ChatGPT is fun, easy to use and it’s the first major company to bring generative AI to the public forefront. But several free ChatGPT alternatives provide better solutions for your business marketing, sales, ideation, revision and client relationship management (CRM) needs. Let’s look at our five favorite alternatives to ChapGPT and when you should use them.
1. Bard: Best for Research
- Cost: Free (for now)
- Upgrade: Pricing plans pending
- Standout feature: Real-time results powered by Google
- Biggest con: Still in development stage
I can’t deny that I’ve quickly come to love Bard despite already having a ChatGPT subscription. Bard is simply awesome. The integration of current data from Google search, Google Maps and its new Gemini backbone built from previous engines make it a spectacular tool.
Bard holds the awesome power of real time Google results. This feature alone makes it the best ChatGPT alternative for research on any new, trending or frequently updated topic. Bard is versatile, too. Powered by Google’s Gemini and its unique combination of large language model (LLM) and natural language processing (NLP), it generates poems, emails, scripts, computer code and more.
But where Bard really shines is that it uses the full power of Google’s vast resources. When I ask for the top five restaurants or hiking trails near me, it provides more than just information and links. It uses Google Reviews to pick those most highly rated places and generates a map with each location pinned. You can even integrate your Google Workspace!
2. Writesonic: Best for content marketing
- Cost: Free limited use
- Upgrade: From $13 monthly for 200,000 words
- Standout feature: Ability to personalize communication at scale
- Biggest con: Algorithmic lack of creativity
Marketing, communications and PR teams continually feel the strain of producing different kinds of content on a deadline. Switching gears from a detailed ebook to banner ad copy tests the limits of time and creativity. That’s where this ChatGPT alternative comes in.
Writesonic won’t replace your team members. Instead, it provides a means to leverage AI to increase revenue. Like a personal assistant, it assists team members in creating custom-tailored email responses, catchy slogans, SEO optimized headlines and more. Simply tell Writesonic your role and provide the details of your project. From there, it helps to create branded copy that rings true and keeps your customers engaged.
3. Copy.ai: Best for scaled sales generation
- Cost: Free with limited use
- Upgrade: From $36 monthly for 5 users
- Standout feature: Data-driven CRM
- Biggest con: Risk of formulaic outputs
Copy.ai may seem very similar to Writesonic at a glance. Both generate blog, social media, email and other content. What makes Copy.ai different is its approach to creating what your company needs. Rather than focusing on creative content marketing, Copy.ai offers an entire operating system suited to direct sales. Its features make it ideal for business-to-business communications and high-volume consumer marketing.
Yes, copy.ai will write blogs and emails. But its system will assist in automating entire email and social media campaigns while repurposing documents into effective press releases. Furthermore, this ChatGPT alternative will scrape specific data to help you research news, industries and even individual competitors.
4. Jasper: Best for multi-language marketing
- Cost: From $39 monthly per user after 7-day free trial
- Standout feature: Marketing in more than 30 languages
- Biggest con: Limited training data
Living on the Mexican border, I learned the value of speaking someone’s “home language.” That is, the language someone speaks at home. Speaking someone’s home language creates familiarity and helps close the sale. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 68 million Americans speak another language at home. That’s one in five potential clients missed. Jasper has just the solution.
Jasper’s superpower lies in its fluency across dozens of languages. It allows you to create personalized emails, landing pages and ads that resonate across diverse audiences both in the USA and globally. Plus, with calendar features, performance insights and the NLP versatility you expect, Jasper may be the right marketing option for your team.
5. Spinbot: Best for rewriting and paraphrasing
- Cost: Free with word limitations
- Upgrade: $8.33 monthly with annual plan for more features
- Standout feature: Fastest solution for most common uses
- Biggest con: Misinterprets nuances in language
Have you ever written a paragraph that has all the information you mean to convey, but it just doesn’t sound right to you? Or maybe you simply want to summarize or paraphrase someone else’s text. You don’t need to convey complex instructions to a complex AI LLM processor for that. You just need something fast and accurate. That’s where Spinbot is always ready to assist.
Just copy your text to your clipboard and paste it into the Spinbot interface. You can quickly rewrite text, summarize or simply check your grammar using this ChatGPT alternative. For common uses such AI assistance in writing a resume or paraphrasing a transcription, Spinbot may be the best go-to chat service out there.
When is ChatGPT still your best generative AI choice?
The two major players in the generative content game are Google/Alphabet’s Bard and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Microsoft’s Copilot, formerly known as Bing Chat, has also entered the race. While some features are integrated into Bing, Copilot appears to be evolving more toward Microsoft 365 Suite and Microsoft Edge integration than as a standalone product. For now, the big contenders are ChatGPT from OpenAI and Bard from Alphabet.
I’ve already mentioned that personally, I love Bard but also use ChatGPT. There can be good reasons to hold on to your ChatGPT subscription. More to the point, there are times you may want to use ChatGPT for your business or even for fun. These include:
- The reliability of a free chatbot: ChatGPT offers a robust free version while future pricing plans for Bard remain uncertain.
- Access to past discussions: ChatGPT provides access to past conversations for reference while Bard’s future access to test phase information is uncertain.
- Greater opportunity for privacy: ChatGPT also allows you to turn chat history off, allowing for greater privacy while Bard’s conversation may be reviewed during its testing phase.
- Informal chats: ChatGPT maintains perhaps the best informal tone, making it ideal for chats and ideation. It’s like bouncing ideas around with someone super smart.
- Graphic design and other artwork: The current paid version of ChatGPT 4 includes DALL-E 3, allowing you and your marketing team to create artwork for graphic design tasks.
Like all NLP chats, ChatGPT is rapidly evolving. For instance, ChatGPT 4 now has an integrated web search tool that allows it to find current data, typically using Bing. It will even cite and link to its online sources when asked. The race to become the top informational AI search and chat has only just begun!
Photo by Leszek Glasner/Shutterstock.com
Bryan enjoys the digital space where arts and technology meet. As a writer, he has worked in education, health and wellbeing, and manufacturing. He also assists smaller businesses in web development including accessibility and content development. In his free time, he hikes trails in central Florida.
