AI executive assistant

AI executive assistant for the agency owner who is the bottleneck

Every brief, every client question, every report runs through you. The bar is not another chat window. A real AI executive assistant acts on your behalf in the accounts you already manage, and checks in before any draft reaches a client. Not another dashboard to manage.

SOC 2 Type II compliant1,000+ integrations50,000 free credits with the onboarding call, no card

An AI executive assistant is software that handles the coordination work around a busy person. At an agency that is client call notes, scheduling, follow-ups, CRM updates, the weekly report per account, and prep before a client call. The good ones connect to your tools and execute inside them, with a named approval on every message or post they draft, and by default on anything that spends. The rest generate drafts and leave the admin where it was.

The test

Does it execute, or does it just draft?

Spend ten minutes in the Reddit and Quora threads on AI assistants and one worry comes up over and over: is this actually reducing my admin, or is it one more dashboard I now have to check? It is the right question, and it is the one test that sorts this whole category.

A tool that produces drafts still leaves you with the last mile: pasting the recap into the client doc, sending the follow-up, updating the deal, chasing the invoice. The last mile was the job, and at an agency the last mile is where your evenings go. If the work does not end up done inside the systems your agency runs on, you have hired a very fast intern who cannot touch anything.

Tier 1: chatbots

ChatGPT and its peers. Brilliant at drafting anything, connected to nothing by default. You carry the context in and you carry the output back out, so your admin load stays exactly where it was. A tool, not an assistant.

Tier 2: point solutions

Schedulers and email tools like Reclaim or Superhuman. Genuinely useful, but each one executes inside a single surface, one calendar or one inbox, for one person. Cover the whole job and you are paying for four subscriptions and doing the coordination between them yourself.

Tier 3: coworkers

Coworkers that sit where your team already talks and execute across the whole stack: client notes filed, invites sent, CRM updated, the weekly reports assembled. The safety mechanism that makes this possible is the approval gate, a named yes from your team before any draft reaches a client. This is where Patricia lives.

The same request, three ways

Take one ordinary ask from a Monday: "send Northwind the call recap and get their invoice out." A chatbot writes you a lovely recap, which you paste into an email yourself before opening the invoicing tool. A scheduler cannot help with this at all. A coworker drafts the recap email, preps the invoice from the connected tool, posts both in the account channel for one yes, then sends them and logs what happened. Same request, three completely different amounts of your afternoon, times the number of clients you carry.

The honest version of the skeptics' answer: yes, plenty of AI assistant tools are another dashboard. The fix is not a better dashboard. It is a coworker who works inside the surfaces your agency already checks, so there is nothing new to log into and nothing new to roll out to the team.

The options

The real AI executive assistant options, honestly compared.

These are the tools agency owners actually shortlist for this job, including the human option. They are different products for different jobs, so the fair comparison is what each one is best at, where it lives, and whether it executes.

Assistant	Best for	Where it lives	Executes or drafts	Price
Patricia	Agencies that want the client admin done inside their stack	Slack, and Microsoft Teams in beta	Executes across your connected tools, with approvals	$45/mo for the whole workspace, every seat included
Lindy	One person's inbox, calendar, and follow-ups	Its own app, wired to your inbox and calendar	Executes personal admin for a single user	$49.99 to $199.99/mo per user, 7-day trial, no free plan
Motion	AI project, task, and calendar planning	Its own app: calendar, tasks, docs	Plans and schedules inside Motion, drafts on credits	$19 to $29/seat/mo
Reclaim.ai	Defending focus time on a busy calendar	Your Google or Outlook calendar	Schedules and reschedules, calendar only	Free plan, paid seats $10 to $22/mo
Superhuman Mail	Getting through email faster	Your inbox, as an email app	Drafts and triages, email only	$25 to $40/mo per user
Sintra	Solo founders who want role-specific AI helpers	Its own dashboard	Drafts and generates, on 250 credits/mo	$15.60 to $48.50/mo bundle, no free plan
Human EA	Judgment, relationships, being in the room	Your office, or remote	Executes, and owns the judgment calls	$60,000 to $90,000+ a year in the US, before benefits

Vendor pricing checked on each vendor's public pricing page on July 23, 2026. The human EA range reflects published US salary surveys (Indeed, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, and Salary.com averages, July 2026). Prices change; the vendor's page is always the source of truth.

If a single person's inbox and calendar are the whole job, Lindy is the closest comparison to Patricia, and we compare the two line by line in Patricia vs Lindy. The short version: Lindy is a personal assistant priced per user, Patricia is an agency coworker priced per workspace, so she does not get more expensive every time you add an account manager.

A fair word on each

Lindy

Lindy pitches itself as an AI assistant that runs your inbox, meetings, calendar, and follow-ups, and for one busy person it is the most capable personal option on this list. Plans run $49.99, $99.99, and $199.99 a month per user, with a 7-day trial and no free plan; the higher tiers add more usage, more inboxes, and computer use. The scope is the point and the limit: it is your assistant, not your team's.

Motion

Motion is an AI planning workspace: calendar, projects, tasks, and docs in one app, at $19 to $29 per seat per month with a monthly credit allowance for AI work. If your team is happy to move its planning into Motion, the auto-scheduling is genuinely clever. The trade is that the work lives in Motion; it organizes your time more than it executes in your other tools.

Reclaim.ai

Reclaim defends focus time on a Google or Outlook calendar and does that one job well, with a real free plan and paid seats between $10 and $22 a month. It is the easiest recommendation on the list for a calendar problem. It is also only a calendar answer: no email, no CRM, no notes, no reports.

Superhuman Mail

Superhuman Mail is the fastest way through a heavy inbox, with AI drafts and triage built into the email client itself, at $25 to $40 a month per user with no free tier on Mail. If email volume is your bottleneck, it earns its price. It drafts and sorts; it does not act beyond the inbox.

Sintra

Sintra bundles 12 role-named AI helpers in its own dashboard, from $15.60 a month on a 12-month plan to $48.50 month to month, every tier on 250 monthly credits, with no free plan but a 14-day money-back guarantee. It is the cheapest way to try role-specific AI. The helpers generate and draft inside Sintra; getting the output into your systems is your job.

A human EA

Still the gold standard for judgment, discretion, and relationships, at $60,000 to $90,000 or more a year in the US before benefits. If you can afford one, the question is not either-or: agencies that pair a human EA with an AI coworker hand the human the decisions and the AI the typing.

How to choose

Six questions to ask before you pick one.

Run any tool on this page, or any tool a listicle recommends, through these six questions. They take ten minutes and they sort the category faster than any feature grid, whatever size your agency is.

1. Where does the finished work land?

In your CRM, your calendar, your inbox, and the board your account managers actually use, or in the tool's own workspace waiting for you to move it? If the answer is a new dashboard, you are buying drafts.

2. How many surfaces does it cover?

One calendar or one inbox is a point solution. The job spans client calls, email, calendar, CRM, the ad platforms and reporting; count how many of those the tool can actually touch.

3. Is it personal or for the agency?

Per-user pricing tells you the answer before the marketing does. A personal assistant helps one person; an agency coworker shares one brain across the owner, ops and the account leads, so the context does not live in one person's DMs.

4. What are the approval controls?

Autonomy without a gate is a liability with your client's name on it. Look for an explicit approval gate before any draft reaches a client and an audit log you can actually read, not just an autonomy slider.

5. Where do you talk to it?

Another app is another tab that stops getting opened by week three. A coworker who lives in the client channels your team already talks in gets used, because asking her costs nothing.

6. What does the exit look like?

A free start without a card, one-click disconnection of every integration, and clear data deletion on cancellation. A vendor confident in the product makes leaving easy.

The job

What Patricia handles as your executive assistant.

She sits in your client channels and you talk to her like a colleague. Here is the executive assistant slice of what she does for an agency owner, with the receipts.

Client call notes and recaps

Patricia joins the client call, posts a TLDR in the account channel with the full notes in the thread, and files the action items with owners in Notion, Asana, or wherever your team tracks work. The decisions land in her memory of that account, so nothing gets re-litigated in three weeks. See meeting recaps.

Calendar coordination

Ask her to find a slot with the client and two of your people and she checks the calendars, proposes times, and sends the invite once you say go. Rescheduling works the same way: one message in Slack instead of eleven emails. See the Google Calendar integration.

Email follow-ups

The follow-up that slips is the one that costs you a retainer. Patricia drafts the chaser, shows it to you in Slack, and sends it on your yes, whether that is a new business lead going quiet or a client invoice going unpaid. See invoice chasing.

CRM hygiene

After the client call, the notes, the next step, and the renewal date actually get updated, because Patricia does it instead of nagging an account manager to. She works with Attio, HubSpot, and the rest of your stack.

Reporting

The Monday report per client and the weekly internal update, assembled from the accounts you manage, in your agency's tone, on schedule. You review and send instead of compiling. See reporting and async status reports.

Prep briefs

Before your next client call: who you are meeting, what was said last time, what moved in the account since, and the one thing to bring up. Two minutes of reading instead of twenty minutes of tab archaeology. More in the customer use cases.

One habit runs through all of it: when an action item from a client call is work she can do herself, she offers to take a first stab and hands the account owner a draft to review instead of a to-do. That is the difference between an assistant that tracks your work and one that shrinks it. It is also how the queue stops forming behind you.

The executive assistant work is one slice. Patricia also runs the client reporting, the daily account checks and the back office across the same connected accounts; the use cases library has the full picture, and the AI business assistant guide covers the wider job.

Approvals

Approval-gated by design.

Execution without control is a liability, not a coworker. Patricia's autonomy has a hard edge: every email, post or message she drafts waits for a named yes from your team, by default every spend waits for one too, and the person who owns the account can give it.

Reading and drafting run free

Pulling yesterday's numbers, drafting the recap, proposing calendar slots: the safe work happens on her own, at speed, without ceremony.

No draft reaches a client without a yes

An email to a client or a post in a shared client channel stops and asks first, in the channel where the account lives, and by default so does a change to a connected account. The approval is bound to that exact action, so a yes cannot be reused for something else.

Everything lands in an audit log

Every action, hers and yours, is written to an append-only audit log: who asked, what she did, who approved it. Trust is nice; a record is better.

The full mechanics, including how OAuth grants are stored and what she can never do on her own, are on the security page.

Cost

What an executive assistant costs, three ways.

The choice is not really tool versus tool. It is one workspace price, versus the next salary on your payroll, versus a stack of per-user subscriptions that grows with the team.

Patricia: $45/mo, whole workspace

One workspace price for the whole agency, every seat included, covering 20,000 credits a month. Metered to the work she actually does, with a spend cap on by default. Separately, 50,000 free credits come with the onboarding call, no card.

A human EA: $60,000 to $90,000+ a year

Worth every dollar for judgement, relationships, and being in the room, and out of reach for most agencies of this size. The strongest setups pair one with an AI coworker that absorbs the typing.

Point tools: $10 to $200 per user, each

A scheduler, an email tool, a personal agent: individually reasonable, collectively a stack of per-user line items that each cover one surface for one person, multiplied by every account manager, with you as the integration layer.

How the metering works matters as much as the headline number. Patricia's credits are metered to the work she actually does, unused credits roll over and never expire, and the spend cap is on by default, so a busy month never surprises you. The full plan, what a task costs in credits, and the bulk ladder are on the pricing page.

Setup

Connect your tools once. Then just ask.

No workflow builder, no prompt library, no onboarding project. If your agency runs on Slack, she feels like a colleague on day one.

1. We add her to your Slack

On a 20 minute call we invite Patricia to the client channels where the work already happens. She reads only the channels you add her to, nothing else.

2. Connect the accounts you manage

Calendar, email, CRM, the board, the ad platforms and analytics: 1,000+ integrations, each scoped to what you grant, connected once for the agency with access scoped per person, and disconnectable in one click.

3. Ask for the work

"Recap that call and file the action items." "Chase the Fernbrook invoice." "Find 30 minutes with Northwind on Thursday." 50,000 free credits come with the call, no card.

Weighing a hire instead? The virtual marketing assistant guide puts a VA, a junior and an AI coworker side by side for the same money.

FAQ

AI executive assistant questions, answered straight.

What is an AI executive assistant?

An AI executive assistant is software that handles the coordination work around a busy person. For an agency owner that is client call notes, scheduling, follow-ups, CRM updates, the weekly report per account, and prep before a client call. The useful ones connect to the tools you already use and act inside them, with a named yes before any draft reaches a client. The rest are chat windows that produce drafts for you to deal with.

Can an AI executive assistant replace a human EA?

It replaces the execution layer, not the judgement layer. The recap typed after every client call, the follow-up sent on time, the CRM kept clean: an AI assistant does that work reliably and at a fraction of the cost. It does not replace a person who reads a room, holds the client relationship, or makes a call on your behalf when the situation is ambiguous. Agencies that have both end up giving the human EA better work by taking the typing away.

How much does an AI executive assistant cost?

Personal AI assistant tools run roughly $10 to $200 per user per month depending on the product and tier, which at an agency means one bill per account manager. A human executive assistant costs $60,000 to $90,000 or more a year in the US before benefits. Patricia is $45 a month for the whole agency workspace with every seat included and 20,000 credits each month. Separately, 50,000 free credits come with the onboarding call, no card.

What tasks can an AI executive assistant handle?

The recurring coordination work around client accounts: call notes and recaps with the action items filed, scheduling and rescheduling with clients, email follow-ups and reminders, CRM updates after calls, the weekly report per client, and prep briefs before a client call. Patricia runs these across the accounts you manage from Slack, and asks before any draft reaches a client.

What is the difference between an AI executive assistant and ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a strong drafting tool, but it works in its own window: you bring it the context and you carry the output back into your tools yourself. An AI executive assistant is connected. She sits where your team works, joins the client call, drafts the recap, files the action items, and updates the CRM, so the admin actually gets done rather than getting drafted. That difference is the whole reason the work stops queueing behind you.

How does an AI executive assistant access my email and calendar safely?

Patricia connects through OAuth grants that you scope and can revoke in one click, made once for the agency with access scoped per person. Credentials are encrypted and held server-side, never placed in a prompt. Data is stored in the United States, every action lands in an append-only audit log, and every draft, like an email, waits for a named yes from your team before it reaches a client. The full mechanics are on our security page.

Does an AI executive assistant work for a whole team or just one person?

Most tools in this category are personal: one user, one inbox, one calendar, priced per seat. Patricia is built for the agency. She joins your Slack workspace, works in the client channels you invite her to, and every seat is included in one workspace price, so the owner, the ops lead and the account managers share one coworker. Her memory is one brain for the agency, organised by client channel, and each client gets its own channels and connections with access scoped per person.

Stop being the bottleneck.

See your own week handled in a live demo: client recaps filed, follow-ups sent on your yes, CRM updated. Your 50,000 free credits come with the onboarding call, no card needed.

No credit card.