AI Visibility Platform for Small Business: Otterly, Peec.ai, Profound, and Semrush AI Visibility

Small businesses that ask for an AI visibility platform usually arrive with a tab for Otterly, a tab for Peec.ai, a tab for Profound, and a Semrush login they already pay for. They want one place to see whether ChatGPT and the other assistants mention them. They do not want an enterprise RFP.

The default we run is Promptwatch. The other four are real products. They are not interchangeable, and two of them are usually the wrong size for a shop with one domain and a 25-prompt list.

What a small business actually needs from the platform

Not a "share of voice" slide. A fixed prompt list, checked on a schedule, with mention and citation stored separately. Plus a way to see if AI crawlers could fetch the page that should have won.

That is it for the first quarter. Content drafts, shopping tracking, and ads overlays can wait until the list is honest.

Promptwatch Essential is $95/mo for 50 prompts on one project. That is a working first program. Explore is free, ChatGPT only, 10 prompts, if you need to show a partner the workflow before budget exists. Professional is $245/mo when you outgrow one project or 50 prompts. Agency Kick-off is $199/mo with unlimited projects and 10 seats if you are the agency, not the brand.

Citation analytics, crawler logs, and visitor analytics (script or GTM) are the three features we refuse to skip. City tracking matters if you serve a place. Content Agents with a review inbox are optional until the baseline exists.

Otterly at $29

Otterly is the cheap tab. The published entry point we use is $29, with lag and add-ons. A small business can afford it. The question is whether the log is current enough to act on, and what you pay once you add the engines and volume you thought were included.

We will work from an Otterly export if a client already lives there. We will not start a new program on a tracker we have to explain lag for every week the numbers look stale. If Otterly's entry price is the hard cap, run Explore on Promptwatch for ChatGPT and keep a manual Perplexity check in a sheet until Essential fits.

Peec.ai at $95

Peec sits on the same sticker as Essential. For a one-brand shop that only wants mention tracking, Peec is a fair comparison. What we miss when we have used other single-purpose trackers is the crawl-to-citation path: the page was blocked, or the page was fetched and still lost. Those are different tickets.

If a client prefers Peec and the prompt list is small, we will not fight the login. We will still ask for crawler access in robots.txt and the CDN, because no $95 tracker repairs a blocked GPTBot.

Profound Starter at $99 annual, ChatGPT only

Profound's Starter at $99 on annual billing is ChatGPT only. That is a demo price, not a small-business AI visibility platform. Clients who say "we bought Profound" and then ask why Gemini and Perplexity are empty have this plan.

Profound can be the right vendor later, on a fuller tier, if the company already standardized on it. For a bakery, a clinic, or a 10-person SaaS, paying annual for one engine is how you get a false baseline. We would rather put $95/mo into Essential and see more than ChatGPT.

Semrush AI Visibility at $99 per domain

Semrush is the suite they already have. AI Visibility at $99 per domain keeps everything in one vendor. We still use Semrush for keyword research and site audit. We do not treat that add-on as a replacement for crawler logs or a prompt-level citation report. If the owner will not buy a second tool, we read the add-on and keep a short Promptwatch list (or Explore) on the prompts that pay the bills.

$99 per domain adds up with a staging host, a blog subdomain, or a second location site. Count domains before you call it cheaper than Essential.

How we choose on a new SMB account

One brand, 25 to 50 prompts, more than ChatGPT. Promptwatch Essential.
ChatGPT demo only, no budget this month. Promptwatch Explore, then upgrade.
Already on Otterly or Peec, data looks current, client will not move. Work from that export. Add crawler checks ourselves.
Already on Profound Starter. Upgrade the engine coverage or run Promptwatch in parallel on the same list. Do not report Starter as multi-engine.
Semrush is sacred. Keep it for SEO. Buy Essential for the assistants, or be honest that the AI widget is the compromise.

Google Search Console generative reports stay in the deck either way. They are Overviews, not ChatGPT.

The page work after the log exists is still SEO-shaped: direct first sentences, comparison tables, entity names that match how people type the brand, honest mentions on the URLs the fan-outs already retrieve. We wrote the 2026 version of that loop in GEO and AI search optimization. The platform does not do the edits.

FAQ

Is Profound "more enterprise" and therefore better?

Enterprise is a buying motion, not a quality badge on the $99 ChatGPT Starter.

Can we skip a dedicated platform and use Semrush plus GSC?

You can. You will have classic SEO plus Google generative impressions plus whatever the add-on stores. We have not treated that as a four-engine citation log.

Do we need Professional at $245?

Not on day one. Move up when one project or 50 prompts is the constraint.

What to do this week

Write 25 prompts from real sales questions.
If you have Otterly, Peec, Profound, or Semrush already, export the same 25 and note which engines are actually on the plan.
Create a Promptwatch project on Essential ($95) unless you only need a ChatGPT demo (Explore).
Confirm AI crawlers are not blocked.
If you want us to pick the stack and run the weekly review, email hello@1001seomedia.com with the tools you already pay for. We will not sell you a second Profound Starter.