Ethora: The Voiceflow Alternative for AI Agents You Own
Put an AI agent trained on your website and documents on your site or inside your app, without designing every path by hand. Ethora has an open-source core you can self-host, per-agent model choice including models you run yourself, human handoff in the same conversation, and a free plan with no credit card.
The honest short answer
Ethora vs Voiceflow: the honest short answer
Voiceflow is a hosted AI agent platform for customer experience teams, with visual workflows, team collaboration, and agents that run on web, in apps, on WhatsApp, over SMS and on voice. Ethora is narrower and more open: an AI agent grounded in your own content for your website and your own apps, on an open-source core you can self-host, with the model of your choice, including one you run yourself with Ollama or vLLM.
Stay with Voiceflow if
- Your team designs conversation workflows together on a visual canvas
- You need voice agents, or channels such as WhatsApp and SMS, from one platform
- You rely on contact-centre and CRM integrations such as Salesforce, Zendesk, Genesys or Amazon Connect
Choose Ethora if
- You want an AI agent on your website or app that answers from your content, without designing every path
- You need to self-host, or keep prompts and answers on a model inside your own perimeter
- You want published pricing and a free plan to start, and room to grow into in-app chat, group rooms and calls
Best for: Voiceflow for CX teams designing multi-channel chat and voice agents together; Ethora for an AI agent on your own website or app that you can own, self-host and run on your own model.
Side by side
Ethora vs Voiceflow: capabilities at a glance
The questions buyers ask most when comparing AI agent platforms. Voiceflow facts come from its public website, pricing page, security page and documentation.
Ethora
How to read this table
Voiceflow facts are taken from voiceflow.com, its pricing and security pages and its documentation, checked 16 October 2026. Voiceflow does not publish plan prices for businesses, so check with them for current terms. If something here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
Why teams switch
Why teams move from Voiceflow to Ethora
Voiceflow is built for teams designing agents across many channels. Teams switch when the job is simpler and closer to home: an AI agent on their own site or app that they control end to end.
Voiceflow
Hosted AI agent platform
Ethora
Open-source chat and AI platform
An honest view
When Voiceflow is the better choice
We would rather you pick the right tool. Voiceflow is likely the better fit in these cases.
Teams designing flows together
If conversation designers, product and support work on the same agent on a shared visual canvas, Voiceflow is built for that. Ethora has no flow canvas.
Voice agents
Voiceflow runs agents on voice as well as chat. Ethora has voice and video calls between people in its chat SDKs, which is a different thing.
Contact-centre channels
WhatsApp, SMS and integrations with Genesys, Amazon Connect, Salesforce or Zendesk are Voiceflow territory. Ethora does not offer those channels or a ticketing helpdesk.
Build it on Ethora
Everything you need to replace Voiceflow on your site
The pieces most teams use when they move a website or in-app AI agent to Ethora.
AI chat widget for your website
One script tag adds a floating AI chat widget to any site. It loads asynchronously and keeps its styles isolated from your page.
See the AI chat widgetNo-code AI agent builder
Start from a template such as the support agent, add knowledge, set instructions and appearance, and preview it live.
Build an agent without codeRAG chatbot on your own content
Crawl your website, upload documents, and check which sources each answer used before you go live.
How the RAG chatbot worksSelf-hosted LLM AI agent
Point an agent at Ollama, vLLM or another OpenAI-compatible endpoint so prompts and answers never leave your servers.
Run it on your own modelPricing
Free plan with 1,000 monthly active users and no credit card, then Small Business at $149/mo and Enterprise from $599/mo.
Compare plansAlso comparing Chatbase?
If you are weighing a hosted chatbot trained on your content, see how Ethora compares with Chatbase.
Ethora vs ChatbaseAI agents on customer websites, built with Ethora
Healthcare: HIPAA-compliant AI assistant (RAG) over a medical video library
Dr. Talks is one of the most prominent organizers of online healthcare conferences and summits.
Ethora enabled them to create a context-aware AI-powered chatbot to help users navigate thousands of pages of medical content, correctly referencing pages, authors, videos and timestamps. 100% secure and HIPAA-compliant.
This assistant enhances user experience by simplifying interaction with the platform and reducing search time.
- 1000+ summits indexed by AI bot
- Instant user engagement
- Vector embeddings enable intelligent domain expert AI responses
Communities: fan chat app with second-screen rooms and digital collectibles
A cross-platform social app uniting the automotive community around racing events.
Fan rooms for teams and drivers, second-screen events, and collectibles handed out and traded through chat bots.
- Cross-platform iOS and Android app
- Fan rooms and second-screen events
- Collectibles distributed in chat
Energy: dedicated chat server, AI-agent rooms and a React Native app for a procurement platform
Preshent is a US platform for energy-project procurement with AI-driven decision support.
Ethora provides the conversation layer: a chat room per project workspace shared by people and the AI agent, a dedicated chat server in Preshent’s own cloud, push notifications and a React Native app.
- 1,130 chat rooms, one per workspace
- AI agent as a participant in every room
- Dedicated chat server, 99.99%+ uptime
Professional services: a private, self-hosted AI assistant for a corporate intelligence firm
A London corporate intelligence and investigations firm whose analysts could not use public AI assistants on confidential client work.
Ethora designed a private AI assistant: a single-tenant server with AI agents, document search and an open-weight model on the firm’s own GPU, managed by Ethora in a London cloud region or installed on a workstation in the office.
- Local open-weight LLM, no public AI services
- Single-tenant server, UK hosting
- Cloud GPU or on-premise workstation
Virtual worlds: a 3D multiplayer world built from a book, with AI characters, in one weekend
An internal R&D showcase by Ethora’s founder: Alice in Wonderland, The Tempest and A Christmas Carol as 3D worlds you walk through in first person.
Each room is an Ethora chat, each character an Ethora AI agent with the book as its knowledge; a generator and the hosted MCP server build a new world from any book in about four minutes.
- Built in a weekend on the public SDK, API and MCP
- Characters answer in character from the text
- Daily AI budget keeps a public world affordable
AI agents on customer websites: support, intake and teaching assistants
Clinics, schools and small businesses build AI agents on Ethora themselves and put them on their own websites, often on the day they sign up.
3 examples, from a US mental health provider and a wellness brand to a university pharmacology course.
- WordPress plugin or one script tag
- Answers from the customer’s own pages and documents
- Self-serve, no developer needed
Migration
Moving a website agent from Voiceflow to Ethora
Your knowledge sources and your agent’s instructions carry over. Workflows do not import, because Ethora has no flow canvas: for question-answering agents they usually become instructions plus knowledge.
Collect your knowledge
Export the help articles, PDFs and documents your Voiceflow agent answers from, and list the website pages it should know.
Create the agent in Ethora
Sign up free, create an app and an AI agent (start from the support agent template), crawl your website and upload the documents.
Turn workflows into instructions
Write the rules your workflows enforced into the agent’s instructions: tone, what it must not answer, and when to bring in a person. Pick the model, cloud or your own.
Embed it
Add
<script src="https://widget.chat.ethora.com/assistant.js" data-app-id="YOUR_APP_ID"></script>before</body>, install the WordPress plugin, or add chat to your app with the SDKs.Test 10 real questions
Run ten questions from your Voiceflow transcripts in the Try it chat. It shows which sources each answer used, so gaps are easy to spot.
Watch conversations for a week
Read the widget conversations in the admin, add missing knowledge, rebuild, and join conversations yourself where a person should answer.
Voiceflow alternative FAQ
How is Ethora different from Voiceflow?
Voiceflow is a hosted platform for designing chat and voice agents with visual workflows across many channels. Ethora focuses on AI agents for your own website and apps: you give the agent your content and instructions instead of designing every path, and you can self-host the platform and run the agent on your own model.
Does Ethora have a visual workflow builder?
No. You configure an agent with instructions, knowledge, a model and tools in the admin or through the API, and test it in a chat that shows the sources behind each answer. If a visual canvas is central to how your team works, Voiceflow is the better fit.
Can Ethora run voice agents or answer phone calls?
No. Ethora’s chat SDKs include voice and video calls between people, but there are no AI phone agents. For voice agents, Voiceflow is the better choice.
Can I use my own model?
Yes. Each agent can use a cloud model API such as OpenAI or a model you host through an OpenAI-compatible endpoint such as Ollama or vLLM, so prompts and answers can stay on your own servers.
Is Ethora suitable for healthcare?
Ethora is HIPAA and SOC 2 compatible, and a BAA is available on Enterprise and dedicated deployments. Whether a specific project is compliant depends on its configuration and hosting. Chats are encrypted in transit and at rest by default; end-to-end encrypted rooms are an optional per-app setting that is off by default.
Put an AI agent on your site today
Add your content, set the instructions, paste one line. Free to start, on our cloud or your own servers, with the model you choose.
