All ways to start

Sometimes off the shelf is the answer.

Here are some solid options and what I would think about before signing up for each one.

I am testing these one by one. Until I do, I am not going to pretend I have used them. This is my read on what each product is actually built for, plus the questions I would ask before I connected anything important.

The closest thing here to a personal EA

Town

14-day Pro trialStarter is $15/month

My read

Town is the first one I want to test. It is for people who want a personal EA, not a blank agent they have to teach. The part I like is the preset routines and prompts. It comes ready to triage an inbox, draft replies, prep meetings, look at the week ahead, and send morning briefings. That is much closer to "please help me run my life" than "here is a chat box."

The catch

That convenience comes from access. Town's core Google connection can read and modify Gmail and manage your calendar events. Town has approval modes and read-only controls, which is good, but those controls govern what it does. The connection itself can still see a lot.

This is one reason I keep coming back to open agents. I can build a Gmail metadata plugin that never sees the body of an email, or a calendar plugin that exposes free/busy without every event detail. I am planning to build both.

What I want to test

  • Are the preset routines useful before I spend hours tuning them?
  • Does it make good calls about which email actually matters?
  • Can I keep work and personal accounts from bleeding into each other?
  • What can I export if I leave?

What you are paying for

The $15 Starter plan is where automatic inbox triage, drafts, scheduling, and two daily routines begin. You can configure routines and approvals, but you cannot take Town's underlying agent, memory store, or source code with you.

Other ones I would look at

Each of these is narrower than a build-your-own agent. That is often the point.

Personal assistant

Poke

Pro is $19/month

Poke is the messaging-first version of this idea. It lives in Apple Messages, WhatsApp, Telegram, and RCS, then reaches into email, calendar, reminders, and other connected tools. I would try it if I wanted the assistant to feel like someone I text instead of another dashboard.

Pro is the plan with proactive background automations. Before I paid, I would check every connected account permission and see whether one chat still feels manageable after a few weeks of ongoing work.

See Poke

Email assistant

Fyxer

7-day trial, then $30/month

If email is the whole problem, I would look here before buying a more general agent. Fyxer works inside Gmail and Outlook, organizes the inbox, drafts replies in your tone, and takes meeting notes. It says it only drafts. It does not send for you.

It reads your previous sent mail to learn how you write. The annual price is $22.50 a month, but I would use the trial before making that commitment.

See Fyxer

Academic research

Elicit

Paid plans from $11/month annually

This is the product I would compare an academic research assistant against. Elicit searches scholarly papers, builds research reports, and has a dedicated systematic-review workflow for screening and extraction.

I would test it in my actual field. Does it find the papers I already know? Does it show where every answer came from? Can I export the work in a format I can keep?

See Elicit

Small-business accounting

Digits

30-day trial, then from $65/month

This is the off-the-shelf product I would compare the Two Fruits helper against. Digits is an accounting system, not a prompted chatbot. It connects banks, cards, and payroll, then categorizes transactions, reconciles accounts, and produces live financial statements.

It does not file your taxes. I would run it beside the current books during the trial and have an accountant compare the reconciliations, profit and loss statement, and balance sheet before switching.

See Digits

Coding agent

Devin

Pro is $20/month

Devin makes sense when the job starts with a repository and ends with working code. The environment, model access, repository integrations, and cloud agents are already assembled.

I would give it a small issue with a clear test, then look at the diff, the test results, and the amount of paid usage it took. The agent and cloud environment stay with Devin.

See Devin

Legal platform

Harvey

Custom quote

Harvey is for law firms and in-house legal teams doing a lot of research, contract review, due diligence, and document analysis. It packages the agents with legal workflows, a document vault, shared matter spaces, and enterprise controls.

This is an organizational purchase, not a personal download. I would ask for a trial on one real matter and agree on how to judge the output before the demo.

See Harvey

Prices checked September 4, 2026. Usage limits and annual-billing rules vary, so check the product's site before paying.