If you’re in the market for an AutoML platform, you’ve likely encountered the plethora of options. One google search will show you the innumerable AI and analytics tools out there, with offerings from startups to giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and more.

Many businesses find themselves comparing H2O.ai and Obviously AI when looking for the right AutoML solution. In this article, we’ll compare and contrast the two in both application and use case so you can make an informed decision to help empower everyone in your organization.

Overview

Here’s a high-level overview of Obviously AI and H2O.ai:

• H2O.ai is designed for larger enterprises and offers a set of features at a higher price point, and is geared to a more technical audience. H2O.ai is a top contender in the traditional AutoML space, and a leading rival to the likes of Google AutoML and Azure AI. As H2O writes, they’re focused on offering “sophisticated AI technology that enables businesses, government entities, nonprofits and academic institutions to make, operate and innovate with AI."
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• In contrast, Obviously AI specializes in affordable no-code AI that can be built in minutes. With a focus on predictive analytics, you can use Obviously AI to build AI models for tabular data in clicks. Obviously AI offers affordable, simple AI solutions and is made for non-technical users who want to make predictions quickly and easily.
  

Let's start comparing.

Price

Most other solutions require a high investment just to get started. Some start low and quickly become costly as more training is added. 

H2O.ai isn’t very open about their pricing, requiring you to request a quote. That said, we dug through IBM documentation to find an H2O AI pricing list, which features subscriptions ranging from $300,000 (a 3-year subscription) to $850,000 (a 5-year subscription with GPU).

This implies that an H2O.ai subscription will be even pricier than hiring a data scientist at US-level market rates. That said, if a company is spending six-figures on AI software, they’ll probably hire data scientists to use it anyway, so affordability is out the window with H2O.ai.

Additionally, one review listed that while the H2o.ai version is great for a trial, it’s quite expensive and seems to be focused only on enterprises, and that a version for SMEs or smaller businesses would be ideal.

Obviously AI has the mission of democratizing machine learning for everyone. Our plans were designed to easily allow almost any business to get started. We also have the ability to scale with our customers as their needs grow.

If you knock off a couple zeroes from H2O’s plan, you’re in the realm of pricing for Obviously AI.

We also offer the flexibility to put our money where our mouth is, meaning: you have an opt out period. Our team goes above and beyond to ensure that you’re set up for success. And if you’re not getting what you want, or aren’t completely happy, that means we haven’t done our job right. 

Clean and Clear UI

H2O.ai is convenient and easy to use, with many reviewers praising its familiar interface.

Obviously AI carries a similar easy-to-use interface. It was designed to provide a user experience that can easily be understood and used by any entry-level Business Analyst. Teams can easily share results or provide customer-facing predictions with the models they create.

Support from a Data Scientist

Oftentimes, when users sign up, they’re left alone to their own devices. We aren’t sure if that’s the case for H2O.ai - they may offer the support from a data scientist, but it isn’t entirely clear or upfront in any of their product listings. 

Our customers enjoy guidance from our in-house Data Science team. Upon sign-up, our customers are scheduled for onboarding with their Product Specialist and Data Scientist.

Our team is then able to sync with the data sources, enrich the data so it is fit for machine learning, and push the data back to wherever the customer wants to see it. We then schedule another time to show the customer the work that was completed and how to get their results moving forward.

Ongoing check-ins are also scheduled at that point. Any time a new use case comes up, our customers can schedule a new time to speak with their assigned team.

Data Cleaning is also included, and that includes: Data Cleaning, Merging, Enrichment, Statistical work and Applying Business Logic. This ensures that organizations get the kind of success they need.

Extras

Integrations

Both H2O and Obviously AI have invested heavily in integrations, especially in comparison to tools like Power BI, which has relatively few integration options.

H2O’s integrations are highly technical, covering areas like Instance Life-Cycle Management, API clients, scoring, and storage. What’s apparently absent are easy-to-use, simple integrations like Zapier, HubSpot, or Salesforce.

Obviously AI offers a rich integration ecosystem, including an extremely simple REST API. If you’re less technical, you may want to use the Zapier integration. This is just scratching the surface, and Obviously AI offers many more integrations, including (some are in development) with Airtable, Amazon RedShift, Box, Chartio, Dropbox, Google Analytics, Google BigQuery, HubSpot, Kaggle, Mode, Shopify, Snowflake, Tableau, Typeform, and others.

Dashboards

If your key goal is creating Business Intelligence dashboards, then you might want to check out our guide on Power BI. Neither H2O nor Obviously AI are primarily focused on dashboards, though they both offer visualization features.

Features

Both H2O and Obviously AI offer sharing features, but H2O report sharing functionality seems to be quite limited, and it doesn’t seem possible to access any public AI reports.

With Obviously AI, a shareable report can be made in a single click, accessible to anyone, anywhere, even without an Obviously AI account.

Conclusion

When comparing H2O and Obviously AI, there’s no clear winner, per se. If financial resources are unlimited, and features like image processing are needed, then H2O is likely the way to go.

We believe everyone should be able to harness the power of ML to support their businesses. If you’re looking for advanced analytics and AI functionality, but aren’t willing or able to shell out up to a million dollars, then Obviously AI is the way to go.