Every software vendor under the sun is bolting “AI” onto their roadmap right now. Some are doing it well. Some are not. Here are eleven questions that separate the good from the noisy.
1. Does it talk to my live data, or a snapshot?
Snapshot AI gives stale answers. Live AI gives current ones. For ops, you want live.
2. Read-only or read/write?
Read-only is safer to start with. If write access matters (despatching, refunding), make sure you understand the safeguards.
3. Which platforms does it actually connect to?
Linnworks, Shopify, WooCommerce, Xero, Amazon, eBay — not all AI tools support all of them. Get the list before you commit.
4. Where is the data processed?
UK / EU edge vs US data centres matters for GDPR, latency and trust.
5. Do they train models on my data?
They shouldn’t — but check the T&Cs. Anthropic’s commercial terms explicitly prohibit it.
6. What’s the failure mode when the AI is wrong?
AI hallucinates. Good vendors make it obvious when the AI is summarising vs quoting. Bad ones don’t.
7. Can I see the underlying data?
Insist on it. “AI says X” is not a report. “AI says X and here are the 12 rows it’s based on” is.
8. What does it cost at scale?
Per-seat? Per-query? Per-tool-call? If pricing is opaque, prices tend to surprise you upwards.
9. How do I cancel?
Self-serve cancel = good vendor. “Contact your account manager” = walk away.
10. Does it work with the AI assistant I already pay for?
If your team uses Claude or ChatGPT, getting answers in those tools beats a bespoke chat UI. MCP-based connectors mean you keep your existing AI subscription and add data.
11. Who owns the data path?
If the vendor sits in the middle of every query, they’re a hard dependency. If you own the connector (e.g. self-host the MCP server), the vendor disappearing doesn’t kill your AI workflow.
Where MCP-G stands on all eleven
- Live data, never snapshots.
- Read-only by design.
- Linnworks, Shopify, WooCommerce, Xero, Amazon, eBay (six and counting).
- UK / EU edge (Cloudflare).
- We never train on your data; we don’t store it.
- Answers cite the data they used.
- You can always see the underlying tool calls.
- £49/mo hosted, £99 one-off source code. No surprise charges.
- Cancel from your portal in two clicks.
- Works with Claude Desktop, Claude Code, and (soon) Claude.ai web.
- Buy the source for £99 and we’re completely out of the data path.
Want to discuss your specific stack? hello@mcp-g.com — reply same day.