HitLai and Relay.app are both built on the conviction that automation should pause for a person before consequential actions — and this comparison is written by the makers of HitLai, so weigh it accordingly.
Relay.app is team-oriented, app-to-app automation with human-in-the-loop steps as its centerpiece: a run pauses at an approval step, the assignee gets an interactive Slack or email notification with context inline, and they can approve, reject, or edit the result before the run continues, including directly from Slack. Human-in-the-loop features are included in every Relay.app plan. If your goal is collaborative team workflows across many apps with approvals woven through them, Relay.app is a strong choice and we'd tell you so.
HitLai is narrower on purpose: it's a governed AI platform for small businesses whose automations touch customers or money. The AI drafts the work itself — quotes, invoices, customer replies, purchase orders — from your business's own data, and a trust dial sets what happens next: routine actions flow through, and the actions you designate pause for approval. HitLai never moves money on its own. Approvals respect roles — a junior team member drafts, a manager signs off — and every decision is recorded in a timestamped, tamper-evident audit trail, so "who approved this and when" has an answer months later.
The practical difference is what you're left holding afterward: an approved step in a workflow, or an approved, auditable unit of work. Teams that need broad app coverage with approvals pick Relay.app; businesses that need accountability around customer- and money-touching work pick HitLai.