Questions and objections

Every question here has actually been asked, most of them in public. The answers are the ones we give in a conversation — including where the product does not work.

< 60 sfrom message to alert
~80%target precision
90–95%filtered out before the model
0messages our accounts send

Do you read private chats?

No. Public supergroups only, and only the ones you connect yourself.

An account joins as an ordinary member and sees exactly what the other few thousand members see. Groups that do not admit it are not read at all. Our accounts never post: no messages, no replies, no direct messages, no reactions — read-only is a property of the system, not a promise about our intentions. What is stored is the request and a link to it, not a person’s history. Details are on the Data and Privacy page.

In chats it is only contractors writing, not people who need the service

In general chats — true. That is why the chat list matters as much as the filter.

A general professional chat is 90% colleagues, and a keyword alert there returns a stream of your competitors. Two things fix it, and neither is a keyword: taking chats where the customer sits rather than the trade does, and separating “I do this” from “I need this”. The second is what the model is for — a keyword cannot tell those apart, because they contain the same words.

How is this different from paid search?

A different stage. The person has not started looking yet — they asked the people around them.

Search advertising catches someone who already formed a query and is comparing offers; you pay per click alongside ten other bidders. A question in a chat comes earlier, before that, and there is no auction for it — but there is also no volume you can turn up on demand. The two are not substitutes.

How accurate is it, really?

We aim for about 80% precision. That means roughly one lead in five will be off.

We say the number because the alternative is that you discover it yourself in week two. Precision is chosen over volume deliberately: a competitor advertising 5000 leads a month is selling a feed nobody reads to the end. Every lead carries a link to the original message — open it and you see the person, the chat and the context, which is a two-second check.

Will it work for my niche?

Sometimes no, and we would rather say so before you pay.

A niche is a configuration: the chats, the vocabulary, and a written definition of what counts as a lead. Before anything is connected we can measure a chat and say how many matching requests it produced last week. If a niche or a city has no volume, no subscription changes that — a monitor over three messages a month is a refund waiting to happen.

Could the leads be bots?

Every lead links to the original message. Open it and judge for yourself.

We do not generate or paraphrase leads: an alert is someone’s actual message, quoted, with a link back to where it was written.

I could build this myself in an evening

The parser, yes. What comes after it is the part that took months.

Keeping a list of chats that are alive rather than abandoned; separating the buyer from the trade; holding precision as a niche drifts; and accounts that do not get banned. If you want to build it anyway, ask us where we burned ourselves — the answer is free.

What does it cost?

From $49 a month, after a 30-day trial.

The exact plan depends on how many niches and sources you need; the terms are on the Terms page. While the product is in beta the first 50 customers keep a 50% discount for as long as they stay, in exchange for feedback.

Still unanswered?

Ask in the @SonarLeadSupport group. Name your niche and city and we will tell you honestly whether there is volume there.