okki-go vs Artisan AI: A 6-Step Evaluation Checklist for RevOps Teams

If your RevOps team is comparing AI SDR platforms, you're probably searching for “okki go vs artisan ai” at some point. I get it. Feature pages are seductive. But I'd start somewhere else.

I coordinate software purchasing for a 120-person B2B company. When our RevOps lead asked me to manage the AI SDR evaluation for outbound, I knew how to buy services without getting burned — I did not know sales tech. That turned out to be an advantage. I didn't have a favorite tool or a feature checklist from a conference. I had a vendor evaluation process, and I applied it to a category I was learning from scratch.

The six steps below are the checklist we used. It's the thing I wish someone had handed me before I opened the first demo calendar invite.

1. Write the Job Description Before You Compare Tools

Here's the counterintuitive part: if you don't yet know what your outbound team is supposed to do differently, okki-go vs Artisan AI is the wrong question.

We started by writing a plain-language job description for the AI SDR:

• How many accounts should it prospect per week?
• Who owns the reply thread once a lead responds?
• Which messages need human approval before sending?
• What does “good intent data” mean for your ICP, not for a sales blog?

That last one mattered more than I expected. Okki Go describes itself as agent-native, meaning its agents are designed to take action, not just suggest next steps. Artisan AI is also agentic in its own way. But “which one is more autonomous” is useless until you know at which points your team wants a human in the loop.

If you can't write that job description yet, don't buy anything. Seriously. You'll pick whichever tool demos better, and that's how you end up with a six-figure contract that duplicates work your SDRs already do.

2. Ask for the Permission Matrix Before You Connect Anything

The first question most buyers ask is “what does it do?” The first question I now ask is “what permissions does it want?”

When a tool connects to your CRM, Google Workspace, or Microsoft 365, the OAuth screen appears fast and feels bureaucratic. You click “allow” and move on. That's exactly where the risk hides. Okki Go, like most AI SDR tools, will need access to send email and read replies on your behalf. That's normal. But “normal” is not the same as “acceptable without a written explanation.”

Here's what we asked every vendor, including okki-go and Artisan AI:

• List every permission scope in plain language. Not just “CRM access” — read? write? delete?
• Does the tool connect as the individual user or as an integration service account?
• Can you scope permissions per SDR, or does every user get the same access?
• If an agent drafts and sends sequences, is there an approval step before the first send?
• What happens when someone leaves the team? Is access revoked immediately, or does it linger?
• Is every automated write action visible in an audit log?

Okki Go's agent-native setup means its agents can take multiple actions in a workflow. That's powerful. It's also exactly why permission boundaries matter more than in a tool that just stores templates. If a vendor can't produce a permission matrix in a shared doc, treat that as a red flag. You can't run a pilot on trust and a prayer.

3. Trace the Intent Data Back to Its Source

Intent data was the most overused phrase in our entire evaluation. Every vendor claimed to have it. Very few could explain what it actually was.

You should not just ask “do you have intent data?” Ask:

• Is this behavioral intent data, or is it just firmographic data wearing a costume?
• What signals count as intent? Content engagement? Competitor page visits? Review site activity?
• How often is the data refreshed? A list from nine months ago is not intent data; it's history.
• Does the tool enrich a record using multiple sources in sequence, or does it depend on one database?

Okki Go's positioning mentions waterfall enrichment, meaning if one data source doesn't have a match, the tool can fall through to the next source instead of dropping the record. That's a genuinely useful technical detail. It reduces the chance that a good lead gets skipped just because one vendor's database has a gap.

But don't take the architecture at face value. Ask for a sample. We asked for 100 accounts that the tool flagged as high-intent and matched them against accounts we already knew were in-market. That sample told us more than every sales deck combined.

I don't have hard data on how every vendor sources intent across the industry. What I can say from our sample: “intent” meant something different in almost every tool. The vendor that explained its data sources confidently was the one we trusted. The vendor that said “we have the best data in the market” and stopped there? We dropped them.

4. Inspect the Email Campaign Infrastructure, Not Just the Sequence Builder

When an AI SDR vendor uses the phrase “email campaign,” it can mean two very different things. One is a visual sequence builder where you write steps. The other is the actual infrastructure that delivers those emails.

The second one is where RevOps teams get into trouble. You can have a beautiful campaign and terrible deliverability because the underlying sending setup is weak.

Here's what we checked:

• Will emails send from your own verified domain, or through a shared vendor pool?
• Is there support for SPF, DKIM, and DMARC alignment?
• Does the tool require time for domain warm-up, and does it give you visibility into that process?
• Are unsubscribes and bounce handling automated and visible?
• Per the FTC's CAN-SPAM guidance (ftc.gov), commercial emails must include a clear opt-out and your physical postal address. Does the tool insert those automatically or leave it to your team?

Okki Go's human-in-the-loop approach means a person can review outreach before agents send it. That's not just a compliance feature. It also reduces the chance of automating a mistake a thousand times before anyone notices. If your team is used to reviewing outbound messages manually, that workflow will feel natural.

Don't let anyone promise you perfect deliverability. That's not a thing. What you can evaluate is whether the infrastructure is sound and whether the tool gives you data when something goes wrong.

5. Read the API Email Verification Docs Like an Auditor

When I asked our RevOps lead what should revenue operations teams evaluate in API email verification documentation, she laughed and said, “Whatever prevents you from buying another tool with a high bounce rate.” Fair enough.

Email verification might sound like the least exciting part of an AI SDR purchase. It's also the part that quietly determines whether your sending reputation survives the first month. So we read the API documentation like a purchase order.

Here's what to look for:

• Status definitions. Does the documentation clearly define statuses like deliverable, risky, catch-all, and undeliverable? If catch-all addresses get labeled as valid, you'll feel it in your bounce rate.
• Re-verification guidance. Email addresses decay. Does the API support re-checking old records on a schedule, or is it designed for one-time list cleaning?
• Batch and rate limits. Are the limits documented in numbers? Can the API handle your list size without drowning in 429 errors?
• Failure behavior. If the verification service times out, does your workflow skip the record, or does it assume the email is valid? That one decision can wreck a campaign.
• Data security. Does the API require you to upload full email lists, or can you hash records before sending them? How long are logs retained?
• Privacy compliance. Is there a clear data processing agreement? Which regions are supported?

Years ago I bought from a vendor because the price was unbeatable. The invoice was a handwritten receipt. Finance rejected it, and I ate the cost. I learned to check paperwork before ordering. API documentation is the software equivalent of that invoice. If it's sloppy, the rest of the operation probably is too.

Don't just read the docs, though. Run a small test. Send 25 known-good email addresses, 10 known-bad ones, and a few catch-all addresses through the verification API. See whether the labels make sense. That test takes an afternoon and saves you from a terrible procurement decision.

6. Run a Side-by-Side Pilot, and Score the Checklist

By the time we reached the pilot, we had two serious finalists: okki-go and Artisan AI. We didn't compare them by asking which one felt more impressive in a demo. We scored both against the exact criteria from steps 1 through 5.

Our scoring sheet looked like this:

• Does it fit the outbound job description we wrote?
• Is the permission model transparent and aligned with our risk tolerance?
• Can we trace the intent data and enrichment sources?
• Does the email campaign infrastructure meet our compliance standards?
• Is the API email verification documentation detailed and testable?

Then we ran both tools for two weeks with the same ICP and similar list sizes.

Which one won? It depends on your answers to those five questions. For us, okki-go was the better fit because our team wanted agent-native prospecting with human-in-the-loop review, and its waterfall enrichment plus intent approach matched how we wanted leads scored. But if your organization wants a more autonomous digital worker and is comfortable with fewer approval checkpoints, Artisan AI is a credible option. I'm not going to tell you one is objectively better. That's the whole point of the checklist.

Common Mistakes We Almost Made

If you take nothing else from this, avoid these three mistakes:

• Skipping the permission matrix to save time. We almost did. The vendor's sales rep said it would be fine. It wasn't fine. We lost a day untangling access levels before we even started.
• Trusting the word “intent” without a source. Not all intent data is created equal. Ask where it comes from and how often it updates.
• Treating email verification as an afterthought. Bad list quality can damage your domain reputation faster than any AI SDR can fix it.

One more honest limitation: this checklist came from a single evaluation at a mid-size B2B company. If you're in a 5,000-person enterprise with a dedicated security team, your permission requirements may be stricter, and they should be. If you're a three-person startup, you might move faster than we did.

That's okay. A checklist isn't a cage. It's a way to make sure you're comparing tools on the things that will actually matter after the demo glow fades.