IBM watsonx Assistant vs. Cortana (discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM watsonx Assistant
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
IBM offers watsonx Assistant, an AI and natural language driven chatbot designed to allow anyone to deploy a chatbot in an app or website.
$0
per month
Cortana (discontinued)
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's Cortana was a general purpose productivity assistant, that has been deprecated as a standalone product.N/A
Pricing
IBM watsonx AssistantCortana (discontinued)
Editions & Modules
Lite
$0
per month
Plus
$140
per month
Enterprise
Contact for pricing
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM watsonx AssistantCortana (discontinued)
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsBilling for the use of Watson Assistant is managed through an IBM Cloud® account. The metrics that are used for billing purposes differ based on the plan type. The plan can be billed based on the number of API calls made to a service instance or on the number of active users who interact with the instance.—
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM watsonx AssistantCortana (discontinued)
Considered Both Products
IBM watsonx Assistant
Chose IBM watsonx Assistant
The ease of use working with IBM Watson Assistant is simple when compared with the other players. More scalability, fewer bot building complexities, simple integration capabilities, and multi-language support. Most of all, it comes from the IBM product suite which clearly …
Cortana (discontinued)
Chose Cortana (discontinued)
IBM Watson Assistant has been early into this market and has improved a lot over time compared to Azure AI Cortana. More documentation related to the services. But Ease of integration Azure AI ranks over IBM Watson Assistant. And again in terms of services offered under the …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
IBM watsonx AssistantCortana (discontinued)
Small Businesses
ManyChat
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Score 7.9 out of 10
Intercom
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Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Zoom Contact Center
Zoom Contact Center
Score 9.2 out of 10
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Conversica
Conversica
Score 9.5 out of 10
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
IBM watsonx AssistantCortana (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
9.1
(86 ratings)
7.1
(3 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.7
(73 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(9 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM watsonx AssistantCortana (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
In scenarios requiring highly specialized technical support, where deep domain expertise is necessary, a virtual assistant may lack the specific knowledge needed to address complex technical issues, It's important to note that the effectiveness of virtual assistants depends on factors such as the quality of training data, customization, and ongoing improvement efforts.
Read full review
Microsoft
It's easy for anyone who is expecting some simple AI problems like fetching the keywords, understanding the intent, language translation, etc. to be solved from an existing database and all they need is to connect to their APIs via a subscription model. But for complex use cases, there is still room for improvement like customization of underlying AI models for a specific use case like identifying some unique identifiers with respect to industry.
Read full review
Pros
IBM
  • Provides fast and accurate responses to our customers.
  • Learns and adapts, continually improving its responses and recommendations as it interacts with customers.
  • Integrates seamlessly with our internal systems and databases.
  • We can customize and adjust the virtual assistant's responses and recommendations to suit our customers' specific needs.
  • It provides valuable information about our customers' needs and preferences.
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Microsoft
  • Being hosted in Azure solves a massive hosting problem
  • The language understanding system has the ability to revolutionize many vertical markets
  • Integrating with Cortana Analytics was really simple due to easy to understand documentation
Read full review
Cons
IBM
  • Watson Assistant requires some improvement in the way it deals with multimedia content when displayed on the assistant. As of now, IBM Watson Assistant has issues displaying technical diagrams on a small chat window. This is definitely something that needs some improvement.
  • It is sometimes hard and time-consuming to create some advanced actions while creating the virtual assistant so I suggest that the IBM Watson Assistant development team would work on creating sample templates for some simple to advanced actions according to industry to help kick-start the process of creating the initial virtual assistant.
  • IBM Watson Assistant is great, but it is not magic on its own; it requires more extensions which, in my opinion, are very limited to a few possibilities. Enhancing the extensions with other products, including open-source solutions, ought to be a priority for the Watson Assistant development team.
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Microsoft
  • More partnerships with colleges and schools to increase the workforce with technical knowledge (increase local workforce)
  • Have more online training and documentation in other languages
  • Have affordable prices for students
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Likelihood to Renew
IBM
Currently we are using to develop chatbots based on client provided flow what kind chatbot required for client either button or free text chatbots. we will decided accordingly flow and develop chatbot using IBM Watson. We will integrated custom components if required which is not present in library.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Usability
IBM
IBM Watson assistant has come a long way in last few years, and is handling the generative AI chatbot building really well. It is of immense importance to sales strategists like me who are average in coding but have real world cases of lead qualification for sales. IBM Watson is also very intuitively designed with the amazing drag and drop feature. Testing is easy, deployment is pretty straightforward. I could have worked with a little more sales support, but then the whole point of making a conversational AI chatbot is to reduce the sales support intervention - so I guess I will live with that
Read full review
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Performance
IBM
To develop chatbots based on client provided flow what kind chatbot required for client either button or free text chatbots. we will decided accordingly flow and develop chatbot using IBM Watson. We will integrated custom components if required which is not present in library. IBM Watson library anyone can easily learn and develop chatbots.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
IBM
We've rarely had to engage support, but they've always been prompt in responding and very attentive. Support experiences have been extremely positive (but we're mostly happy that we just don't have any cause to routinely need support in the first place!).
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Online Training
IBM
Excellent course material.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
IBM
Overall the implementation was simple.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
IBM
IBM Watson Assistant provides a highly intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it accessible to non-technical users to easily create and deploy conversational agents. Additionally, being a cloud-based platform, it eliminates the need for manual retraining of the bot after each modification, saving time and resources for businesses. This combination of user-friendliness and automation makes watsonx Assistant an ideal choice for building conversational agents at scale.
Read full review
Microsoft
IBM Watson Assistant has been early into this market and has improved a lot over time compared to Azure AI Cortana. More documentation related to the services. But Ease of integration Azure AI ranks over IBM Watson Assistant. And again in terms of services offered under the ecosystem, Azure AI precedes IBM Watson Assitant.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
IBM
To develop chatbots based on client provided flow what kind chatbot required for client either button or free text chatbots. we will decided accordingly flow and develop chatbot using IBM Watson. We will integrated custom components if required which is not present in library. IBM Watson library anyone can easily learn and develop chatbots.
Read full review
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Scalability
IBM
Over All good
Read full review
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
IBM
  • Setting up automated tasks has helped my team to have a cut on time leading in a dynamic change and this service has taken it down by 30%
  • Chatbots are a way forward, using this product we receive more queries most of which lead to qualification
  • The data provided based on user interactions is so valuable that now we easily know what the intents are and where we can improve with our pitches
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Difficult to ascertain the ROI as we are a software house who have developed a module in our application using Cortana. However for companies that use our software I would say the use of sentiment analysis in our application could free up at least 1 full time resource to be used elsewhere in their organisation.
Read full review
ScreenShots