The Short Version
Howie vs Catch comes down to scope. Howie is an AI secretary built around the calendar: you CC it on an email thread, it negotiates times with the other side, sends the invite, and keeps your week from turning into a pileup. Catch is an AI Executive Assistant that takes on the whole administrative role. Inbox triage and replies, scheduling and rescheduling, reminders and meeting prep, reservations, real outbound phone calls, all reachable across Slack, email, text message, iMessage, and phone.
Both tools take work off your plate. They take different amounts of it. If meetings are the only thing you want handled, Howie covers that lane and does it in a familiar way. If what’s actually eating your week is everything around the meetings, the inbox, the chasing, the bookings, the calls someone has to place, that’s a wider job than a scheduling assistant was built for.
Below, the two compared on scope, channels, and what each one includes.
At a Glance
| Catch | Howie | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | AI Executive Assistant covering the full admin role | AI secretary focused on scheduling |
| Pricing | Flat $99/month, everything included | Not publicly listed on a first-party page |
| Scheduling | Books, reschedules, resolves conflicts, and creates scheduling links on demand | Coordinates and books meeting times, prevents double-booking, and reschedules |
| Email beyond scheduling | Triages, drafts, sends, and chases quiet threads that matter | Centers on scheduling coordination |
| Channels | Slack, email, text message, iMessage, phone | |
| How it learns you | Connected data plus your ongoing feedback; applies judgment | Focused on scheduling coordination |
| Setup | Under 3 minutes, nothing to configure | Email or CC the assistant on a thread |
Platform Overview
Catch
Catch is an AI Executive Assistant built to handle admin work end to end rather than surface it for you to finish. You reach it wherever you already are: Slack, email, text message, iMessage, or a phone call, so delegating never means opening another app. Setup is self-serve. Connect Gmail or Outlook, grant permissions, connect whatever else you use, and start handing things off. Under three minutes, with a 10-day free trial.
Coverage is broad by design. On email, Catch triages what comes in, drafts to your intent, sends, and chases a quiet thread when the context says that thread matters. On the calendar, it schedules, spots conflicts and reaches out to the other party to move things, and generates scheduling links with constraints you describe in a sentence. It also books through other people’s links, picking a time that fits your availability and the urgency behind the request. It reminds you about prep, flags what needs your attention, and leaves the rest alone.
Then there’s the part most assistants in this category don’t touch: Catch places real outbound calls on your behalf. Booking a table, arranging a late hotel checkout, confirming an appointment. It places the call, identifies itself as an AI agent, and sees the request through. You can also call Catch directly to walk through your day and hand off tasks by voice. It updates records in HubSpot and Zoho, acts on tasks in Asana and Notion, and pulls context from popular note-takers. Travel booking is in beta.
Catch is SOC 2 Type II certified and a Google Verified app under CASA Tier 2, with data hosted in the US. To date it has handled more than 200,000 emails, scheduled over 5,000 meetings, and taken on more than 20,000 delegated tasks.
Howie
Howie is an AI secretary built around one job: getting meetings on the calendar. It has its own email address, so you email it or CC it on a thread, and it takes the scheduling conversation from there. Proposing times, reading replies, coordinating across everyone’s calendars to avoid double-booking, handling reschedules and declines, and sending the invite. For that job it works like a conversational assistant that keeps the whole exchange inside email.
The constraint is scope. Howie’s work centers on scheduling rather than the wider administrative load: the inbox beyond scheduling threads, the reservations, and the phone calls someone has to place are a different job than coordinating meetings over email.
Core Features Compared
Scheduling
Catch Catch does the scheduling work rather than handing you a link to finish it yourself. It coordinates across multiple parties, spots a conflict and contacts the other side to move the meeting, and generates a scheduling link on demand with whatever constraints you describe: mornings only, next week, 30 minutes, two of you on the call. When someone sends you their own booking link, Catch clicks through and picks a slot based on your real availability and how urgent the request is, instead of leaving it sitting in your inbox.
Howie Scheduling is the whole product, and Howie is competent at it. Email it or CC it and it runs the back-and-forth, coordinates across calendars to avoid double-booking, sends the invite, and handles reschedules. For pure calendar coordination over email, that covers the core need. Where it stops is the next step, when a scheduling thread turns into something else: a document to send, a question to answer, a call to place.
Catch Email is where most executives lose the most time, and Catch treats it as the main event. It reads what comes in, decides what matters, drafts replies that reflect what you actually meant rather than replies that merely sound like you, sends them, and keeps an eye on threads waiting on a response. When a decision is genuinely yours to make, it comes to you with the full context so you can weigh in quickly. Then it acts. The work itself is mission-critical, since contracts, negotiations, and client decisions all happen over email. What drops is the overhead around it.
Howie For Howie, email is the interface rather than the workload. It works over email to coordinate scheduling requests. Managing the inbox is a different matter. General triage and replies that aren’t tied to scheduling stay with you or need a second tool.
Voice and Real-World Actions
Catch Outbound calls are included in the plan, with no per-call fees. Catch calls the restaurant, the hotel, the doctor’s office. These are the tasks email can’t solve, because the other side doesn’t do email. It self-identifies as an AI agent at the start of the call. You can also call Catch yourself to talk through priorities and delegate by voice, which is usually faster than typing on the way between meetings.
Howie Howie is built for coordinating meetings over email, so placing outbound calls to a restaurant, hotel, or office is outside what it does. Anything that requires someone to pick up a phone remains a manual task.
Platform and Channel Support
Catch Works with Gmail or Outlook, which matters because plenty of mid-market companies are Microsoft shops. You talk to Catch on Slack, by email, by text message (through a dedicated Catch number on WhatsApp Business, never your personal account), on iMessage, or by phone. Admin gets handled in whichever channel you’re already in.
Howie You reach Howie over email, bringing it into the thread so it can coordinate the scheduling from there.
Judgment vs. Configured Rules
Catch Catch builds a picture of you from your connected data and from the feedback you give it over time: who matters, how you like things handled, what’s worth surfacing and what isn’t. From there it weighs priority and context and decides what to ignore, draft, handle on its own, or bring to you. That’s judgment rather than a rule table. Early on it checks with you before acting, and it takes on more independently as it learns how you work. When something is ambiguous it reasons from what it already knows about you, and it comes back with a question when the situation genuinely calls for your input.
Howie Howie is focused on scheduling, and for that job it’s predictable and easy to reason about. What it’s built for is the calendar rather than the rest of your admin.
Pricing Comparison
Catch Pricing
Catch is a flat $99/month. One price, everything included: email, calendar, scheduling links, reminders, bookings, and phone calls. No credit system, no usage tiers, no per-call fees. There’s a 10-day free trial, and signup is self-serve.
The number worth holding next to that is what the same work costs when a person does it. A fully loaded US executive assistant runs roughly $120,000 - $180,000 a year. Catch handles the traditional executive-assistant role, meaning the calendar work, the inbox, the scheduling, the briefings, the coordination, at $99 a month, around the clock, with responses in seconds rather than hours.
None of which is an argument for letting anyone go. The admin layer gets handled, which frees the person in that seat to move into work Catch doesn’t cover: operational ownership, in-person responsibilities, and the relationship and event work that needs a human on the ground. The role changes shape rather than disappearing.
Howie Pricing
Howie doesn’t publish its pricing on a first-party page, so we won’t put a figure on it here. If scheduling is the only thing you plan to delegate, it’s worth asking Howie directly what a plan runs for your usage.
What we can compare is the model. Catch is a flat $99/month with everything included and nothing metered: the calendar work plus your inbox, your reservations, your reminders, your CRM updates, and the phone calls, all at one price that doesn’t move from a light month to a heavy one.
Who Should Choose Which?
Choose Catch if you want:
- The full admin role handled rather than the calendar alone: inbox triage and replies, scheduling, reminders, meeting prep, and bookings
- Real outbound phone calls made on your behalf, included at no extra cost
- Outlook support alongside Gmail
- To reach your assistant on Slack, text message, iMessage, or by voice, not only over email
- An assistant that learns your priorities and relationships and applies judgment, rather than one you configure with rules
- One flat price with nothing metered behind it, no matter how much you delegate
- Reservations, CRM updates in HubSpot or Zoho, and task actions in Asana and Notion handled without you
Choose Howie if:
- Meeting coordination over email is the main thing you want to delegate, and you’re happy keeping the rest of your admin elsewhere
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better, Howie or Catch?
It depends on how much you want to hand over. Catch handles the entire administrative role rather than one slice of it: email, calendar, bookings, reminders, and real phone calls, on Gmail or Outlook, for a flat $99/month. Howie fits a narrower case: meeting booking over email is the main task you want off your plate.
Does Howie manage your email inbox?
No. Howie operates over email, but its work centers on scheduling. General inbox triage and replies unrelated to scheduling are a different job. Catch handles the inbox end to end, including drafting and sending.
Can Howie make phone calls?
Howie is an email-based scheduling assistant, so placing outbound phone calls isn’t part of what it does. Catch makes real outbound calls, like booking a restaurant, arranging a late hotel checkout, or confirming an appointment, with no per-call fees, and it identifies itself as an AI agent on the call.
How much does Howie cost compared to Catch?
Howie doesn’t publish its pricing on a first-party page, so we can’t put a firm number on it here; it’s worth asking them directly. Catch is a flat $99/month with everything included and nothing metered.
Is Catch just a scheduling tool?
No. Scheduling is one part of what it does. Catch also runs email triage and replies, reminders and meeting prep, reservations, outbound calls, CRM updates in HubSpot and Zoho, and task actions in Asana and Notion. Travel booking is currently in beta.
Which one is easier to set up?
Both start quickly. Catch takes under three minutes, connecting Gmail or Outlook, granting permissions, then delegating, with no rules to define up front, because it learns your preferences from your connected data and your feedback. Howie starts by emailing or CCing the assistant on a thread, and it coordinates the scheduling from there.
Can either replace a human executive assistant?
Catch handles the traditional executive-assistant role, covering calendar, inbox, scheduling, briefings, and coordination, at $99/month against roughly $120,000 - $180,000 a year for a fully loaded US hire. No one needs to be let go. The person in that seat moves into the operational and in-person work Catch doesn’t cover. Howie is scoped to scheduling and isn’t intended to cover the role.
Is Catch a good Howie alternative for a company on Microsoft?
Yes. Catch connects to Gmail or Outlook, so Microsoft-based teams get full coverage without switching their email and calendar stack.
What channels can you reach each assistant on?
Catch works over Slack, email, text message, iMessage, and phone, including voice calls you place to it directly. Howie is reached over email.
Does Catch handle scheduling links from other people?
Yes. When someone sends you their booking link, Catch clicks through and selects a time based on your actual availability and how urgent the request is, rather than leaving it for you to handle. It also generates your own scheduling links on demand with the constraints you describe.
