How CRSTA and Cumae Work Together
The difference is direction
The cleanest way to hold the distinction is to ask who the customer is talking to.
- A customer asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude or Gemini about your business. You are not in that conversation. What those systems can retrieve about you is the whole of your presence in it. That is Cumae’s half.
- A customer arrives on your website, your kiosk, your app and asks a question there. You are in that conversation, and you control it end to end. That is CRSTA’s half.
Both are discovery. Only one of them happens on ground you own.
What they share
Both products draw on the same thing: business knowledge your company has reviewed and approved. Your hours, your catalog, your policies, your eligibility rules, your preparation and safety limitations.
Maintaining that knowledge twice is how the two halves end up disagreeing — and a business whose website says one thing while AI assistants say another has a worse problem than one that published nothing. Keeping one approved source behind both is the point.
The loop between them
The two products inform each other, but not automatically, and the direction matters.
CRSTA conversations surface what customers actually ask, in their words — including questions your website never anticipated and your record does not yet answer.
Those questions become candidates for the record, not entries in it. Your business reviews and approves any change before it is added to or updated in Cumae. Nothing is written automatically from a conversation.
An approved addition makes the Cumae record more complete for external AI systems, and gives CRSTA a better answer for the next customer who asks on your own site.
The human approval step is deliberate. It is what separates a governed information layer from a system that quietly learns your business wrong.
Either one works alone
They are separate products with separate pricing, and neither requires the other.
- Cumae without CRSTA suits a business whose main exposure is being described inaccurately by AI systems — where the traffic problem is upstream of the website entirely.
- CRSTA without Cumae suits a business with good traffic and a conversion problem — visitors arrive, cannot find what they need, and leave.
Most businesses have one of these problems more acutely than the other. Start there.
Two things they are not
- Cumae is not a place to put your CRSTA transcripts. Raw customer conversations are never made public or discoverable. If you run CRSTA and opt in, approved and classified conversation insights can help improve your Business Discovery Profile — that is opt-in, and it works on approved insights, not raw transcripts.
- CRSTA is not how external AI systems reach your record. Those systems retrieve from Cumae under the access policy you configure. CRSTA is your own surface, not a gateway to your record. See How Cumae Access Policies Work.
Frequently asked questions
If I buy both, is there a discount?
Yes. Cumae is 40% off with CRSTA Network or Enterprise, within that tier’s location scope. See Cumae pricing.
Does CRSTA automatically update my Cumae record?
No. Conversations can identify new questions, customer interests and possible information gaps, but your business reviews and approves changes before anything is added to or updated in Cumae.
Which should I deploy first?
Whichever problem is costing more. If AI assistants are describing you wrong, start with Cumae. If visitors are landing and bouncing, start with CRSTA.
Do the two products share a login and account?
They are managed under one CRSTBL account, but billed and scoped separately. Cumae plans are never blended with CRSTA conversation allowances.
One authoritative source, two jobs.
Cumae governs the information. CRSTA applies it in conversation. Start with either.