Kovo vs OrderOut: Which Fits Your Restaurant?
OrderOut moves delivery tickets into your POS. Kovo answers the phone. Compare the two, what each costs, and which gap in your stack is the expensive one.
On this page
Pull up last month's software invoices and count the ones that touch an order. There is the POS, then a delivery integration layer that sorts the DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub tickets, then the phone, a handset that rings until somebody picks it up or gives up.
OrderOut and Kovo sit on opposite sides of that list. OrderOut moves delivery tickets between the marketplaces and the POS. Kovo answers the phone and turns a call into a ticket. Buying one does not remove the need for the other.
That makes this less a head-to-head than a gap analysis, and the gap is what the tables are for.
TL;DR
- Kovo answers the phone, takes the order the caller says, reads it back, and writes the ticket to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or a receipt printer.
- Kovo's limit is the shop's own: defaults of 10 items and 8 of one item, an optional value limit, and a ring to your handset above it if you asked for one.
- Kovo's price is public: $99 for 750 connected minutes or $299 for 5,000, with calls forwarding to your own line at the cap instead of an overage.
- OrderOut is delivery integration and dispatch middleware: it routes marketplace orders into the POS, and it sells on a quote rather than a published price (vendor pages, October 2026).
- They are not substitutes. OrderOut does not answer a call, and commission at 15% to 30% an order sits on the delivery ticket, not the phone one.
What each product is
Kovo is a phone line with a kitchen on the other end. It answers 24/7, takes the order the way the caller says it, reads it back, and sends the finished ticket to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or an Epson or Star receipt printer. Menu questions, greetings, complaints, and order-status calls stay on the call. Handoff happens when the caller presses 0, asks for a person, or the order is over a limit the shop chose to route, and only if the shop has set a handset number. The Toast walkthrough shows what a finished ticket looks like on the other side.
The menu comes from one source per shop: a POS catalog, or a menu page from Toast, DoorDash, Uber Eats, Clover, Slice, or a pasted link. Refresh runs once a day, and the merge is three-way, so your edit to a field survives a source refresh and an item you deleted is not resurrected. Callers hear the version that refreshed last.
The order limit belongs to the shop: defaults of 10 items in total and 8 of one item, both editable, plus an optional order-value limit. Above a limit, the call rings your handset if you turned that on; otherwise the agent says the order is too large and keeps taking what fits. Cards off means the caller pays when they collect, and cards on means the card the shop already holds is charged while the caller is on the line, with a Stripe link held open for a first-time caller. No card number reaches the call, the recording, or the transcript. Starter is $99 for 750 connected minutes, roughly 300 calls; Unlimited is $299 for 5,000, and at the cap the phone forwards to your own line instead of billing an overage.
OrderOut's dispatch layer
OrderOut is delivery integration and dispatch middleware. In plain terms it is a pipe: an order arrives from DoorDash, Uber Eats, or Grubhub, and the pipe puts it where the kitchen already looks, which is the POS. OrderOut's own site describes the routing; the company quotes each shop instead of publishing a monthly number (October 2026).
That is a real problem worth paying to solve. Marketplace dispatch is the one capability no phone agent does natively, so a shop running four channels into a POS that ingests none of them needs this category first.
What OrderOut is not, is a phone system. It does not answer a call, take an order from a caller, read it back, or hand off to a person. If a ticket begins as a telephone call, this layer never sees it.
Check for duplication before signing. Otter and Stream publish similar routing, and some POS systems now ingest marketplace orders without a third party. Two pipes doing one job is the commonest mistake here, and it stays invisible until a ticket prints twice.
The 30-second comparison
Published positioning, October 2026. A cell that reads "not publicly listed" is a fact worth noticing; re-confirm every quote before you sign.
| Kovo | OrderOut | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $99/mo, 750 connected minutes | Quote only; no published list price |
| What a phone call ends with | Order read back, ticket released | It does not answer the phone |
| Where the ticket lands | Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, Epson, Star | Marketplaces into the POS, per the vendor; confirm yours |
| Card handling | Known card charged on the line; Stripe link for a first-time caller | Not applicable; no call to pay on |
| Reservations | Own book; reads and texts an OpenTable or Resy page | Not applicable; it does not answer calls |
| Delivery dispatch | Does not dispatch to DoorDash, Uber Eats, or Grubhub | The stated strength of the product |
| Setup | Self-serve: menu import, test call, live the same day | Quote-led; confirm the timeline and who maps the menus |
| Menu source | POS catalog or menu page, daily refresh | Marketplace-side mapping; confirm who owns it |
Two rows carry this decision: the phone row and the dispatch row.
The money: two pipes, two economics
Take a shop doing 1,200 delivery orders a month at a $34 average. That is $40,800 of delivery sales. Industry estimates put third-party commission at 15% to 30% per order, moving toward 30% to 40% all-in once fees and promotions are counted, which the Independent Restaurant Coalition collects. At 25%, $10,200 of that $40,800 leaves before food cost is paid.
Now the phone. The QSR Magazine analysis estimates the average U.S. restaurant misses about 150 calls a month, and industry estimates price a lost call at $35 to $85 once the ticket and the caller who never rings back are counted.
- 150 missed calls × $35 = $5,250 a month at the low end.
- 150 missed calls × $85 = $12,750 at the high end.
- Kovo at $99 or $299 sits under both numbers.
Neither figure is your P&L; your call log is. But the direction holds: the phone gap is usually the larger one and the cheaper one to close, while the delivery gap needs a paid pipe regardless. The local arithmetic on missed calls runs the same sum with other inputs.
Where the two stacks collide
The menu is the collision point. Both products need one, and they read it from different places.
OrderOut maps the marketplace side, where each channel publishes its own item names and modifiers. Kovo reads one source per shop and refreshes once a day. Run both, and a single price change has to land in two mappings. Whichever refreshed last is what a caller hears at noon.
That is not a reason to pick one. It is a reason to ask which system owns a price change and what happens when the other refreshes an hour later. A shop that answers that keeps both products honest. A shop that does not spends a cold night explaining why the app said $18 and the phone said $16.
Who should pick OrderOut
Pick OrderOut if your delivery revenue arrives through three or four marketplaces, your POS ingests none of them cleanly, and someone is still re-keying tickets — then read the OrderOut alternatives shortlist before you add a second pipe.
Who should pick Kovo
Pick Kovo if the ticket that goes missing starts as a phone call: the pizza shop whose line rings through dinner, the deli taking platters, the counter spot where noon calls outnumber the staff. Pick it if you want the order in the POS with modifiers intact, a read-back the caller can correct, and no scheduled onboarding.
It is also the smaller commitment: 14 days free, no card at signup, and the plans page shows the minute math.
The decision, in three rows
| Your situation | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The line rings through dinner and nobody answers, but your POS already ingests marketplace orders | Kovo | The gap is the call, and an integration layer adds nothing to a POS that already reads the marketplaces |
| Three or four delivery channels, no native ingestion, tickets re-keyed by hand | OrderOut | Marketplace dispatch is what the product does, and no phone agent does it natively |
| Both gaps: calls missed at the counter and delivery tickets entered twice | Kovo first, then OrderOut | 150 missed calls at $35 to $85 each is the bigger number, and the cheaper one to close |
Ordering matters less than measuring. Count missed calls for one week, then count the delivery orders you re-key. One of those numbers will look like rounding error, and it is the one you can defer. The comparison hub has the rest of the shortlist.
FAQ
Does Kovo replace OrderOut?
No. OrderOut is a delivery integration layer that routes marketplace orders into a POS, and Kovo is a phone agent that answers calls and writes the completed order to the POS or a receipt printer. Kovo does not dispatch to DoorDash, Uber Eats, or Grubhub, so a shop that sells on those channels still needs a pipe for them, either from OrderOut or from its POS.
What does each cost for a shop taking 500 calls and 1,200 delivery orders a month?
Kovo is $99 for 750 connected minutes, which covers roughly 300 calls at a two-and-a-half-minute average, or $299 for 5,000 minutes, which covers 500 calls of any normal length. OrderOut sells on a quote, so ask for the all-in monthly number at 1,200 orders across your channels and get it in writing before you compare it to $299.
Can I run both at once?
Yes, and they touch the same ticket pool from different sides, so the menu is what to test first. Both products need a menu, OrderOut maps the marketplace side and Kovo reads a POS catalog or your menu page with a daily refresh. Ask each vendor which system owns a price change and what happens when the other refreshes an hour later.
Which one should a takeout shop buy first?
Answer the phone first. The QSR Magazine analysis estimates that U.S. restaurants lose roughly $20 billion a year to unanswered calls and that the average restaurant misses about 150 calls a month, and industry estimates put the cost at $35 to $85 a call. Software that answers the phone is $99 a month; a second delivery middleware is worth adding when the channels justify it.
Does either product take a card during the call?
OrderOut does not answer calls, so card handling in a conversation is not part of what it does. Kovo does: with cards on, the card the shop already holds for a repeat caller is charged off-session while the caller is still on the line, and a first-time caller gets a Stripe Checkout link with the line held open until it is paid. Neither path takes a card number over the phone. On a demo, ask to see the payment step rather than the dashboard.
Final Thoughts
These two products are only competitors in a search box. OrderOut closes the distance between a marketplace and your POS. Kovo closes the distance between a ringing phone and a kitchen ticket. If delivery is where your tickets come from, buy the pipe. If the phone is where they go to die, buy the answering.
Start with the cheap measurement: last week's call log, after 5 p.m. If that number is over 100, Kovo is $99 for 750 connected minutes and 14 days are free, long enough to hear your own menu read back. Take a test call with your own menu.