Repply vs Heep: Honest Comparison of Two French Restaurant AI Agents

Two agents can tick the same boxes on a comparison page and still write different things into your booking calendar. That is the whole problem with comparing Repply and Heep: on paper, both reply to inbound messages, detect a booking intent and hand over when needed. The difference starts where comparisons stop: what each one writes into your system, in how many languages, and what you can verify before signing.

What follows is what both vendors state publicly, including where Repply is ahead. Where something isn't public, I say so rather than guess.

The common ground: multichannel conversational AI agent

Before the differences, what's shared. Repply and Heep have the same product skeleton:

• AI agent that automatically replies to guest messages across multiple channels
• Intent detection (booking, modification, cancellation, info request, private event)
• Availability check and autonomous booking creation
• Human takeover when the case gets sensitive
• Dashboard with stats on handled enquiries

Both deliver the base promise: replying before the guest looks elsewhere, about five minutes (industry studies 2024), and covering the hours when nobody can answer, since 62% of enquiries arrive outside opening hours (observed across the Heep base).

So both qualify as "a conversational AI agent for restaurants". The question isn't which one works, it's which one fits your profile.

Repply: positioning and strengths

Repply is a French startup based in La Rochelle, founded by Alexandre Jouandin. Positioning is explicitly tilted toward the independent restaurateur operating in autonomy.

Real strengths:

• Self-serve onboarding. Type your restaurant name and Repply automatically imports opening hours, menu and reviews from Google Maps. No mandatory sales call.
• Configuration via natural-language instructions. "Offer the terrace when the weather is nice", "Small dogs allowed": you write rules in plain language and the AI applies them.
• Covers phone + Instagram + WhatsApp. Triple inbound channel, single agent.
• Group and private-event detection. The AI flags group requests, collects key info (date, budget, party size) and routes to the team for commercial qualification.
• Flexible pricing. Adapts to seasonality, via form.

Typical Repply customer: independent restaurant or small group (1 to 5 venues), mostly French-speaking clientele, lean team that wants to try AI without a long sales cycle.

Heep: positioning and strengths

Heep is us: a French startup based in Paris. The positioning targets premium restaurants and groups that already run a booking system: a writing problem rather than a setup problem.

Real strengths:

• Official integrations with booking systems. Heep is listed as an official partner of both Zenchef and SevenRooms, with real-time booking creation in the calendar, synced modifications, and source tagging for attribution tracking.
• 32 supported languages. Beyond French and English, the agent handles Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Russian, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and 21 more.
• 4 inbound channels handled by AI. WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and email. On top of that, missed calls are followed up by WhatsApp, then SMS.
• Premium and group clientele. Moma Group, Fitz Group, Lapérouse, Lùbar (Milan) among others.
• Public pricing. €99/month excl. VAT per 1,000-message pack, no commitment, 48-hour deployment, 20-minute demo.

Typical Heep customer: high-end restaurant or group with multiple venues, already running a booking system (Zenchef or SevenRooms), international clientele, complex requests (allergies, events, multilingual private bookings).

Feature-by-feature comparison

One clarification: "not publicly confirmed" does not mean "impossible", only that the vendor doesn't advertise it and I cannot verify it for you.

When to pick Repply

Repply is the right call in three cases:

1. You're an independent restaurant or small group without a structured booking system. No Zenchef or SevenRooms installed, just a paper book or a Google Calendar. Repply fits this situation without forcing a stack change.

2. You want to test AI in autonomy without a sales cycle. Repply's self-onboarding lets you start without a meeting, in a few minutes.

3. Your clientele is French-speaking and local. If 80%+ of your guests speak French, Heep's broader multilingual coverage isn't a decisive argument for you.

When to pick Heep

Heep is the right call in four cases:

1. You already use Zenchef or SevenRooms and want an official integration. Real-time booking creation in your existing system, with no double-entry and full source attribution, is a non-negotiable in structured groups.

2. Your clientele is international. Starred restaurants, premium hotel-restaurants, brasseries, tourist areas: a large share of premium Paris venues receive messages in three or more languages. If your guests write in Japanese, Chinese or Arabic, having Heep reply in their own language moves conversion.

3. You operate multiple venues with a group logic. Heep is used by Moma Group, Fitz Group and other restaurant groups, across more than 100 venues. The product handles per-venue rules, channel attribution, and consolidated reporting.

4. You need inbound email handled automatically. Premium restaurants get a lot of email enquiries (private events, press, corporate). Heep handles that channel natively with the same logic as WhatsApp.

See a 20-minute Heep demo

The hidden criterion: type of commercial relationship

Beyond features, the real deciding factor for many restaurateurs is the kind of commercial relationship they want.

Repply bets on autonomy: form, self-onboarding, subscription that flexes with your seasonality. It's the product-led philosophy, à la Stripe or Notion.

Heep bets on accompaniment: 20-minute demo with a team member, briefing on your real inbound flow, assisted deployment, monthly check-in. It's closer to an operational partnership.

Neither is objectively better. They attract different profiles, and that never shows up in a feature table.

Verdict

Repply and Heep aren't fighting over the same customer. The market is young, and each player finds its niche.

Repply leans toward the independent who wants self-service, a product-led logic and quick onboarding. Heep leans toward premium restaurants and structured groups, with deep Zenchef or SevenRooms integration needs, international clientele, and operational follow-up.

Before you decide, three things can be checked without us. That your booking-system vendor lists the integration on its own site. That your contract and your region open up API access: the most frequent blocker on SevenRooms, and not something to discover after signing. And that a duplicate-prevention setting exists in the calendar, since two sources will now write into it. With those three in place, the rest is profile, not technique.