Ontu and Microsoft Copilot: an assistant you ask versus a workspace that gets ahead
Copilot lives inside the Microsoft apps your team already uses. Ontu is a separate project workspace that connects to your mailbox. Plenty of teams will want both, so the question is what each is best at.
Ontu and Microsoft Copilot, side by side
Ontu
Microsoft Copilot
Where it lives
Ontu
In its own project workspace, connected to your Outlook or Gmail mailbox.
Microsoft Copilot
Inside Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams.
How work starts
Ontu
Correspondence arriving in the project starts the work. Nobody has to open a tool and ask.
Microsoft Copilot
A person opens Copilot in the app and asks, for example to summarize a thread or draft a reply.
What it knows
Ontu
A project's emails, files, call transcripts and tasks, plus the firm's SOPs and role profiles.
Microsoft Copilot
Content you can already access in Microsoft 365, retrieved through Microsoft Graph and your existing permissions.
How work is organized
Ontu
Around the project. Each deal or engagement has its own workspace, team and history.
Microsoft Copilot
Around the individual user and their Microsoft 365 content.
What it produces
Ontu
Cited draft replies, call summaries with tracked tasks, and Excel, Word, CSV or text files saved to the project.
Microsoft Copilot
Summaries, drafts and edits inside the Microsoft apps, including presentations and spreadsheets.
Pricing
Ontu
Per seat, billed annually, with no meter on AI use. No public list price.
Microsoft Copilot
Licensed per user through Microsoft's plans. Check Microsoft for current pricing.
Choosing between them
Choose Microsoft Copilot if
- —Your team lives in Microsoft 365 and wants help inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams.
- —You want an assistant for individual tasks, such as summarizing a thread or tidying a draft.
- —You want an assistant that follows your existing Microsoft 365 permissions.
Choose Ontu if
- —You work across several deals at once and need each one kept separate, with its own documents and history.
- —You want replies drafted per project from that project's documents and prior answers, even when no one has asked yet.
- —You want drafts that cite the documents they used and flag anything they can't support.
Using them together. Copilot and Ontu can sit side by side. Copilot helps with work inside a single document or message, and Ontu keeps up with the project-level conversation across everything a deal generates.
Last reviewed October 2026. What we say about Microsoft Copilot comes from its own public materials and is limited to what they state. Products change, so check Microsoft Copilot directly before deciding. If anything here is out of date or wrong, email [email protected] and we'll correct it.
Sources
See Ontu on your next project
A short walkthrough with your deal team. No slideware, just the product on a real workflow.