Lotics vs Lark
Lark combines messaging, video, docs, and spreadsheets into one collaboration suite, and Lark Base lets your team build its own databases. Lotics isn't a suite you build in: we build and operate a finished app per desk, where AI reads incoming documents, drafts the outgoing ones, and checks the numbers. Here's how the two differ for document-heavy operations.
| Feature | Lotics | Lark |
|---|---|---|
| Core purpose | A finished AI app per desk, built and operated by us | Team collaboration and communication |
| Document processing | AI extracts data from PDFs, invoices, cross-checks documents | No document data extraction. Stores and edits docs |
| Messaging | No built-in messaging. Integrates with Zalo, email | Full messaging, video calls, channels |
| Database | Structured records under each app (computed fields, linking, cascades) — we build it, you don't | Base (spreadsheet-database hybrid), simpler field types |
| Workflow automation | Multi-step workflows with conditionals, loops, email triggers | Approval workflows, basic automation with Lark Flow |
| AI's role | Does the desk's manual work: reads incoming documents, drafts outgoing ones, checks the numbers | My AI for writing, summarizing, translating |
| Document generation | PDF form fill, HTML-to-PDF, Excel from templates | Doc and sheet creation, no template-based generation |
| Office suite | No built-in docs/sheets editor | Full docs, sheets, slides, mindmaps, wiki |
| Pricing | From $20/month for one process, setup included, scales by scope | Free tier, paid plans from $12/user/month |
Communication vs operations
Lark is a collaboration suite: messaging, video, docs, sheets, and approvals in one app. It replaces Slack, Google Workspace, and basic project tools, and it's where a team talks and shares files. Lotics is not a communication tool. We build and operate a finished app for each operational desk — the docs desk, the quotation desk — and inside it AI does the desk's manual work: reading the documents that arrive, drafting the ones that go out, and checking the numbers match. The team reviews before anything is sent.
Companies often run both: Lark for how the team talks, Lotics for the documents and coordination a desk runs on. They sit at different layers and don't overlap much — one is where you communicate, the other is the app that does a job's manual work.
Document handling
Lark has a full docs editor (similar to Google Docs) and sheets (similar to Google Sheets). Teams create, edit, and share documents collaboratively, and that's genuinely useful. Lotics doesn't replace that editor. The app we build handles the documents that come in from outside: AI reads incoming PDFs, invoices, and forms, cross-checks the values against your records, and drafts the outgoing documents from your own templates. The team reviews before anything goes out.
If your team writes and collaborates on documents, Lark's editor is strong. If your team receives supplier and customer documents all day and has to key the data in, cross-check it, and produce formatted paperwork, that's the manual work the app takes on.
Workflow and approval automation
Lark has approval workflows: submit a request, route it through approvers, track its status. Lark Flow adds basic automation like notifications and field updates, which a team member sets up. In Lotics, the automation runs inside the app we build for you — multi-step, with conditionals, branching, and waits, started by a record change, an incoming email, a schedule, or a button. You don't wire any of it up; we do.
Lark's approvals cover standard business requests — leave, expenses, purchase orders. Lotics runs the operational chain behind a job: a shipping email arrives, and AI reads the bill-of-lading data, creates the shipment record, updates the container status, and alerts the gate team — one email in, the whole sequence handled.
AI capabilities
Lark's My AI writes drafts, summarizes meeting notes, translates, and answers questions about content in the suite — a genuinely useful assistant sitting on top of Lark. But it doesn't build your Base or do the operational work: a person still sets up the tables, the automations, and the views, and a person still does the daily processing. Lotics is built the other way around. The platform was designed so AI is the primary configurer, and inside the finished app AI does the desk's manual work — it reads the documents that arrive, drafts the ones that go out, and checks the numbers match. The team reviews before anything is sent.
And you never touch a builder. Where Lark's My AI hands a suggestion back to whoever is building the Base, Lotics ships and operates the app for you: the setup that takes an admin days is already done, and AI runs the daily work inside it.
Which should you choose?
Use Lark if your team needs a unified communication and collaboration suite: messaging, video, docs, sheets, and approvals in one app. Choose Lotics if you'd rather be handed a finished app for a desk — built around your documents, fields, and rules, and operated for you — where AI reads the incoming paperwork, drafts what goes out, and checks the numbers, and the team reviews before anything is sent. Many companies run both: Lark for how the team talks and shares files, Lotics for the documents and coordination a desk runs on. They sit at different layers, so it's rarely one or the other.
