VanlySearch for an AI receptionist and every website shows you one price. Then you read the small print and find it covers the phone and nothing else, or fifteen calls a month, or one channel out of six. Here is what these things actually cost UK trades in 2026, checked against each provider's own pricing page, and an honest answer about whether you need one at all.
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The real prices, from their own pages
Checked September 2026. All exclude VAT.
| Provider | Headline | What that covers | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| TradeCall24 | £29/mo | 15 answered calls | £1.50 per call after, £49 for 50 calls |
| Down To Earth AI | £45/mo | Phone answering plus website chat | Every other channel is £23/mo extra |
| Sophiie | around £29/mo | Phone answering | Budget tier, check current limits |
| Invox AI | from £99/mo | Phone, flat rate | Priced for firms with real call volume |
| Moneypenny | around £100/mo | AI with humans taking over | The human hybrid, priced like it |
| Mucka | £29/mo | Job management plus 60 AI minutes | Receptionist metered at 60 min/month |
Two things the headline prices hide.
Calls are metered. TradeCall24's £29 buys fifteen answered calls. A busy plumber in January burns that in a fortnight, then pays £1.50 a call, or moves to £49. Mucka includes sixty minutes a month, which is roughly twenty short calls. Nothing here is unlimited at the low end.
Channels are sold separately. This is the one that surprises people. Down To Earth's £45 covers the phone and website chat. Missed call text back is £23 a month on top. So is WhatsApp. So is email, SMS, Facebook Messenger and Instagram. A tradesperson who wants the phone answered, WhatsApp covered and a text sent when a call drops is looking at £45 plus £23 plus £23, which is £91 a month.
That is not a criticism of their product, which is well built and honest about what each part costs. It is a warning about comparing headline numbers.
What you are actually buying
An AI receptionist answers the phone. A synthetic voice picks up in your business name, has a conversation with the caller, takes the job details and either books it or passes the urgent ones to you. Good ones sound convincingly human and work at three in the morning.
That is genuinely useful for some trades. If you are an emergency locksmith, a 24 hour plumber, or a firm where the phone rings all day and half of it is people who will not leave a voicemail, a machine that answers every time will pay for itself.
For a lot of one van businesses, it is more than the problem requires.
The cheaper thing most trades actually need
Ask what the loss really is. It is not usually that nobody spoke to the caller. It is that the caller rang, got nothing, and phoned the next name on the list before you got out of the loft. The numbers on reply speed are the whole argument: whoever replies first usually wins, and the window is minutes, not hours.
A missed call text back closes that window without anyone talking to a robot. The call comes in, you cannot take it, and within seconds the caller gets a text saying you are on a job, asking what they need. Most people reply. Now the enquiry is in writing, on your phone, and the customer has stopped dialling.
It is a smaller idea than a synthetic receptionist and it solves most of the same loss. The practical version is covered in how fast a tradesman should reply to an enquiry.
Work out your real number first
Before you buy any of these, spend five minutes on your own phone. Open your call log, count the missed calls over the last month, and separate them into two piles: the ones you rang back the same day and won anyway, and the ones you never heard from again.
The second pile is what you are buying software to fix. If it is two calls, no product on this page is worth £45 a month. If it is fifteen, and your average job is a few hundred pounds, almost any of them pays for itself in a fortnight.
Do the same for the channel question. If most enquiries arrive by WhatsApp or a platform message rather than a ringing phone, a voice receptionist is answering a phone that is not where you are losing money.
Which one fits your week
Buy the voice AI if: the phone is your main channel, you get more than a handful of calls a day, callers are often urgent, and a good number of them will not leave a message or send a text. Emergency trades, mainly.
Buy the text back if: you miss calls while working rather than while sleeping, your customers are comfortable texting, and the real problem is the gap between the missed call and you ringing back at six.
Buy neither yet if: you get two or three enquiries a week and you already ring everyone back the same day. Software will not improve on that, and you have better places for £45 a month.
Where Vanly sits, plainly
Ours, so read it knowing that.
Vanly does not answer your phone. There is no synthetic voice having a conversation with your customer, and if that is what you want, buy one of the products above rather than ours.
What Vanly does is the other half. A missed call gets a text back within seconds. WhatsApp enquiries get answered in about thirty seconds, qualified, and handed to you with the details. A voice note becomes a quote PDF. Invoices go out and chase themselves. It is £39 a month flat, every channel included, nothing metered per call or per channel, fourteen days free with no card.
The comparison that matters is not feature by feature, it is what your money covers. £39 flat against £45 plus £23 a channel, or £29 for fifteen calls, buys a different shape of thing. One answers the phone. The other makes sure nobody who contacts you is left waiting, on whichever channel they used.
If you want the full picture of the tools around this, we compared six of them with verified prices in the best job management software for UK trades.
FAQ
How much does an AI receptionist cost in the UK?
Entry plans run from about £29 a month for a limited number of answered calls, up to £99 or more for flat rate answering. Expect metering: TradeCall24 includes fifteen calls at £29, Down To Earth covers phone and web chat at £45 with other channels at £23 each, and Moneypenny's human hybrid sits around £100.
Are AI receptionist calls unlimited?
Rarely at the cheaper end. Most low tiers cap answered calls or minutes, then charge per call beyond the cap. Work out your real monthly missed calls before choosing a tier, because the overage is where the price moves.
Will customers know they are talking to an AI?
Some will, some will not. Modern voice AI is convincing on a short call. The bigger risk is not detection, it is a caller with an unusual request going in circles. Providers handle this by escalating urgent calls to you, which is worth checking before you buy.
Is a missed call text back as good as an AI receptionist?
For most one van trades, it covers the same loss for less money. The job is usually lost to silence, not to the absence of conversation. If your callers are emergencies who will not text, that logic flips and voice answering wins.
Can I get both?
Yes, and some firms should. A voice receptionist for the phone and a text or WhatsApp assistant for everything else. Just add the real monthly cost up first, because bundling channels is where these products get expensive.
What does Vanly charge?
£39 a month flat, with WhatsApp, missed call text back, quotes, invoices and chasing included, no per call or per channel fees. Fourteen days free and no card to start. It does not answer your phone with a synthetic voice.
The bottom line
AI receptionists are real products that solve a real problem, and for an emergency trade they are worth the money. Just price them properly: count your actual missed calls, add up the channels you need, and compare the total rather than the headline.
For most one van businesses, the loss is a customer who rang, heard nothing, and moved on. That does not need a robot on the phone. It needs a reply before your competitor sends one. Try Vanly free for 14 days. No card needed to start.