Compare / Optimly vs DIY Prompt Testing
Comparison
Optimly vs DIY prompt testing.
Typing your company name into ChatGPT tells you something. It does not tell you how to interpret it, how it compares to your intent, which gaps matter most, or whether anything changed after you acted. That is the gap Optimly closes.
DIY prompt testing is a reasonable starting point — but it has limits.
Searching your company name in ChatGPT or asking it "what does [company] do?" gives you a real data point. Many people start there. The limitation is not the idea — it is the protocol. Without a controlled question set, a baseline, consistent scoring, and a remeasurement loop, what you get is a snapshot with no way to know if it is representative, how far off it is, or whether your changes moved anything.
Where DIY prompt testing runs into problems
✗ No baseline
You have no record of what AI said before. You cannot measure change — only observe the current state.
✗ No consistency
AI answers vary across sessions, question phrasings, and model versions. Without a controlled protocol, different results might reflect different inputs, not actual change.
✗ No scoring
You see the answer, but you have no systematic way to assess whether it matches your positioning intent or how far off it is.
✗ No prioritization
You know something is wrong, but not what to fix first — or which gaps are most likely to affect buyer decisions.
✗ No remeasurement loop
After you make a change, repeating the same process manually is time-consuming. Without consistency in the protocol, the before and after are not comparable.
What Optimly adds over DIY
- A baseline you can compare future panels against
- Consistent question sets scored against your BrandVault
- Prioritized gaps — what to fix first, not just what is wrong
- Later reports for comparison under comparable questions and model coverage
BrandVault is free. Upgrade when you need it.
Claim your brand, verify ownership, and prepare and publish an owner-approved record for AI agents. Nothing is published until you approve it.
Includes up to 3 completed reports per brand in any rolling 30-day period when your BrandVault has been published or updated within that same period.
Deeper measurement, market intelligence and strategic advisory start at $500/month. Scope is agreed on a call.
What Optimly measures today
Your approved BrandVault provides the reference for interpreting the answers we test. Reports separate three metrics:
- Visibility: how often your brand appears in the tested unbranded answers.
- Positioning Strength: how closely scored answers align with your approved positioning.
- Endorsement Strength: how often your brand is recommended first in the eligible unbranded answers.
Reports include answer evidence and model coverage. Recommendations are suggestions for review. Failed or unjudged answers are excluded; missing results are not zero scores. Publishing a record does not guarantee retrieval or recommendation, and a later score change does not establish causation.
Read the metric definitions and aggregation rules → · See Optimly’s example report →