As a marketing leader and AI enthusiasts I've tested dozens of different generative AI tools. Copy.ai is among the very few real alternatives I've found to ChatGPT.
In this review I'll go through my thoughts on where Copy.ai adds most value and where it still has room to improve.
Recently I surveyed CMOs in Finland to find out how different generative AI tools are used by marketers. The survey revealed that almost every marketing team in Finland had tried using ChatGPT, but less than half of teams were considering investing in paid alternatives to ChatGPT in 2024. In my view this is shortsighted. While ChatGPT has become widely adopted, marketers can gain more by actively testing and exploring different alternatives.
The key thing about new AI-powered solutions for marketers like Copy.ai is that they don't aim the core technology behind ChatGPT. They simply offer an easier and faster way to access it. I think we will see different layers of innovation in AI technology. In the foundation layer will likely see advancements from the likes of OpenAI, Google and Amazon. In the business-facing layer we'll see entire new ecosystems of apps that solve individual pain points of knowledge workers like marketers.
Since GPT-3 was released by OpenAI in June 2020 dozens of new generative AI tools have emerged to help marketers with key tasks like text generation, marketing automation and creative inspiration.
Among the first to gain traction was Copy.ai, a startup founded in by Paul Yacoubian in Tennessee in 2020. With 13 million in Series A funding from notable investors like Sequoia and Tiger Capital, Copy.ai has already gained over 10 million users over the past 4 years.
Today, Copy.ai very transparently leverages OpenAI's GPT-3,5 and GPT-4 functionality within the app, so to some extent you're getting the same service packaged with some advanced uses of prompts and pre-set workflows.
If you're not willing to spend hours and hours of learning prompt engineering and ChatGPT best practices you might be open to alternatives that make your life easier.
Paid alternatives to ChatGPT typically usually offer marketers customizations, cleaner user interfaces and integrated features that can sync seamlessly with their existing workflows. Specialized tools I've tested are typically faster to learn and easier to use than the core ChatGPT experience.
Essentially, tools like Copy.ai are tailored to fit the unique needs of marketing professionals, instead of an endlessly flexible but difficult to master chat bot. For some people that ease of use is well worth the investment.
The broader reason why marketers should use specialized tools is that ChatGPT is flooding the internet with bland and generic content. Too many people use ChatGPT in similar ways and it often it lacks a human touch. Recently Google started to punish extensive use of generative AI content ahead of launching their own Search Generative Experience. Tailored solutions like Copy.ai give you ways to include generative AI in your content creation process in ways that taps into your unique writing style and past content. More on that later.
When CMOs with a bit of money to spend ask me for an alternative to ChatGPT, I typically mention Jasper and Copy.ai. When you have time, you can also check my recent in-depth review of Jasper.
While I've tested Copy.ai before, I recently signed up for the paid-for Pro version to give you a more informed run-through of features. You can always try out the free trial of Copy.ai yourself, but you should keep in mind that it is currently limited to GPT-3,5 and has some other differences to the paid version.
One major thing to clarify in this review. While Copy.ai started very much as a tool for marketers, it has recently expanded very broadly into broader areas in the intersection of sales and marketing. Today on the website you see it called as the "GTM AI Platform."
The broader go-to-market features can prove a lot of value for marketers, but that's not why we're here today.
The second big thing you notice when you use Copy.ai is that the user interface is quite minimalistic. For marketers, the natural urge is to pick the big "Discover Chat" in the middle of the screen, but it was helpful to also have the broad library of example chats available to give inspiration.
In my testing, I found that there were many other nudges and winks to inspire you to get started in different areas. For example, the Workflows and Chat functionality also contained quite specific templates and examples that I could relate to as a marketer. This shortened the learning curve considerably and overall made Copy.ai feel like it was a tool built by marketers for marketers.
Another very clear early indication was that you need to set up your own Brand Voice in Copy.ai. In practice this could happen as simply as copy-pasting 50-500 words into the tool, for example, from a blog article that you have written and feel reflects your writing style.
Within a few seconds I was able to get a fairly detailed (and extremely flattering) Brand Voice that I was able to set as the core writing style for any new generated content.
I need to be honest. In my testing, I struggled a bit with my initial Brand Voice. While it sounded like a way I would like to write, the actual generated content didn't sound anything like my own writing style. Blog content I generated within Copy.ai was far more aggressively salesy and poetic than what I like. When I tried to adjust written language, similar to adjusting a prompt in ChatGPT I simply didn't get better results. It almost feels like the default writing style in Copy.ai has a strong North American software company foundation that is difficult to remove.
I tried some creative options to fix by Brand Voice. Among them, I copied directly text from a software company blog I respect and was able to get a quite distinctive different Brand Voice to try. However, the generated text remained very salesy and poetic. I also tried to list very detailed copywriting techniques in my Brand Voice such as BLUF and MECE to ensure a standard way of writing. The generated output ignored these key instructions and actually ended up sounding more like ChatGPT with an introductory sentence like "In the fast-paced world of digital marketing, producing high-quality, engaging content consistently is both a priority and a challenge."
In summary, the Brand Voice is a great idea and shows promise, but fully generated blog articles I tried failed to align with my different writing styles.
The second key feature to call out in Copy.ai is the very prominent "Chat" module. While it works like ChatGPT it offers a few key advantages. Firstly, even the free trial version gives "Real-time search" as a way to access more recent information from the Internet. I'm not sure how exactly it gathers the information. In testing it made reference to a cut-off period in 2023, so my presumption is that the underlying technology is very similar to ChatGPT where information comes from Microsoft Bing. In this way, the reference to "real-time" is a bit misleading.
Another significant advantage over ChatGPT is that there are many prompts templates you can browse through and edit. I didn't have time to test all of them, but I can imagine that an up-to-date prompt library could provide marketers sufficient visual queues of what you can do, similar to what I've seen in tools like Superlines.io.
I've repeatedly warned marketers not to generate full articles with an AI tools. I simply don't believe the current generation of AI tools can replace proper research, customer understanding and professional copywriting. Instead of expecting a fully automated solution, I have advocated for a chat-like experience, where you use tools as part of your content creation process as you work through creating your article structure and content.
The inline Editor in Copy.ai was almost hidden. It is accessed through a small "Editor" button in the core Chat module. When you do start using it, the Editor gives you an idea of how versatile and useful Copy.ai can be. In the example above I asked in the Chat different versions of a paragraph I wanted to generate. When Copy.ai didn't give me a perfect first draft, it was easy to "Add to Editor" any new content I was able to generate.
This in-app workflow of researching, generating content, editing tone of voice and preparing for publication I've only seen executed well in Jasper and to some extent AIContentfy. It highlights to me the key area where marketers should be paying to get more value beyond ChatGPT. Having a streamlined, focused workflow within one app saves time and has potential to make you write better content. It's easier said than done, but this is where marketers should pay attention.
The last major functionality I'd like to call out in Copy.ai is the quite extensive catalog of workflows. There are already ways to automate the use of ChatGPT using integration tools like Zapier, but Copy.ai's workflow automation options looked to be a much quicker way to get started in automating time-consuming marketing and sales operations tasks.
In my test, I chose to automate the workflow of creating a blog describing how Copy.ai can be used as a tool for marketing automation. The article produced was surprisingly better quality than the articles I'd generated using the Copy.ai Chat functionality, and it came with additional metadata and headline suggestions.
I also tested out generating a press release about Google acquiring Hubspot and generating Google Ads based on my website content and ideal customer profile. In these kinds of tasks it gave a good enough starting point to quickly save me time and effort on fairly common tasks.
The thing that stands out to me the most about these workflows is how there are a lot of broader go-to-market team tasks available in the Workflow Library that go well beyond the needs of a marketer. This aligns well with Copy.ai's vision of being the AI platform for GTM teams, and I could see this as being the core reason why folks would invest the time and resources to build out a Copy.ai workspace for their broader team.
In the past I saw Copy.ai as a direct competitor to Jasper. I'm not yet convinced either tool can fully automate things like content creation or SEO-focused blog writing. However, my latest test with Copy.ai gave me enough inspiration to think more broadly about marketing and sales operations automation.
Copy.ai will not replace my subscription of ChatGPT Plus, but I will maintain my paid subscription to take more time to try out a broader range of marketing and sales related automations. At a cost of $49 per month for a solopreneur Copy.ai doesn't need to do much to give a good return on investment. The team options looked a lot more expensive, so I'd consider testing this out before rolling out on a longer term contract.
The next key milestone I'm eager to see is what happens to these tools when GPT-5 gets released. For the moment, the key limitation of AI generated text is that it has a very templated look and feel based on the limitations of the LLM technology under the hood. I already observed a massive improvement from GPT-3 to GPT-4 and it's only a matter of time before the Brand Voice elements and configurable copywriting tools get to a high enough standard of writing that they vastly replace my own capabilities.