All AI comparisons
Substrait AI vs A human ISA

Should you hire an ISA or use AI?

The short version

Hire a person for the conversations that need one. Do not hire one to type.

A person is better on the phone and better in a strange situation. Software is better at the thousands of leads nobody has touched since March. Most teams that get this right run both.

What you’re really comparing

One seat, or the whole database.

Seven dimensions, not a feature list. The last row goes to the person, and it is the reason to hire one.

SubstraitA human ISA
Hours coveredNights, weekends and the hours you setA shift, five days a week, minus vacation
Leads workedEvery lead in the database, considered dailyAs many as one person gets through in a day
MemoryThe lead’s entire record, every timeWhat they wrote down, and what they recall
RampAbout fifteen minutes, live when you say soHiring, training, scripts, months to get good
TurnoverWhat it learns is written back to your CRMWhen they leave, the pipeline knowledge goes
Cost shapeOne flat monthly rate by database sizeRoughly $7 an hour outsourced, $20 and up in the US, plus bonus
On the phoneNo. Calls belong to your agentsYes, and that is the point of hiring one

The hourly figures are ours, from hiring for this seat, and they assume a forty hour week. At full time that is roughly $1,200 a month outsourced and about $3,500 for a skilled ISA in the US before bonus or split. Nobody should buy software to make calls it should not be making. That row is not a gap we are working on.

Where a person wins

Do not buy software for these.

The phone

A live call from someone who knows the market beats any message. We do not think it is an AI’s job to hold a phone conversation pretending to be a realtor.

Reading a room

Grief, a divorce, a deal falling apart, a seller angry about something that has nothing to do with you. A person hears it in the first sentence.

Talking like a local

The traffic on that road, the high school, the development going in next year. Someone who lives there can trade small talk that no record contains.

Relationships that pay later

Past clients, referral partners, the people who send you business because they like you. That is a human job and it always will be. Encore agrees, and hands the agent only the date and the reason.

Where software pulls ahead

The parts of the job nobody enjoys.

Coverage
3 differences
The ones nobody gets to

You paid for every lead in there. One ISA works the top of the list, because that is all a day holds. We consider every lead in the database, every day.

Nights and weekends

A lead who fills in a form at 11pm on Saturday gets an answer at 11pm on Saturday, inside the texting hours you set, in their own local time.

Year three

Follow-up that outlasts anyone’s patience. A lead who said not until next spring is still being worked next spring.

Consistency
4 differences
Objections do not catch it off guard

It answers the same way on its two hundredth conversation as on its first. A great ISA is better than this. An average one having a bad afternoon is not.

It reads the whole file first

Every text, note, logged call and email on the record before it writes a word. Nobody has time to do that on their two hundredth lead of the day.

The rules are enforced, not remembered

Fair Housing screening, texting hours, opt-outs and frequency caps run on every message as code. A tired person at 6pm is the usual failure point. The registry is published.

The CRM stays current on its own

Notes, stages, tags and tasks update as the conversation happens. Nothing depends on someone logging it afterwards.

What it costs you
2 differences
No ramp, no rehire

Get started in about fifteen minutes. No scripts to write, and nothing to redo when someone quits.

One flat rate

Priced by database size, not per message, per seat or per lead. It does not cost more in a busy month. The tiers run $179 to $1,079.

The honest answer

Put software on the typing and people on the talking.

If you can only do one and your team lives on the phone, hire the person. A good ISA who dials all day will beat any software at the job software is not doing.

If your problem is that thousands of paid leads are sitting untouched, and your agents are calling two hundred a day to find the one who answers, that is not a hiring problem. One more seat works one more seat’s worth of the list.

The teams that get the most out of both do exactly that. Substrait works the database and hands your agents the hand-raisers. Calls are for agents to make, not AI.

Questions

Hiring an ISA, answered.

Still deciding? Compare every AI, or read what an AI ISA actually is.

What does a real estate ISA actually cost?
It depends where you hire. An outsourced ISA runs around $7 an hour, which is roughly $1,200 a month at forty hours. A skilled ISA in the US is $20 an hour and up, closer to $3,500 a month before any bonus or split.
Can AI replace an ISA?
Not the phone half of the job, and we would not claim otherwise. Software replaces the typing: the follow-up, the nurture, the thousands of leads nobody has time for. Calls, and reading a difficult room, stay human work.
Is an AI ISA cheaper than hiring one?
Usually, yes. Substrait is $179 to $1,079 a month by database size, against roughly $1,200 to $3,500 a month for one full-time seat. The seat also carries hiring, training and the cost of doing it again when they leave.
How long does it take to get an AI ISA working?
About fifteen minutes to get started, and it is live when you say so. There is nothing to interview, no scripts to write and no ramp. A person is usually a few months from hire to genuinely good.
What happens to my ISA's knowledge when they quit?
With a person, most of it leaves with them. That is the real cost of turnover in this seat. Everything Substrait learns is written back onto the lead record in your own CRM, so it stays with you.
Should I hire an ISA and use AI at the same time?
That is what the teams who get the most out of both do. Put software on the typing and people on the talking. Your ISA works the hand-raisers all day instead of dialing down a list to find them.
Does Substrait call my leads?
No. Substrait texts. It does not place AI voice calls and it does not put a named AI persona in front of your leads. Calls belong to your agents, and that is a deliberate decision rather than a missing feature.
One flat rate

Keep your people on the phone. Let the database work itself.

One flat monthly rate by database size. No setup fee, no per-message billing, no per-seat billing.