Relay · comparison · private AI for small business

Relay vs ChatGPT Teams vs Microsoft Copilot.

Q: What does it know about your business?

ChatGPT Teams: what you paste or upload in a chat, plus connectors to Drive, Slack and others that search files on demand. It doesn’t remember your business between conversations unless you build a custom GPT and keep it fed. Copilot: the Microsoft 365 content the signed-in user can access: Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams. Strong inside that boundary, blind outside it. Relay: everything the company has, indexed once and refreshed daily: email history, Drive, Slack, Canva, spreadsheets, your website and your own systems. Every answer cites where it came from.

Q: Does it write like your company?

ChatGPT Teams: you can set a style in custom instructions; it drafts well but generically. Copilot: drafts in Word and Outlook from the documents it can see; no company voice. Relay: has read a year of your proposals, updates and posts, writes in that voice, and follows your playbooks (the Friday update, the change-order email, the monthly content calendar).

Q: Can it do things, not just answer?

ChatGPT Teams: agent features can browse and complete tasks in a session; nothing is queued for a colleague to approve. Copilot: agents built in Copilot Studio act inside Microsoft 365 and connected systems; powerful, but you build and govern them. Relay: drafts emails, documents, sheet rows, Slack posts and invoices into a queue; a named person approves each one before it goes out. Nothing leaves without a human.

Q: Who can use it?

ChatGPT Teams and Copilot: each person needs a seat. Relay: per company, unlimited users, with individual logins and a record of who asked what.

Q: What does it cost?

ChatGPT Teams: around $25 to $30 per user per month on an annual plan (published pricing, October 2026). Ten people is roughly $3,000 to $3,600 a year. Copilot: an add-on per user per month on top of Microsoft 365; Microsoft has lowered small-business pricing in 2026, so check the current rate. Ten people is typically a few thousand dollars a year. Relay: $7,500 setup, then $1,500 a month per company, any number of users. More expensive than ten seats; far cheaper than the ops hire it usually replaces. Full pricing.

Q: Where does your data go?

ChatGPT Teams: business data is excluded from training by default; stored by OpenAI. Copilot: stays within your Microsoft 365 tenant and its commercial data protections. Relay: one isolated tenant per company on US infrastructure; Claude via API, which does not train on your data; a dedicated database available for regulated firms; deleted within 30 days of leaving. Security details.

Three ways a 5 to 50 person business can get an AI that knows its own work. Here is what each one actually knows, does, and costs.

ChatGPT Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot are good products and most of our clients use one of them. They solve a different problem from Relay. A seat gives one person a very capable assistant that can see the files that person can see, inside one vendor’s apps. Relay is a brain for the company: it has read everything the business has, across every app, answers anyone on the team with the source, and does the next step with a person approving. This page compares them honestly, including where you don’t need Relay.

By Spencer Wilkinson, AI lead at Bodhi & Co · Published 14 October 2026 · Vendor prices as published October 2026; check current pricing.

Try Relay free for a week The comparison

Same question, three toolsExample

You ask“What did we promise Carol on the Whitlock job?”
ChatGPT Teams“I don’t have information about Carol or the Whitlock job.”
CopilotFinds the SharePoint file, if it’s there and you have access
Relay“Tile moved to the 22nd; Carol was told the 20th. Source: change order #3, Renata’s email 9 Oct.”
Relay, next stepDrafts the email to Carol in your voice
Approve

What each one knows, does and costs.

Side by side

What does it know about your business?

ChatGPT Teams: what you paste or upload in a chat, plus connectors to Drive, Slack and others that search files on demand. It doesn’t remember your business between conversations unless you build a custom GPT and keep it fed. Copilot: the Microsoft 365 content the signed-in user can access: Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams. Strong inside that boundary, blind outside it. Relay: everything the company has, indexed once and refreshed daily: email history, Drive, Slack, Canva, spreadsheets, your website and your own systems. Every answer cites where it came from.

Does it write like your company?

ChatGPT Teams: you can set a style in custom instructions; it drafts well but generically. Copilot: drafts in Word and Outlook from the documents it can see; no company voice. Relay: has read a year of your proposals, updates and posts, writes in that voice, and follows your playbooks (the Friday update, the change-order email, the monthly content calendar).

Can it do things, not just answer?

ChatGPT Teams: agent features can browse and complete tasks in a session; nothing is queued for a colleague to approve. Copilot: agents built in Copilot Studio act inside Microsoft 365 and connected systems; powerful, but you build and govern them. Relay: drafts emails, documents, sheet rows, Slack posts and invoices into a queue; a named person approves each one before it goes out. Nothing leaves without a human.

Who can use it?

ChatGPT Teams and Copilot: each person needs a seat. Relay: per company, unlimited users, with individual logins and a record of who asked what.

What does it cost?

ChatGPT Teams: around $25 to $30 per user per month on an annual plan (published pricing, October 2026). Ten people is roughly $3,000 to $3,600 a year. Copilot: an add-on per user per month on top of Microsoft 365; Microsoft has lowered small-business pricing in 2026, so check the current rate. Ten people is typically a few thousand dollars a year. Relay: $7,500 setup, then $1,500 a month per company, any number of users. More expensive than ten seats; far cheaper than the ops hire it usually replaces. Full pricing.

Where does your data go?

ChatGPT Teams: business data is excluded from training by default; stored by OpenAI. Copilot: stays within your Microsoft 365 tenant and its commercial data protections. Relay: one isolated tenant per company on US infrastructure; Claude via API, which does not train on your data; a dedicated database available for regulated firms; deleted within 30 days of leaving. Security details.

Which one should you pick?

An honest answer

Pick ChatGPT Teams if…

Your team mostly needs a strong general assistant for writing, research and analysis, and your company knowledge is small enough to paste in as you go. Under eight people, this is usually enough.

Pick Copilot if…

You live in Microsoft 365, almost everything you know is already in SharePoint and Outlook, and you have someone who will build and maintain Copilot Studio agents.

Pick Relay if…

Your knowledge is spread across email, Drive, Slack, Canva and a couple of systems; two or three people carry the business in their heads; you want drafts in your own voice with a human approving; and you’d rather have it done for you than build it. Relay works alongside Copilot or ChatGPT, not instead of them; it can even be plugged into them as a source.

Can I try before I decide?

Yes. A Preview Week is free: we build your tenant on your own data in two days, your team uses it for five, and if you don’t sign on day seven it’s deleted, confirmed in writing.