Kea Alternatives for Restaurants
Kea sells restaurant voice AI on a quote. Here is how to turn a quote into a number you can compare, six alternatives priced as published, and what to test.
On this page
Three vendors, one spreadsheet. Two reply with a number and a link to a pricing page. The third replies with a calendar invite, and the cell stays empty for a week.
The blank cell is not neutral. It loses every comparison it enters, because the shop either buys the cheapest visible price or stalls until the busy season arrives. Quote-based pricing is a legitimate way to sell a configured product; it is a bad way to choose between them.
Kea sells restaurant voice AI with order taking on a quote, so the work here is turning that quote into a number. Then the demo can be about the ticket.
TL;DR
- Kea sells order-taking voice AI on a quote, which leaves a blank cell in the comparison that matters.
- Published anchors for October 2026: Loman from $199 a month with no per-minute fees, Hostie $199 base, Kovo $99 for 750 connected minutes.
- Ask for the same quote at 300 calls and at 900; a number that doubles is a per-minute price wearing a monthly label.
- Ask what happens when the minutes run out, because a cap you can plan for beats a 300-call plan that bills overage.
- Kovo is $99 or $299 a month with no overage (plans), writes to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo or a printer, and the first 14 days are free.
What a quote hides
A quote is a monthly price with the meter somewhere else. Custom pricing is how a vendor prices a custom build, and a shop with an unusual POS or a language mix may genuinely get a better product that way.
Two things go quiet inside a quote: the volume assumption, and the unit that scales. A number built on 400 calls a month is not the number at 900, and the unit is usually a minute, a location, or a fee that only appears in the contract.
Neither is dishonest. Both are invisible on a pricing page, and invisible is what costs money.
Who should stay on Kea
Stay if your build is genuinely non-standard. A menu with nested choice groups, half-and-half pricing where each half opens its own groups, or a POS the vendor has already integrated is worth paying for a configured deployment rather than a self-serve one.
Stay too if you want a human during launch: a quote usually buys scoping, and scoping is what a shop with no IT staff needs in the first two weeks.
The test is simple. If the quote includes something you can name — your POS, your menu shape, your second language — it is a product. If it includes only the answering everybody else gets, it is a price with a delay.
Who should leave Kea
Leave when the quote cannot be re-run at a different volume. A vendor that will not put the 900-call number next to the 300-call number is telling you the structure is per-minute, which is a price worth hearing.
Leave too if order taking is the point and your POS is on the common list. Toast, Square, Clover and Olo are covered by several vendors with published prices, and paying for scoping you do not need is how a small shop overpays here.
Six options, priced as published
Published information, October 2026. Where a vendor sells on a quote, the table says so, and the paragraph below says what to ask.
| Option | Best for | Published price | Order on the call | POS path | Card handling | Setup |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kea | A configured build | Quote | Yes, restaurant-specific | Confirm your POS on the demo | Not publicly listed — confirm | Not publicly listed — confirm |
| Loman | Closing the whole call | From $199/mo, no per-minute fees | Yes, with modifiers | Toast, Square, Clover, SpotOn, SkyTab, Aloha, Olo | Card taken during the call, per the vendor | Live in under 24 hours, per the vendor |
| Reachify | POS-first routing | Quote | Yes, with text-link fallback | Pushes into the POS, per the vendor | Not publicly listed — confirm | Not publicly listed — confirm |
| Certus AI | Mixed-language callers | Quote | Yes, plus reservations and upselling | Confirm depth on the demo | Not publicly listed — confirm | Around five days, per the vendor |
| Sadie | Informational calls | Quote | Not documented | Middleware | Not advertised | Not publicly listed — confirm |
| Kovo | Takeout and table lines | $99/mo or $299/mo | Yes, with modifiers and a read-back | Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, Epson, Star | A card the shop already holds, charged on the line; link for a first-time caller | Self-serve; test call the same day |
Kovo is on this list because it is ours; the rows above it come from each vendor's public pages. Where a cell reads "confirm", that is what the demo is for, and the Hostie alternatives list covers the guest-line case.
The six options, one at a time
Kea
Kea is the incumbent and the reason for the page: order-taking voice AI with a restaurant-specific build, sold on a quote from the vendor's own site. The build is the argument, and a shop whose menu breaks a generic agent should hear it; the menu sync mechanics decide who maintains it afterwards. The caveat is the one this article is about: get the all-in monthly at your call volume, including any per-minute or per-location part, in writing, before the second call.
Loman
Loman is the published-price answer to a quote. From $199 a month with no per-minute fees (published pricing, October 2026), the widest POS list of the group, card taken during the call, two-way OpenTable booking documented. It publishes a 99.6% order-accuracy figure on a 20M+ call corpus, a vendor claim rather than an audit. The caveat: a flat fee at 250 calls buys capacity you never use, and the contract term is the number to read. Kovo vs Loman has the crossover arithmetic.
Reachify
Reachify is POS-first: the pitch is getting the order into the POS rather than leaving it as a message, with text-link fallbacks when the call cannot close. Sensible design for a shop already committed to a POS workflow. The caveat is the split. Ask which parts of the order close on the call and which arrive by text, because a text link is a second chance for the caller to change their mind. Quote-based, so run the volume test.
Certus AI
Certus is the multilingual option, handling English, Spanish and French as a first-class feature, which matters where the phone gets answered in two languages. The caveat is time: implementation is publicly described as around five days, longer than the under-24-hours promise elsewhere in the category, and POS depth is what to check on the demo.
Sadie
Sadie is an AI receptionist: hours, location, policies, reservations, message taking. It publishes a ceiling of 20 concurrent calls, generous for one location. The caveat is scope. No secure payment is advertised and order taking is not the center of the product, so a shop with missed tickets will find the phone answered and the kitchen still waiting.
Kovo
Kovo is ours and it sits at the fixed-price end: $99 for 750 connected minutes, $299 for 5,000, one store per subscription. It takes the order the way the caller says it, reads it back, and writes the ticket to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or an Epson Server Direct Print or Star CloudPRNT printer. No overage: at the cap, calls forward to your own phone. It charges a card the shop already holds while the caller is still on the line and links a first-time caller instead, answers a website chat on the same engine, and books tables in its own book, derived from the shop's hours, with a confirmation text. What it will not do is write a booking into OpenTable or Resy. If your menu needs a human build, or the booking has to land in the book your host already reads, this is not that product.
The demo's first ten minutes, when the price is a quote
The first ten minutes should buy two things: the number and the mechanism.
- Ask for the all-in monthly at your volume, in writing, with every component listed.
- Ask what the next 200 calls cost on that plan, so the meter becomes visible.
- Ask what happens at the cap: forward to your line, bill an overage, or stop answering.
- Order two items with modifiers on your menu and correct one of them mid-order.
- Ask for the kitchen ticket on your POS, then time how long it takes to appear.
Step three is where quotes and published prices diverge most. A vendor that stops answering at the cap sold you a ceiling; one that bills overage sold you a meter.
What your volume does to the number
Put your own call count in and the quote stops being abstract.
A three-minute average order means 750 connected minutes is about 250 calls, which is Starter at $99. At 900 calls of the same length you need 2,700 minutes, which is Unlimited at $299, or Loman's flat $199, so a quote has to beat the lower of those two to earn its place. At 250 calls, it has to beat $99.
That is the negotiation: one number at your volume against a published one. The missed-call arithmetic sets the other side; if the line gives up 150 calls a month at $35 to $85 each, the subscription is the smaller line item.
Who this is wrong for
If the booking has to land in OpenTable or Resy, most of this list is the wrong aisle except Loman and Hostie, and comparing the alternatives sorts the rest by situation. If your menu changes weekly and nobody maintains it, any agent will read yesterday's prices with confidence, and the fix is a menu source before it is a vendor.
And if you want somebody else to own the phone, a quote-based vendor with an onboarding team beats a $99 self-serve plan you configure on a Sunday.
FAQ
Why do restaurants look for Kea alternatives?
Mostly because they cannot compare the price. Kea sells order-taking voice AI on a quote, so an operator ends up with two published numbers and one blank cell on the spreadsheet, which is not a comparison. The second reason is scope: a shop that assumed a quote meant a small bill finds the all-in monthly at 900 calls is a different number from the one at 300.
What should I ask in the first ten minutes of a Kea replacement demo?
One question that costs nothing: what is the all-in monthly at my call volume, in writing, including any per-minute, per-location or setup component. Then take an order with two modifiers on your own menu and ask for the kitchen ticket. 10 minutes gets you the number and the mechanism, which are the only two things that separate these vendors.
How does Kovo's price compare with a quote-based vendor?
Kovo publishes two numbers: $99 a month for 750 connected minutes, about 300 calls at a two-and-a-half-minute average, or $299 for 5,000. There is no overage, because at the cap calls forward to your own phone. A quote beats that at low volume only if it lands under $99, and it beats $299 only if your calls are longer than the minutes you are buying.
Does Kea or any alternative take the card during the call?
Loman advertises card payment inside the call and documents two-way OpenTable booking, both vendor claims to verify on a live call. Kovo splits the path: a card the shop already holds for that caller is charged off-session while the caller is still on the line, and a first-time caller gets a Stripe link by text with the line held open, paying it without hanging up. Neither path reads a card number into the call or the transcript. Ask every vendor to show the payment screen, not the slide.
How long does it take to move a phone line?
The account takes a day; the number takes planning. Kovo is self-serve, so a shop with a supported POS menu is usually live the same day, and the trial runs 14 days with no card. Porting or forwarding the existing line is a separate task, and the sensible window is a Monday and Tuesday with the old line still answering until the new one has taken one Friday.
Final Thoughts
Kea is a reasonable product with an unreasonable comparison problem: a build fitted to your menu is worth more than a published price, and worth nothing in a decision you cannot finish. Get the number in writing at your volume, then spend the demo on the ticket.
Kovo is the fixed-price option, $99 a month or $299, self-serve, no overage, with a charge on the line for a known card and a table in its own book. If the quote comes back above those numbers, take the test call here first and compare the two tickets. Take a test call with your own menu.