11x or Artisan: which should you choose?
11x vs Artisan compares two AI SDR platforms. 11x runs outbound, inbound voice and chat agents and publishes an entry price of $3,750 a month. Artisan sells one AI BDR, Ava, and quotes to lead volume. Vendr estimates $65,100 and $30,000 a year.
Choose 11x if…
- You want an entry price before a sales call: 11x's Outbound Growth card reads "Starting at $3,750 / mo", "Billed annually", where Artisan shows "Pricing scoped on your plan".
- You need inbound as well as outbound: 11x sells voice and chat agents that qualify inbound demand, priced separately from Outbound, with caps on calls, chats and concurrency.
- You want sending infrastructure included: every Outbound plan lists "11x Managed Gmail Mailboxes" with domain setup, warmup, inbox rotation and monitoring.
- You want the bill tied to leads rather than activity: 11x says "We charge per lead, not per send," and that the price holds "Whether Alice runs three touchpoints or thirty."
Choose Artisan if…
- You want one agent inside your own stack: Artisan calls Ava "The AI BDR that runs in your stack, alongside your team" and says she sends from your reps' mailboxes, respecting ownership rules.
- You want approval before anything goes out: Artisan sets autonomy per campaign, with "Approve before sending", locks on tone, CTA and length, budget caps and instant pause.
- You want the same platform on every plan: Artisan says "Every plan includes the full platform", so the step up is volume and support rather than features.
- You want a staffed rollout: enterprise accounts get "a dedicated (human) team", including a deployment strategist, forward deployed engineer and campaign specialist.
11x vs Artisan at a glance
| 11x | Artisan | |
|---|---|---|
| Positioning | Calls itself "One intelligent platform for every revenue motion", with "Specialist AI agents" working "24/7 across voice, chat, email, WhatsApp, SMS, and social" (11x). | Calls itself "The AI BDR that runs in your stack, alongside your team": "Ava finds leads, enriches them, sends personalized messages, and books meetings on behalf of your reps" (Artisan). |
| Core modules | Three motions: Outbound (formerly Alice), Inbound (formerly Julian) and Expansion, over a shared platform of lead data, deep research, multi-channel sequences, deliverability, AI phone agents and lead routing. | One platform around Ava, its AI BDR: B2B and local lead data, intent signals, autonomous campaigns, cold outbound, cross-sell and upsell, meeting booking, and an AI dialer sold as a per-seat add-on. |
| AI and agents | Agents turn public signals, CRM context and a Knowledge Base into "a cited brief"; teams "set the tone, approval thresholds, escalation rules, and send windows", and 11x flags "potential hallucinations" (11x). | Ava writes and sends sequences, handles replies and books meetings; guardrails include approval mode, banned phrases, escalation rules and DNC lists; a second agent, Artie, is flagged "New" (Artisan). |
| Pricing model | Published per lead: Outbound Growth "Starting at $3,750 / mo", "Billed annually"; Pro and Enterprise are "Custom" (11x). | Quote-based: its pricing page lists Team, Scale and Enterprise with lead volumes but no prices, saying "Pricing scoped on your plan" and "Custom". |
| Third-party price data | Vendr shows a median 11x contract of $65,100 a year, from $38,250 to $83,100, but does not say how many purchases it covers or when it was updated. | Vendr shows a median Artisan AI contract of $30,000 a year, from $18,300 to $80,371, but does not say how many purchases it covers or when it was updated. |
| Analyst recognition | No analyst evaluation (Gartner, Forrester or IDC) found on the 11x pages opened. | No analyst evaluation (Gartner, Forrester or IDC) found on the Artisan pages opened. |
| Company status | Private and venture-backed; its about page shows "$75M" raised from "Benchmark, Andreessen Horowitz and more", with offices in San Francisco and London. | Private: "© 2026 Artisan AI Inc."; its about page lists investors including HubSpot Ventures, Y Combinator and Soma Capital, "50+ team members" and offices in San Francisco and New York. |
| Best for | Revenue teams that want outbound prospecting plus inbound voice and chat qualification from one vendor, with published entry prices, managed mailboxes and per-lead billing. | Outbound teams that want a single AI BDR running data, sequencing and reply handling inside Salesforce or HubSpot, with per-campaign approval controls and a scoped quote. |
What is the difference between 11x and Artisan?
Both sell AI agents that prospect and book meetings, but they are scoped differently. 11x describes "One intelligent platform for every revenue motion", with "Specialist AI agents" working "24/7 across voice, chat, email, WhatsApp, SMS, and social" (11x). Its own llms.txt names three motions, Outbound (formerly Alice), Inbound (formerly Julian) and Expansion, and notes that "Alice and Julian are legacy names that still appear in some documentation, pricing pages, customer stories, and URL paths". Artisan is narrower by design: "Artisan builds AI employees for go-to-market teams" and "Its first AI employee, Ava, is an autonomous AI BDR" (Artisan), with a second agent, Artie, flagged "New" in its navigation.
That shows up in what each sells against. Artisan says on its homepage that it "Replaces ZoomInfo, Nooks, Outreach, and more" and asks teams to "Consolidate data, sequencing, dialing, and booking into one platform". 11x instead splits the work by motion: its Outbound page covers prospecting, research, personalisation and multi-channel execution, while its platform page adds inbound lead qualification, intelligent routing and AI phone agents.
Neither sells sales content management or digital sales rooms. Both are where pipeline starts: finding the buying group, reaching it and getting a meeting on a rep's calendar.
How do the agents, data and human controls compare?
On data, each states its own coverage. 11x says leads can come from your CRM "or use our database of 400M contacts", with lists refreshed from signals such as "Funding rounds, hiring spikes, job changes, technology shifts, and site visits". Artisan states "250M+ contacts enriched from 22+ sources" and says Ava searches "250M+ verified B2B contacts across 200+ countries" (Artisan). These are vendor figures measured in different ways; test both against a sample of your own target accounts.
On channels, the split matters. 11x sequences "across email, social and rep-led calls" and keeps outbound calls human, "11x does the prep. Your rep makes the call", while its Inbound product does run AI voice and chat agents for inbound demand. Artisan is email and social for the agent, with calling left to people: its Ava page says "Ava cannot legally make calls, she creates a list of qualified prospects for your reps to dial," and the dialer is sold as a per-seat add-on.
On control, both let you decide how autonomous the agent is, and both publish the levers. 11x says "You set the tone, approval thresholds, escalation rules, and send windows" and that it will "Automatically flag potential hallucinations and script adherence". Artisan offers "Full control or full autonomy", "Chosen per campaign", with "Approve before sending", locks on tone, CTA and length, budget caps per campaign, reply-sensitivity settings and instant pause, and says Ava is "Fully autonomous by default", so approval mode is a setting you switch on. Artisan's enterprise page adds banned phrases, DNC lists and customer-set escalation rules.
On integrations, Artisan names Salesforce and HubSpot, with "custom CRMs via API"; 11x names HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive plus LinkedIn, G2, Slack, Gmail, Outlook and Google Calendar. On security, 11x states SOC 2 Type II and CASA Tier 3 and DPAs for EU customers (11x); Artisan states "SOC 2 Type II certified. GDPR compliant," with SSO, SAML and SCIM, role-based access and audit logs. Both are the vendors' own statements, so ask each for the current report.
How does 11x pricing compare to Artisan pricing?
11x publishes an entry price; Artisan quotes. On 21 October 2026, 11x's Outbound pricing page showed Growth at "Starting at $3,750 / mo", "Billed annually", with 2,000 new prospects a month and up to 5 end users, and Pro and Enterprise as "Custom". Its Inbound pricing page is separate again, with Growth voice at "Starting at $5,333 / mo" and Growth chat at "Starting at $2,417 / mo". Note that three entry figures sit around the Outbound page: its page meta says "Plans from $2,000/mo", the card says $3,750 a month and the FAQ says "11x starts at $36,000 per year on the Growth plan", which do not reconcile. See the 11x pricing guide.
Artisan's pricing page showed Team and Scale as "Pricing scoped on your plan" and Enterprise as "Custom", with lead volumes of about 2,500 and about 6,000 a month. Its FAQ says "Plans are sized to your lead volume, mailboxes, and dialer seats," and a panel adds "Credit volume and dialer seats tuned to your pipeline. No hidden line items." No credit amounts, seat minimum, trial or contract length appear on the page. See the Artisan pricing guide.
The meters differ, which changes who pays more. 11x charges per lead, not per send, so heavy follow-up does not raise the bill but a wider list does; Artisan scopes leads, mailboxes, dialer seats and credit volume together, and prices its dialer per seat. Neither publishes an overage rate, so ask both what happens when a monthly cap is passed.
The only third-party contract data we found is Vendr's, and neither page is dated. Vendr shows a median 11x contract of $65,100 a year, from $38,250 to $83,100, without saying how many purchases that covers. Vendr shows a median Artisan AI contract of $30,000 a year, from $18,300 to $80,371, again with no purchases count and no update date. Neither page shows a deals-handled count, so both are undated Vendr estimates from purchase data rather than vendor prices. Vendr's plan names lag both vendors too: it lists an "Advanced" tier for 11x and Accelerate and Blitzscale for Artisan, none of which appear on the vendors' current pages.
On terms, 11x says annual is the default, that two- and three-year commitments carry discount tiers, that renewal increases are capped and that onboarding has no implementation fee; its Inbound page adds that contracts "do not auto-renew without 30-day written notice". Artisan publishes no contract length; Vendr records "Annual payment in advance, Monthly payment options may be available upon request."
What has been reported about these two companies?
This category has moved fast and attracted scrutiny, so the public record is part of the diligence. On 24 March 2025, TechCrunch reported that 11x had presented companies as customers that said they were not. A ZoomInfo spokesperson said "We did not give them permission to use our logo in any manner, and we are not a customer", and Airtable said a pilot "was never used in production and never rolled out to our sales team". 11x said it had "promptly removed any undesired or inaccurate customer mentions" and attributed the remainder to "human error"; Pleo and Rho confirmed to TechCrunch that they use 11x products.
The same report described heavy early churn, including a former employee's estimate that "We were losing 70-80% of customers that came through the door", and said 11x counted ARR on annual contracts that customers exited through break clauses. 11x said its highest churn was in early 2023 cohorts, that its retention rate was then 79%, and that it reports contracted ARR to its board, which it said investors knew; Andreessen Horowitz denied it was suing and Benchmark said it had received transparent updates, including on break clauses. That account is from March 2025, and we found no newer independent retention figure for either vendor. For Artisan, the coverage its own newsroom links is about funding and its "Stop Hiring Humans" advertising campaign rather than customer or churn disputes.
On company status, both are private and venture-backed. 11x's about page shows "$75M" raised from "Benchmark, Andreessen Horowitz and more", with offices in San Francisco and London, and no founding year, founder names or round dates. Artisan's about page says it is "Backed by top investors including HubSpot Ventures, Y Combinator and Soma Capital", states "50+ team members" and offices in San Francisco and New York, and names Jaspar Carmichael-Jack as a third-time founder; its newsroom links a Forbes headline, "Artisan Raises $25 Million To Replace Repetitive Work With AI Employees", with no date, round name or lead investor shown. Leadership at 11x has changed since the TechCrunch report, which named Hasan Sukkar as chief executive: 11x's company post of 14 October 2026 is bylined Prabhav Jain, CEO, and says "We built the first voice agent optimized specifically for revenue workflows" (11x).
Both publish results figures without methodology: 11x's outbound page cites "57X ROI from pipeline generated by 11x" for one customer, and Artisan's homepage cites "20x ROI" and "$700K ARR sourced in 6 months". Treat these as marketing claims, and ask each vendor for customers in your own segment who will take a call.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, 11x or Artisan?
Neither is better in general. 11x suits teams that want outbound plus inbound voice and chat agents from one vendor, with a published entry price and managed mailboxes. Artisan suits teams that want one AI BDR running inside Salesforce or HubSpot with per-campaign approval controls. Both are agent products whose output depends on your list and messaging, so pilot before committing to a year.
How much do 11x and Artisan cost?
11x publishes an entry price: Outbound Growth at "Starting at $3,750 / mo" billed annually, with Pro and Enterprise custom, and Inbound priced separately from $5,333 a month for voice and $2,417 for chat. Artisan publishes no prices and scopes Team, Scale and Enterprise to lead volume, mailboxes and dialer seats. Vendr's undated medians are $65,100 and $30,000 a year, with no purchases count stated on either page.
Do 11x or Artisan make phone calls for you?
Artisan does not: it says "Ava cannot legally make calls, she creates a list of qualified prospects for your reps to dial," and sells an AI dialer as a per-seat add-on. 11x keeps outbound calls human too, "11x does the prep. Your rep makes the call", but its separate Inbound product does run AI voice agents that answer and qualify inbound calls.
Does either have a free trial?
No free plan or free trial is stated on the pricing pages we checked for either vendor; both lead to a demo. Artisan's FAQ says "We'll scope the right plan together." Ask instead for a short scoped pilot on your own target list, with a written success measure and a break clause.
Is 11x still called Alice?
No. 11x says Outbound is the current name for the agent it used to call Alice, and Inbound for the one it called Julian, while noting that "Alice and Julian are legacy names that still appear in some documentation, pricing pages, customer stories, and URL paths". Its pricing pages still sit under those paths.
Sources
All 19 sources were opened and checked by 2026-10-21. Vendor statements are paraphrased; figures belong to the source that published them.
- 11x. 11x Platform. Checked 2026-10-21.
- 11x. 11x Outbound (formerly Alice). Checked 2026-10-21.
- 11x. 11x Outbound (formerly Alice) pricing. Checked 2026-10-21.
- 11x. 11x Inbound (formerly Julian) pricing. Checked 2026-10-21.
- 11x. 11x security. Checked 2026-10-21.
- 11x. About 11x. Checked 2026-10-21.
- 11x. 11x llms.txt. Checked 2026-10-21.
- 11x. A Love Letter to the Pursuit of Growth. 2026-10-14; checked 2026-10-21.
- Vendr. 11x.ai software pricing and plans (Vendr Marketplace). No update date stated; checked 2026-10-21.
- TechCrunch. a16z- and Benchmark-backed 11x has been claiming customers it doesn't have. 2025-03-24; checked 2026-10-21.
- Artisan. Artisan: the AI BDR that runs in your stack. Checked 2026-10-21.
- Artisan. Artisan pricing. Checked 2026-10-21.
- Artisan. Ava, the autonomous AI BDR. Checked 2026-10-21.
- Artisan. Artisan for enterprise. Checked 2026-10-21.
- Artisan. About Artisan. Checked 2026-10-21.
- Artisan. Artisan newsroom. Checked 2026-10-21.
- Artisan. Artisan llms-full.txt. Checked 2026-10-21.
- Vendr. Artisan AI software pricing and plans (Vendr Marketplace). No update date stated; checked 2026-10-21.
- Revspire. Revspire pricing (per module, unlimited user licenses). Checked 2026-10-15.
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