In the past year, artificial intelligence tools (AI tools) have rapidly evolved, especially in the number of ways they empower businesses. Not only are they able to replicate and automate simple tasks, AI tools are now able to do the work of multiple departments at once. This can be a game-changer for startup founders, who are often working solo and juggling multiple roles.
Here are four AI tools currently available in the market that handle roles such as full-stack developers, branding and design, marketing, and customer service. We’re going to see how well they perform for a newly launched fictional bakery, Sweet Delights.
#1 Lovable
Role: Full-stack (frontend and backend) developer for websites and apps
Price: Four pricing tiers, with a free plan for basic use, and Pro plans starting from 25 USD per month.
Website: Lovable.dev
Lovable is an AI full-stack developer that allows entrepreneurs to create apps and websites simply by chatting with their AI interface. This is especially useful for entrepreneurs who have an idea but not the coding ability to create the app.
Using the free service, you can create a basic website in less than 5 minutes.
Use a generative AI service like ChatGPT to generate a detailed and descriptive prompt that you can edit before using it in Lovable.
Lovable will share its thought process when generating the website, including what it plans to implement on the website and the images it generates. After less than 5 minutes of processing, these are the 4 website pages it produced for me.
Generating the first draft of this website cost me 2 credits, while most edit actions will cost 1 credit or less depending on the complexity of the edit. While the website design is relatively basic, I was impressed at the quality of the copy and honestly did not need to make any edits.
This website isn’t complete, as it needs a full ordering system including a shopping cart, payment platform and pre-order management. For this, you’ll need backend functionality. Lovable offers native Supabase integration that lets you manage a backend database without needing to leave Lovable’s chat interface.
Lovable also allows you to connect to GitHub so you can deploy the website or app’s code on your own infrastructure or platform of choice.
There are four pricing tiers, starting with a free tier that provides 5 credits per day, with a total monthly limit of 30 credits. Higher price tiers essentially give you at least 4 credits per $1 spent, starting with $25 for 100 credits per month, which you will definitely need if you plan to develop apps using this platform.
5 credits per day is more than enough if you’re just creating basic websites, but the real strength of a tool like Lovable is its user interface. While Lovable’s AI interface may be too unreliable for experienced coders, it gives newcomers to coding the ability to generate entire working websites in minutes without too much technical knowledge.
#2 Looka
Role: Logo and brand designer
Price: Minimum 20 USD for a low-resolution logo file, 96 USD per year for a full brand kit
Website: Looka.com
No brand is complete without a logo, and Looka Logo Maker will generate a company logo for you for free after bringing you through a few simple steps.
Looka allows you to download your selected logo for a one-time purchase of 20 USD for a low-resolution file, or $65 for multiple high-resolution files of the logo. Of course, what they’re really driving you to use is their Brand Kit service, which is currently on a subscription basis of 96 USD a year, where they’ll give you what you need for business cards, email signatures, letterheads, and more.
The Brand Kit also comes with multiple design ideas for social media, including posts and stories, but this is also where the AI’s “creativity” is being stretched.
The Bitcoin chart and the image headlined “Discover our coaching services” shows that you won’t get ideas that are all instant winners. Ultimately, you get what you pay for – and there are some marketing agencies out there that charge more but aren’t able to produce better looking social media content for you either.
Ultimately, a company’s logo and branding are a crucial element of a business. While Looka provides a great start to the process, entrepreneurs are still better off investing and working with a proper designer who better understands you and your company.
#3 Jasper
Role: Marketing
Price: 7-day free trial, Pro plan is 59 USD per month
Website: Jasper.ai
Jasper is a very powerful AI tool for digital marketers. It started as an AI writing assistant but now positions itself as an “agentic platform that transforms marketing “. It does this by using an AI-power content engine that allows you to set up entire marketing campaigns, as well as drill down to the smallest detail.
Starting by giving Jasper a simple prompt for a marketing strategy for the fictional bakery, giving very little information except that there were five signature cake flavours. This is a snippet of what Jasper produced:
Where Jasper shines is their ability to “remix” this information into multiple plans and briefs. Within seconds, it had given me a social media campaign plan and content strategy, an influencer brief, and even a launch email campaign.
And using the canvas interface popularised by Figma, you can rearrange these different content pieces so that they’re easy to find.
What Jasper is originally and most known for is its ability to generate excellent long-form content. Now it’s even more powerful by its ability to do so consistently using a customisable brand voice, a target audience that you can set, as well utilising other source materials to ensure accuracy.
The Pro plan comes with 2 Brand Voices, 5 Knowledge Bases, and 3 Audiences, which is collectively known as Jasper IQ. In other words, you can utilise up to 2 distinct voices in your content, target up to 3 audience segments, and provide information for up to 5 separate topics, including products, companies, individuals, and events. This empowers Jasper to produce content with your unique tone of voice as well as speak authoritatively about topics.
Entreprenuers who will need to consistently generate a significant amount of content when launching their brands will find Jasper an invaluable tool, well worth the monthly subscription fee of 59 USD.
#4 Tidio
Role: Customer Service
Price: From 39 USD per month for 50 AI-powered conversations
Website: Tidio.com
Tidio is an all-in-one AI-powered customer service platform, with features like live chat, and automated workflows. Tidio requires that you already have an existing website, so we’ll use the one we created with Lovable.
You will have the option to customise the welcome message and assign conversations to agents while providing live chat support.
Where Tidio shines is providing an AI agent called Lyro that will be able to respond to customer queries on your behalf. It answers these queries based on information it finds on the website.
For queries where it cannot find an answer for, it will be upfront about it.
Tidio also allows users to create multiple customer flows, so that the right messages can be provided depending on where the user is on the site. For example, this proactive Welcome Message greets a new visitor to the site with a different message depending on whether a customer service agent is online or not.
While all these features are available during the 7-day trial period, Tidio allows you to customise the suite of features according to your needs. Currently, it is 29 USD per month for up to 100 billable conversations, and the Lyro AI Agent feature starts at 39 USD per month for up to 50 conversations.
AI Tools Are Great To Have At The Start But Won’t Replace Human Workers Forever
While powerful, these AI tools are currently still unable to completely replace human workers, but they are still worth adopting, especially for entrepreneurs at the start of a new company. In order to fully maximise what these tools are able to achieve, an entrepreneur is strongly encouraged to spend a significant amount of time thinking about what their company and product are about.
By creating substantial knowledge bases and branding guidelines to power these AI tools, the entrepreneur is creating a substantial foundation for future workers to build on.
Read Also: Why Tech Analyst Benedict Evans Insists Companies Must Be Ready For AI
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