Enterprise Bots vs. Consumer Bots
Capacity Enterprise Bots Consumer Bots Notes
                  Creation, Types, and General Restrictions    
Provisioning Need to be provisioned, contact http://dev.aol.com/aim/BusinessInfoForm Bot the screen name on dev.aol.com Provisioning can be done either via a contract with AOL by contacting http://dev.aol.com/aim/BusinessInfoForm or through a third-party provider.
Requires Dev key Yes, if wanting to use AIM SDK Yes, if wanting to use AIM SDK Even when not using AIM SDK, a Dev key may also be required for authentication.
Statistics collected Yes No Enterprise Bots usages are monitored and graphed on daily/hourly basis
Subject to normal rate limits No 10,000 IMs per day, up to 150,000 IMs per month There are other restrictions applied on Consumer bots, for example the number of IMs per minute.
Can be warned/reported? No Yes Consumer Bots have the same status as regular users. They can be warned and reported for misconducts or spamming. Enterprise Bots are not affected by these activities, although AOL does record these actions in case the bot violate the term of service.
Restricted to certain IPs  Yes No This restriction is to enforce the non-rate-limit privilege for Enterprise bots, by mean of locking down the bot names to certain IP ranges.
Bot types MASQ, Direct, Special Logins, PCL… Direct MASQ can also be made available to Consumer bots through Dev team
                  Availability and Visuals  
Online Master bot is always online Needs to be signed on Most Enterprise bots are always online regardless of the their engine state.
Availability AIM, AOL, ICQ, SIP AIM These are the networks that a bot can communicate on. AIM, AOL are generally set for Enterprise bots. ICQ and SIP availability may depend on the contract
Buddylisted Unlimited Unlimited, but only appear online up to 10,000 users  Other restrictions may apply. This capacity enables Enterprise bots to have their presence visible to every users
AIM Expressions Can be associated with buddy icons, mini icons, immersion backgrounds, sounds Limited to buddy icons AIM Expressions greatly increases a bot's productivity. These assets can contain html links, simple scripts, animations, etc... Assets are uploaded to production servers. Pointers to the specific assets are in the form of BartIDs.
Friendly Name and Aliases Yes, set by support team No. Not sure if current AIM SDK supports this. Enterprise bots can be associated with a friendly name or other aliases. For example a bot named comEnt can be viewed on users' buddylist as Company X Enterprise Bot
Status Message and other Presence Attributes Must be set by AOL host team Can be set directly like regular screennames
Receive Presence feed Yes No Bots generally do not have buddy lists and do not know when users sign on or off. The conversations are normally initiated by the users. However in cases where bots need to perform alert functionality for subscribed users, AOL can feed the bots with the users' presence. 
                  Mechanism and Functionality - AOL  
BartID functionality Full Limited This ability gives Enterprise bots access to various assets provided by AOL. It is mostly used for expression-related assets.
LNGO rules and other capacities Full Not available LNGO rules are sets of commands that are executed on AIM core complex. The ability to call LNGO rules from Enterprise bots provides another dimension in bot management. This can be used to, for example, limit the availability of an Enterprise bot to a certain domain
Functional flags (domain restrictions, etc..)  Full Not available These are similar to LNGO rules, although their aplicability and range of impact are slightly different.
Ability to initiate conversations Do not need to be on user's BL Need to be on user's BL This capacity for an Enterprise bot needs to specially requested. This essentially make the Enterprise bot an official AIM bot. Which enables it to by-pass user's privacy settings. 
By pass users' privacy settings Capable No There are a few privacy settings that Enterprise bots can by pass. For example, they can alert the user even if they are on the user's blocklist.
                  Mechanism and Functionality – Client  
Display of Capabilities Yes. Varies depending on the client No An Enterprise bot can advertise what it is capable of, i.e file transfer, video, voice, and many others. These capacities are displayed as click-able icons on AIM clients
Forward Auto Response Yes. Requires handling from the client side. No This capacity enables Enterprise bot to retrieve the user's away message. This comes in handy in scenarios where the users want to be selective in the bot's communication contents
Mobile Communication Yes, needs to be requested No This capacity enables Enterprise bots to communicate with users with mobile status
Retrieve User IP Yes, needs to be requested No Enterprise bots can learn what IP the user is coming from. This is useful in collecting demographic usage statistic. It can also be used to apply restrictions and filters to users based on their base Ips