The best AI answering services
for UK trades, honestly ranked.

The short version

There are two kinds of product on this page, and knowing which you need saves you a lot of reading. The first kind answers one door: the phone. If that is your only problem, a flat-rate AI receptionist at £39 to £60 a month is honest value, and TradeAlly, Trade PA and Hey Jodie are the three we’d shortlist. Down To Earth AI covers more doors than the rest, at a real cost nearer £91 a month once you add the channels.

The second kind runs the whole front of house: every way a customer reaches you, handled by one system, with your website and brand built around it, you kept in the conversation, and a person behind it who is invested in your firm rather than a faceless subscription. That is what Shoogly is, and it is a different purchase from a phone bot, so we’ve set it out in the next section rather than pretending it belongs in a list of £49 subscriptions.

Where Shoogly slots in

Every product ranked below does one job, usually answering the phone, and charges a monthly fee for it. We are more bespoke. One system for every way work comes in. The website form filled in at any time, the call you had no time to take, the text, the WhatsApp, the email: one brain reads it, works out what the job is and how urgent, scores it out of ten, answers in your own words within a minute, and puts a briefing on your phone. One system, not four subscriptions that don’t talk to each other. We work with your specific business setup and adapt the system to you.

The website and the brand come with it. None of the products below incorporate branding or websites. We look at your business as a whole and connect all the moving parts. The enquiry system is wired in from day one, so the late-night enquiry through your own site is the first thing it catches rather than the thing everyone else ignores.

We focus on your human relationships. You stay in the conversation. The reply a customer gets is written the way you actually write, because it’s based on how you actually talk to customers. From your phone you can hold a reply, edit it, or tell the system what to say instead, and it drafts again in your voice. It never quotes, books or commits you to anything. The point is a customer who feels they heard from you, faster, not a customer who got a robot instead of you. Relationships are how a trades firm wins its next ten jobs; we’d rather keep yours alive than flatten them.

A person you can actually reach. You deal with the person who built your system and runs it, based in Glasgow, on a direct line, with a stake in your firm doing well. Work with us and you get someone directly invested in the success of your business: we’re after long-term, human growth partnerships, not a cold subscription. Enquiry handling and a brand refresh are where it starts. Around that we build the rest of your online presence as your firm grows: the site, content, paid ads, and search, so that when a customer asks Google, or ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity, who to call, it’s your name that comes up. The goal is the one you’d expect: more of the right work coming in, every enquiry answered the way you’d answer it, and someone who cares whether it worked.

And the honest line: if the one thing wrong in your business is a phone ringing out on site this month, one of the products below fixes that for about £40, and we’ll tell you which on a call.

How we picked and ranked them

Four tests. Does the vendor publish its price on its own site (if not, it isn’t ranked, it’s mentioned). Is it built for trades, or at least for UK small firms. Which front doors does it cover: phone, missed-call text, website form, email, WhatsApp. And what happens after the call: is the enquiry handled, or is a message passed to you to deal with later. Contract terms and setup fees broke ties.

Our stake, declared: Shoogly sells to the same firms these products sell to. That is why we’re not in the numbered list, and why we’ve said where a product does something we don’t.

1. Down To Earth AI

The product that covers the most here, and the one to choose if you want more than the phone handled without buying a whole system. Down To Earth AI charges £299 setup plus £45 a month for 100 minutes, then £23 a month per extra channel, with WhatsApp, SMS, email and missed-call text-back all on the menu, human escalation when the AI is out of its depth, and a founder who came from the trade.

Say honestly: the £45 headline is not the bill. A plumber wanting phone plus WhatsApp plus missed-call texts is paying £91 a month or more, after the £299 to get started, and overage runs 20p a minute. Choose it if you want channels and a person behind the AI, and you’ve done the sums on the real monthly figure.

2. TradeAlly

The best allowance design on the list, and the pick if the phone is your only problem and you want tidy admin thrown in. TradeAlly’s “Ali” is a flat £59 a month for 75 calls, and calls you answer yourself or spam calls don’t count against it, which is rarer than it should be. It also carries the job into quotes, invoices and chasing.

Say honestly: it is voice and text only, and 75 calls is a cap. A busy heating firm in January will meet it. If your enquiries arrive by phone and you want them to become invoices without retyping, it is a good fit. If they arrive through your website, it does nothing with them.

3. Trade PA

A job-management tool that answers, rather than an answering service that manages jobs, and the only product on this list we found with a real email-enquiry agent. Trade PA is £39 a month solo, £89 for a team of five, £129 for the business tier, with CIS, VAT reverse charge, RAMS and HMRC mileage built in and a 30-day trial.

Say honestly: the answering is second fiddle to the admin, and that’s fine if admin is the bigger pain. Choose it if you want one subscription to run the office, and check the email agent does what you need it to before you rely on it, because it’s the feature that sets it apart.

4. Hey Jodie

Unlimited minutes at every tier, no setup fee, and a seven-day trial with no card, which makes Hey Jodie the easiest of the lot to try. Plans run £49, £99 and £199 a month, phone only.

Say honestly: when we checked, the three tiers listed identical features, so ask what the £199 actually buys before you pay it. And its “best AI receptionist” articles rank itself first, which you can weigh as you like. Choose it if you want unlimited calls without a cap to watch, and your enquiries are phone calls.

5. Clara

Unlimited calls at the lowest price on this list for a pure phone receptionist. Clara is £39.99 a month or £399 a year (£33.25 a month equivalent), with a Pro tier at £69.99 or £699, a seven-day trial, no setup fee and no contract.

Say honestly: it is a general small-business receptionist rather than a trades product, so expect to teach it your trade yourself, and its own “best of” blog puts Clara first. Choose it if you want cheap, unlimited phone answering and you’re happy to set it up properly.

6. AI-Assist SMEs

The cheapest on the list and the closest, on paper, to covering the written channels. AI-Assist SMEs starts from £19 a month with a 14-day trial, and bundles a website chat widget that answers questions and books appointments, a missed-call text-back, and automated email chasing of unanswered quotes.

Say honestly: a chat widget answering questions on your page is a different thing from reading the enquiry someone typed into your form at 9pm, working out the job, and replying in your voice with you briefed. The two get confused in marketing copy, including possibly theirs. Choose it if you want a lot of coverage for very little money and you’ll test what “answers website enquiries” means in practice before you rely on it.

7. ServiceM8 Phone Agent

Only worth considering if you already run ServiceM8, in which case it’s the path of least resistance. ServiceM8 Phone starts at £15 a month and the AI Phone Agent sits on its Connect Plus and Unlimited tiers, with business-hours, after-hours and voicemail modes that text customers a booking link.

Say honestly: the tiers that include the AI agent don’t publish a price, you have to port your number, and the app is iOS-only, which for a firm on Android phones ends the conversation. Choose it if you’re a ServiceM8 shop on iPhones and the unpublished price comes back sensible.

8. Ringby

The fully managed option: they set it up, it’s live in about half an hour, and it runs 24/7. Ringby starts from £77 a month, phone only.

Say honestly: it is the dearest of the phone-only products and the contract terms weren’t stated when we checked, so ask before you sign. Choose it if you want someone else to do every part of the setup and you’re paying for that convenience knowingly.

9. Airayflow

A bespoke build rather than a product: Airayflow charges a build fee and then you pay the underlying platforms directly, so the monthly cost is honest but has no ceiling. Voice only, with the strongest compliance posture we saw, ICO registration and Hiscox professional indemnity and cyber cover.

Say honestly: no published prices means we can’t rank it on value, only on what it is. Choose it if compliance paperwork matters to the kind of client you serve and you want a system built around you rather than off the shelf.

If you'd rather pay a person

A human answering service is a fair choice for call-heavy firms with anxious callers, and we’ve written the honest comparison separately. The one with a published rate card is Face For Business: plans from £49 to £115 a month billed by the second, no setup fee, a seven-day trial, and cover that stops at evenings and Sunday afternoon rather than running 24/7. Moneypenny, JAM and AllDayPA publish no rate card, so you’re quoting by phone.

Whoever you pick, remember what a human service delivers: a message taken, passed to you, still waiting for your real answer. The customer is not served yet; they’re queued.

Which kind do you need?

• The phone rings out and that’s the problem. A flat-rate phone receptionist. TradeAlly if you want the admin handled too, Hey Jodie or Clara if you want unlimited calls cheap.
• You want several channels now, as a product. Down To Earth AI, with the real monthly figure worked out first.
• You want the front of house run as one system, website and brand included, and you kept in the conversation. That’s us. Read what the market charges, run the calculator on your own enquiry numbers, then bring a real enquiry to a call and watch it handled. Pricing is a flat monthly figure agreed on that call, no long contract, and if the maths doesn’t work for your volume we’ll say so and point you back at this list.