Weighing up your options
Automation is not always the right answer, and a comparison page that always concludes “buy ours” is a sales sheet with a table in it. So each of these opens with when you should pick the other option — because that is the part you actually need, and because it is the same promise we make on every call.
Two things worth saying up front. We compare categories of solution rather than named providers: we cannot verify what any third party charges this week, and publishing a price we have not checked is exactly the thing we tell clients not to do. And where we quote our own pricing, it is the same published figure as on our pricing section — from £99 a month plus a £249 one-off setup for a single automation.
If you would rather start from what the problem is costing you than from what the fix costs, the missed-revenue calculator takes about twenty seconds and does not ask for your email address before showing you the answer.
The comparisons
AI receptionist vs a call answering service
These two get compared constantly and they are not really the same product. One takes a message. The other finishes the job. Which you want depends almost entirely on whether your enquiries need a decision or just a note.
AI receptionist vs hiring a receptionist
This is the comparison most small business owners are actually making, usually at the point where the admin has become unbearable. It is also the one where the honest answer most often is: hire someone.
AI receptionist vs voicemail
Voicemail is not really a choice anybody makes. It is what happens when nobody picks up. Which is exactly why it is worth looking at honestly, because for most service businesses it is the single largest silent leak they have.
Building it yourself vs done-for-you automation
Everything we build could, in principle, be built by you. The tools are inexpensive, well documented and genuinely good. So the honest question is not whether you could — it is whether you will, and whether it will still be running in six months.
Want the honest version for your business?
Tell us how enquiries reach you now and we will tell you which of these is actually right — including when the answer is “none of them yet”.