Proton.ai alternatives for industrial distributors

The short answer. Proton.ai, the distributor software company in Cambridge, Massachusetts (not Lumo, the AI assistant made by Proton), sells several things under one name: a CRM for distributors, an AI assistant built into it, AI that drafts quotes and orders from customer emails, product data clean-up and product recommendations for your web store. So the right alternative depends on which of those jobs you want done. If you want AI that tells reps which products to offer from your ERP's order history, the alternatives are other distributor-focused tools such as WizCommerce, or AI added to a CRM you already run, such as Zilliant inside Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics. If you want a CRM your reps will use, the alternatives are the general CRMs on their AI editions, your ERP's own CRM, or a CRM built around how a distributor's customers are organised. We read every vendor fact below on the vendor's own pages on October 22, 2026.

We build a CRM for industrial & MRO distributors, and we do not sell an AI product recommendation engine, so read our view with both in mind. The advice is our recommendation, not a survey.

What does Proton.ai do for distributors?

Its home page title calls it an "AI Industry Cloud Platform for Distributors", and its CRM page calls the CRM "The CRM for distributors that turns order takers into order makers". On its own pages, the parts are:

Part	What Proton.ai's own page says it does
CRM	"Proton CRM analyzes your data to show reps exactly who to call, what to sell, and when to follow up." It lists pipeline, quotes, tasks, mobile and reporting
Pronto, the AI assistant	Call preparation, product research and substitutes, email drafts, voice notes and route drafts. "Yes, Pronto is built into Proton"; Proton's own blog lists it as an optional add-on
Order and quote entry	Reads customer emails, PDFs and spreadsheets and drafts the quote or order for a rep to approve, then posts it to the ERP. Announced as generally available on July 21, 2026
eCommerce AI	Complementary products, substitutes and reorder suggestions in your existing web store. "Proton is not an eCommerce platform"
Product data (PIM)	Finds specifications and cleans product attributes
Pricing AI, Inventory AI	Listed as "Coming soon", with a waitlist

The data behind its recommendations is mainly your ERP. Its CRM page says "ERP sync pulls order history, quotes, and customer activity automatically", and its integration page lists SAP, Epicor (including Prophet 21, Eclipse and BisTrack), Infor, NetSuite, Dynamics 365, DDI, DMSI and homegrown AS/400 systems. By default, "Proton reads from your ERP. It doesn't write back unless you explicitly configure a two-way sync."

On price, we found no figures on Proton.ai's pages: its product pages offer to "Get pricing and packaging before you commit to anything". Its own blog comparison of distributor CRMs (published May 18, 2026) describes its pricing as "Per-user licensing with optional add-ons (Pronto AI analyst, Workflow Builder, eCommerce AI)". Its comparison pages say "12 weeks the average time it takes clients to go-live", and its comparison with Spiro says "Proton's onboarding team handles ERP integration, data migration, and rep training".

Which job do you want the alternative to do?

Proton.ai's products cover four jobs. Name the one you want first, because the alternatives for each are different products.

The job	What to look at instead of Proton.ai	What to check
Tell reps who to call and what to offer, from order history	WizCommerce's AI Sales Copilot; Zilliant Sales Insights and Actions inside Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics; AI editions of Salesforce, Dynamics 365 or Zoho CRM	Whether it reads your ERP's history, and how a rep sees the reason for each suggestion
A CRM the reps will open every day	Salesforce, Dynamics 365, Zoho CRM or HubSpot; your ERP's own CRM; a CRM built around your customers' structure	Departments inside accounts, territories, quotes, and use with no signal
Turn emailed requests into quotes and orders	WizCommerce's AI order entry and quote automation assistants	Which ERP it posts to, and who approves before it does
Recommendations in your web store	WizCommerce, which sells the store as well; your store platform's own tools	Whether it uses phone, counter and rep orders as well as web orders

What are the alternatives for AI sales recommendations?

This is the job Proton.ai's CRM page leads with. The alternatives, in their own words:

WizCommerce calls itself an "AI-powered sales and ecommerce platform for wholesalers and distributors". Its AI Sales Copilot "analyzes customer order history, browsing activity, wishlists, and buying patterns to recommend relevant products", and its home page lists ERP connections including NetSuite, Epicor P21, SAP and Sage Intacct. It also sells a CRM, an order-taking app and a web store, and AI assistants for order entry and quotes. We found no published pricing for its sales platform; its Pricing page covers only WizStudio, its AI product-photo tool.
Zilliant calls itself "A Leader in B2B Price Optimization & Management", citing an analyst ranking. Its Sales Insights and Actions product "turns pricing and customer data into prioritized, revenue-driving actions", and its integrations page says it delivers "actionable cross-sell and recovery recommendations" to reps inside Salesforce Sales Cloud and Microsoft Dynamics. It is an addition to a CRM you already run, not a CRM. No pricing is published.
Salesforce Sales Cloud sells Agentforce for Sales as an add-on "From $125 USD/user/month", described as "predictive, generative, and agentic AI at every step"; its Max edition (US$550 per user per month, billed annually) includes it. The pricing page says "AI can be added to Core and above."
Dynamics 365 Sales includes "Copilot capabilities" from its Enterprise edition (US$105 per user per month, paid yearly). Its Premium edition (US$150) adds Sales Insights and what Microsoft's pricing page calls "AI-powered recommended actions", plus 1,000 Copilot Credits per user per month.
Zoho CRM lists a Recommendation Builder and Similarity Recommendation from its Professional edition, and Next Best Experience on Enterprise and Ultimate for accounts with more than 10 user licences, on its feature list (last updated May 12, 2026).

None of these is a like-for-like replacement. Proton.ai and WizCommerce are built for distributors and connect to distribution ERPs themselves. Zilliant comes at it from pricing. The general CRMs sell AI as an edition or add-on, and their recommendations work best on order history you bring into the CRM, which is an integration project of its own. We cover what Salesforce's pieces add up to in Salesforce for distributors.

Does your ERP already cover part of it?

Check before you buy anything. Epicor's own page says Prophet 21's CRM tools manage "prospect, customer, and contact information", "from opportunity to quote to order", and its sales and marketing page lists Customer Buying Trend Analysis, to "Recapture revenue from missed buys and identify at-risk customers". Epicor does not describe it as AI or as a recommendation engine, but for a distributor on Prophet 21 a report of customers who stopped buying a line can be the first version of "who should my reps call". We covered when an ERP's own CRM is enough in CRM vs ERP for distributors.

What should you ask any Proton.ai alternative?

The same questions you would ask Proton.ai. We found no answer to the last two on the Proton.ai pages we could read (its Trust Center did not load for us), so ask it too. Our buyer's guide has the wider list.

Which of our orders does it learn from? Web only, or phone, counter and rep orders from the ERP as well?
Why this suggestion? Can a rep see the reason, such as a line the customer stopped buying, before they say it to a buyer?
Who presses send? Does anything reach a customer without a person approving it?
Does it write to our ERP? Read-only by default, or a two-way sync, and who builds and maintains the connection?
How is our customer modelled? One flat company, or a parent account with departments and sites that buy separately? Recommendations for "the customer" are only as good as that record. See account hierarchy in a CRM for distributors.
Does the mobile app work with no signal? A rep in a plant basement still needs to log the visit.
Where is our data hosted? For a Canadian distributor, which country, and in which language can the interface run?

When is Proton.ai the better choice?

Your main goal is cross-sell from ERP order history, and you want it built for distribution. That is Proton.ai's core, with recommendations reaching the CRM, the assistant and your web store from one source.
You run a common distribution ERP and want the vendor to connect it. Proton.ai lists Prophet 21, Eclipse, SAP, NetSuite and AS/400 among the systems it has integrated with, and says it handles the integration.
You want quote and order entry from email in the same product. It is generally available, with a rep approving each draft.
You already run Salesforce or Dynamics 365 and want recommendations inside it. Then Zilliant or the CRM's own AI edition may suit you better than either Proton.ai or a new CRM.

AlterFlow is not the right fit if your main need is AI product recommendations from ERP order history, recommendations in your web store, or product data clean-up. We do not sell those. It is also not the fit if you need a ready-made live connection to your ERP on day one: our product page says a direct live connection into a legacy inventory platform is work we scope per engagement, not something already built.

Where does AlterFlow fit?

Our industrial & MRO CRM starts from a different problem: the customer record. An industrial customer is often a parent account whose departments buy separately and own equipment that comes due for service on its own schedule. We think the call a rep should make next often sits there, in a unit coming due, as much as in a product the customer has not bought yet. Production build, in delivery means built and being deployed to a live team, not a product with a long customer list.

Need	In AlterFlow	Status
Customers with departments and sites	Organization, department and contact hierarchy, with equipment held at the department that owns it	Production build, in delivery
Equipment that tells you when to call	Equipment that carries its own service cadence	Production build, in delivery
A follow-up nothing falls out of	Logging an outcome creates the next date, and a miss stays visible	Production build, in delivery
Use with no signal	Capture in the field that holds on the device and arrives exactly once	Production build, in delivery
Quotes against what was ordered	Partial wins captured against what was actually ordered, and the reason for the gap	Production build, in delivery
Asking about a customer in plain words	An assistant that answers from your own records	Working prototype, demoed live, not a production deployment
AI cross-sell recommendations from ERP history	Not offered

We keep the AI and the rules apart on purpose. The follow-up loop is a plain rule that runs the same way every time, because a missed follow-up has to surface every time, not probably. Nothing reaches a customer until one of your people presses send. We price on scope, not per seat, and your data stays yours.

Frequently asked questions

What does Proton.ai do? Proton.ai is distributor software from Cambridge, Massachusetts. On its own pages it sells a CRM for distributors that uses ERP order history to suggest who to call and what to sell, an AI assistant built into the CRM, AI that drafts quotes and orders from emails, product data clean-up and product recommendations for web stores. It is a different company from Proton, which makes the Lumo AI assistant.

How much does Proton.ai cost? We found no prices on Proton.ai's pages; you get pricing in a call with its team. Its own blog comparison, published May 18, 2026, describes "Per-user licensing with optional add-ons". Ask for the price of the add-ons you need, such as the assistant or eCommerce AI, as well as the seats.

What are the main Proton.ai alternatives for distributors? For AI recommendations from order history: WizCommerce, and Zilliant inside Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics. For a CRM with AI: Salesforce with Agentforce for Sales, Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise or Premium, and Zoho CRM's recommendation features from Professional. For reports on missed buys: your ERP's own tools, such as Prophet 21's Customer Buying Trend Analysis.

Is Proton.ai a CRM or an AI add-on? Both, on its own pages: it sells a full CRM for distributors, with its assistant available as an add-on, and separate AI for order entry, product data and web stores. That is the main difference from Zilliant, which delivers its recommendations inside Salesforce or Dynamics rather than replacing them.

Does a distributor need AI recommendations at all? Not first, in our view. If your reps cannot see a customer's departments, open quotes and equipment coming due in one place, fix the record and the follow-up first. Recommendations built on a record that is wrong tell a rep to call the wrong person about the right product. Our buyer's guide lists the questions to settle before any of it.

See it with sample records. The working demo is open with no form and no sign-up: a prototype on sample records. Open a customer to see its departments, the equipment each one holds with its service due date, and a won deal that records the reason for a partial win. Or book a walkthrough and bring the job you were looking at Proton.ai for.

Sources, read October 22, 2026, all vendors' own pages. Proton.ai: home page, CRM, Pronto, order and quote entry, eCommerce AI, PIM, integration, comparison with HubSpot, comparison with Spiro, general availability of order and quote entry (July 21, 2026), Top 6 CRM software for wholesale distributors (published May 18, 2026). Proton: Lumo. WizCommerce: home page, AI Sales Copilot, WizStudio pricing. Zilliant: home page, Sales Insights and Actions, integrations. Salesforce: Sales pricing. Microsoft: Dynamics 365 Sales pricing. Zoho: CRM feature list (last updated May 12, 2026). Epicor: Prophet 21 CRM, Prophet 21 sales and marketing. Dates in brackets are the pages' own dates; the other pages show none. Prices, editions and features change; check the vendor's page before you buy.

Proton.ai alternatives for industrial distributors, matched to the job