Why Settle for Rules?
Nektar vs Backstory (People.ai)
Backstory (formerly People.ai) is an activity mirror. Useful, until you need answers. Nektar is a system of record. We write clean, contextual, reportable data directly into Salesforce, so RevOps, Sales, and AI can actually trust it.
Top revenue teams ❤️ Nektar
Trusted by leading B2B revenue teams for Salesforce-ready data
Features
Why it matters
Primary Category
Data & CRM First
A "System of Record" engine focused on writing clean, AI-ready data directly into Salesforce to feed your BI stack
Analytics & Dashboard First
A "System of Insight" built for leadership dashboards and UI scorecards
Why it matters
Strategic Fit
Choose People.ai if you want a new dashboard out of the box. Choose Nektar if you want trustworthy data to power your existing BI (Snowflake/Looker)
Pricing and ROI
Scoped & High-Value
Itemized pricing aligned with the features you actually need. You pay only for high-fidelity data capture, ensuring every dollar delivers value
Quote-Based + Services Layer
Beyond licensing, it charges extra for implementation, data services, custom analytics, and more, adding another layer to the total cost of ownership.
Why it matters
Cost Efficiency
Stop paying a premium for analytics features that just duplicate what you already have in Tableau or Looker
Flexibility
"Lego-Like" Modularity
Highly customizable backend rules allow granular sync logic based on geography, deal type, or title
Rigid & Slow
Built on a legacy architecture where changing logic is difficult. Teams must adapt their process to the tool.
Why it matters
Agility
Your Ops team can pivot data strategies instantly (e.g, "new rules for EMEA") without waiting months for vendor support
Meeting Intelligence
Verified Attendance
Logs exactly who attended (vs. just accepted), duration, and status (No-Show, Cancelled)
Blind Spots (Invited Only)
Cannot distinguish "meeting accepted" from "meeting attended". Fails to log meeting types automatically
Why it matters
Pipeline Reality
Prevents "watermelon pipelines" by exposing if Economic Buyers are actually showing up or just accepting invites and ghosting
Data Accuracy
AI-Powered Opportunity Matching
Uses advanced "Affinity AI" models to achieve above 90% accuracy in opportunity matching, even in complex multi-deal environment
Rule-Based & Configurable
Activity matching follows rules configured by admins. As account structures and matching requirements grow more complex, those rules need to be updated accordingly.
Why it matters
Accuracy That Scales
Adaptive matching helps keep activity connected to the right opportunity as your GTM environment gets more complex.
Salesforce Architecture
Native (Standard Objects)
Writes directly to standard Events, Tasks, and Contacts. Immediate usability in Salesforce flows and reports with zero drift
Managed Package (Siloed)
Writes to custom objects/managed packages. Requires admin intervention to standardize data and fix duplicates
Why it matters
Usability
Nektar data is instantly available for Databricks/Snowflake ingestion without complex transformation logic
User Attribution
Multi-User Attribution
Credits every internal participant (SEs, Execs, CSMs) and external contact present
Organizer-Centric
Primarily attributes activity to the meeting host. Underreports value of SEs, CSMs, and Partner
Why it matters
Resource ROI
Accurately measure the impact of your overlay teams (SEs/CSMs) on deal velocity and win rate
Noise Control
Granular Sync Rules
Precise controls on what to sync (e.g., exclude specific domains, limit contact creation). Filters out noise before it hits CRM
High Volume (Storage Bloat)
Logs broad swathes of data by default. Customers report "Duplicate Participant" records and increased storage costs
Why it matters
Governance
Keeps your Salesforce instance clean and performant while reducing storage costs
Data Ownership
Own Your Insights
Writes engagement scores and metadata back to Salesforce. You keep the data forever
Rent Your Insights
Insights sit in Backstory's own interface, and their analytical output is delivered through Tableau dashboards they host. If the contract ends, the reporting layer goes with it.
Why it matters
Continuity
Your data asset belongs to you, protecting your historical intelligence regardless of vendor relationships
Historical Data
Backfilled into Salesforce
Historical activity is written as native Task and Event records, so it reports alongside everything else.
Analysed, not written back.
Their two-year look-back is a professional services engagement that builds benchmarks and a baseline. The output goes to Tableau dashboards Backstory hosts.
Why it matters
Historical data you can actually use
Historical activity is more valuable when it becomes part of your CRM. Writing it back to Salesforce makes that context available for reporting, workflows, AI agents, and future analysis.
Go Deeper on the Comparison
Nine questions a Backstory evaluation runs into, answered in full.
Why Nektar.ai Wins?
Connect contacts to deals with context, not just logic.
Nektar goes beyond simple rules, using AI to understand the situation, ensuring that contacts are linked to the right opportunities, even with complex data.
No user adoption required
Nektar's AI seamlessly integrates into existing workflows, meaning your team doesn’t need to change their habits to start benefiting from better data capture.
Automatic identification of key decision-makers.
Nektar uses context to automatically identify the most influential people in a deal, removing the guesswork for your team.
Keep your data clean and relevant without manual effort.
Nektar filters out irrelevant contacts and activities automatically, saving time and maintaining clean, actionable data without relying on manual data entry.
Why Revenue Teams Are Switching from Backstory to Nektar
I've had a nightmare in my past role with People.ai. We are into our second year and we still have an open Slack thread with them on missing meetings and missing classification. The problem with People.ai is they've deviated away from in-depth activity capture to trying to replace [human coaching] with AI analysis... But what I don't want is a rep saying to me, 'It's missing this meeting, that meeting,' because then what starts to happen is it degrades the value because it sets in that the data is flawed.
Head of RevOps, Cybersecurity Company
Migrated from People.ai (now Backstory)
People.ai created additional overhead for our Ops team. Because they rely on their own managed package and participant lists, we were forced to build complex automations just to move that data into standard Salesforce fields for our users. Nektar was the superior choice because it populates the data exactly where it belongs—in standard integration fields—without requiring us to build and maintain custom workarounds.
RevOps Leader, Mid-market SaaS
Former People.ai (now backstory) Customer
A critical gap during our evaluation was People.ai’s lack of integration with Zoom attendance data. We needed to know not just if a meeting happened, but exactly who from our side (such as leadership or managers) actually joined the call to correlate that effort with churn or win rates. People.ai couldn't provide this. Nektar offered this granularity out of the box.
Business Systems Manager, B2B SaaS
Evaluated People.ai (now Backstory)
The reason we couldn't go with People.ai is because of the high license cost and they keep adding features we don't require, adding to the expense
CRO, SaaS
Evaluated People.ai (now Backstory)
Frequently Asked Questions
How hard is it to switch from People.ai to Nektar?
Nektar writes to standard Salesforce objects, so there’s no rip-and-replace of your CRM architecture. Most teams are up and running in 3 to 4 weeks, not months, and historical data can be backfilled so you don’t lose continuity.
Can Nektar replace People.ai completely?
For CRM data accuracy, contact capture, and Salesforce-ready intelligence, Nektar covers and exceeds what People.ai offers. If you rely heavily on People.ai’s dashboard UI, you’d shift that work to your existing BI tools — which is where most RevOps teams prefer it to live.
People.ai is now Backstory. Is it the same product?
Yes. People.ai rebranded to Backstory in April 2026 and the whole people.ai domain now redirects. Same company, same product, same data infrastructure, confirmed on their own FAQ. The positioning moved from data and analytics toward answering deal questions, and activity capture now sits underneath that rather than leading it.
Do I need to already be using Salesforce to use Nektar?
Nektar is built natively for Salesforce today. HubSpot and Dynamics support is on the roadmap. If you’re on one of those, reach out and we’ll keep you posted on availability.
Can Nektar work alongside our existing BI tools like Tableau or Snowflake?
Yes. Because Nektar writes to native Salesforce objects, your data is instantly queryable from any connected BI tool without custom transformation. No proprietary layer to work around.
How does Nektar compare to just building a data pipeline in Snowflake ourselves?
Building in-house means owning dedup logic, association rules, and ongoing maintenance, typically $250K+ per year in engineering time. Nektar delivers clean, association-resolved GTM telemetry out of the box, writes it to Salesforce natively, and keeps it self-healing. The pipeline is the product.
Is Nektar the right foundation for Agentforce or other AI agents we're building?
Yes. Because Nektar writes clean, structured, deduplicated data to native Salesforce objects, every AI agent running on your CRM data starts from a trustworthy baseline. Agents don’t question the data, they act on it. Nektar makes sure they act on the truth.
Can Nektar backfill historical data so our AI models have context from Day 1?
Yes. Time Travel backfills up to 18 months of email and calendar history, writing it to the right accounts, contacts, and opportunities retroactively. Your AI models and agents don’t start blind. They start with a complete picture of what actually happened.
How does Nektar handle data privacy and security?
Nektar is SOC 2, ISO27001 and CASA compliant, built with enterprise-grade security. You can review the full trust posture at Nektar’s trust page.
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