Loman Alternatives for Restaurants
Loman closes the call with a card from $199 a month per location. If your calls don't need that, here are five alternatives and the demo test that sorts them.
On this page
The search that lands on a page like this usually starts with an invoice. A shop reads $199 a line, counts the locations, then remembers the Friday the agent read a price the menu had not carried since spring. The second reason is simpler: the contract is up and nobody has compared.
Most alternatives pages are written by one of the alternatives, which is why they list the incumbent first and themselves second. This one marks the one we sell and gives each option a reason to be picked and a reason to hesitate.
TL;DR
- Loman publishes from $199 per month per location with no per-minute fees, and it closes the call with a card charged inside the conversation (October 2026).
- That closure path is also the reason to stay: if a stranger has to read a card into the call, no cheaper alternative replaces it.
- Kovo is $99 for 750 connected minutes or $299 for 5,000, and charges a card the shop already holds while the caller is still on the line.
- At 200 calls a month the minute plan wins. At 1,000 three-minute calls, Loman's flat $199 beats Kovo Unlimited by $100.
- Run one modifier-heavy call on any vendor and ask for the kitchen print: Kovo is $99 with 14 days free.
Kovo is one of the options below. We have marked it in the table.
Who should stay on Loman
Stay if the card has to be charged while the caller is still talking, and the caller is someone you have never served. That is Loman's actual product: order taken, any card taken, ticket written, no second step. A shop taking deposits on Friday nights is buying exactly the thing that made $199 defensible.
Stay too if the POS list matters. Loman publishes the widest one here: Toast, Square, Clover, SpotOn, SkyTab, Aloha, Olo, Stream, and OpenTable, per its pricing page. A group running three systems across five sites is not served by a narrow alternative.
The caveat: the headline results, including 99.6% order accuracy, up to 22% higher phone revenue, and up to 17% lower labor, are vendor claims, operator-reported and not audited. They are not a forecast for your shop.
Who should leave, and what they actually want
Leave if the call never needed to end paid. A pizza counter where the regular pays cash at pickup, a deli taking platters for collection: both pay for a payment path they do not use. The narrower case is a shop whose callers have almost all paid before: a card already on file can be charged on the line, and the gap to $199 closes.
Leave too if the fee is per location and your volume is small. Loman's price does not move with usage, which is a feature at 1,000 calls and a cost at 200.
The uncomfortable part is that the second reason has a ceiling. At 1,000 calls of three minutes, that is 3,000 connected minutes, and Kovo Unlimited at $299 is $100 more than Loman's flat $199. A shop at that volume should leave for a better fit, not a smaller invoice.
Six options, one table
Published information, October 2026. Every price here should be re-checked on the vendor's own page before a contract, because these move and the caveats move with them.
| Option | Best for | Published price | Order on the call | POS path | Card on the call | Setup |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Loman | Closing the whole transaction | From $199/mo per location, no per-minute fees | Yes, with modifiers | Nine POS and ecosystem integrations, per the vendor | Yes, during the call | Live in under 24 hours, per the vendor |
| Kovo (ours) | Takeout and table lines at a fixed price | $99/mo for 750 minutes; $299 for 5,000 | Yes, with modifiers | Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, Epson, Star | A card the shop already holds, charged on the line; link for a first-time caller | Self-serve; same day on a supported POS |
| Hostie | Reservations and a guest inbox | $199 base; $399 with order taking | On the $399 tier | OpenTable, Resy, Toast, Square documented | Not documented | Not publicly listed — confirm |
| Slang.ai | Questions and reservations | $450–$600/mo per location | No — redirects to online ordering | Reservations via OpenTable | Not documented | Not publicly listed — confirm |
| Kea | Quote-based order taking | Quote | Yes | Confirm by name | Not documented | Confirm the timeline |
| Reachify | POS-first order routing | Quote | Yes, with text-link fallbacks | POS push, per the vendor | Not documented | Confirm |
Two columns decide this table, and neither is the price. "Card on the call" tells you whether you are replacing Loman's core capability or giving it up, and "order on the call" tells you whether the phone ends in a ticket or a message.
The alternatives, one at a time
Kovo
Kovo answers, takes the order in the caller's words, reads it back, and writes the ticket to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or an Epson or Star receipt printer. Starter is $99 for 750 connected minutes, roughly 300 calls, and Unlimited is $299 for 5,000 with calls forwarding to your own phone at the cap instead of billing overage.
The caveat this page turns on: whose card. 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 with the line held open, paying it without hanging up and vaulting the card for next time. Loman captures any card inside the call, first-time included, and that is the gap to weigh. Kovo also answers a website chat on the same engine, books tables in its own book rather than into OpenTable or Resy, and sets its limit per shop: 10 items and 8 of one item by default, with an optional value limit. The full head-to-head is in Kovo vs Loman.
Hostie
Hostie is a guest communications layer: reservations, questions, and one inbox for calls, texts, and email. Order taking is documented on the $399 per-location tier, and OpenTable, Resy, Toast, and Square are documented integrations (pricing).
Its caveat is the tier, and the depth behind it. $399 is the number to compare with Loman's $199, not the $199 entry price, and a demo should establish how much of an order reaches the POS rather than Hostie's inbox. If the reservation book is the problem, that is a better fit than any order line. The Kovo vs Hostie comparison has the row-by-row.
Slang.ai
Slang.ai is reservation-first: it answers questions, handles reservation requests, and sends callers who want food to online ordering. It is also the most expensive option here at $450 to $600 per month per location.
The caveat is what happens to an order. A caller who wanted a pizza and got a link is a missed call with extra steps, which makes Slang a good answer for a full-service room and a poor one for a takeout line. Its pricing explains the tier; the Slang.ai alternatives shortlist covers the order-led case.
Kea
Kea is a restaurant voice AI with order taking, sold on a quote. That is not a defect: a smaller vendor with hands-on onboarding can be the best fit for a shop that wants one named person to call.
The caveat is the number you cannot see. Ask for the all-in monthly cost at your call volume in writing, including per-location, per-minute, and setup charges, then put it next to $99 and $199.
Reachify
Reachify positions around getting orders into the POS rather than leaving them as messages, with POS push and text-link fallbacks. For a shop already committed to a POS workflow, that is the right instinct.
Its caveat is the split. Ask which parts of an order close on the call and which arrive by text, because a fallback is a second conversation the caller may not finish. Confirm the price in writing, since it is quote-based.
The first ten minutes of a replacement demo
Do not spend the first ten minutes on the voice. Every vendor here sounds acceptable for thirty seconds, and voice quality is the least likely reason an order goes wrong.
Minutes 1 to 3: the order. Two items, one with two modifiers, one with a substitution, plus a drink. On the live line, not a recorded sample. At a pizzeria, use a half-and-half pie, because that is where nested choice groups break.
Minutes 4 to 6: the ticket. Ask where it printed and go look at it. The Toast walkthrough shows what a correct ticket contains: modifiers inside their groups, not as a free-text note. A dashboard instead of a ticket means it is not writing to your POS.
Minutes 7 to 9: the edit. Change one item after the read-back and listen for whether the agent reads the order again. A skipped read-back is how a wrong order reaches a fryer.
Minute 10: the limit. Order 12 items, or 9 of one item, and see what happens. Kovo's limit belongs to the shop, 10 items and 8 of one item by default, and above it the call rings the handset if the owner asked for that or the agent says the order is too large and keeps taking what fits. Loman sets its own behaviour, so ask. Either answer is fine; "it just prints" is how a party order lands in a kitchen that cannot build it.
What switching actually costs
The software switch is a day. The phone number is the project: whether you port the line or forward it, the work happens on a service day, and both lines run side by side until a full dinner has gone through the new one. The old contract is the third cost, so find the notice period before a trial, not after.
Keep one number in view while you compare: industry estimates put a missed restaurant call at $35 to $85, and the missed-call arithmetic shows what 150 of them become in a month. A vendor that answers the peak is worth more than the $100 difference between plans. The plans page shows the minute side of that comparison.
FAQ
Why do restaurants leave Loman?
Usually for one of two reasons, and neither is call quality. Either the shop never needed the card charged inside the call, so it was paying from $199 a month for a closure path it did not use, or the call volume is low enough that a flat per-location fee costs more than a minute plan. Kovo is $99 for 750 connected minutes, which is roughly 300 calls, so a 200-call shop is paying about half.
What should I check in the first ten minutes of a replacement demo?
Three things: a modifier-heavy order on a live call, the read-back after the caller changes their mind, and where the ticket physically lands. Ask for the kitchen print, not the transcript. If a vendor cannot show a ticket in your POS within ten minutes, the rest of the demo is a voice sample, and the price you are quoted is for a voice sample.
Is Kovo cheaper than Loman?
At low volume, yes: Kovo Starter is $99 for 750 connected minutes against Loman from $199 a month per location (published pricing, October 2026). At high volume the arithmetic reverses, because 3,000 minutes of three-minute calls is 1,000 calls and Kovo Unlimited is $299 against Loman's flat $199. Do the multiplication with your own call log before you switch.
Can Kovo charge the card during the call like Loman does?
The difference is whose card. A card the shop already holds for that caller is charged off-session while the caller is still on the line. A first-time caller gets a Stripe link by text with the line held open, pays it without hanging up, and paying vaults the card for the next call. Neither path reads a card number into the call, so Loman's advantage is the stranger: it captures any card inside the call, first-time included, and a shop whose callers are mostly new should stay.
How long does a switch take?
The software is a day for a shop with a supported POS: sign up, connect ordering, import the menu, take a test call, on a 14-day trial that needs no card. The phone number is the slow part, whether you port it or forward the existing line, and porting should be planned for a quiet service day. Check the notice period on the old contract before you start either.
Final Thoughts
Loman is the right product for a shop whose calls end in a payment, and its POS list is not a small thing. The alternative is not a better Loman. It is a narrower product for a shop that never needed the card, at a price that tracks what it uses.
Decide on the shape before the number. If a first-time caller has to pay inside the call, stay and renegotiate. If your callers are regulars, run the ten-minute demo on two vendors, look at both tickets, and compare the invoices at your own volume. The comparison hub has the rest of the head-to-heads. Kovo is the narrow option in this list: $99 for 750 connected minutes, self-serve, the ticket in the kitchen, and 14 days free without a card. Take a test call with your own menu.