Answering Service for Tradesmen UK (2026): 13 Compared, and Which Ones Book the Job

Disclosure first, because it shapes everything after it: Vocalenda, one of the thirteen below, is ours. Read this the way you would read any vendor's comparison. Every price and claim comes from the provider's own UK pages, fetched on 25 September 2026, most of them twice; where a page does not say something, we say "not stated" rather than guess.

The short answer: for a month of 60 two-minute calls, the answering services we could price cost £25 to about £131 before VAT and setup fees. What matters more is how the call ends: a message you ring back, or a job booked in your diary. Vocalenda books into Google Calendar or Outlook for £49 a month, the founding rate for the first ten businesses, £69 standard.

Up a ladder when the phone goes

You are two rungs from the top with a gutter bracket in one hand, and your phone goes in your pocket. You cannot answer it. By the time you are down, it has stopped, and the number is one you do not know. You ring back at lunchtime and it goes to voicemail, or the customer tells you, kindly, that someone else is coming on Thursday.

It is not only you. In a 2022 survey of more than 220 tradespeople by Fix Radio, 34% said they believed they had lost work because they could not answer the phone, and 60% said they struggled to answer it while they were working. A small sample, and a belief rather than a count, but anyone who has come down a ladder to a missed call knows the feeling. We looked at why the first trade to answer usually gets the job in our post on customers ringing three trades at once.

So trades pay someone, or something, to answer. There are three kinds of answer on sale, and they are not the same product:

• A message. A person or a machine takes the customer's name, number and job, and sends it to you by text or email. You ring back.
• A put-through. The answerer takes the call, announces it, and passes it to your mobile when it matters.
• A booked job. Whoever answers checks your diary and books the quote visit or the small job during the call, then the customer gets a confirmation.

The question that decides it: how does the call end?

A beautifully answered call that ends with "someone will ring you back" is still a call-back, and the customer is still free to ring the next trade on the list while they wait. A call that ends with "you're booked for Thursday at five, I've just texted you the details" is finished.

A trade gets three kinds of call, and a good setup handles each one differently:

1. The emergency. A burst pipe, no power, no heating, a door that will not lock. That caller needs you, or a clear answer about when you can come. Most services here can put an urgent call through to you; the question is who decides what counts as urgent, and what happens at 9pm.
2. The bookable job. A free quote visit, a boiler service, a small repair with a known length. This is most of your calls, and it is the call a message wastes: the customer wanted a time, and a time is what they could have had.
3. The one that is not yours. A postcode forty minutes away, a job you do not do. The best answer is a polite no, not a booking you have to cancel or a message you have to return.

Everything below is sorted by that question. Price comes second, because a cheap message that loses the job costs more than a dear booking that keeps it.

The thirteen, at a glance

Checked on each provider's own pages on 25 September 2026. "Not stated" means the page does not say, not that the answer is no.

This is not a like-for-like table. A people service that charges by the call and a software plan with a monthly allowance are priced on different things, and a "from" price is the lowest plan, not the one you will need. The next section puts them on the same month.

How much does an answering service for tradesmen cost?

People start at 99p a call in weekday office hours. For a month of 60 two-minute calls, the services we could price came to between £25 and about £131 before VAT and setup fees, and the ones that book the job start at £49.

The headline price is the easy part. What you pay depends on how many calls you get, how long they last, and whether booking is on the plan you are looking at. So here is one ordinary month, priced the same way for everyone who publishes enough to price it: 60 calls, each about two minutes, so 120 minutes of talking.

How we worked each one out, so you can redo it with your own numbers:

• The Answer Centre: 60 calls at 99p. Calls outside 8.30am to 6pm on weekdays go to its free voicemail unless you pay the unpriced extra.
• ReceptionHQ: its 50-call bundle is £49, and the other 10 calls at £1.10 are £11, so £60 before VAT. Its 100-minute MyDiary bundle is £99, and 20 more minutes at £1.10 are £22, so £121 before VAT. Its own page suggests its 300-minute plan, £265 plus VAT, for about 60 calls a month, so ask how it counts a minute before you rely on our figure.
• Answer4u: its 75-call bundle is £131.25 and covers 60 calls; the saving it quotes suggests the text and email alerts are included, but ask. Its AI Receptionist's 100-minute bundle is £27, and 20 more minutes at 29p are £5.80.
• Down To Earth AI: £45 for the first 100 minutes, plus 20 minutes at 20p.
• Trade Receptionist: its page does not say what a call over the Starter's 50 costs, so we priced the plan that covers 60.
• Vocalenda: one price, 500 minutes a month, no per-call or per-minute charge. If the 500 run out, the line pauses until the month resets, unless you buy a one-off top-up of 500 minutes for £59.

Five we could not price. Message Direct and Face for Business publish "from" prices without saying how many calls or minutes they include, Your Office and PA's £63.50 a month does not say how many calls it covers, Moneypenny publishes nothing for its people, and Team-Connect's plans read differently on its trades page and its pricing page. Answer4u's diary booking is quoted case by case, with £50 a month given as a guide, so we left it out of the table.

On VAT: ReceptionHQ and Trade Receptionist say their prices are plus VAT. The others do not say either way, so ask. Vocalenda adds no VAT at checkout.

The pattern is plain enough. Per-call people are cheap in a quiet month and dear in a busy one. A flat software price barely notices the difference between 30 calls and 150.

People or software: which should answer a trade's phone?

Honestly, it depends on the calls you get.

Pick people if your calls are long, awkward or high value: a landlord with six properties, a commercial client, a complaint, a job that needs questions a script cannot hold. A good person reads a mood and handles a surprise better than any software here. Your Office and PA, ReceptionHQ and Moneypenny also say their people can take payments; among the software, Team-Connect sends a payment link. We take no payments.

Pick software if most of your calls are ordinary bookings: a quote visit, a service, a small repair. Software answers at 9pm and at 7am on a Sunday, when homeowners are at home and thinking about the job. And as the month above shows, at trade call volumes the software that books costs less than the people plans that book.

Either way, check the hours. Four of the seven people services here are not open around the clock on their standard plans, and evenings and weekends are exactly when a homeowner rings about the leak they have just found.

The people, honestly

The Answer Centre is the cheapest way to have a real person answer: 99p a call, no monthly fee, no setup fee, and it does not charge by the second or for sending you the message. The catch is the clock. On that tariff a PA answers from 8.30am to 6pm, Monday to Friday; after that the call goes to a free voicemail box, and longer hours, 7am to 11pm seven days a week, are "a small additional charge" it does not price. Its trades page talks about messages and put-throughs, not booking. Good for a trade whose calls come in office hours and who is happy to ring back. Two-week free trial.

Message Direct's trades page is built for you: 24/7 answering, "emergency call out" escalation, calls patched through to you, messages by email or into Teams, Slack or WhatsApp, and booking "directly on the call" into almost any online diary, though it names none. Plans start at £19.20 a month, or "£0.64 per day", with no setup fee; texts to you cost 12p each. What the pages do not say is how many calls £19.20 covers, and they give three answers about the contract: a "temporary plan length" on the trades page, "a minimum contract length of three months" on the free trial page, and monthly invoicing with a month's notice on the main service page. Ask which applies before you sign. 14-day free trial.

ReceptionHQ publishes every number, which we like. Messages only is £15 a month plus £1.10 a call, or bundles such as £49 for 50 calls, all plus VAT. Its booking plan, MyDiary, is £30 a month plus £1.10 a minute and a setup fee from £20, or bundles from £59 for 50 minutes, and it uses "your preferred calendar" without naming one. It answers 24/7 with no surcharge for evenings or bank holidays. On its trades page it follows your script to decide what counts as an emergency, quotes your call-out fee and books "installation and quote appointments"; its messages-only plan says the receptionists cannot give callers general business information, so that fuller service is on its put-through and booking plans. Rolling monthly, no minimum term. Its 7-day free trial is on the put-through plan, not the booking plan.

Answer4u answers 24/7 for £19.99 a month plus from £1.75 a call, or bundles such as £131.25 for 75 calls. Booking is a separate diary service, quoted case by case with £50 a month plus £100 to £200 setup given as a guide, and it names Google Calendar, Outlook and Calendly, which is more than most here. Its construction page promises to escalate emergencies "swiftly to the right team member". No contract and a 30-day free trial. Answer4u also now sells its own AI Receptionist, £27 a month for 100 minutes or £14.99 plus 27p a minute, with a £25 setup fee; it takes messages only and says it is for "straightforward enquiries only".

Your Office and PA sells two ways. Pay as you go from £32.50 buys messages but not put-throughs or booking; the £63.50 monthly account adds both, on a 30-day rolling contract, and books jobs into your diary while the customer is on the phone if you use, or can move to, an online diary. It can also process payments over the phone. The hours are the limit: 8.30am to 7pm on weekdays and 9am to 2pm on Saturday, then voicemail. 14-day free trial, and no card until it ends.

Face for Business says its trades service "starts at £49 a month", and that £49 Taster plan covers your core business hours. Evening and weekend cover and appointment booking are on Inclusive Minutes, from £115 a month, charged by the second. Its team answers 8am to 8pm on weekdays, 9am to 5.30pm on Saturday and 10am to 4pm on Sunday, and it can divert emergency calls to your mobile when it is closed. Its construction page says you can cancel before your next bill; its virtual receptionist page says cancelling "after the first 90 days" needs 30 days' notice. Another one to ask about. 7-day free trial.

Moneypenny is the name everyone knows, and it publishes no price for its people: you ask for a quote. Its people can take messages, transfer calls to you, book appointments and take payments. Its standard hours are 8.30am to 6pm, with voicemail outside them, and its smaller plans, 150 minutes and under, have a three-month minimum and then a month's notice. Its AI Receptionist is "from £25 a month", answers 24/7, books appointments and hands over to a person when needed, though its page does not name a calendar. We compared Moneypenny with the alternatives in a post of its own.

The AI receptionists, honestly

Down To Earth AI is built for trades. £45 a month plus a £299 setup fee, with 100 minutes and then 20p a minute on its pricing page; its trades page calls it "a flat forty-five pounds per month regardless of volume" with "no volume caps", so check which you are buying. It answers 24/7, sends you a summary with the caller's name, number, location, job and urgency, and can transfer an urgent call or flag it for an immediate callback; if you are not available, it says a human receptionist on its team calls the customer. It is honest that it "doesn't quote, diagnose, or book", so the booking still waits for you. No free trial, but a 30-day money-back guarantee that refunds the setup fee too.

Team-Connect has the most trade-specific page of anyone here. It lets you define emergency keywords such as "leak", "no heat" and "locked out" and puts those calls through to your on-call phone, captures the address, postcode and access notes, can text the customer a link for photos, books quote visits, and names Google and Outlook. Postcode routing is on its Business Pro plan. The trouble is the prices: its trades page shows a £9.99 plan that includes the AI receptionist, while its pricing page lists no AI minutes on the £9.99 plan, and an extra 150 AI minutes is £24.99 on one page and £34.99 on the other. Worth a look, and worth getting the price in writing.

Trade Receptionist is built for trades and publishes clean prices: £49 a month plus VAT for up to 50 calls, £89 plus VAT for up to 150. It answers 24/7, texts you a summary of each call, and can flag urgent calls or send them straight through. Booking is the catch: the £49 Starter lists "Google Calendar sync", and "Calendar booking" appears on the £89 Pro plan. Google is the only calendar it names. 14-day free trial, monthly, no contract.

Sayora is £49 a month on early access with unlimited minutes, no setup fee and no contract, and it answers day and night. It books during the call into Google Calendar or Cal.com, texts customers their confirmation, and sends you a summary. Unlimited minutes beats our 500; if your phone never stops, that matters. It does not name Outlook. 7-day trial.

ServiceM8's Phone Agent is for trades already running ServiceM8. It comes with the Connect Plus phone plan, £25 a month for 500 minutes, on top of a ServiceM8 plan, which starts free for one person and 30 jobs a month. ServiceM8's help centre says the agent takes messages to your ServiceM8 inbox, texts the caller a link to your online booking form or submits one for them, and transfers complaints and emergencies to the right person. It works inside ServiceM8, not Google Calendar or Outlook. If ServiceM8 is your diary, try this first. One-month free trial.

We also found a done-for-you service at £997 setup plus £397 a month, which is a different kind of purchase.

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, then a reminder the day before for jobs booked further ahead. Set up a free quote visit, a service, a small repair, each with its own length and price. When a customer rings back to move Thursday, it moves the booking in your diary. It answers from the key information you write, your call-out charge or the jobs you do not take, and takes a message when a question is not covered. It can put urgent calls straight through to the number you set, so a burst pipe still reaches you.

It also checks the patch. Booking questions, added on 24 September 2026 and listed on our what's new page, are up to three questions the receptionist must ask before it books. A postcode question takes the areas you cover, such as SE, BR1, Bromley or London as a whole, and a caller outside them is told politely instead of being booked. The answers are written on the booking, so you see the postcode before you set off.

Here is a sample call with a made-up building and repairs business, a fence panel and a free quote visit, in our default voice:

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

• It books the job on its one plan, into Google Calendar or Outlook. Down To Earth AI does not book, Answer4u's AI takes messages, Trade Receptionist books from its £89 plus VAT plan, and Your Office and PA, Face for Business, ReceptionHQ and Answer4u book on a dearer plan or a separate service. Sayora books too, into Google Calendar or Cal.com but not Outlook; Team-Connect names both, and Moneypenny's AI books without naming a calendar.
• No per-call meter. At 60 two-minute calls a month you use about a quarter of your 500 minutes, and a busy month costs the same as a quiet one, up to those 500 minutes. The per-call services here charge more as the phone gets busier. Sayora's unlimited minutes beat us.
• Your areas, enforced on the one plan. Team-Connect captures the postcode and routes by it on Business Pro; its page does not say it turns a caller away. Ours is a question the booking system checks, so a keen caller from outside your patch is told politely and cannot talk it round.
• Thirty days free, as long as Answer4u's and ServiceM8's trials, and longer than the other free trials here.

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 and the metered services keep answering and bill the extra. We answer up to three calls at once. We do not book into job software, so if your diary lives only in ServiceM8, Jobber or Tradify, a receptionist that works inside it may suit you better. A transfer needs a number other than the one you divert to us, such as a second mobile. We take no payments. A person handles an angry customer or a complicated job better than we do. And £49 is our founding rate for the first ten businesses; £69 is the standard price.

Pick Vocalenda if your diary is Google Calendar or Outlook and most of your calls are jobs that could be booked; or there are up to five of you out on jobs, each with your own calendar, and customers ask for someone by name; or you work a set patch and want the postcode checked before anything is booked; or you would rather pay one flat price than watch a per-call bill. The trade pages go further for plumbers, electricians, heating engineers and every other trade.

Questions to ask before you sign anything

Whichever service you choose, ask these, and get the answers in writing:

1. What happens to a call at 6.01pm, and on Saturday afternoon? Several services here send it to voicemail on their standard plan.
2. Is booking on the plan I am buying? At Your Office and PA it is £63.50, not £32.50; at Face for Business, £115, not £49; at Trade Receptionist, £89, not £49.
3. Which calendar, by name? "Your preferred calendar" and "almost any online diary" are not answers. If your diary is Outlook, ask whether it is Outlook.
4. Per call, per minute, or per second, and how many are included? A "from" price with no allowance cannot be compared with anything.
5. What is the contract, really? Message Direct and Face for Business each give more than one answer on their own pages.
6. Does the price include VAT?
7. What counts as an emergency, and who gets rung? Write your own rules first: what is urgent, which number gets the call, and what the customer hears while they wait.

Try one before you decide

Nearly everything here has a free trial or a money-back guarantee: 30 days at Answer4u and at Vocalenda, a month at ServiceM8, two weeks at The Answer Centre, Message Direct, Your Office and PA and Trade Receptionist, 7 days at ReceptionHQ, Face for Business and Sayora, and a 30-day refund at Down To Earth AI.

Then test it the way your customers will. Ring it at 8pm. Ask for a quote visit next week. Give it a postcode you do not cover. Say the word "leak" and see what happens. Ring back and move the booking.

You can hear ours now on +44 7888 866273. The demo diary belongs to a barbershop, but the manner, the booking and the confirmation text are what your customers would get. Setup is short: connect your calendar, add your jobs, set your areas in Settings, and point your number at it; our setup guide walks through the calendar and the number. Start the 30-day free trial, and if it has not booked you more work than it would cost you by day thirty, don't keep it.

The short version

All thirteen beat a phone that rings out in your pocket. The Answer Centre is the cheapest person, in weekday office hours. Message Direct, ReceptionHQ and Answer4u are people around the clock, with booking on a separate plan or service. Your Office and PA and Face for Business book on their dearer plans, within their opening hours. Down To Earth AI takes a good message and leaves the booking to you. Sayora and Trade Receptionist book into Google Calendar, Team-Connect into Google or Outlook, and ServiceM8 inside ServiceM8. Vocalenda books the job into Google Calendar or Outlook, checks the postcode against your areas and texts the customer, for up to five people at £49 on the founding rate for the first ten businesses, £69 standard.

Decide how you want each call to end. The rest is just pricing.

For more on the wider market, see our guides to the best AI receptionist in the UK, what an AI receptionist costs, and virtual receptionist vs AI receptionist. For your trade: AI receptionists for plumbers, for electricians and for heating engineers. For Outlook diaries, how an AI receptionist works with Outlook; for the reminder text, how to reduce no-shows; and for callers' data, our GDPR explainer.