Receptly vs AI receptionists in Australia
How to buy an AI receptionist in Australia without getting burnt.
The term covers everything from a voicemail-to-text bot to something that books jobs into your software. Here is how to tell them apart, and the questions that separate the two.
1300 556 520Ring ours while you read. It is the same demo we give on a sales call.
The case against us
What the words actually mean
Three very different products are being sold under the same name.
The first is voicemail with a transcript. It answers, records, and emails you the text. Useful, cheap, and it books nothing.
The second is a build-it-yourself platform. You get a good voice model and a blank canvas, and you write the prompts, connect the calendar, test the edge cases and maintain it. If you enjoy that, the tooling is genuinely good now. If you are on the tools at 7am, you will configure it once and never touch it again, and it will slowly drift out of date.
The third is a managed receptionist: someone sets it up on your jobs, connects it to your software, listens to the first month of calls and tunes it. That is what Receptly is, and it is the only one of the three that survives contact with a real trade business.
The catch
Where these go wrong
The failures we see are boring and they repeat. The receptionist takes a message instead of booking, so nothing changes except you now pay for voicemail. The job software integration turns out to be one-way or gated behind a vendor plan you do not have. Nobody tunes it after go-live, so it answers a question wrong for four months. Or the minutes run out mid-month and the first you hear about it is an invoice.
None of that is exotic. All of it is avoidable if you ask twelve questions before you sign.
Due diligence
Twelve questions to ask any vendor
- Who sets it up? You, or them? If the answer involves you writing prompts, price your own time into the deal.
- Does it book, or does it take a message? A booking is a slot in a calendar. Anything else is a message with extra steps.
- Which job software does it write into? Ask for the specific product and the specific fields. Then ask whether the software vendor charges for API access or for the records it creates.
- What does it do when it does not know? The right answer is: stops, says so, takes the details, escalates. The wrong answer is: it will figure it out.
- Do I keep my number? You should. Diverting your existing number is normal. Being issued a new one you have to advertise is not.
- Per minute, per call, or a plan? And what is the minimum billable unit. Per-minute pricing with 60-second rounding is a different product to what the headline says.
- What happens when I go over? Ask for the overage rate and ask whether they will warn you before billing it. Get the warning in writing.
- Where do the recordings and transcripts live? Which providers are in the chain, in which countries, and for how long is anything kept. Ask for it in the contract, not in an email.
- How is recording disclosed? Recording law differs by state and it is your business on the hook, not the vendor’s. There should be a disclosure at the start of the call and a page you can point people at.
- Can it put a real emergency through to me? Live transfer, not a text five minutes later.
- Who tunes it after go-live, and for how long? If tuning is an extra, it will not happen.
- What is the exit? Can you take your number, your call records and your contact list, and what is the notice period.
Our answers to all twelve are on this site rather than behind a form: the software it writes into, what it costs and what happens when you go over, and how recording is disclosed.
Side by side
The three products, side by side
| Voicemail-to-text | DIY platform | Managed | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Answers 24/7 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Books the job | No | If you build it | Yes |
| Writes into job software | No | If you build it | Yes |
| Who configures it | Nobody | You | Us |
| Tuned after go-live | No | By you, if you get to it | First month included |
| Typical failure | You still ring everyone back | Drifts out of date | None of the above, or you cancel |
Honesty
When an AI receptionist is the wrong answer
- You take fewer than about ten calls a week. The maths does not work and you know every caller by name anyway.
- Your work is almost entirely quoted commercial or government, where the enquiry arrives by email and tender and the phone is a formality.
- You already have someone at a desk all day who is not busy. Fix that before you add software.
- You want it to chase debtors, do your invoicing or manage your staff. It answers the phone and books work. That is the whole product.
Questions we get
Straight answers
Is it legal to record calls in Australia?
Recording rules differ by state and territory, and the obligation sits with the business taking the call. In practice you disclose it at the start of the call and you have a page a caller can be pointed at. Ours is at call recording. Get your own advice if you are unsure — we are not lawyers.
Will it work with an Australian accent?
Yes, and with trade vocabulary and suburb names, because it is set up on them. It is not flawless. The behaviour that matters is what it does when it is unsure, which should be asking again rather than guessing an address.
How long does setup take?
For us, a call and then live inside a week. If a vendor quotes you same-day, ask what they are skipping. If they quote six weeks, ask what they are doing.
What does it cost in Australia?
Plans in this market generally run from a couple of hundred dollars a month for a single-operator setup. Watch the structure rather than the headline: included minutes, the overage rate, whether setup is charged, and whether integrations are extra. Ours is on the site.
Pricing
Set up for you, not sold to you as a platform
Starts the day it goes live. Nothing charged until it’s answered your calls for a week. Cancel inside the week and you pay nothing, setup included.
Set up for you, not sold to you as a platform.
No surprise bills: go over two months running and we tell you before we move you up. Full pricing and what’s included.
Book a setup callSet up for your trade: plumbers, electricians, air conditioning, roofing, painters, landscaping, pest control, locksmiths, builders. Other comparisons: vs voicemail · vs an answering service · vs hiring a receptionist.
Ask us the twelve questions.
Ring the demo first, then book a call and put us through it.
1300 556 520