What makes us different
Three things the others can’t copy.
Most of what a sales tool does can be built by anyone in a quarter. These cannot, because each one is a decision made at the foundations.
We research companies, one at a time.
Every buyer is a real company, checked against the brief you wrote. Not a list assembled once and handed to everyone who asks.
Your mail is yours, on your own machine.
The archive lives in a database on your computer, not on our servers. It is yours to keep, search and export, it is fast because it is local, and your passwords stay in the Windows Credential Manager. Every alternative here is a website, so your mail sits on theirs.
It is built by an exporter who runs his business on it.
I am Ahmed. I sell olive oil into twelve-plus countries, and OleaDesk runs my own sales desk every day. Every buyer it finds and every email it sends goes out under my name, to my customers. That is why it refuses to quote a price, and why it would rather send five good emails than five thousand.
Side by side
| Cold-email platforms | OleaDesk | |
|---|---|---|
| How each buyer is chosen | Usually filtered from a contact database | Researched one company at a time against your brief, with the reason it fits and an address checked before it reaches you |
| Your inbox | A reply dashboard bolted on the side | A real mail client, every mailbox in one place |
| The writing | Templates with the name swapped in | Learns your voice from your sent mail, and scores itself against your edits |
| The buyer’s language | English, or a template you translated yourself | Writes to a buyer in Lyon in French and one in Hamburg in German, in your voice, not a translation of it |
| Before you read a draft | You check it yourself | Every price, number and link is checked against the thread first, and anything unaccounted for is flagged |
| When a buyer asks your price | The sequence answers, or keeps running | It stops and hands you the conversation. It never invents a number |
| Sending | Automated once a campaign starts | Nothing leaves without your approval |
| What it costs to use | Usually credits on top of the subscription, priced per email and per lookup | One price. The AI is included, and there is no per-email arithmetic |
| Who owns the desk | Usually an account on their site: stop paying and the mail, the list and the history stop with it | You do. Your mailbox, your domain, and the whole archive in a database on your own computer |
One thing we will not pretend: if your plan is to send tens of thousands of emails a month, the platforms above are built for that and we are not. OleaDesk sends a small number of researched, approved emails, in the recipient’s working hours, stopping the moment someone replies. Different instrument, different job.
Compared with other trade AI tools
Trade AI tools
Two other products sell AI for finding buyers abroad. Both are worth a look, and both are built differently from OleaDesk.
EximAgent (eximagent.ai) calls itself “your 24/7 AI team for global trade”. It is built on customs shipment data: its home page claims 276M+ shipment records and 578K+ importers identified, and that 82% “yield a verified contact”. It has five AI specialists, covering trade intelligence, buyer discovery, answering inquiries, following up after expos and HS-code classification. It says there is “no external action without approval”. It does not show a price on its home page.
What that means for you: if customs records and HS codes are how you choose buyers, EximAgent has data OleaDesk does not have, and we do not pretend otherwise. OleaDesk is built only for food and drink. It finds 30 qualified buyers a week for each market you give it, writes in your voice from your own sent mail, and keeps your mail on your own computer.
Rinda (rinda.ai, by Grinda AI, South Korea) covers every sector, from beauty to IT to food. Its home page claims a database of 800 million companies, 1,100+ exporting companies using it, and 20 languages. Its AI writes cold email and sends it automatically, “hundreds a day”. It is priced from 199,000 won a month, with two weeks free and no card.
What that means for you: Rinda is built to send at volume. OleaDesk sends nothing without your approval and sends a small number on purpose, because a food producer’s own address is worth more than a big send. Why we send small.
Their figures are their own published claims, read on their home pages on 3 October 2026. We have not verified them.
Compared with having it done for you
The agency question
The other thing a food business weighs this against is paying somebody to run the outreach. It works, and it costs you no hours at all. What it costs you is everything the outreach produces.
| Outreach run for you | OleaDesk | |
|---|---|---|
| The mailbox it sends from | Theirs, or a lookalike domain bought for the campaign | Yours. Your address, your domain, your sending reputation |
| The voice | A house style, written by whoever has the account this month | Yours, learned from your own sent mail |
| Who keeps what is learned | They do. The list, the replies and the way it learned to write stay on their side | You do. Every buyer, every thread, every note |
| When you stop | The pipeline stops with the retainer, and you begin again from nothing | The desk is still on your machine, with the archive in it |
| The relationship with the buyer | Between the buyer and whoever wrote to him | Between the buyer and you, from the first email |
| The hours it takes you | None, and that is the real thing you are buying | Minutes a day approving what it drafted |
If the hours are the problem, take the hours back. Our Managed plan sets your agents up, writes the first sequences with you and tunes them month by month. The difference is what you are left holding: the mailbox, the buyers and the conversations are yours from the first email, and they stay yours the month you decide to run it all yourself.
See it against your own market.
Twenty minutes, and I’ll show you the buyers it finds for what you sell.
Book 20 minutes with the founder