Deacon AI vs Decagon, and how to tell them apart

Deacon and Decagon are two different companies with names that look alike, and both make AI agents that answer customers. Deacon, at heydeacon.com, is an AI customer support agent for founders who answer support themselves. It answers on your website in seconds from your own docs and shows you what your customers are stuck on. There’s a free plan, and you can sign up today. Decagon, at decagon.ai, sells AI agents for chat, voice and email to large companies such as Chime, Duolingo and Notion, and you buy it through a demo with its sales team.

Decagon’s pages read on decagon.ai on 10 November 2026

Deacon or Decagon, which one you’re looking for

You want Deacon if

  • You saw a chat on someone’s site introduce itself as Deacon, and you want one like it
  • You run a small software company and answer support yourself
  • You want to sign up today, on a free plan with no card and no end date
  • You want it to answer from your own docs, and to say so when they don’t cover a question
  • You want to see what customers are stuck on and what they ask you to build

You want Decagon if

  • You run support for a large company, with human agents behind the AI
  • Your customers phone and email as well as chat, and you want one agent on all of them
  • You need the agent to act in your systems, such as rebooking an appointment
  • You want to write and test its workflows yourself, with versions, simulations and A/B tests
  • You’re ready to buy through a demo and a rate agreed with its sales team

Try Deacon for free

Install Deacon

Deacon and Decagon, feature by feature

Website

Deacon
heydeacon.com
Decagon
decagon.ai

Built for

Deacon
Founders and small software teams who answer support themselves
Decagon
Large companies, such as Chime, Duolingo, Hertz and Avis Budget Group, in industries from financial services and healthcare to retail and telecoms

Getting started

Deacon
Sign up with your email or Google, give it your website and paste one script tag. The free plan needs no card and has no end date
Decagon
The Get a demo form, which asks how many support tickets you get a month, then its sales team. We found no pricing page, free plan or trial on its site

How it’s priced

Deacon
A plan price, on the pricing page. Nothing is billed past the plan’s answers, and no plan upgrades itself
Decagon
No published price. A fixed rate for every conversation, or a higher one for each conversation its AI resolves, agreed with sales

Where it answers

Deacon
A chat widget on your website
Decagon
Chat on the web and mobile, by SMS and on WhatsApp, plus phone calls and email, with one agent built once for every channel

What it answers from

Deacon
Your website’s main pages, or the whole site on a paid plan, plus files, pasted text and the answers you write
Decagon
Articles synced from tools such as Confluence, Contentful and Kustomer, and live data from your CRM, helpdesk and other systems

Setting it up

Deacon
Nothing to build. There are no flows, decision trees or canvas, and Instructions in plain words are optional
Decagon
Agent Operating Procedures, workflows written in natural language, which engineers can version in Git and you test in simulations and live A/B tests

Connecting your systems

Deacon
An API, webhooks and an MCP server for your own code and coding agent, on every plan. No helpdesk or CRM integration
Decagon
Connectors for CRMs, helpdesks and call centres such as Salesforce, Zendesk and Amazon Connect, plus MCP and APIs for its agent to fetch data and act

When it can’t answer

Deacon
Says it doesn’t know and asks for the visitor’s email, and you’re emailed when they leave it
Decagon
Hands over to your human agents, through your helpdesk’s tags and tickets on email, and with a summary on calls

Replying yourself

Deacon
Reply in Deacon’s dashboard, and your words appear in the visitor’s chat under your name
Decagon
Your agents take over in your own tools, and Decagon Assist writes them summaries and draft replies

Actions in other systems

Deacon
None. It answers questions, hands the rest to you and declines questions about a visitor’s own account
Decagon
Yes, through the systems you connect, such as rebooking an appointment or extending a rental, as its homepage shows

What customers ask about

Deacon
On every plan, Topics group questions, count who asked and give a topic a type, such as a bug report, a feature ask or a how-to, when one kind of question leads it
Decagon
Insights & Reporting, and Watchtower, which reviews every conversation against criteria you set

Languages

Deacon
Replies in the language the visitor writes in, and the widget’s own words come in English and 40 other languages
Decagon
More than 70 languages on calls, with automatic detection and switching

Website analytics

Deacon
Included, from the same script, with visits, sources, goals, funnels and JavaScript errors
Decagon
Not among the products its site lists

Decagon’s details are from its homepage, About page, demo form, pricing post, and its chat, voice, email, integrations and AOP pages, all read on 10 November 2026.

How to start on Deacon, or buy Decagon

Deacon takes a few minutes to start, and every step works on the free plan. Sign up with your email or Google and give it your website. It reads your home page and up to four main pages, such as pricing and help, and can answer within a minute or so. Try it then plays up to three questions a visitor is likely to ask, with the answers Deacon gives. To go live, paste one script tag just before the closing body tag on your pages, or press Copy the prompt and let Claude Code, Cursor or Codex add it and check it’s live. When Deacon can tell which builder your site runs on, such as Webflow, Shopify or Lovable, Install opens on that builder’s own steps. The page on an AI chatbot for your website links guides for more builders, such as WordPress, Wix and Framer.

Buying Decagon starts at its demo form, which the site’s Contact Sales link also opens. It asks for your email, your name and your company, and it won’t let you skip how many support tickets you get a month. The choices are less than 9,999, 10,000 to 49,999, 50,000 to 249,999, 250,000 or more, and not sure. Have that number ready before you open it.

Decagon publishes no price, and decagon.ai/pricing comes back as a page not found. Its post on pricing AI agents, from December 2024, says it charges in one of two ways. One is a fixed rate for every incoming conversation, with flexible pricing at higher volumes. The other is a higher rate for each conversation its AI fully resolves, with no charge when it escalates to a person, and a lower rate the more resolutions you commit to. The post says most of its customers choose per conversation, because the bill follows volume and nobody has to argue over what counts as resolved. Decagon pricing works out what each model does to your bill.

Going live is a project of its own. In Decagon’s story about Tremendous, a rewards company handling nearly 60,000 support interactions a week, the team started on chat and email and had “a strong initial implementation” within 30 days. Then it built the Agent Operating Procedures that let the agent resolve requests rather than only answer them.

Why founders without a support team pick Deacon

A price you can read before you start

Decagon’s rate is agreed with its sales team, and its pricing post says a per-conversation rate flexes at higher volumes and a per-resolution rate drops the more resolutions you commit to. Deacon’s plans are on its pricing page, and the free plan needs no card and has no end date. Every feature is on every plan, the free one included. Nothing is billed past your plan’s answers and no plan upgrades itself, so a busy month never costs more than the plan.

Nothing to write before it answers

A Decagon agent runs on Agent Operating Procedures, workflows your team writes in natural language and tests in simulations. Deacon has no procedures, flows or decision trees. It answers from your pages, files and pasted text, in seconds and in the visitor’s language, and when they don’t cover a question it says it doesn’t know rather than guess. If you want a say in how it talks, write a few plain sentences in Instructions.

Made for when you’re the one who answers

Decagon hands a conversation to human agents working in your helpdesk or call centre. Deacon needs neither. When a visitor asks for a person or leaves their email, you get an email about three minutes later, unless you’ve already seen it in the dashboard. Type your reply there and it appears in their chat under your first name and your company’s. The chat stays open to it for three days, so a visitor who has left sees it next time they open the chat in that browser.

It shows you what customers need, and learns from your answers

Every conversation is saved and searchable by what visitors asked. Topics group the questions and count how many people asked. When one kind of question leads a topic, it gets a type, such as a bug report, a feature ask or a how-to, so you can see what to fix and what to build next. A question your content didn’t cover waits with an Answer this button. Write the answer the way you’d reply, and Deacon puts it where it belongs in your help document, shows you how it now replies, and can answer the next person who asks.

When Decagon is the better choice

Decagon is built to answer a large company’s customers wherever they turn up. Its voice agents run on Chord, Decagon’s own speech model, cope with interruptions, make outbound calls and speak more than 70 languages, and they pass a call to a person with a summary. Its email agents answer threads inside Intercom, Zendesk and Salesforce, and its chat runs on the web and mobile, by SMS and on WhatsApp. Deacon answers in a chat on your website and nowhere else.

Decagon’s agents also act. Its integrations connect them to your CRM, helpdesk and call centre, including Amazon Connect, RingCentral and SIP trunking for phones. MCP and APIs reach any other system, so the agent can look up a customer’s data and act on it. Your team writes how the agent behaves as Agent Operating Procedures, which engineers can version in Git, and Decagon’s Duet can draft them from transcripts of past conversations. Deacon takes no actions in other systems, and it always declines questions about a visitor’s own account.

It’s built for a large company’s security review too. Its security page lists single sign-on through Okta and Microsoft Entra, role-based access, PII redaction and zero data retention with model providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic, along with SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, CCPA and HIPAA.

If a team of agents answers your customers on the phone and by email as well as in chat, Decagon gives them one AI agent across all of it, working in the systems they already use. If you answer your customers yourself, Deacon is the better choice. It answers them on your website from your own docs and brings you only the conversations that need you, and you can have it running today.

FAQ

Questions about Deacon and Decagon

No. They’re two different companies whose names look alike. Deacon, at heydeacon.com, is an AI customer support agent for founders who answer support themselves, with a free plan you sign up to yourself. Decagon, at decagon.ai, sells AI agents for chat, voice and email to large companies. Its About page names its founders as Jesse Zhang and Ashwin Sreenivas, and in January 2026 it raised $250 million at a valuation of $4.5 billion.

Because the names look alike, Google can take one for a misspelling of the other. When we checked on 10 November 2026, a US Google search for “deacon ai” asked “Did you mean: decagon ai” and filled its first page with results about Decagon. To reach Deacon, type heydeacon.com into the address bar.

Decagon doesn’t publish a price, so your rate comes from its sales team. Its post on pricing AI agents offers a fixed rate per conversation, or a higher rate per resolution with nothing charged when the AI hands over to a person. Decagon pricing works through what each model does to your bill, and Deacon’s plans are on the pricing page.

Not that its site shows. When we read decagon.ai on 10 November 2026, its header offered Get a demo or Sign in, and its Contact Sales link went to the same demo form. We found no pricing page, free plan or trial. Decagon alternatives looks at other AI agents you could choose instead, including some you can sign up for yourself.

No to both. Deacon answers in a chat on your website, with no phone line, email inbox, SMS or WhatsApp. It doesn’t act in other systems either, so it won’t rebook an appointment or issue a refund, and it always declines questions about a visitor’s own account, invoice or data. Decagon’s agents take calls and emails, and act through the systems you connect.

No. Deacon has no helpdesk or CRM integration, and you don’t need one to use it, because you reply to visitors from Deacon’s own dashboard, as human handoff shows. If you do run a helpdesk, Deacon’s webhooks can tell your own code when a visitor asks for a person or leaves their email, and your code can open the ticket. Decagon’s integrations page says it syncs tickets and customer data from Salesforce, Intercom, Zendesk and more.

Deacon only answers from the passages it finds in your own content for that question. When nothing there covers it, it says so and names what the team will get back to the visitor about, with something like “I don’t have the answer to that. Leave your email below and the team will get back to you about invoices in euros.” An answer drawn from a page on your site usually links to it. Decagon adds a check of its own. Its security page says a built-in supervisor spots hallucinations and revises a reply before it’s sent.

Try Deacon for free

Give Deacon your docs and put your customers’ real questions to it in the Playground before it goes on your site. You don’t need a demo to start, and the free plan needs no card.

See what Deacon does, read the plans and prices, see how Decagon charges, or compare Decagon alternatives.

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