platform
- No SEC filings, financial reports, and earnings estimates
- No industry-specific reports or thought leadership
- No broker research
- Content hosted outside its platform; it only provides URL links
- Lacks advanced search capabilities, such as keyword and synonym recognition, thematic search, and sentiment analysis
- Not well-suited for users with many competitors or whose competitive landscapes are frequently changing
Feedly
Feedly is a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed reader and web-based news aggregator for users tracking insights across the internet. Feedly users can track the latest news, WordPress blogs, podcasts, newsletters, websites, YouTube channels, LinkedIn, and other social media accounts to stay updated on local, national, and global events.
Users can create personalized news and RSS feeds from multiple sources at once. These feeds are collected and presented in a unified format, depending on topics and user interests. It also offers access to news from certain premium content sites (for an additional fee).
Feedly’s biggest value offering is that it allows users to easily track insights across the web without needing to read through everything.
Feedly also recently added the Feedly AI feature, which automates the curation process by cutting out the noise and flagging relevant insights for your business from all over the web.
Feedly is geared primarily toward individual users who need to track various news sources. It is less suited for enterprises, as it only provides access to public, low-level content, and it does not aggregate any content outside news.
Feedly’s value offering includes:
- News aggregator and RSS reader
- Personalized news feed
- Organized content categories
- Articles can saved for later or marked as read
- Supports sharing content on social media and other channels
- Clean and intuitive interface
- Available on web browsers, iOS, and Android devices
- Supports Integration like Evernote and Pocket
- Team collaboration options are available for paid users.
Feedly Pros
- Aggregates news posts from hundreds of sources
- Teams can collaborate and share insights
- AI features search and flags critical insights for you
- Available on multiple platforms
- Supports subscriptions to favorite content
- Offers email alerts and push notifications
Feedly Cons
- Duplicate information from multiple sources
- Information overload risks
- No access to broker research or expert calls
- No proprietary content sources, company filings, or research
- AI is a newer feature and not yet as robust as competing platforms
- Premium content features are only available for an extra upgrade cost
- Not suitable for enterprises
AlphaSense
AlphaSense is a leading all-in-one market intelligence platform, intended for research and business professionals—from analysts and financial researchers to corporate professionals and consultants—looking to implement a qualitative research strategy powered by AI search technology and automation.
Consistently ranked as an industry leader by TrustRadius and G2, AlphaSense was also recognized by Forbes as a top 50 AI company in 2023.
AlphaSense provides access to 10,000+ premium sources of information, including trade journals, news, SEC filings, and company filings.
Moreover, AlphaSense offers access to two highly valuable proprietary content offerings:
- Expert Insights – 40,000+ expert call transcripts of one-on-one calls with industry experts, customers, professionals, competitors, and former and current executives, available as an add-on to the AlphaSense package.
- Wall Street Insights® – A collection of broker research from Wall Street’s leading firms, covering global sector themes, industries, and companies from 1,000+ 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.
AlphaSense also comes with several unique capabilities and features that streamline and enhance the research process. These include:
Automated Monitoring
With AlphaSense, you can set up real-time alerts that send instant updates on any relevant news, market movements, emerging trends in companies and industries, and competitor activities. For your business intelligence needs, AlphaSense also generates snapshots of companies and topics of interest regularly, providing actionable insights for your research.
Instant Company Insights
With Search Analytics and Company Tearsheets, you can get updates on any companies currently on your radar, giving you an in-depth reach across industries, regions, and more. These company insights keep you focused and grounded in your research on the competitors of your choosing, cutting out noise and enhancing your competitive advantage.
Smart Synonyms™
Smart Synonyms™ is a proprietary AlphaSense feature that uses AI technology to recognize both the keyword and search intent behind any query.
AlphaSense uses advanced algorithms to eliminate noise from your search (i.e., content with matching keywords but ultimately irrelevant to your search objective) and leverages variations in language (for example, “impact investing” vs. “ESG investing”) to pinpoint the exact information you need.
AI search functionality allows you to easily find the exact documents and snippets that are most relevant to your search, giving you back time and energy to spend on analysis and other high-level tasks.
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 users track any slight change in market sentiments across time. Users can take advantage of it to make better-informed investment decisions and improve their risk management strategies.
This feature can be instrumental in picking up on subtle sentiment shifts in expert interviews that go beyond expert-level commentary. But it can also be applied to company documents—such as earnings transcripts and company presentations—to gain much deeper insight into the perspective of an individual, company, or the market on a key topic.
Generative AI
Unlike other consumer-grade generative AI (genAI) tools trained on publicly available data, AlphaSense takes an entirely different approach. Our industry-leading suite of generative AI tools is purpose-built to deliver business-grade insights and leans on 10+ years of AI tech development. Our proprietary AlphaSense Large Language Model (ASLLM)—trained specifically on business and financial data—matches or beats the leading third-party LLMs over 90% of the time.
Our suite of tools currently includes:
- Smart Summaries – this feature allows you to glean instant earnings insights—reducing time spent on research during earnings season, quickly capture company outlook, and generate an expert-approved SWOT analysis straight from former competitors, partners, and employees
- Enterprise Intelligence – a first-of-its-kind offering that delivers AlphaSense’s AI-powered search and summarization capabilities to customers’ internal organizational knowledge.
- AlphaSense Assistant – a generative AI chat experience that transforms how users can extract insights from hundreds of millions of premium content sources
Integrations and APIs
It’s now becoming industry standard for many market intelligence platforms to offer integration of internal content containing both structured and unstructured data, but it’s key that this content is indexed and immediately available. A market intelligence platform should also offer the ability to upload new external content sources (such as RSS or web content), so that you can leverage the platform’s analysis tools to pull relevant insights.
AlphaSense provides integration with commonly used programs like OneNote, Sharepoint, Box, and Evernote, enabling streamlined collaboration with members across your organization and improving team productivity. It also allows you to search across all internal and external company content to find key insights, and the proprietary AI technology catches what other platforms miss in a secure and automated way.
AlphaSense Pros
- Extensive content database that spans the four key perspectives, including broker research and expert calls
- Incorporates AI search technology, machine learning, and sentiment analysis
- Smart Summaries generative AI feature for earnings and image search
- Automated and customizable alerts
- All-in-one research platform
- User-friendly interface
- Internal messaging and collaboration features
- Support for APIs and integrations
- Supports enterprise-level organizations and teams
AlphaSense Cons
- Visualization tools are limited to financial data at this time
- Collaboration tools are limited to users with AlphaSense licenses
Features Comparison
Reviews and Ratings Comparison
Crayon
Rating: 4.6 out of 5 on G2, 7.1 out of 10 on TrustRadius
Popular positives:
- Exceptional automated insights
- Supports sharing of boards and competitive intelligence across teams
- Easy to build battlecard templates
- Supports multiple integrations
- Dedicated customer support
Popular negatives:
- Does not track LinkedIn
- Content is not easily downloadable
- Crayon’s AI may not pick up all public data available on a competitor
Feedly
Rating: 4.4 out of 5 on G2, 9.0 out of 10 on TrustRadius
Popular positives:
- Access to real-time data via RSS feeds
- Available on iOS, Android, and web app
- Intuitive interface for users
- Offers content on emerging topics like AI, ESG, and cloud computing
Popular negatives:
- Duplicate news reports
- Intermittent customer support
- Potential for outdated data sources despite AI
AlphaSense
Rating: 4.8 out of 5 on G2, 9.4 out of 10 on TrustRadius
Popular positives:
- Comprehensive data and analysis on public and private markets
- Real-time data availability
- Easy-to-find relevant and high-quality results
- Intuitive interface and great customer support
- Smart AI-powered search leads to quicker, more accurate insights
Popular negatives:
- Visualization tools are limited to financial data at this time
- Lack of collaborative tools for knowledge management
Price Comparison
Crayon
Crayon starts at about $15,000 per year, offering no free tier or freemium options. Crayon’s pricing also scales up based on the number of competitors you need to track.
Feedly
Feedly has a free tier. However, the Pro plan starts at $6/month for an annual plan and $8.25 for the Pro Plus plan. It also features an enterprise plan with an annual contract.
AlphaSense
For AlphaSense, you can pay by the enterprise or seat, depending on your unique business needs. Contact us for more information on pricing options, or start a free 2-week trial here.
A Better Alternative to Crayon and Feedly?
Crayon and Feedly are excellent research tools for users looking for a web listening tool, or who only need a tool for competitive intelligence.
But for deeper research and analysis, Both Crayon and Feedly fall short. If you are looking for a platform that provides access to proprietary and premium content sets, and that is equipped with powerful AI search functionality, AlphaSense is the clear choice.
Only AlphaSense curates content from all four key perspectives of market research—indexed, searchable, and available all in one place. AlphaSense’s AI is significantly more robust, with features such as sentiment analysis, generative AI, synonym recognition, and more.
When considering a tool for your market intelligence needs, AlphaSense may be the best choice for you if:
- You want a platform that serves your entire organization to meet various strategic goals, and not just competitive intelligence and web listening.
- You prefer a platform that eliminates tedious and manual research techniques while surfacing real-time insights relevant to your needs.
- You want to save precious research time and dedicate it to deeper analysis and strategic planning.
- You want access to an expansive content universe of proprietary, premium, private, and public content unavailable to many of your peers.
- You want a platform that keeps you updated on all critical information, with customizable real-time alerts, watchlists, and dashboards.
- You are looking for a platform purpose-built for an enterprise-level organization.
