The AI receptionist for UK small businesses, trades and local services. Your phone never rings out.
Your phone rings first, every time. Anything you cannot get to is answered in seconds, on seven channels, day or night.
We set the whole thing up. Nothing to install, nothing to learn, and no new app on your phone.
How does an AI receptionist actually work?
Three steps, and two of them are ours. You answer some questions once at the start, and after that your part in it is finished.
We set your AI receptionist up
Tell us your business name, what you actually do, the jobs you want, and how you like people spoken to. We set it up to answer as though it has always worked for you. You choose the name, you choose the greeting, you choose all of it, and you read every line of it before a single customer hears it.
Carrie handles every channel, and your phone still rings first
Calls, texts, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, email and the chat on your website. Seven places a customer can reach you, and it watches every one.
You always get first go: it only steps in on the ones you have not got to. Then it has a proper conversation, takes the job down, and anything urgent, or anybody who asks for a person, comes straight through to you.
You get on with the work
Check your phone when you are ready. Every job is there in one list, with the name, the number, what they need and how soon they need it.
No voicemails to play twice, no numbers on the back of something, and nothing quietly lost between one job and the next. If nobody has come back to somebody by the time you said was too long, it tells you once and then leaves you alone.
What does an AI receptionist answer for you?
Seven places a customer can reach you, and you cannot watch all seven at once. Your phone rings first on every single one. Your AI receptionist takes the ones you cannot get to, sorts the urgent from the ones that can wait, and hands you the job already written up. You stop checking five apps and start working off one list.
The phone and the website chat are what the £45 a month buys. The other five are yours to pick from, at £23 a month each. Take two, four or all five together and there is a bundle price. Every card below says which it is.
Phone answering
It picks up in your business name, has a real conversation, and puts an urgent caller straight through to you.
Text messages
Every text gets a proper reply, so nothing sits unread while you are on a job.
Facebook Messenger
Every message to your page gets an instant reply, so your badge reads "usually replies instantly".
Instagram messages
Every message answered, including the requests folder that sits behind the main inbox.
Website live chat
A real conversation in the chat box, and it fetches you if the job is urgent.
Where a lot of your calls come from: your Google listing
Your listing sends you phone calls and visits to your website. It does not send messages any more, because Google switched that button off in 2024, so anybody still selling you Google messaging has not checked. The calls get answered like any other call, and there is no extra channel to buy for it.
Take more than one and each one costs less
Setting a channel up is £45 once, and that is waived on the Growth and Full plans, so on those you only ever pay the monthly.
You choose which ones it watches, and you can start with one. Start with the phone, the texts and the website if you are not sure. Add the rest once you have seen a week of it.
What does an AI receptionist cost?
An AI receptionist is £199 to set up and £45 a month, on top of whichever website plan you are on. That covers the phone and the website chat, with 150 minutes of call time in it. The other five places it can answer are £23 a month each, and less than that if you take more than one.
Nothing to learn. Nothing to set up. We build it, we run it, and we fix it when it needs fixing. Your job is to turn up to the work.
What six other UK AI receptionists charge, every figure dated →
What it costs
- 150 minutes of call time included
- Keep your own number, or use the new one we set up. Either way there is no porting and nothing to reprint
- 15p a minute past the 150, on its own line on your bill
- Five more places it can answer, £23 a month each, or all five for £85
- 5.6p a text, and only ones it actually sends
- Evenings, weekends, bank holidays and the Christmas week
- She answers in your business name, never in ours
- Every job emailed to you as she takes it, with the name, the number and what they want
- Trained on your business before she says a word to anybody
Every figure we charge for anything is published, and the price page carries the lot.
How many calls does 150 minutes cover?
How many calls 150 minutes covers depends on how long your own calls run, and only you know that. Divide 150 by however long a call usually takes you and you have your own number. At two minutes a call that is seventy-five calls, and at ten minutes it is fifteen.
The 150 minutes are call time, so they cover the whole call and not just the talking. Calls are counted in whole minutes, the way the phone network charges them, so one minute and ten seconds counts as two.
Where does the job go when she takes one?
Every job she takes is emailed to you as it happens, with the caller's name, their number and what they want. That is on every plan.
Growth and Full add the back office, and the same job is waiting on that screen as well, with the whole conversation against it.
What does that look like on a Tuesday?
Half past eight at night. Your phone goes while you are sat at the table with your family.
You are not going to answer it, and nobody would. They will not leave a voicemail either, so normally that is a job gone to whoever did pick up.
Instead it is answered in your business name. It asks what has gone wrong, takes the name, the number and the address, and says you will ring first thing. They stop ringing round.
It is on your phone in one line before you have finished your tea: who rang, what they want, and where they are. You ring at seven the next morning. You won that job without leaving the table.
Which businesses is it built for?
Anybody whose customers ring and expect an answer. That is a builder or a plumber, and it is just as much a salon, a practice or a garage.
Not sure whether we cover what you do? We work with all sorts of local businesses, trades and services alike, and the list above is nowhere near all of them. Ask us and you will get a straight answer in about a minute, and it costs nothing.
Why I built this one first
You may never have had a receptionist at all. What you have is a phone in a pocket and two hands already busy.
An AI receptionist gives a one person business the front office a big firm has, without the wages that go with it. It is polite, it says the same thing every time, and it never forgets to follow anything up. You name it, and you set the rules it works to.
What do people ask about the receptionist?
Every one of these is about the receptionist as a whole. Answering the phone has its own questions on its own page, and so does every other channel. Prices are on the price page.
What exactly is an AI receptionist?
It answers your calls and your messages when you cannot, takes the details of the job, and passes them to you written up. Not a menu, not a voicemail. It has a real conversation, works out how urgent the job is, and tells the caller what happens next.
How does an AI receptionist compare to an answering service?
An answering service takes a message. This takes the job.
- The hours. An emergency at midnight and another at three in the morning are covered here, and not by a service working shifts.
- The channels. People reach a business on WhatsApp, on Facebook, by text and through your website. A phone-only service misses every one.
- The bill. Answering services charge by the call or by the minute, so the week you are busiest is the week it costs you most. This does not.
Six UK AI receptionists side by side, with ours in the same table and every price read off their own page.
Is an AI receptionist professional enough for my business?
The call is the last test before somebody commits, and voicemail fails it. It answers in your business name and adapts to the person. Somebody panicking gets calm and gets put through. Somebody pricing up a big job gets the detail written down. Doing that on every channel makes a small business look like a bigger one.
Which type of business is an AI receptionist designed for?
Any business where somebody rings and expects an answer, and the person who would answer is already busy.
- On your own, it gives you a front office one person could never run.
- Two to five staff, it is the cover that lets you go after bigger work without putting somebody on a desk.
- Bigger than that, it takes the overflow, the out of hours and the busy weeks without hiring anybody temporary.
Trades, salons, practices, vets, garages and driving instructors all use it for the same reason.
Will it say something daft to one of my customers?
Not without you seeing it. Every reply that goes to one of your customers is drafted and waits for you to press send, unless you deliberately switch that off. It goes out from your number and your address, and every message is kept with the time and who approved it.
I already answer my phone. Why would I want this?
For the evenings, the weekends and the chasing. The quote follow up and the out of hours cover are worth most to somebody who already answers, because those are the hours nobody covers.
What else might you need?
Answering the phone is one of four. Take this on its own, or take it with whichever of the others is costing you the most.
Lead generation website
Your website brings the work in, your AI receptionist answers it. Together they are the whole thing, start to finish.
AI marketing
Turn the jobs you have finished into the reason somebody rings you next. Photos in, marketing out, and your Google and Bing pages kept fed.
Custom AI implementations
Built around the way your business actually runs. We map it first, then quote a fixed price before anybody builds a thing.
What else is worth reading?
Every page here answers one question properly rather than skimming five. These are the others, and each one says what it is before you click it.
AI receptionist for locksmiths
Nobody locked out at midnight rings round for a better price. They book whoever answers first. She answers on the first ring, at any hour.
AI receptionist for builders
The extension enquiry rings once and never again. She answers while the digger is running, takes the detail, and books the site visit.
Foothold AI: websites and AI for local service businesses
A website that gets found, a back office that runs the day, and an app for your team. From £295 to set up and £99 a month. Suffolk based, UK wide.
Where we work: Suffolk and north Essex
Twenty towns across Suffolk and north Essex, from Sudbury. Most are twenty or thirty minutes away, and the person who builds your site comes out.
How many did you miss last week?
You may never have counted, and that is the place to start. Tell me how people reach you now and I will tell you where they are going.
Work out what a missed call is costing you, with your own two figures.
Twenty minutes with Chad. Nothing to pay and nothing to sign. See all four AI services and what each one is for.