Talkify answers your business phone in a real New Zealand voice, at any hour, on the first ring. It knows your services, your prices and your availability. It books the job into your calendar while the caller is still on the line, then texts you what happened. One flat price, whether you take ten calls this month or three hundred.
From $129/month founding rate · 100 minutes included · No setup fee · No lock-in
Not a switchboard and not a message service. It handles the call end to end, the way a good receptionist who knows your business would.
Your greeting, your tone, your vocabulary, in a genuine NZ or Australian voice, from 0.4 seconds. Thirty-two voices to choose from, plus te reo Māori greetings and correct pronunciation of local place names.
Opening hours, what you charge, whether you cover their suburb, how long a job takes, whether you can fit them in this week. It is trained on your business, so it answers rather than promising someone will call back.
It checks real availability and books the appointment on the call, then sends the confirmation. Connects to Google Calendar, Outlook, Calendly, HubSpot, GoHighLevel, Xero, Zenoti, GymMaster and MechanicDesk, with other systems available on a custom setup.
Name, number, what they want, how urgent, when to ring back. Not a scribbled note: a structured summary plus the full transcript and recording, in your inbox and on your phone.
You set the rules. Genuine emergencies, named callers, the jobs worth interrupting you for: it warm-transfers them to a person with the context already gathered.
There is no queue and no hold music. Five people ringing at nine in the morning all get answered on the first ring, which is the moment most businesses quietly lose work.
You keep your number. Nothing gets ported, nothing gets installed.
Your services, prices, hours, service area, the questions you are sick of answering, and what should always come straight to you. We load it; you read it back and change anything that does not sound like you.
Set a call diversion on your existing number, either always, or only when you are busy or do not pick up within a few rings. That is a few minutes with your phone provider, and it is reversible at any time.
Every call arrives as an SMS summary and sits in your dashboard with the transcript and recording. Change any wording and it goes live in seconds.
Both answer your phone in your business name. What happens next, and what it costs, is where they part ways.
| Typical NZ human service | Talkify AI receptionist | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $19 to $50/mo retainer plus per-call or per-minute charges; $200 to $500/mo at real volumes | $129/mo flat founding rate for 3 months, then $199; 100 minutes included, overage from 10c/min |
| Busy week | Costs you more, every extra call is billed | Costs the same, answer volume is unlimited |
| Hours | Mostly business hours; nights, weekends and holidays cost extra or go to voicemail | 24/7/365 included, answers from 0.4 seconds |
| Simultaneous calls | Limited by rostered staff; busy periods queue | Every caller answered at once, no hold music |
| What the caller gets | A message taken for you to ring back | The actual outcome: question answered, appointment booked into your live calendar, confirmation texted |
| What you get | An email or text with a name and number to chase | SMS summary, full transcript and recording, lead captured, urgent calls warm-transferred |
| Knows your business | A script card, shared attention across many clients | Trained on your services, prices, FAQs and rules; updates go live in seconds |
| Sick days & turnover | Real, and they affect answer rates | None. Same voice, same standard, every call |
| Data residency | Varies; rarely published | NZ data centres, AES-256 at rest, stated in writing |
Human service pricing reflects published NZ virtual receptionist and answering service rates: low monthly retainers with per-call or per-minute billing on top. Several providers label plans "pay per call" without publishing the rate, so always price your own real call volume before signing. Ours is on the pricing page with no asterisks.
An honest comparison cuts both ways. There are calls where a human still wins.
If your phone carries a high share of distressed or sensitive callers, a skilled human's judgement and warmth is worth the premium. Many Talkify customers handle this with escalation rules instead: the AI answers, recognises the situation, and warm-transfers to a human immediately.
If most calls involve live negotiation or judgement calls only a senior person can make, no receptionist of any kind should be finishing those calls. The job is triage, and AI triages well, but be realistic about what you are buying.
Some firms want callers to build a relationship with one familiar receptionist. A boutique human service offers that in a way software honestly does not, at a price that reflects it.
For bookings, quotes, opening hours, availability and messages, which is most of what rings, the comparison is not close.
The traditional service hands you a name and number at the end of the day. You ring back at 6pm, they have already booked the next business on Google. Talkify books the appointment while the caller is still warm, on the first call, and texts them confirmation. That difference, message versus outcome, is the whole game.
A human service bills you most in exactly the weeks your marketing works. A flat $129/month with 10c overage means a spike in enquiries is pure upside. Work out what your real volume costs on the missed call calculator.
A virtual receptionist that only answers inbound calls solves half the problem. The other half is the calls your business needs to make: the reminders, the win-backs, the overdue invoices nobody has time to chase. Here is what each provider publishes.
| Talkify | Easy AI Agents | reception.ai | KiwiAgent | Waboom | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Answers inbound calls | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Outbound calling campaigns | ✓ Win-backs, reminders, follow-ups | – | – | – | ✓ |
| Phone surveys with reporting | ✓ Question sets, live results | – | – | – | – |
| Chases overdue invoices | ✓ Driven from your own Xero | – | – | – | – |
| Website chat on the same brain | ✓ $49/mo, voice + text | – | • Separate web chat minutes | – | – |
| Multi-line call centre | ✓ 5, 10 or 15 lines | • Up to 10 at once | • 1 call at once on entry plan | ✓ Unlimited concurrent | ✓ Unlimited |
| Personal assistant for one mobile | ✓ Shortwave, from $89/mo | – | – | – | – |
| iOS and Android apps | ✓ Both, every plan | – | – | – | – |
A dash means the provider does not publish that service on their own website, not that they refuse to do it. Taken from each provider's public pages in August 2026. Waboom, CallKyzen, Automate AI and EnvokeAI all publish outbound calling; AI for Trades states it is inbound only. Spotted something out of date? Email [email protected] and we will correct it.
Nine of the questions we hear most. If yours isn't here, ring our live demo agent on 03 242 1183, it'll either answer or queue a callback from a human.
The full picture: what an AI receptionist does on every call, what it costs, and who it suits.
The answering service version of the same idea, for businesses that think in those terms.
Talkify against every other NZ AI receptionist on published pricing.