Riley vs Viva AI
audit the outcome · verify activation · prove it every Friday
Viva replaces your front-desk receptionist on the phone. Riley grows your practice: reputation, AI search visibility, lead discovery, and an outcome ledger that proves what shipped. Different jobs.
Riley
Free $0 · Starter $99 · Growth $249 · Studio $499/mo
AI coworker for dental practices. Drafts review replies, runs recall, recovers missed calls, and ships a weekly digest in Slack.
Viva AI
$200 to $500/mo (per practice)
End-to-end AI front office for dental practices. Inbound calls, multilingual booking, outbound recall, payments, forms, DSO multi-location.
Short version
Feature by feature
Inbound phone receptionist (24/7)
Viva is more specialized here; Riley's inbound voice ships Q3 2026
Outbound recall + missed-call recovery
Multilingual
Dental PMS integration
Review monitoring + reply drafting
AI Search Visibility (AEO)
Riley tracks the 6 signals AI search engines use; ships content drafts to close gaps
New-patient lead discovery
Outcome ledger (per-tenant ROI proof)
Riley logs recovered patients, posted replies, booked appointments to your ledger; cancel anytime, take the data
Brand-voice cloning
Approval-first posting
Riley default is draft → owner approves in Slack → posts
Data routing controls
DSO / multi-location architecture
Slack delivery surface
Setup time
Pricing transparency
Why practices switch
Viva is the best in-class AI receptionist. If your front-desk is the bottleneck, hire Viva. Riley does a different job. Once the phones are covered (by Viva, by a human, or both), Riley grows the practice: reputation, AI search visibility, new-patient leads, recall reactivation, outcome proof.
When a patient asks ChatGPT or Google AI Overview 'best dentist near me', who gets named? Riley tracks the 6 signals AI search engines use to pick recommendations and ships the content drafts that close the gaps. Viva does not do this. Neither does anyone else in the dental AI category.
Riley writes every recovered patient, posted reply, and booked appointment to a per-tenant ledger you own. Cancel anytime, export the data: it's yours. Viva reports call logs. Different artifact, different ownership story.
Riley's data routing isn't binary HIPAA / not-HIPAA. Three modes per practice: default, BAA-covered AI only, or on-premise inference (zero external traffic). Useful for practices with stricter compliance postures than the average HIPAA SaaS provides.
Every public-facing action (review reply, ad post, outbound email) drafts in Slack and waits for owner approval before going out. Viva ships with optional approval. Riley defaults to it because a wrong reply costs more than a slow one.
When to choose which
Choose Riley if
Your front desk is covered (by Viva, a human, or both) and you want to grow: AI-search visibility, reviews drafted in your voice, recall reactivation, new-patient lead discovery, and a proof ledger you own. You'll pay more because the job is bigger.
Choose Viva AI if
Your #1 bleeding wound is missed inbound calls, you serve a multilingual patient base, or you run a DSO with native multi-location needs. Viva is the more specialized answer for that job and the cheaper way in.
Start with an outcome audit, activation checks, and a proof path before anything goes out live.