We tried OtterlyAI, Peec AI, AthenaHQ, and Profound, then built our own.

"Does ChatGPT know about my business?"

Our clients kept asking this last year. Six months ago, none of us had a good way to answer it. Today, there are at least four tools that claim to. We tried all of them before deciding to build our own.

Here's what happened.

Why this mattered to us

Webido CTR has been running CTR optimization for local businesses since 2019. What changed in 2024 and accelerated through 2025 was that people started asking ChatGPT and Perplexity for local recommendations the same way they used to ask Google. "Best HVAC company in Phoenix." "Top family dentist near me."

When clients asked if THEIR business showed up in those answers, we needed a way to check. Systematically. Across all the LLMs at once.

So we went shopping.

What each tool got wrong

OtterlyAI — $29/mo. Cheapest option, clean UI. But Gemini and Google AI Mode cost extra. Paying separately for each platform defeats the point of consolidated monitoring. For us, the per-platform math hit four figures per month before we got past 20 clients.

Peec AI — €89/mo. European-built, prettiest dashboard. But the base tier only covers 3 of 6 AI platforms. Same fundamental problem as OtterlyAI — the pricing assumes you only care about a subset of AI search.

AthenaHQ — $295/mo. Full platform coverage, real recommendations engine. But $295/mo per tracked entity adds up fast across a portfolio. Built for in-house brand teams obsessing over one brand, not agencies tracking 50+ businesses.

Profound — $499/mo. Most sophisticated of the four. Excellent data depth. But $499/mo for one platform pushes total coverage into Fortune 500 territory. Not built for agency scale.

What was missing across all four

After three months of testing, we mapped what we actually needed:

Coverage across all 6 AI platforms at one price (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Grok, Google AI Overviews)
Done-for-you query setup — clients want results, not 50 prompt variations to write
A single composite score that translates "are you visible in AI search?" into one number
A recommendation engine that tells you what to fix next

None of the four checked all four boxes.

So we built AI Pulse.

What we ended up with

AI Pulse covers all 6 AI platforms at the $67/mo entry tier. Done-for-you onboarding. A single 100-point Visibility Score that a non-technical client can read. Built-in recommendation engine.

The kicker: at $67/mo we're cheaper than any competitor's full-coverage tier, and most agencies that tested us against the alternatives just switched.

Two things we learned

First: the AI visibility tracking category is still early enough that operator-level knowledge of what local businesses actually need can outbuild existing players. The competitors were built for brand teams; the gap was for agencies and SMBs.

Second: pricing complexity is a moat in disguise. "Track more platforms, pay more" is legitimate pricing logic — but the cognitive load of "which combination do I need" is itself friction. Pricing simplicity is product value.

Curious to hear what others have tried. Anyone using a fifth tool I missed, or building their own?

—Mars Lin
Building Webido CTR since 2019
https://webidoctr.com/ai-pulse (use IHPULSE for $20 off the first month)