The short version
Both products take initiative. But a dot is one person's agent for everything, while Kite is a marketing expert your whole company shares, and it arrives with the data, the website, and the sending tools to finish the job.
The team's marketing expert
Kite
Kite is an AI marketer. It works in your Slack like an experienced hire on the marketing team, and it takes care of:
- positioning, messaging, and the growth plan behind them
- the website, its landing pages, and how visitors move through them
- search rankings and what AI answers say about you
- lead lists, outbound email, and replies
- social posts, launch announcements, and event campaigns
- brand imagery and design
Anyone at your company can @mention Kite, from the founder to the newest sales rep. Every one of them gets the same Kite, working from the same knowledge of your business.
Choose Kite when your team needs its marketing handled by an expert that everyone can work with.
One person's always-on agent
Dots
Dots are OpenAI's always-on agents, built into ChatGPT and powered by GPT-6 Astra. Each person creates their own dot, gives it a name, and talks to it in ChatGPT on desktop, web, and mobile, in Slack or Microsoft Teams, or on a voice call. A dot has its own cloud computer and browser, connects to more than 4,000 apps through ChatGPT plugins, and learns its owner's preferences over time.
Dots are also built to act without being asked. Between conversations, a dot runs what OpenAI calls proactive research: it reads its owner's connected apps with read-only tools, keeps private notes, and suggests ways to help. OpenAI's own examples cover a developer's bug fixes, a scientist's analysis, a sales lead's proposal, and a creator's show notes.
Choose Dots when you want a personal agent that keeps up with your own work across your calendar, inbox, files, and apps, whatever your job is.
Kite and Dots, side by side
| Question | Kite | Dots |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Kite is an AI marketer in your Slack. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. | A dot is an always-on agent in ChatGPT that takes on ongoing work for one person, using its own cloud computer and the apps that person connects.¹ |
| Who initiates work | Kite starts work on its own, and you can too. Once an hour, Kite scans new messages in the Slack channels it belongs to and checks them against the marketing goals your team has set. Between scans it keeps track of your site traffic, your search rankings, and how AI answers describe you. Anyone can also give it a task or a goal directly. | The dot starts work on its own, and you can too. It researches in the background with read-only tools, forms memories from your connected apps, and suggests ways to help. It also runs the reminders and recurring checks you schedule.² |
| Who can direct it | Anyone on the team. Everyone who @mentions Kite reaches the same marketer. | Only the dot's owner. Other people's mentions and direct messages don't start work for that dot, though channel members can see what it posts.³ |
| Where it works | Your team's Slack channels and the Kite web app. Forwarding an email to your team's Kite inbox starts a conversation with Kite too. | In ChatGPT on desktop, web, and mobile, by voice call, and in Slack and Microsoft Teams. Texting is a limited beta for Pro users in the US.² |
| Marketing tools included | Apollo, Clay, Crustdata, PredictLeads, DataForSEO, Exa, ad intelligence, Brandfetch, AI-visibility tracking across four answer engines, website hosting with analytics, and a team email address. You don't need your own account for any of them. | None bundled. A dot uses the apps you've connected through ChatGPT plugins, from a catalog of more than 4,000, and it can sign into websites in its own browser. Each connected account limits what the dot can see and do.¹ ³ |
| Work completed | Pages published to the site Kite hosts or to your connected CMS, email campaigns sent from your team's Kite address, social posts published through your connected accounts, and reports on your real numbers. | Drafts, files, analyses, and actions in your connected apps, brought back for your review. A dot can send email through an account you connect, but it can't have its own email address at launch.² |
| After it ships | Kite tracks visits, conversions, email replies, and AI citations, reports what changed, and turns the results into the next tasks. | A dot learns from your feedback and reruns the checks you schedule. What it can measure depends on the analytics apps you connect.¹ ² |
| Memory | A single knowledge base the whole team shares. It stores your positioning, brand voice, research on customers and competitors, and what past campaigns earned. | Each dot keeps its own context and shares memory with its owner's ChatGPT. You can't view or edit individual dot memories, and clearing them means deleting the dot.⁴ |
| Approvals | Kite asks before it publishes a page, sends an email, or posts on social media. Your team can give it more autonomy as trust builds. | Built-in rules decide when a dot acts and when it asks. Custom Rules let you allow, require approval for, or block specific actions, and a separate check called Auto-review screens actions before they run.⁴ |
| Setup | Add Kite to Slack. Kite studies your website and market, then posts its first plan in the channel. | Create your dot in the ChatGPT desktop app or desktop web, then connect your apps. Each person sets up their own dot's Slack connection, and a Slack admin may need to approve the install.² ³ |
| Pricing | One price per workspace, however many people use it. The free plan includes usage, Growth costs $100 a month and comes with $100 in AI credits, and Business is priced on request.⁵ | One dot is included with ChatGPT Pro, which comes in three tiers that include Pro 200 at $200 a month and Pro 500 at $500 a month, and with a Business Premium seat at $100 a month billed annually. Dots usage doesn't count toward plan allowances for the first month, and more dots per person are planned.⁶ |
| Availability | Available now, with a free plan. | Rolling out gradually to Pro and Business Premium. Pro access excludes the European Economic Area, Switzerland, and the UK at launch, and Enterprise access is a beta that's off by default.² |
| Security | Appsmith, the company behind Kite, holds SOC 2 Type II certification. Each site Kite builds gets its own isolated sandbox and its own database.⁷ | Each dot's cloud computer is sandboxed and isolated from other users. Secure sign-in keeps passwords out of the model, content is encrypted at rest and in transit, and business workspace data isn't used for training by default. ChatGPT Business is SOC 2 Type 2 certified.⁴ ⁸ |
Sources (8)
- ¹ openai.com/index/introducing-dots, September 2026.
- ² "Getting started with your dot" and ChatGPT release notes for September 29, 2026, help.openai.com, September 2026.
- ³ "Manage dots in ChatGPT workspaces," help.openai.com, September 2026.
- ⁴ "Dots privacy, security, and safety FAQs," help.openai.com, and "How we build safety, security, and privacy into dots," openai.com, September 2026.
- ⁵ kite.ai/pricing, August 2026.
- ⁶ openai.com/pricing, openai.com/business/pricing, and ChatGPT release notes for September 29, 2026, September 2026, in US dollars. OpenAI hasn't announced pricing for additional dots.
- ⁷ security.appsmith.com, where Appsmith publishes its SOC 2 Type II report.
- ⁸ openai.com/business/why-openai/small-business, September 2026.
Kite looks for marketing opportunities. A dot looks out for you.
Most AIs wait for instructions. Kite finds what needs doing and does it.
How Dots handles it
Dots don't wait either, so it's really a question of what each one is watching. A dot's proactive research reads the apps its owner has connected and saves private notes about what it finds. OpenAI's examples are personal ones, such as a change to your travel plans or an invoice you forgot to send.
Kite watches your marketing. Once an hour it catches up on your Slack channels and asks whether anything there moves one of your marketing goals forward. It also keeps an eye on your site analytics, your search rankings, and how often ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude mention you when buyers ask about your category.
Say your events lead mentions in #marketing that you've booked a booth at a trade show six weeks from now. Kite picks it up and comes back with:
- the exhibitors and speakers worth meeting, checked against your ideal customer profile
- a list of the right people at the companies attending, each scored from one to five and matched to a professional email address
- a landing page for booking time at your booth, staged in a preview on your site
- a pre-show email for each person on the list, written from research on their company
- a follow-up plan for the week after the show
Reply in the thread to approve the page and the emails, and Kite publishes and sends them.
A dot could help with the same trade show, but it starts from a different place. It knows what its owner has told it, and it works with its own browser and the apps that person has connected. So the prospect data and the website come from accounts you connect, and any email it sends goes out through one of them, because a dot can't have its own email address at launch.
Kite works for the whole team. A dot works for its owner.
Your founder can @mention Kite about positioning, your sales lead can ask it for a list of accounts that just raised money, and your designer can ask for a new hero image. All three are working with the same Kite. Its knowledge base holds your brand voice, your customer research, and the results of everything it has shipped, so the request from sales benefits from what the launch taught Kite last week.
A dot belongs to one person. It can join a Slack channel and post there, but only its owner can direct it, so a teammate's @mention doesn't start any work. Each dot keeps its own context and shares memory with its owner's ChatGPT. A marketing team of five on Business Premium seats gets five dots, and each one learns from a different person.
OpenAI's answer for shared work is ChatGPT Space, where teammates and their dots build on the same pages and files. Kite's answer is simpler: one marketer the whole team works with, and one memory everyone's work adds to.
Kite comes with the marketing stack. A dot uses the apps you connect.
A dot has wide reach. It connects to more than 4,000 apps through ChatGPT plugins, and it can sign into websites in its own browser. Everything it touches comes through an account you've authorized, so the prospect data, the search data, and the ad research come from accounts you hold with those vendors.
Kite brings its own tools, and none of them needs an account of yours:
- Apollo, Crustdata, and PredictLeads for the companies, people, and funding and hiring news behind a list
- Clay for filling in a list from many data providers in one pass
- DataForSEO for search volume, keyword difficulty, and who outranks you
- AI-visibility tracking that runs your buyers' questions through ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude
- ad intelligence for the ads, copy, and landing pages your competitors are running now
- Brandfetch to pull any company's logo, colors, and fonts
- a website builder with hosting and built-in analytics, plus a team email address for sending
When a job needs your CRM, your CMS, or your ad accounts, Kite connects to them through more than 2,300 integrations and sends a one-click link in Slack.
Kite keeps score after the work ships
Publishing the trade show page is the midpoint of the job. Kite tracks visits and form submissions on it through its built-in analytics, and it reports which pre-show emails were delivered and who replied. Then it follows up with the people who engaged. After the show, it compares the campaign against your goal and writes what it learned into the knowledge base, so the next event starts from real numbers.
A dot learns from your feedback and reruns the checks you schedule. What it can measure depends on the analytics apps you've connected.
When to choose Kite vs. Dots
Choose Kite if:
- You want your marketing handled by an expert, not a generalist you have to brief on marketing.
- You want one AI marketer your whole team can @mention, with one memory everyone's work builds.
- You want prospect data, search data, AI-visibility tracking, a website, and email sending included.
- You want pages and campaigns published, sent, and then measured against your goals.
- Your team works in Slack.
Choose Dots if:
- You want a personal agent for your own work across your calendar, inbox, files, and travel.
- Your job is mostly engineering, research, or sales, and you want an agent that turns customer feedback into pull requests or keeps a proposal current.
- You want an agent that can work in the files and apps on your own laptop.
- Your company works in Microsoft Teams rather than Slack.
- You already pay for ChatGPT Pro or a Business Premium seat, and marketing is a small part of your week.
The two fit together well: each person's dot for their own work, and Kite for the team's marketing.
FAQ
What's the difference between a dot and an AI marketer like Kite?
A dot is a general agent that works for one person. It learns that person's preferences and helps with whatever they do, from code to travel. Kite is a marketing expert that works for a whole team. It already knows how marketing works, it researches your business before you brief it, and it comes with the data and publishing tools that marketing work needs.
Can I use my dot alongside Kite?
Yes. Your dot can keep your calendar and inbox moving while Kite runs the team's marketing in Slack. If your dot drafts a launch doc or pulls together customer notes, share the file with Kite in Slack and it will work from it.
Who at my company can work with Kite?
Anyone in your Slack workspace can work with Kite in the channels it's in. Sales can ask for a lead list, product can flag a launch, and leadership can ask how last month's campaign did. Everyone adds to the same knowledge base.
When should someone pick a dot over Kite?
A dot is the better choice when the work is personal and spans many kinds of jobs. It can work in your laptop's files, talk with you on a voice call, and move between Slack, Teams, and ChatGPT. If you want an agent that follows your own work wherever it goes, that's a dot.
Does Kite use OpenAI's models?
OpenAI's models are among those Kite uses, alongside models from other frontier labs, and it chooses the model for each task. The model doesn't decide which product fits. What decides it is the marketing expertise, the bundled marketing stack, and the measurement that come with Kite.
What does Kite do without asking first?
Kite handles research, planning, drafting, list building, and measurement without checking in. It asks in Slack before it publishes a page, sends an email, or posts on social media, and you can give it more room once you trust its work.
How is Kite priced for a team of several people?
Kite charges one price per workspace, so adding a fifth teammate doesn't raise the price. You can start on the free plan, which includes usage. Growth costs $100 a month and includes $100 in AI credits, and Business is priced on request. A dot is included with each person's ChatGPT Pro plan or Business Premium seat.