OpenClaw SaaS? | Hacker News Reader

OpenClaw SaaS?

4 pointsalexfthom18 comments

Does anyone know of an OpenClaw like SaaS or Agent saas that is a turnkey solution? Preferably not one that I have to buy a new computer or find a spare one? Something that just works as software with its own email, calendaring, etc...? I am thinking of using Muse but the idea of giving it access to all my emails is a bit daunting. And then working on a phone is not ideal for me as I find doing business on a phone very difficult. Ideally, something completely siloed with its own email, calendar, notes, and things but with an AI agent built in. Thanks! Alex

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Just like any other SaaS, they are built for the masses and will never offer enough customization or too expensive. The only way to truly fill the gap is to roll your own. I suggest you find a developer that can truly deliver what you need and do it for a low cost, but make make sure they are available for the long-haul so that you can add features a few months down the road.

You will not find a $20 a month solution (unless you are a cookie cutter franchise business), but for less than $1000 you can have a stable, secure life-long tool with no monthly fees or privacy concerns.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I actually looked into this when the whole openclaw or moltonclaw whatever it was came out and I could not find a cheap enough dev. I tried looking into the international dev route but my CPA stopped me immediately due to the new IRS section 174 international developers rule where I would need to ammortize international dev salary or payments over 15 years. Making it look like false revenue. When you are a business owner, you want to focus on your product and how to grow it. Having to deal with a developer and then maintaining a custom solution and then future upgrades and changes, is a head ache, I dont want let alone another peice of the biz I have to deal with. Most biz owners are like this. I got enough things to deal with running a biz. I am willing to pay $1000 a month. It's just opex. ANd I really dont need a lot of customization from what it seems is already available from just watching emails, drafting replies, scheduling, sending contracts, management contracts into their proper folder.

Given some of your other comments here, you got me curious. So you don't want it to access you email, then what email are you hoping for it to access? If it's using its own siloed calender, how would you ask it "am I free tomorrow?"

Yeah, great question. I would imagine the service would have it's own web app and one for cell phone that I can monitor. That you can access to see the agents inbox, agents calendar, agents tasks, etc... I guess you could say it would be a common workspace for me and my agent. But I know in my circle of smallbiz owners, that some just want to forward emails to an agent that it can start drafting replies and things that they approve rather than give it free reign to their historical inbox. You have to understand that for many of us, email is not just communication but a knowledge record and giving an agent free reign and acess to that is a bit scary for many of us. The preferred method would be to forwad emails old and new to have it work on or keep track of etc... but not jump in both feet and give the keys to an agent to just injest all my clients information as they may not even want that. I think there will be a huge privacy matter that will come up likely in law where Clients will have the right to opt out from their service providers using AI on their info... We all know how the Europeans are with stuff like this.

Oh yes I understand, I'm not saying you should give it free reign I'm just trying to understand the alternative.

So your needs would be roughly met by creating a new email under your business domain (like you would for a new employee: agent@example.com, let's assume you're using Google gsuite), and then using chatgpt connectors with that inbox and gdrive. I understand you don't want to set all of that manually, but is that final state close to what you're envisioning?

Yes, the email Gsuite part exactly. Not sure about the chatgpt connectors part. But yes a new workspace for the agent that it and I have access to. Ideally it would be more seamless as Gsuite is a bit of a disjointed experience. We use it now only because we have to and all our history is in there but not married to it.

Interesting idea. i think the difficult part isn't just making an agent available as a SaaS, but making it reliable, easy to integrate with other tools and simple for users to manage.

Yeah, I have been searching. I know a couple people running openclaw on some spare machines but I find them constantly having to tinker with it. It seems not all that reliable when it comes to admin work. I have small business and not enough revenue to do the admin work. I am outdoors a lot for my biz so I don't have the ability to go through my emails book appointments, etc... I thought someone would have an online solution for this already. Set up an email and calendar and an agent is already built in. Nothing seems to be really like that. All the agents people rave about or the better part of SV is just personal stuff like dinner reservations or getting tickets... I dont need that bs, I need an agent to read business emails, escalate what needs my attention, perform scheduling ping pongs for me.

I’ve been looking for something like this as well as a small business owner. Not technically savvy enough to set up any of those ai agents and bots so been looking for something that I can just sign up for that has everything build in and I don’t have to give it access to all my emails and private information

Seriousy, no one has anything available. Hiring a part time admin is a couple thousand a month. I would pay half that for an AI agent to do emailing and scheduling and contract rounds.

That's a good point. most of the tools I've seen still require quite a bit of setup and maintenance. For a small business owner, it should just work in the background without having to constantly monitor or fix the agent.

So true... an AI agent for the rest of us... solo entrepreneurs and small biz that dont have technical know how.

Try https://crew.ao

I’ve not officially launched it, it hav therm using it as my daily driver for a few months. I may in the future add BYOK, but for now I’m a lot more focused in improving it for real world usefulness. The goal is to really answer the question “what is the actual benefit of LLMs”, for these personas:

1. Business: a business leader (CXO, or any other decision maker or managerial type) that is drowning in processes, meetings, plans, research, experimentation, and needs a team of specialists following them wherever they go.

2. Building: An engineer who wants to get as close as possible to a Jarvis like experience (not there yet, but getting the pieces together) that they can trust, instead of yelling constantly at agents and just saying “ship it”.

3. General: A normie (or your mother) that just needs help getting through their day, reading her emails, killing all the spam, replying, answering questions on whatever they need.

4. Physical: Eventually someone like a farmer, that can manage their entire operation by injecting sensor data into the app and monitoring performance, identifying plagues, etc.

The main goal is 100% privacy friendly, no training and absolutely no claim on anyone’s data now in the future. I actually wonder how one can insure that this outlives acquisitions (not that I expect to be acquired)

Try it out, mostly I’m just expecting some feedback. Thanks!

Thanks, this looks genuinely cool but way too technical for me. I am not trying to code or build anything. I just need an automated AI agent that can access siloed email and calendar oh and probably documents for client agreements to send back and forth. Nothing I have to custamize of or tweak to get it to work.

You actually don’t. You signup, connect your email (IMAP or Google OAuth), plug into your telegram or WhatsApp and you get an agent that manages your email. You can go as deep as you need, or as “just an assistant” as you need. I may post some demos soon.

Mobile app is on the roadmap.

Thanks appreciate that but that is what I am saying is I dont want to monkey around with anything. I dont want to connect imaps or google things. I just want to sign up with a service that gives me everhting I need without having to configure anything. Email, calendar, docs, out of the box. Nothing to connect. just sign up, take my credit card, and go. No history to import, no other services I have to connect.

Got it, you likely won't find it. That app will be selling you AI + calendar service + email service + etc. Each of those is it's own startup. Just email it a beast, with storage, spam lists, etc. I doubt even Meta/OpenAI will give you this.

Yeah, as simple as it sounds, probably too much to ask. I wish you much luck with your project. Thanks for the info and replies.

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