Receptly vs voicemail
Voicemail is a recording that asks your customer to try someone else.
It costs nothing and it does nothing. Here is the straight comparison, including the case where voicemail is genuinely all you need.
1300 556 520Ring it. Leave it a job. See what turns up on the other end.
The case against us
When voicemail is enough
Voicemail is fine if three things are true: your work is never urgent, you ring every missed call back inside the hour, and most of your work comes from people who already know you.
Plenty of trades run exactly like that and do very well. If that is you, do not buy anything from us. Get better at ringing back and keep the $249.
The rest of this page is for the other situation: the phone rings while you are under a house, the caller has water coming through a ceiling, and they have four more numbers on the screen in front of them.
The catch
Where it falls over
A voicemail is a request. It asks a stranger, who has a problem right now, to do unpaid admin for you: state their problem to a machine, spell their address, and then wait.
Some will. The ones who will not are the urgent ones, and the urgent ones are the ones that pay.
And when someone does leave a message, you have not saved a call. You have created one. You still have to ring back, get the address you did not get, ask the questions the machine could not ask, and find a time. The conversation happens either way. Voicemail just moves it to when you are tired.
Side by side
Line by line
| Voicemail | Receptly | |
|---|---|---|
| Answers at 2am | Yes | Yes |
| Gets the address and the job | No | Yes |
| Books it into your calendar | No | Yes |
| Writes it into ServiceM8 or simPRO | No | Yes |
| Tells you which one is urgent | No | Yes |
| Puts the caller to you on a real emergency | No | Yes |
| Work left for you afterwards | Ring back, ask everything again, book it | Read a text |
| Cost | Free | From $249/mo |
Instead
What happens instead
The phone rings four times. If you have not picked up, the receptionist does. It answers as your business, works out what has gone wrong, gets the address, decides whether this is a today job or a Thursday job, and books it into your software.
You get a text with the whole thing on it. If it is a genuine emergency it rings you and puts them through.
You never listen to a message again.
Questions we get
Straight answers
Does the caller know it is not a person?
It says it is the automated receptionist for the business at the start of the call. We do not pretend. In practice callers do not care as long as the thing on the other end actually helps them, which is the whole point.
What if it cannot handle the call?
It stops guessing, takes the details and texts you. That is a worse outcome than a booking and a much better one than a voicemail, because you get the address and the problem instead of a name and a number.
Can I keep voicemail as a backstop?
You can, but you will not want it. If Receptly is unavailable for any reason, calls fall through to whatever your carrier has set. We set that up as part of the build.
Pricing
Cheaper than one job you did not hear about
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.
Cheaper than one job you did not hear about.
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 an answering service · vs hiring a receptionist · Buying one in Australia.
Stop asking customers to leave a message.
Ring the demo number and leave it a job instead.
1300 556 520