AI Receptionist for Heating Engineers UK (2026): 5 Compared, £45 to £49

The disclosure first, because it shapes everything after it: we make one of the five products below. Vocalenda is ours. Read this the way you would read any vendor's comparison, then ring the demo lines yourself. Every price and every claim about another company here comes from that company's own published UK pages, fetched on 24 September 2026, and where a page does not say something we say "not stated" rather than guess.

The short answer: £45 to £49 a month (ours is £49 on a founding rate, £69 standard). Sayora, Ringmere, Voco and Vocalenda book the annual service into your calendar during the call. Down To Earth AI sends you a lead brief. The difference is what a busy January costs and where the breakdown goes.

The boiler-in-bits problem

You are kneeling at a combi in a kitchen cupboard, case off, halfway through a service, and the phone goes in your pocket. You leave it. By the time the case is back on there are three missed calls: a house with no heating, a customer whose service is due, and a letting agent. Two of them are already ringing the next engineer.

That is the job, not a failing. When Fix Radio surveyed over 220 tradespeople in 2022, 60% said they struggled to answer the phone while at work, and 34% believed they had lost work because of it. From the customer's side, YouGov polling of 2,046 UK adults for Answer4u in June 2026 found that 37% would give up on an unanswered call within 60 seconds and ring a competitor instead. We wrote about the three-quotes habit behind that number in our post on tradespeople and missed calls.

For heating engineers, the letting agent rings round by instruction. HSE's gas safety guidance for landlords says they must arrange a gas safety check every 12 months by a Gas Safe registered engineer, and on what that check will cost, the same page advises getting quotes from three different engineers before hiring someone. The agent with four flats due works down a list, and the engineers who pick up are the ones she compares.

A small industry now answers that phone for you. The five here are Sayora, Ringmere, Voco, Down To Earth AI and Vocalenda, each checked on its own site the same day. Three more get a paragraph further down. We ran the same comparison for plumbers and for electricians.

The real question: where does the job land?

All five answer the call, around the clock. The thing to settle before you compare a single price is where the job is when the caller hangs up.

In your calendar, booked. The product checks the times you have free, writes the job in and texts the customer. There is nothing to chase.

A request for you to confirm. The product puts the time the caller wanted in front of you, and the customer is confirmed when you tap yes. You keep the final say; the customer waits for your tap.

A lead on your phone. Name, number, address, boiler make, what the display says, how urgent. Far better than voicemail, and the booking is still yours to make, from the van, tonight.

For a heating engineer the honest answer is often two of these at once. An annual service or a landlord's gas safety check has a price and a length, so it can go straight in the diary. A breakdown has neither until you have looked at it, and what it needs is you, not the next free slot. So ask every product two questions: where does the service land, and where does the breakdown land?

The five, at a glance

Prices are each provider's published UK pricing, checked 24 September 2026, for the plan a one-van heating engineer would buy. The table is not like for like: Sayora is unlimited; Ringmere and Down To Earth charge per minute past their allowance; Voco charges per call up to a spend cap; Vocalenda pauses the line when its minutes run out. Ringmere's prices exclude VAT and Voco quotes pay as you go before VAT; Voco's monthly plans, Sayora and Down To Earth do not state VAT, and Vocalenda adds none at checkout.

Two rows to read twice: the annual service, because that is the product, and "Included", because your calls do not arrive evenly across the year.

How much does an AI receptionist for a heating engineer cost?

From £45 to £49 a month for the entry plans of the five in our table, on the providers' own pages checked 24 September 2026, and one of the five adds a setup fee. The entry prices are close; the allowances are not.

Sayora is £49 a month with unlimited minutes and everything it does. Its pricing page calls £49 an early-access price, "the price while we onboard our first customers", and unlimited carries a fair-use line: "if a number is being abused we'll talk to you first". No setup fee or contract; the seven-day trial starts, card in, when you claim your free demo.

Ringmere is £49 a month before VAT for 150 call minutes and a free UK local number, then £0.25 a minute. Growth, at £99 for 240 minutes across calls and chat, adds SMS appointment reminders and multi-staff scheduling. Fourteen-day free trial.

Voco is £49 a month for 75 calls, then 75p a call until a default £20 spend cap, after which it stops charging for the month and keeps answering. Every feature is on every plan, annual billing brings Starter to £39, and pay as you go is 29p a minute before VAT, rounded up to the whole minute, with no monthly fee. No setup fee, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Down To Earth AI is £45 a month plus a one-off £299 setup, done for you and live within 24 hours. The £45 includes 100 minutes of talk time, then 20p a minute, and website chat; other channels are £23 a month each. Its 30-day money-back guarantee includes the setup fee.

Vocalenda (ours) is one plan: £49 a month on the founding rate for the first ten businesses, locked in while they stay subscribed, then £69 standard. It includes 500 call minutes a month, around 250 bookings at a typical two-minute call, with a 500-minute top-up at £59. Thirty-day free trial, with card details taken at checkout when it starts. Full detail on our pricing page.

What a cold month does to the bill. Take 150 calls in a busy winter month at two minutes each: 300 minutes. Sayora stays £49. Ringmere's Starter comes to £86.50 before VAT (150 minutes over at £0.25). Voco's Starter hits its £20 cap and costs £69. Down To Earth comes to £85 (200 minutes over at 20p), plus the £299 setup in your first month. Vocalenda stays £49 on the founding rate, £69 standard, with 200 of its 500 minutes left. Now a quiet summer month, 40 calls or 80 minutes: everyone sits at their entry price, and Voco's pay as you go would cost £23.20 before VAT at two billed minutes a call, the cheapest figure in this article.

Sayora, honestly

Sayora, from Edinburgh, has the strongest headline in the table: unlimited minutes and a UK landline at £49. Its heating engineers page covers "breakdowns, annual services and landlord calls" and asks the right things: heating, hot water, the boiler make, the fault code and who is in the property. It "records the fault, never diagnoses it", and "can offer the service or survey times you make available, then book the chosen slot during the call", into Google Calendar or Cal.com, with a confirmation text in your business's name. On gas safety questions, its FAQ says it shares the wording you have approved and records anything else for you.

Two things to weigh, both from its own pages. "Sayora currently handles inbound calls and does not offer live call transfer", so on its sample breakdown call, a Worcester showing a code with an 84-year-old in the house, it marks the callback urgent and you decide what happens next. And the calendars are Google Calendar and Cal.com, with "more calendars on the way", so Outlook is not there yet.

Pick Sayora if: you run Google Calendar, your phone gets busy enough in winter that a meter would worry you, and you are happy to be the one who rings the breakdowns back.

Ringmere, honestly

Ringmere, a UK company, draws the service-or-breakdown line in its own words. Its plumbers and heating engineers page says it books "the predictable ones", with "an annual boiler service or a gas safety certificate" as its examples, and "anything it does not have a price and a duration for, like a leak or a fault nobody has seen yet, it captures as an enquiry and sends to you instead." At 11pm it "answers, takes the details and marks the call urgent, so you get a text immediately", and "you decide whether to ring back that night". It books into Google Calendar or Outlook and Microsoft 365, checking live availability, and its Starter plan lists live call transfer to your team.

The thing to be clear-eyed about is the meter, which runs hardest in the months you are busiest. At its per-account safety ceiling, Ringmere forwards calls to your team if you have given it a number to ring, and otherwise asks the caller to try again later.

Pick Ringmere if: you want the annual services booked and every fault sent to you, you like having a live transfer on the entry plan, and your call volume sits near 150 minutes, or you are happy to pay the meter in January.

Voco, honestly

Voco, a company registered in England and Wales, is the closest thing to Vocalenda in this table, and the one we would want you to compare us against. Its HVAC page is written for heating engineers: it sorts a breakdown from a service, an installation or a warranty question, asks whether there is heat, hot water, both or neither, and says it will take the postcode and "confirm it is inside the area you cover". You write the emergency definitions; anything matching "rings your mobile immediately", and the rest waits for the morning, ordered by priority. It "will not quote a price you have not given it, diagnose a fault down the phone, or promise an attendance time you cannot make", and its page describes gas-smell wording you set during setup, pointing the caller to the national gas emergency line first.

Two things it does that we do not. It turns calls into requests in Jobber, on every plan, and names Jobber as the one job management tool it integrates with today. And it can hold each booking for your approval, with one-tap confirm or reject buttons by text and email. Its calendars are Google, Outlook, Apple and Cal.com, and you can connect up to three, which is a limit if you run more engineers than that.

The thing to weigh: Starter's 75 calls is about three a working day, and Voco does not name a reminder text on the pages we checked.

Pick Voco if: Jobber is where your jobs live, you want to approve every booking before the customer is confirmed, or your line is quiet enough that 29p a minute beats any monthly fee.

Down To Earth AI, honestly

Down To Earth is a done-for-you service built by a tradesman, and its gas engineers page speaks the language: Gas Safe, CP12s, boiler brands, model numbers and error codes. Landlord certificate requests are captured with the number of properties, the addresses, the certificate expiry dates and preferred booking windows. On a gas smell, its page says the receptionist "advises calling the National Gas Emergency line first, then captures details for your follow-up". Its team sets it up and keeps it current, and it covers website chat, with WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram as add-ons.

What it does with a job is capture: it "sends you a complete lead brief", and its home page says urgent enquiries are escalated to you or to a professional human receptionist who calls the customer. The booking is yours to make. Check the allowance: its pricing page includes 100 minutes of talk time, then 20p a minute, while its gas engineers page says £45 a month covers January as it does July "with no per-call charges and no volume caps", so ask which applies to your phone calls.

Pick Down To Earth if: you want someone else to set it all up and keep it running, landlord certificate work is a big part of your year, and you are happy to ring back and book each job yourself.

Three more with a heating page

Outside our table, three more products selling in the UK mention heating engineers, and two start below £45. Supportive AI is from £69 a month for 40 calls, then £1.75 a call, and books into Google Calendar; its FAQ says it adds travel buffers between appointments, which we do not. Its heating page offers both "7 days free" and a "14-day free trial", and its HVAC page invites you to join a waitlist for a Q2 2026 launch, so ask which is current. HappyFace is £25 per team member a month with 60 voice minutes, then £12 for each extra 60, and says it books into Google or Microsoft calendars; the 300-minute month above would cost £73. Clara is £39.99 a month, and its HVAC page has the team call back with a time window.

Vocalenda, honestly

Ours, so judge this section hardest. Vocalenda answers the call and finishes the booking: it reads your real Google Calendar or Outlook, offers times you actually have free, writes the job in while the customer is still on the line, and texts them a confirmation from the number they rang, or from your Vocalenda number signed with your business name if you forward your existing line, then a reminder the day before for services booked further ahead. Set up an annual boiler service, a landlord's gas safety check and a new-boiler survey as your services, each with its own length and price. When a customer rings back to move Tuesday, it moves the booking in your diary, and the number that booked it is the number that can move it. It answers from the key information you wrote, your callout charge or the makes you work on, and takes a message when a question is not covered. Each engineer connects their own calendar, up to five, and customers can ask for someone by name.

Where that puts us ahead, on the published pages and nothing else:

• 500 minutes at the entry price, with no per-minute meter. Ringmere's £49 Starter includes 150 minutes, Voco's 75 calls and Down To Earth's 100 minutes. Sayora is unlimited and beats us here.
• Five engineers, five calendars, one price. Ringmere puts multi-staff scheduling on its £99 plan, Voco connects up to three calendars, and Sayora and Down To Earth do not describe a calendar per engineer.
• A reminder the day before, included. A service booked for next week gets the confirmation and the reminder. Ringmere's reminders are on Growth, Sayora and Voco name no reminder on the pages we checked, and Down To Earth leaves the booking to you. The case for that second text is in our post on reducing no-shows.
• Your areas, checked by the booking system. Voco's page says it confirms the postcode too; ours is a postcode question our booking system enforces, so a keen caller cannot talk it round.
• Thirty days free. Sayora gives 7 days and Ringmere 14; Voco and Down To Earth refund you within 30 days after you have paid.

Now the trade-offs, because a comparison that hides its own product's limits is not one. When your 500 minutes run out, our line stops answering until your billing month restarts, unless you buy a one-off 500-minute top-up for £59; you will see it coming on your dashboard well before, but Sayora has no meter, Voco keeps answering past its cap, and Ringmere and Down To Earth keep charging per minute. We answer up to three calls at once; Voco and Down To Earth say they answer every caller at the same moment. We do not book into job software, so if your diary lives there alone, read that section below first. A transfer needs a number other than the one you divert to us, such as a second mobile. We do not plan travel between jobs, answer WhatsApp or web chat, or hold bookings for your approval. And we are not the cheapest: Down To Earth starts at £45, Voco's pay as you go undercuts everyone on a quiet line, and £49 is our founding rate, £69 standard.

Pick Vocalenda if: there is more than one of you out on jobs; or you want every annual service booked, confirmed and reminded without touching your phone; or you work a set patch and want the postcode checked before anything is booked; or you want a flat 500 minutes through the winter rather than a meter.

If you keep breakdown visits as a bookable service, this is how a daytime no-hot-water call goes:

Annual services: the calls you can book before they happen

Plenty of autumn calls are services your own software started. Gas Engineer Software says that when you issue a certificate it schedules a service reminder for next year, and before the due date the customer gets in touch to book; Tradify's pricing page lists service reminders too. The replies ring while you are under a boiler.

That is the easiest call to hand over, because it has a known price and length: the receptionist offers the times you have free, books one and texts the confirmation. Landlords can plan further ahead: HSE's guidance lets a landlord have the gas safety check up to two months before it is due and keep the original deadline, so there is room to put those in quieter weeks.

The area matters more for a service than a breakdown, because a service is the call you can afford to turn down. Vocalenda's booking questions, added on 24 September 2026, are up to three questions the receptionist must ask before it books. A postcode question takes up to twenty areas, such as SE, BR1, Bromley or London as a whole, and the answers are written on the booking and the calendar event, so you see the postcode before you set off. Another can be "Is the property rented?" or "What make is the boiler?". It is listed on our what's new page.

Already running Jobber, ServiceM8, Powered Now, Tradify, Fergus or Gas Engineer Software?

This decides the fit for a lot of heating engineers. Several job software companies sell an AI receptionist of their own, and one is building one, so there are three routes: that receptionist, one that writes into your job software, or one that books into a calendar your software syncs with. From the vendors' own pages, checked 24 September 2026:

Jobber sells its Receptionist at $29 a month for 30 conversations, then $0.79 each, included on its Plus plan, with prices in US dollars. Its help centre says the number it needs is available in the UK, that it "uses your Online Booking form to schedule jobs in your calendar", meaning your Jobber schedule, and that an urgent call can be "immediately transferred". If Jobber is your diary, its own Receptionist books straight into it, which none of the five in our table does. Voco creates a request in Jobber instead, work waiting to be quoted or scheduled rather than a booked visit. Jobber's calendar sync runs one way, out to Google "roughly every 12 hours" (Jobber help).

ServiceM8 includes its Phone Agent from its Connect Plus phone plan, £25 a month for 500 minutes before VAT, on top of your ServiceM8 plan. The agent takes messages to your ServiceM8 Inbox, texts the caller your booking form or submits one for them, and transfers emergencies to the right person. ServiceM8 jobs reach Google within minutes, to view but not edit (ServiceM8 help).

Powered Now sells its Receptionist at £29 a month, or £39 with text follow-ups, on top of a plan from £28 a month before VAT. Its sample call is a boiler that has "just packed in"; it takes the details, creates a follow-up task, sends the lead to your phone, and will "text you immediately or put the call straight through" for urgent calls. Its receptionist page says full sync into your account "is coming next month", while its pricing page says it books jobs into your diary, so ask which is live.

Gas Engineer Software lists its AI Receptionist as "Coming soon", one that will take the customer's details and the problem and book the job straight into your diary. Its pricing page lists syncing GES events out to Google, Outlook and Apple calendars. If GES is your system, watch for it.

Tradify lists no call answering on its pricing page, and its Google link runs one way, Google into Tradify (Tradify help): a service a receptionist writes into Google shows on your Tradify scheduler, but a job that lives in Tradify alone is invisible to Google.

Fergus lets each user sync Fergus to Google, Google to Fergus, or both (Fergus help), so a receptionist can see your Fergus jobs in Google and book around them.

We have not tested these links ourselves. Ask your vendor which direction the sync runs, and how often, before you trial anything.

Try them before you decide

Every AI receptionist here lets you hear it before you commit. Sayora builds a demo from your website, Ringmere and Voco have live demos, and Down To Earth has a "Try me live" button. Ours is +44 7888 866273; the demo diary belongs to a barbershop, but the manner, the booking flow and the confirmation text are what your customers would get. Call each one the way your customers would: ask what a service costs, ask if you cover their postcode, book an annual service, then ring back and move it.

Then write your breakdown rules before you forward a single call: what counts as urgent, who gets rung, and what the caller is told meanwhile. For a caller who reports a gas smell, take the wording from the official advice, HSE's gas safety guidance or the Gas Safe Register, not from a vendor or from us, and give it to whichever receptionist you choose. Then ring your own number from another phone one evening and listen to what it says.

Setup is short: connect your calendar, add your services and areas, point your number at it, as our setup guide shows. Start the 30-day free trial. If it has not booked you more work than it costs by day thirty, don't keep it.

The bottom line

All five beat voicemail. Down To Earth sets everything up and leaves the booking to you. Sayora books into Google Calendar with unlimited minutes, without a transfer. Ringmere books the priced work and texts you the faults. Voco books into four kinds of calendar and writes requests into Jobber. Vocalenda books the service into Google Calendar or Outlook, checks the postcode against your areas and texts the customer, for up to five engineers at £49 on the founding rate.

Decide where the service lands and where the breakdown lands. The rest is just pricing.

For the wider market, our guide to the best AI receptionist in the UK and the cost of an AI receptionist in the UK go deeper, with pages for plumbers and tradespeople in general. For Outlook diaries, see how an AI receptionist works with Outlook; for people rather than software, virtual receptionist vs AI receptionist and Moneypenny alternatives; and for callers' data, our GDPR explainer.