Digital Venue
Digital Venue builds public-facing voice and text AI agents that answer visitors, citizens and customers in their own language, grounded strictly in a venue's own content, catalogues and systems, on EU-only infrastructure at a fixed monthly price.
What is Digital Venue?
Digital Venue is a European platform for conversational AI agents that face an organisation's public rather than its staff, which the vendor calls the half of AI that faces the other way. Its own framing is blunt: 'Your staff already have AI tools that help them in their work. We build agents your visitors, customers and citizens can use to get answers and start processes.'
Voice and text were designed together rather than bolted on, and the company insists this is not a voice front-end on top of a generic chatbot. Four requirements are claimed: hear correctly, understand the intent, retrieve the right information from the venue's own data, and answer in a chosen voice. Retrieval runs in four stages, namely hybrid search combining dense vectors, lexical BM25 and structured metadata, then domain lenses for MARC21, Iconclass, Dewey, sports metadata and archive taxonomies, then LLM re-ranking, then a grounded and source-attributed answer. The voice pipeline of speech recognition, agent runtime and synthesis is built in house and streamed, targeting sub-second turn-taking. The vendor publishes a 98.7% grounded-answer rate, an average session depth of 6.9 and roughly 3,000 conversations a month at Forum Libraries Nacka.
Deployment is real rather than hypothetical. Forum Libraries Nacka, a three-branch Swedish network, has run in production since 2023 through the Axiell channel, and Sundsvalls kommun, a municipality of 100,000 inhabitants, has been a continuously paying customer since the same year. Paid pilots include the Vikings voice guide at Historiska museet and the Agesta audio tour at Tekniska museet, which covers ten languages behind a single QR code and replaces roughly 500,000 SEK of audio-guide hardware. A hospitality demo runs for a Bora Bora resort. A global partnership with Axiell, covering 9,000 libraries, 4,000 museums and 60 countries, was announced in April 2026, starting with Quria integration across Sweden, Germany and France; outside libraries and museums the company sells directly.
Everything runs on EU-only Scaleway infrastructure in Paris and Amsterdam, on an ISO 27001-certified host with no replication outside the EEA. An on-site option puts the full stack on consumer hardware from 12 GB of VRAM, with a commercial programme announced for H2 2026. Pricing is a fixed monthly or annual fee, never per token or per voice minute. What the platform explicitly refuses to be is an internal staff copilot.
What it does
- Answer questions from visitors, citizens and customers by voice and by text, in whichever language they use
- Retrieve answers from the organisation's own documents, catalogues and systems through hybrid search combining dense vectors, lexical BM25 and structured metadata
- Cite the source of every answer, and decline to answer while offering to take a message when nothing in the content grounds it
- Start processes: point a citizen to the right municipal e-service, take an order and send it on by email, help book an activity
- Clone a voice with consent, whether a curator, a guide or a stadium announcer, and speak through a chosen persona
- Go live through a website widget, a QR code or a phone number
- Expose agents over an Agent-to-Agent API and run continuous swarm testing, scoring thousands of synthetic questions a week against reference data
When to use Digital Venue / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Digital Venue is the right fit.
When to use Digital Venue
- Public libraries and library networks that want a multilingual assistant sitting on their own catalogue, delivered through the Axiell channel
- Swedish and Nordic municipalities running citizen services, culture and permit information, and public buyers who need an LOU-ready DPA, SLA and security review
- Museums, exhibitions and guided-tour operators replacing audio-guide hardware with a QR-code voice guide in ten languages
- Hotels, resorts and hospitality venues needing a round-the-clock multilingual concierge that recommends and helps book
- Small organisations with no developer, from single-property hotels and bakeries to yoga studios and clinics, that can paste their own content into a sandbox
When not to use Digital Venue
- Teams looking for an internal staff copilot: the vendor states it does not write your team's memos, process invoices or draft internal decisions
- Organisations with no content of their own to supply, since the agent only searches the menu, opening hours, FAQ, catalogue and documents you give it, never the open internet
- Libraries and museums that want to contract directly, because both segments are served exclusively through Axiell
- Buyers who need an instant self-service purchase or an on-premise deployment today: the self-signup tiers are flagged as pre-launch in the site's own structured data and the on-premise commercial programme is announced only for H2 2026
- Users expecting a native mobile app, as there is no iOS or Android application, only web, widget, QR code and phone number
How to use Digital Venue
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Sign up for the free sandbox at the vendor's app, which takes about five minutes, needs no credit card, and starts by naming your agent
- Add your own content over roughly fifteen minutes: PDFs, web pages, menu, opening hours, FAQ and booking rules, or point the agent at your website so it builds the knowledge base itself
- Spend about fifteen minutes choosing an EU-hosted model, setting the branding with your logo, fonts and colours, and picking or cloning a voice
- Test the agent against real questions and correct anything that sounds wrong; stopping here and simply continuing to test is a legitimate end point, since going live is a separate decision
- Publish in about five minutes through a QR code, a widget pasted on your site, or a phone number
- Expect a sandbox online in roughly fifteen minutes and a complete agent within an afternoon, with no developer involved
- Public buyers follow a different path, starting with a thirty to sixty minute scoping call with a founder in week one
- Run a technical evaluation in the sandbox on real content across weeks two to six
- Complete the DPA and the security review in weeks six to ten, then procurement and deployment in weeks ten to fourteen, for a realistic total of twelve to sixteen weeks
- Libraries and museums go through their Axiell contact rather than direct sales; every other segment can email hello@digitalvenue.ai or book a slot with the founder
Pros & Cons
Pros
- European sovereignty is structural rather than declarative: a Swedish company with no US parent, EU-only Scaleway infrastructure and an ISO 27001-certified host
- Quality is measured and published rather than promised, with a 98.7% grounded-answer rate and a stated method in weekly swarm testing
- Fixed pricing with no per-token, no per-voice-minute and no traffic charges, which makes a public body's budget predictable
- Fast, developer-free setup for small organisations, with a sandbox online in about fifteen minutes and a full agent in an afternoon
- Verifiable references: four live public agents can be clicked without signing up, alongside named customers running since 2023
- Genuinely multilingual in practice, with Polish, Arabic and Persian cited as working from day one at Nacka
- Openness commitments and a procurement-ready compliance pack: auditable self-hostable core, no proprietary formats, no exit fees, plus LOU, DPA, SLA, MSB and arkivlagen coverage
Cons
- No privacy policy and no terms of service are published: the footer's 'Legal & privacy' link points at nothing and the usual legal URLs return 404
- No subprocessor list, no documented training opt-out and no stated retention period, on a product that records citizen and visitor conversations
- The site contradicts itself on price: the rendered pricing section shows four plans, while the same page's structured data, llms.txt and llms-full.txt describe five, including a Starter tier at EUR 24.90 per month that never appears on screen
- Further internal divergences: Scale up is EUR 249 per month on the pricing page but quoted on request in the llms files, and Launch's voice allowance is 6 hours a month on the page against 10 hours in those same files
- The structured data flags every self-signup tier as pre-launch while the pricing buttons point to sign-up, so self-service purchase may not really be open, and the on-premise commercial programme is announced only for H2 2026
- Libraries and museums cannot contract directly, leaving an entire segment dependent on a single distribution partner, and the open licensing terms are still unfinalised with the vendor declining the open source label
- No native mobile app, no public social accounts, no public API documentation despite Agent-to-Agent APIs being sold, and a single published contact address with no form and no help centre
Pricing & Plans
Digital Venue offers a permanent free plan. Community is free and self-serve, requires no credit card, and provides a TEACH sandbox with a generous evaluation limit, all supported languages, email support and a 'Powered by Digital Venue' footer. The lowest paid entry point shown on the rendered pricing page is Launch, at EUR 49 per month or EUR 490 per year, a saving of 17%. All prices exclude VAT, which is added at checkout where applicable, and billing is a fixed fee with no per-token or per-voice-minute charge. It should be noted that the same page's structured data, together with llms.txt and llms-full.txt, additionally describes a cheaper Starter plan at EUR 24.90 per month, or EUR 249 per year, which does not appear among the rendered pricing cards.
- TEACH sandbox
- generous evaluation limit
- all supported languages
- 'Powered by Digital Venue' footer and email support
- the core may also be self-hosted
- everything in Community
- up to 3 agents
- 6 hours of voice a month in all languages
- 300 text conversations a day
- broad knowledge storage
- adjustable UI with logo
- fonts and colours
- custom domains
- everything in Launch
- up to 10 agents
- 30 pooled hours of voice a month
- 1
- 500 pooled text conversations a day
- unlimited storage
- custom persona and voice
- hybrid search with domain lens
- everything in Scale up
- LOU compliance
- procurement readiness
- DPA
- SLA and security review
- optional private cloud
- optional on-premise
- Enterprise SLA and a dedicated Customer Success Manager
- the home page's structured data
- llms.txt and llms-full.txt
- dated 10/06/2026
- instead describe five plans — a free Explore or Community tier
- Starter at EUR 24.90 per month or EUR 249 per year
- Launch at EUR 49 per month with 10 hours of voice
- Scale up on quote and Enterprise on quote — and mark the self-signup tiers as currently in pre-launch
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Digital Venue handles your data.
GDPR overview
No privacy policy is published, so legal bases, data-subject rights and any DPO contact cannot be verified. What the site does state is concrete. The enterprise page advertises a 'Full DPA pack. Data minimisation by design. NIS2-aligned for critical-sector deployments', EU-only infrastructure on an ISO 27001-certified Scaleway host in Paris and Amsterdam with 'no inter-region replication outside the EEA', and security aligned with Swedish MSB information-security guidance. The public-sector page claims sovereignty by architecture, with 'No US-incorporated parent' and 'Schrems II and CLOUD Act exposure: zero'. A DPA, an SLA and a security review are promised in weeks six to ten of a public procurement. No Article 27 EU representative is named, consistent with a Swedish-established vendor. Missing: any privacy policy, any subprocessor list, any named DPO and any documented training opt-out.
Who owns the data?
Digital Venue publishes no terms of service and no privacy policy: the footer's 'Legal & privacy' link resolves to nothing and the usual legal URLs return 404, so ownership rests on marketing pages rather than a public contract. On its /open/ page the vendor states that 'Your content, your data and your configuration belong to you', with no proprietary formats and no exit fees. The enterprise page adds data minimisation by design and the right to exit at any time with your data and configuration intact, and the setup page says you can read every conversation. What the vendor itself may do with that data, and with whom, is nowhere set out publicly; a full DPA is promised only to Enterprise and public-sector buyers.
Reuse rights
No published terms of service define what a customer may reuse, and no permission process is documented anywhere on the site. What the vendor does commit to publicly, on its /open/ page, is portability rather than a licence: an auditable core open to technical review by the customer's own team or an independent auditor, a core that can be fully self-hosted in an EU cloud or in an isolated on-site environment, no proprietary formats and no exit fees. The vendor is deliberately careful with wording and still declines the 'open source' label, saying the exact public licensing terms 'are being finalised right now together with our lawyers'. The site never states, in either direction, whether customer data is used to train models. Until a licence and terms are published, reuse rights rest on marketing commitments alone.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Digital Venue states that hosting is EU-only, on Scaleway in Paris and Amsterdam. The claim is repeated consistently on the home page, the enterprise page, the public-sector page, the setup page and in the vendor's own llms.txt and llms-full.txt. The host is presented as ISO 27001-certified, 'EU-only, no inter-region replication outside the EEA'. The sovereignty argument is jurisdictional as much as technical: a Swedish-incorporated vendor, no US parent company, no region-toggle theatre, and a declared Schrems II and CLOUD Act exposure of zero. The site's resolved IP address, 51.158.239.176, belongs to Scaleway SAS in Amsterdam, which is consistent with the declaration. Beyond the shared platform, an optional private cloud is offered, and an on-site deployment can run the whole stack of voice, language, retrieval and runtime in a sealed environment on consumer hardware from 12 GB of VRAM, with no data leaving the site and no external API calls; that commercial programme is announced for H2 2026. Two caveats: the demo page describes the Forum Libraries deployment as hosted in Stockholm and Amsterdam by default, which does not match Paris and Amsterdam, and no subprocessor list is published.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Digital Venue.
- With no privacy policy and no terms of service published, a buyer cannot check legal bases, data-subject rights or subprocessing before reaching the contract stage
- No retention period is published anywhere, on a tool that records conversations held by citizens and visitors
- In Sweden, citizen conversations can become public records under offentlighetsprincipen; the vendor presents this as a feature, but it is also a disclosure risk for the person who asked the question
- Voice cloning is offered with consent, yet no procedure for collecting or revoking that consent is documented
- The agent speaks for the institution: an answer that is properly grounded but out of date, on opening hours, a fee or a planning rule, still commits the body that published it
- Replacing a staffed desk with an agent can exclude the people who most need a human interlocutor, even though accessibility is the sales argument
- The site's internal price contradictions and pre-launch flags mean a buyer can budget on a plan or a voice allowance that does not exist on the actual purchase surface
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low for the self-service path. The vendor claims no developer is needed: if you can paste a paragraph into a text box, you can launch an agent. A sandbox is online in about fifteen minutes and a full agent in an afternoon, over four steps of roughly 5, 15, 15 and 5 minutes. A laptop is enough; going live means a QR code, a pasted snippet or a phone number. Institutional buying is far heavier: twelve to sixteen weeks of evaluation, DPA, security review and procurement. On-site adds an NDA architecture review and 12 GB of VRAM.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Digital Venue
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Digital Venue's agent actually meant for?
Where is the data hosted?
Does the agent make answers up?
How long does it take to go live?
Do I need a developer?
Which languages does it handle?
How much does it cost?
Is a data processing agreement available?
Is there a published privacy policy?
Can my library buy Digital Venue directly?
Should you pick Digital Venue?
Digital Venue occupies a position that is unusually clear for this category: agents that face the public, deliberately separated from the internal staff copilots it says other Swedish vendors already handle well. The evidence behind that positioning is stronger than most, with live agents anyone can click, paid museum pilots, named customers running since 2023, and published metrics rather than adjectives.
The sovereignty argument is structural rather than declarative: a Swedish company with no US parent, EU-only Scaleway infrastructure, and an on-site option for organisations whose data cannot leave the building. Pricing is equally legible, with a fixed monthly fee, no per-token or per-minute billing, and a permanent free sandbox for testing on real content before committing.
Two weaknesses deserve attention before signing. The first is documentary: there is no published privacy policy, no terms of service, no subprocessor list and no stated retention period, an odd gap for a product sold to public buyers who must justify exactly those points. The commitments on data ownership, portability and openness live on marketing pages, and the open licensing terms are, by the vendor's own admission, still with its lawyers. The second is that the site contradicts itself on its own prices: the rendered pricing page shows four plans, while the same page's structured data and the vendor's llms files describe five, including a cheaper Starter tier, a different voice allowance and a different Scale up price.
The ideal buyer is a European institution or municipality that receives the public, already owns the content the agent would answer from, and has to prove where its data sits. Ask for the DPA, the retention schedule and a written price list, and confirm which plan you are actually buying, before you commit.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
- Opens in a new window.