Best Town Alternatives in 2026: 8 AI Assistants Compared for Client Work

Town gives each person a Townie: a personal AI assistant with its own @town.com email address that you forward things to, with a routine library and a daily briefing, metered in credits. It reaches you by email, text, Slack and its apps.

People who look for a Town alternative usually want one of three things: a bill they can predict, an assistant built around client email rather than general tasks, or a plan for a whole team that isn’t a shared pool of credits. This guide compares eight options on those points.

Why People Look for a Town Alternative

From Town’s pricing page and independent reviews:

• You can’t price a task in advance. Town doesn’t publish what an action costs in credits, and overage of $0.030 to $0.044 a credit applies on Pro and up once you raise the cap.
• Team credits are pooled. Team plans share 6,000 or 18,000 credits a seat with no per-person limit, so one busy teammate can use up the month.
• The entry plans are narrow. Free is 30 chats a month and one email account. Starter ($15) allows two email accounts and two custom routines.
• It’s a general assistant. Town is organized around tasks you hand it. A list of the threads where you’re waiting on someone else is not among its published features.

Town Alternatives Compared

The 8 Best Town Alternatives, Reviewed

1. alfred_: The Best Town Alternative for Client-Facing Teams

Price: plans from $29.99/month; teams $49.99 a seat a month on one bill, 7-day free trial | Works with: Gmail, Outlook, any IMAP mailbox, Google, Outlook and iCloud calendars, Slack, Microsoft Teams, HubSpot, Salesforce

alfred_ is an AI assistant for client-facing teams, and each person on the team gets their own. It reads your email across up to six Gmail and Outlook accounts plus any IMAP mailbox, flags the emails that need your answer, and keeps one list of the replies you owe and the replies you’re waiting on. It manages your calendar, prepares you for meetings, and sends a morning brief by email or text.

Where Town is built around tasks you hand it, alfred_ is built around what is owed. The client who wrote yesterday afternoon and the proposal you sent on Tuesday with no reply are both on your list without you setting anything up, and a thread leaves the list when it’s answered.

You can text it, and it texts you first. When a client email needs you, alfred_ sends you a text in iMessage; you text back what to say, it writes the reply in the thread, and a 👍 sends it from your own address.

alfred_: Chris Patel at Patel Family Dental asks whether the new website can go live before their open house on the 24th.

You: yes, we’ll launch on the 21st so there’s time to test

alfred_: Here’s the reply to Chris: “Hi Chris, yes. We’ll launch on the 21st, which gives us a few days to test before the open house. I’ll confirm once it’s live.” Send it?

You: 👍

Illustrative exchange. Names in this post are invented.

The billing difference: your list of what needs you, texting, chat, drafts and the morning brief use no credits, so a busy month costs the same as a quiet one. Routines and workflows use credits from your plan.

What it does not do: give you an assistant email address to forward to, run GitHub or competitive-intel reports, or send anything without your approval.

2. Lindy

Price: from $29.99/month for 3,000 credits pooled across the team; every active user is a billed seat

Lindy is an AI teammate configured with skills. You can text it over iMessage or SMS, which reaches your personal Lindy; the Lindy your team shares lives in Slack channels. Everything it does is metered from the team’s credit pool, including drafting a reply, and credit-using actions pause when the pool runs out until the next reset. The credit question that sends people away from Town applies here too.

3. Poke

Price: Free; Pro $19/month; Ultra $199/month

Poke is a personal assistant you text in Messages, WhatsApp or Telegram. It connects to apps including Gmail, Outlook and Google Calendar and messages you when something comes up. It lists no team or business plan, and its site says it is joining Cognition. It is pitched at your personal life rather than client work.

4. Martin

Price: Basic $21/month billed yearly ($35 monthly); Pro $30/month billed yearly ($49 monthly)

Martin is a personal assistant you can call, text or email, which manages your calendar, inbox and to-dos. The Basic plan uses simpler models, limits proactive actions and works on two tasks at a time. It is priced for one person.

5. Cora

Price: Professional $20/month (two email accounts); Unlimited $39/month

Cora, from Every, screens a Gmail or Google Workspace inbox, keeps important mail in front, drafts replies when it has enough context, and emails you a brief of everything else twice a day. It does not support Outlook, and it does not send email itself.

6. Fyxer

Price: from $22.50/month billed yearly

Fyxer writes draft replies in your Gmail or Outlook inbox from your sent-mail history and takes meeting notes. It is a drafting tool; it does not text you or keep a list of who you’re waiting on.

7. Vellum

Price: free to run locally; cloud from $30/month

Vellum is a personal assistant that runs on your Mac or in the cloud, reached through its apps, Telegram, Slack and email. You add skills and choose the model. It is for people who want to configure their own assistant.

8. Claude and ChatGPT

Price: $20 a seat a month billed yearly, $25 monthly, for Claude Team or ChatGPT Business

General chat assistants for writing, research and analysis. They answer when you open them and ask, and you can connect alfred_ to either to ask about your email and calendar from there.

Three Questions to Ask Any Town Alternative

1. Can you predict the bill? If every action draws on credits, a busy month costs more. With alfred_ the inbox features use none.
2. Does it know who you’re waiting on? Most assistants track what you have to do. alfred_ also keeps the emails you sent that haven’t been answered.
3. Does it reach you when you’re out? Town, Lindy, Poke, Martin and alfred_ can all be texted. alfred_ is the one built around client email, and it texts you first when a client needs you.