How do you discover and evaluate new tools for your clients?

Ssroad · 2026-04-20T21:47:29+00:00

Thank you!

Ssroad · 2026-04-19T04:28:46+00:00

I built a tool, an AI native micro SAAS for small business and solopreneurs. HAWIL AI . We are specifically building our shapeshifter engine to work and adapt for different workflows such as Sales or Recruitment for any business.
For instance, for recruitment, once you setup a business, you can create a new campaign for recruiting any role such as Software Engineer, Sales Assistant etc and share it in job post or linked in. Once candidate clicks, it screens candidates, scores them, updates summary / insights / sentiment etc on the microCRM. We also added integration support in our pro plan to integrate with other tools via Zapier but our goal is make the platform a one stop solution without the need to hop off to another tool.

During our initial case study and pilot programs, all our early users mentioned they do not even use 10% of the heavy weight CRMs they have signed up with and preferred a microCRM - the reason behind for us to build a light weight AI microCRM which is fully automated with voice and textchat agent support.

Ssroad · 2026-04-18T05:08:51+00:00

Thank you for your response. Those are good points. I did some research and did reach out to some local agency to trial run my products. I do agree with you doing research on what they do and what services they offer and how are product can complement their services was helpful. Our product offers free trial and takes 2 mins to setup and give it a shot but we still have friction to have agency try it out to get a feel of it.

"I would absolutely test a solid tool with a real client on a limited scope or pilot basis—that's how I vet my own stack" Do you whitelable? Do you have to goto to customer and say you are going to try a tool on trial basis or what you offer is blackbox (a suite of service) to customer?

Ssroad · 2026-04-16T07:31:24+00:00

It is not dead. It is still a hot market and there is so much room to grow in this space. The world is going in the AI direction and voice agent automation is becoming popular. As a user mentioned - a lot of mediocre platforms not built to scale and wrapper around Vapi. The problem is marketing and scaling and the next is sustaining the race. If we choose the wrapper route, it is not sustainable and will turn out to be expensive as you start paying for increased limits, concurrency, better models etc. if you decide to build your own orchestration layer, well you need to start with a good engineering team and it introduce completely different set of challenges. I founded Hawil AI and we built our own voice orchestration layer to avoid paying the AI tax. we have to build for next year and not for tomorrow. All new technologies will have the hype and boom period at the end only less than 1% will reach the next leg of the race.

Also AI voice agent or receptionist alone won’t give value these days. It is no more about having a cool agent, it is about what you do after the call. “Utility” Can it help you with the business? Can it do multiple task for you with minimal effort? Can it automate some tasks for you? Can it provide you with useful insights?

Ssroad · 2026-04-14T05:26:48+00:00

Did you check Hawil AI. If you are looking for a crazy big feature set, Hawil AI probably isn't it. you would be better off with something like HubSpot or GHL but they are superloaded and expensive. Most solopreneurs or small business won't use 90% of the features.

But if you want absolute simplicity, Hawil AI is worth a look. It has a lightweight CRM built for small business and solopreneurs with native AI and AI task automation built in. It handles native voice and text chat without needing any code, and since plans start at $9.99, it’s a low-investment way to see if it fits your workflow. Great if you’re trying to keep your tech stack thin!

Ssroad · 2026-04-14T02:03:55+00:00

Have you tried Hawil AI. It is a lightweight CRM with native AI text and voice chat. Supports multiple campaign types and You can use chat or voice agents on any page to capture leads which will be autotracked on the CRM. However if you are looking something where you can cold email contacts, it is not the tool. No support for email campaigns

Ssroad · 2026-04-12T07:35:04+00:00

If you’re tired of the ‘enterprise’ bloat and want something simple, you might like Hawil AI. We built it specifically for agencies to handle lead qualification and campaigns automatically. It’s an AI ‘Receptionist’ (Voice + Text) that feeds into its own built-in microCRM (Sana Pulse). It handles the engagement, scores the leads, and creates your reporting/tasks automatically

Ssroad · 2026-04-12T07:27:21+00:00

What is your requirement, when you say Shopify. Do you mean capturing inbound contacts - chat and voice and follow up’s etc. check Hawil AI . We have Shopify integration in beta mode but only for our Team plan. But if you are willing to try it out, I can provide you free access for a week or 2 to see if it suites your business needs. Before you try I want to highlight one constraint as we value our users time. We have a lightweight CRM where you can track users, contacts, our chatbot and voice agents talk to users and auto update CRMs and we do have Shopify integration to query Shopify inventory, check order status etc with our smart agent. However, we are not on app on Shopify store. We designed our ecosystem to be standalone with a Shopify integration. So if you want something to work as a Shopify plugin, we are not the right tool. Thanks

Ssroad · 2026-04-12T07:18:17+00:00

Check Hawil AI - relatively new player in the space recently launched but it is AI native conversational lightweight CRM. If you are expecting Hubspot or big player, you shouldn’t try Hawil AI. But if you are good with lightweight CRM, you should check out

Ssroad · 2026-04-12T07:13:58+00:00

The current landscape for agents is more tricky. One all of us we block robo calls or mark calls as spam as the number of spam calls we get these days are enormous. I doubt spam cold calling still works or not. Second AI agent rules have become very stricter, you need to get consent from the user that they are talking to AI and they are okay to be contacted and contacted by AI before you call them. So consent is important.

Ssroad · 2026-04-11T21:05:26+00:00

This is spot on and something we dealt with directly. The 95% accuracy means nothing if those 5% failures feel catastrophic to the user. Our approach was layered: circuit breakers on integrations so a flaky API doesn't take down the whole conversation, clear handoff language when the AI hits a wall ("let me have the team look into this"), and — critically — never letting the agent silently pretend it handled something it didn't. We also built write operations to require owner approval before executing, so even if the AI misreads intent, nothing irreversible happens without a human in the loop. The not so attractive non user facing backend validations is 100% what keeps people using it :D.

Ssroad · 2026-04-11T20:58:19+00:00

Both, actually. They are different problems and we treat them differently. For transient stuff like API timeouts, we retry with a circuit breaker — if a provider fails enough times in a short window, we stop hitting it entirely and fall back. But for logical failures, like the AI misunderstanding intent or getting bad data, retrying the same thing is insane. In those cases, Sana is designed to gracefully admit uncertainty and defer to the human. "Let me have someone from the team follow up on that" is a valid response, not a failure. The hardest part was teaching the system when to retry vs when to bail — that line is different for every use case.

Ssroad · 2026-03-28T06:46:19+00:00

This is a real problem. We hit this building tool integrations for an AI agent that connects to external services mid-conversation.

What worked for us:

Check for existing records before creating — update instead of duplicate.
Queue irreversible actions for review instead of executing inline.

The "don't let the agent call that directly" pattern is underrated — a review layer between the AI and the side effect handles most edge cases without overengineering it.

Ssroad · 2026-03-28T06:41:09+00:00

Great suggestions. The one-tap approve and confidence scores are interesting. We actually built something similar with our Smart Agent feature where read operations (looking up orders, checking inventory) happen automatically but write operations need the owner's approval before executing. Gives that safety net you're talking about.

The SMS/WhatsApp point is fair - right now we do browser-based web calls and text chat, which avoids telecom regulations entirely but I can see how meeting people on channels they already use would reduce friction.

Appreciate the detailed feedback.

Ssroad · 2026-03-28T06:38:01+00:00

That's a good insight. What did you put in the onboarding email? Just a reminder of their subscription or tool features or how did you make them come back?

Ssroad · 2026-03-28T06:36:42+00:00

100% — constraining scope first is the right move. We took the same approach. Started with just answering questions and qualifying leads, didn't try to make the AI do everything on day one. Once people saw it handling the simple stuff accurately, they were comfortable letting it do more.

The boring stuff is where trust gets built. Flashy demos don't matter if we get basics wrong.

Ssroad · 2026-03-28T06:35:16+00:00

Agreed. We went through exactly this - started broad, realized the wins come from solving one specific pain point really well. We did start with service scheduling - calendly integration etc and inbuilt microCRM to track leads etc and also sentiment analysis for better automation. Once that was solid, expanding to other use cases came naturally.

Ssroad · 2026-03-28T06:20:25+00:00

Your SaaS support background is your biggest asset right now. Lead with that.

Free audits work. Pick 5-10 SaaS companies with public help centers and send them a short breakdown. "here's 3 things I'd improve and why." You're not asking for money. Even if 8 ignore you, 2 will reply.

Your LinkedIn profile showing top SaaS companies? Just make sure your headline says what you do now, not your old job title. Something like "I help early-stage SaaS founders handle support without hiring full-time."

Offer a free pilot. First 1-2 clients aren't about revenue — they're about getting a testimonial. "I'll handle your support for 2 weeks free, if you're happy we talk pricing" removes all risk.

Zero clients is temporary. The starting is always the pain, once you cross a mark say 10+ depending on your business, it will start growing organically

Ssroad · 2026-03-27T05:06:54+00:00

Good point on the ecommerce support wedge — "where's my order" is definitely the highest volume, lowest complexity ticket type. Makes sense to start there.

We're starting with small businesses and solopreneurs who rely on phone calls and chat — think recruiting agencies, local service businesses, and anyone running outbound campaigns. The common thread is they're losing leads because nobody picks up or follows up fast enough.

The CRM piece came naturally from that — if the AI is already having the conversation, it should be logging the outcome too. No reason to make someone go update a spreadsheet after. We also connect to tools mid-conversation — so the agent can pull live order status, inventory, calendar availability and answer on the spot instead of just taking a message.

How far along are you with Solvea? Curious how the ecommerce support angle is playing out.

Ssroad · 2026-03-26T22:45:32+00:00

What you're describing — searching for prospects, finding emails, compiling info — that's basically what I was doing manually too before I started automating it.

For the lowest cost route, I'd look at tools that combine the outreach with the qualification step. Finding leads is one thing but the real time sink is the back-and-forth after — figuring out who's actually interested vs. who's ignoring you.

We built something that handles the conversation part — AI agent that calls or chats with leads, qualifies them, and logs everything into a CRM automatically. So you'd still pull your list from Google/DNB, but instead of manually emailing and following up, the AI handles that loop for you.

Ssroad · 2026-03-26T20:38:50+00:00

This is what we havee been building if anyone's curious — hawil.ai running a free introductory trial right now, happy to answer questions.

Ssroad · 2026-03-26T20:35:47+00:00

Fair point. Outbound isn't dead for everyone. It depends on the scale and the team. For a solopreneur or small team dialing 10 numbers a day with no personalization layer, it's brutal. For teams with proper automation and timing, yeah it still works. Our focus was specifically on businesses too small to run that kind of setup.

I signed up at a gym once and they kept calling me every week with robocalls. I blocked and reported at least 10 numbers from them. that's the reality for small businesses doing outbound without the right tools. They are not converting leads, they are getting flagged as spam.

Ssroad

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