Ployo vs Willo: published pricing, or a live conversation?
Updated August 2026
Willo is a Glasgow-founded, async-only video interview platform built around what it calls transparent, blueprint-based screening: a recruiter defines the requirements up front, and "Willo Intelligence" transcribes, summarises and ranks candidates against them rather than issuing a black-box score. It is one of the only vendors in this research to publish exact, self-serve pricing across every tier, in four currencies, with multi-year discounts built in, and it is ISO 27001 certified, per its own trust centre. Nothing about the format has changed for this comparison: Willo remains async, one-way and recorded, the same trade every recorded-interview vendor makes, but it makes that trade with unusually little friction for a buyer trying to work out what it actually costs.
Willo is the better choice if published, self-serve pricing and a certified compliance posture matter to your buying process as much as the interview format itself, or if your candidates are better served by a recorded prompt they can answer on their own schedule rather than a live call. It is the most transparently priced vendor in this entire comparison cluster and its ISO 27001 certification is a real, independently checkable compliance credential Ployo does not have. Ployo is the better choice if the interview itself needs to adapt to what the candidate actually says, and if you want a verdict built from a live conversation rather than a recording graded against a blueprint afterward. Willo wins on transparency and certification. Ployo wins on what happens during the interview itself.
A UK-founded, async-only video interview and candidate-screening platform marketed as intelligent candidate screening software for inclusive, confident hiring, built around a recruiter-defined evaluation "blueprint."
- Format
- One-way, asynchronous recorded video interviewing only. Candidates "interview anywhere, anytime, on any device"; no live or scheduled interview product exists anywhere on willo.video.
- Based
- Glasgow, Scotland. Trading name of Willo Technologies Ltd, founded 2018 by CEO Euan Cameron.
- Pricing
- Published in full on willo.video/pricing, in four tiers with region-specific list prices and multi-year discounts. Growth: £199 / $279 / €229 / A$389 a month (£149/mo annual, down to £129/mo on a 3-year term) for 2 assessments and up to 4 users. Scale: £299 / $409 / €349 / A$579 a month (£224/mo annual, down to £194/mo on a 3-year term) for 10 assessments and up to 20 users. Enterprise is custom, demo-only. A 50% discount is offered to qualifying non-profits.
Side by side
| Willo | Ployo | |
|---|---|---|
| Interview format | One-way, asynchronous recorded video interviews only. No live or scheduled interview product exists anywhere on Willo's site. | Live two-way AI video interview, adapting to each answer in real time. |
| Does an AI conduct the interview live | No. Willo Intelligence transcribes and evaluates the recording after the candidate finishes; it can draft suggested follow-up questions for a human to ask separately, but does not ask them live itself. | Yes. Every interview is a live conversation the AI conducts and adapts, with follow-ups generated from what the candidate actually said. |
| Pricing | Published in full, in four currencies, with multi-year discounts. Growth from £199/$279/€229/A$389 a month; Scale from £299/$409/€349/A$579 a month; Enterprise custom. | Not published. Scoped with the founder per hiring team, no volume floor. |
| Independent security certification | ISO 27001 certified, per Willo's own trust centre. | No independent certification published. Ployo does not claim one. |
| What the hiring team receives | An AI summary per candidate, a written transcript, and a continuously re-ranked shortlist against a recruiter-defined blueprint, plus flags for candidates failing stated hard criteria such as timezone or work-permit status. | A per-requirement verdict quoting the candidate's own words as evidence, plus the full video recording and transcript. |
| Ownership and funding | Independent, privately held. Per Willo's own About page, raised a £250,000 seed round (2020), a further £630,000 seed led by 1818 Venture Capital, and later rounds to $4 million including participation from ex-Mimecast CEO Peter Bauer. Not independently cross-checked against a funding database in this research. | Independent and founder-led. |
| Target buyer | High-growth and high-volume hiring teams; Willo states 5,000+ hiring teams worldwide use the product (vendor-stated). | No volume floor. Commonly run on a single role with a few hundred applicants. |
Choose Willo if
- Transparent, exact, self-serve pricing. Willo publishes four tiers in four currencies with locked-in multi-year discounts, from £199/$279/€229/A$389 a month on Growth to £299/$409/€349/A$579 on Scale, plus a 50% discount for qualifying non-profits. That is the most transparent pricing page found anywhere in this entire research pass, Ployo included, since Ployo publishes none.
- A real, independently checkable security certification. Willo is ISO 27001 certified, per its own trust centre. Ployo does not hold this certification and does not claim to.
- An evaluation you can interrogate before it is final. Willo Intelligence is built around a recruiter-defined blueprint rather than a black-box score, continuously re-ranks candidates against it, and flags anyone failing a stated hard criterion like timezone or work-permit status, a genuinely transparent design choice for a recorded format.
- Your candidates need to answer on their own schedule, in one of 18 or more supported languages, without a live call to coordinate across time zones. Willo's async format removes scheduling friction entirely, and its multi-year pricing discounts reward exactly the kind of predictable, high-volume hiring calendar many teams actually run.
- You already run Willo and it is working. Nothing here is a reason to replace a certified, transparently priced system your team is getting value from.
Choose Ployo if
- The interview is a conversation, not a recording graded against a blueprint afterward. Willo Intelligence transcribes and summarises what a candidate already said into a fixed recording; it can draft suggested follow-up questions, but there is nobody, human or AI, asking them live. Ployo's AI asks the next question in the moment, generated from the candidate's actual answer, which is the exact function a blueprint applied after the fact cannot perform.
- You want the evidence, not just a summary of it. Willo's output is an AI summary and a re-ranked shortlist against a blueprint. Ployo's output is a per-requirement verdict that quotes the candidate's own words as the evidence behind the judgment, so a hiring manager is checking the actual claim rather than a summary written about it.
- No live or scheduled option exists on Willo at all, on any tier including Enterprise. If even one stage of your process benefits from a real-time exchange, an unclear answer needing a follow-up, a candidate who needs a moment to think out loud, Willo's product has no path to it; it is async only, by design, throughout.
- Certification is one form of trust, and auditability is another, and Willo's own product philosophy actually argues for this point. Willo markets its blueprint approach as more transparent than a black-box score precisely because a recruiter can see why a candidate was ranked. Ployo takes that same instinct further: every verdict links to the actual transcript moment it came from, on a live conversation rather than a recording, so what a hiring manager checks is the interview itself, not a summary layered on top of it.
- Ployo is already running in production on a genuinely hard screening problem: high-volume Australian care and healthcare hiring, where how a candidate talks about a specific, pressured moment with a person in their care is the actual signal, not something a fixed set of recorded prompts reliably draws out.
What Willo actually is today
Willo is the trading name of Willo Technologies Ltd, a Glasgow, Scotland company founded in 2018 by CEO Euan Cameron. Per Willo's own About page, it raised a £250,000 seed round in 2020, a further £630,000 seed led by 1818 Venture Capital, and later rounds up to $4 million including participation from former Mimecast CEO Peter Bauer; none of this funding history was independently cross-checked against a funding database in this research. Willo states 5,000 or more hiring teams worldwide use the product, and names customers including HelloFresh, Toyota GB, EDF UK and Madison Reed.
The product itself has not changed shape since its founding: it is a one-way, asynchronous video interview tool. No live or scheduled interview option exists on the platform at any tier, including the custom Enterprise plan.
Pricing published in a way almost nobody else in this category matches
Willo's pricing page lists exact figures across four tiers, in four currencies, with locked-in discounts for longer commitments: Growth starts at £199, $279, €229 or A$389 a month, falling to £129 a month on a 3-year term, for 2 assessments and up to 4 users. Scale starts at £299, $409, €349 or A$579 a month, falling to £194 a month on a 3-year term, for 10 assessments and up to 20 users, custom scorecards and branding, and 6-month data retention. Enterprise is demo-only, adding SSO, anti-cheat and 12-month-plus retention. A 50% discount is offered to qualifying non-profits.
That is a genuinely rare level of pricing transparency in this comparison cluster, and it deserves to be stated plainly rather than minimised: a buyer can work out exactly what Willo costs before ever speaking to a salesperson. Ployo cannot currently be evaluated the same way.
Willo Intelligence: a transparent blueprint, still applied after the fact
"Willo Intelligence" transcribes candidate responses, writes an AI summary per candidate, drafts suggested follow-up questions a recruiter could ask separately, and continuously re-ranks the shortlist against a recruiter-defined "blueprint," while flagging candidates who fail a stated hard criterion such as timezone or work-permit status. Willo frames this explicitly as transparent, blueprint-based evaluation rather than a black-box score, and no facial or emotion-analysis capability is claimed anywhere on the site.
The design philosophy is worth taking seriously: showing the recruiter why a candidate was ranked, rather than just a number, is a real answer to the trust problem AI screening has. What it does not do is change when that evaluation happens. Every part of Willo Intelligence operates on a recording made once, alone, with nobody there to ask the question the candidate's answer actually needed.
Compliance: ISO 27001 is real, and Ployo does not have it
Willo states it is ISO 27001 certified on its own trust centre, alongside GDPR alignment consistent with its UK and European customer base. That is a real, independently auditable security certification, and it is a genuine advantage for a buyer whose procurement process requires third-party-verified evidence before an AI vendor touches candidate data. Ployo does not hold this or any equivalent certification, and does not claim one. A buyer for whom this is a hard requirement should choose accordingly.
Who each is actually built for
Willo is the safer, more transparent purchase for a buyer who wants an exact price before a sales call, a certified security posture, and a recorded format their candidates can answer on their own time, in one of 18 or more supported languages.
Ployo is built for a narrower, different question: whether the interview itself needs to be a live conversation that adapts to the candidate in front of it, rather than a recording evaluated against a fixed blueprint afterward. Neither is the wrong shape of buyer. They are answering different questions about what a first-round interview is for.
Willo made recorded interviewing about as transparent as a recorded interview can be: published prices in four currencies, a certified security posture, and an AI layer that shows its reasoning against a blueprint rather than hiding it in a score. All of that is real, and none of it changes the one structural fact about the format: the candidate is talking to a camera, alone, and whatever they don't say never gets asked. Ployo's AI is on the call, asking the next question live. That is the difference a published price list and a certification cannot close.
Willo is a layer 4 tool: one-way async video. The candidate records answers to fixed prompts, alone, with no one on the other end. A recruiter watches later. See how the six layers of first-round screening fit together →
Frequently asked
How much does Willo cost?
Willo publishes exact prices in four currencies. Growth starts at £199, $279, €229 or A$389 a month (down to £129/mo on a 3-year term) for 2 assessments and up to 4 users. Scale starts at £299, $409, €349 or A$579 a month (down to £194/mo on a 3-year term) for 10 assessments and up to 20 users. Enterprise is custom, demo-only. A 50% discount is offered to qualifying non-profits. Ployo does not publish pricing; it is scoped directly with the founder.
Is Willo ISO 27001 certified?
Yes, per Willo's own trust centre. Ployo does not hold an independent security certification and does not claim one.
Does Willo offer live video interviews?
No. Willo is async-only: candidates record answers to preset questions on their own time. No live or scheduled interview product exists on the platform at any tier, including Enterprise. Ployo's only format is a live, two-way AI video interview.
Who owns Willo?
Willo is independent and privately held, trading as Willo Technologies Ltd, founded in Glasgow, Scotland in 2018 by CEO Euan Cameron. Per Willo's own About page it has raised funding including a £250,000 seed round, a further £630,000 seed led by 1818 Venture Capital, and later rounds to $4 million, though this was not independently cross-checked against a funding database.
Does Willo's AI conduct the interview, or just score it afterward?
Willo Intelligence transcribes and evaluates the recording after the candidate finishes, and can draft suggested follow-up questions for a human recruiter to ask separately. It does not ask questions live itself. Ployo's AI conducts the interview live and generates follow-up questions from what the candidate actually said, in real time.
Sources
Facts about other products come from their own public pages, checked on the dates below. Vendors change pricing and features without notice, so verify anything decision-critical at the source. Found something out of date? Tell us and we'll correct it.
- Willo homepage · checked 2026-08-05
- Willo pricing page · checked 2026-08-05
- Willo about page · checked 2026-08-05
- Willo trust centre · checked 2026-08-05
- Willo Intelligence product page · checked 2026-08-05
Most of what decides this is your own role, not the feature grid. Worked examples of AI screening applied to specific sectors are on the solutions pages, and the practical how-to side, including what compliance actually requires before someone starts a shift, is in the hiring guides.
If you would rather see the mechanics than read about them, the AI video interviewer page walks through an interview end to end.
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