VOICEplug AI Alternatives for Restaurants
VOICEplug AI sells voice ordering across phone, drive-thru and kiosk on a quote. Six alternatives for a shop whose real problem is the handset.
On this page
A lane speaker, a kiosk by the door, and one handset behind the register: three places a pizza shop takes an order on a Friday, and three places VOICEplug AI sells voice ordering into.
The breadth is the pitch, and it is real. It is also why the quote is hard to read: a multi-surface contract buries the price of the phone inside the price of a rollout you may not be ready to run.
What follows is the phone-only half of that stack, ordered by fit, with prices dated so a stale number never reads as current.
TL;DR
- VOICEplug AI sells voice ordering across phone, drive-thru, kiosk and pizza channels on a quote, with no public list price (checked October 2026).
- Six alternatives, ordered by fit for a shop whose problem is the handset rather than a lane.
- Loman documents card payment inside the call, Reachify and Certus AI are quoted, and Kovo publishes $99 and $299.
- 1,400 calls at three minutes is 4,200 connected minutes, so Kovo Unlimited at $299, or about 21 cents an answered call (plans).
- Ask every vendor for the kitchen ticket in the ten-minute demo, then take the 14 days free.
Who should leave VOICEplug AI, and who should stay
Stay if you have surfaces to cover. A brand running a drive-thru lane, a counter kiosk and a phone line from one contract is buying exactly what VOICEplug builds, and the pizza tooling is aimed at shops selling half-and-half pies.
Leave when the phone is the whole problem. A single location with one handset is paying for reach it will never use, and the honest move is to ask for a phone-only price. If the answer is that the surfaces come as one contract, this is not your product.
The reason that matters is arithmetic. The same QSR Magazine analysis estimates that 30% to 32% of restaurant calls go unanswered during the 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. peak, which is precisely the window when nobody can leave the make line. A kiosk captures the guest standing in front of you. The phone has nobody standing there.
The six alternatives on one line
All of this was read off public pages in October 2026. Prices move, so confirm before signing, and ask for a figure at your own call volume rather than the entry tier.
| Option | Best for | Published price | Order on the call | POS path | Card on the call |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VOICEplug AI | A brand with a lane and a kiosk | Quote | Yes, across channels | 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 | Yes, charged during the call |
| Kovo | Takeout phone lines | $99/mo or $299/mo | 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 |
| Reachify | POS-first order routing | Quote | Yes, with a text fallback | Not publicly listed — confirm | Not publicly listed — confirm |
| Certus AI | Mixed-language callers | Quote | Yes | Not publicly listed — confirm | Not publicly listed — confirm |
| Hi Auto | A drive-thru lane | Quote, plus hardware | Drive-thru first | Not publicly listed — confirm | Not publicly listed — confirm |
| ConverseNow | High-volume QSR | Quote | Yes, at chain scope | Not publicly listed — confirm | Not publicly listed — confirm |
Kovo is one of the six and we make no claim to a neutral table. The other rows are what each vendor publishes; "not publicly listed" means ask for it in writing.
Two of the seven have a number you can do arithmetic with. At 1,400 calls of three minutes each, Kovo runs out of Starter's 750 minutes in the first week, so the plan is Unlimited at $299, or 21 cents an answered call. Loman's flat $199 at the same volume is 14 cents. On the published numbers, a busy line is cheaper on Loman, which a page like this should say out loud.
The six options, in order of fit
Loman
Loman closes the call end to end: order taken with modifiers, card charged during the conversation, ticket written into the POS. It publishes from $199 a month per location with no per-minute fees and names nine systems, including Toast, Square, Clover, SpotOn, SkyTab, Aloha and Olo (published pricing, October 2026).
Where to push back is the claims. Its 99.6% order-accuracy figure and its revenue and labor percentages are vendor numbers, operator-reported rather than audited, so treat them as a hypothesis to test in your own shop. The Loman alternatives page covers the contract questions.
Kovo
Kovo picks up, takes the order in the caller's words, reads it back, and sends the finished ticket to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or an Epson Server Direct Print or Star CloudPRNT printer. It also answers a website chat on the same engine. One store, one line, one subscription: $99 for 750 connected minutes or $299 for 5,000, and at the cap, calls forward to your own phone instead of billing an overage.
Two things still stop it. Cards are never spoken to the agent: the known card is charged off-session while the caller waits, a first-time caller gets a Stripe link with the line held open, and no number is recorded, transcribed, or sent to a model. And the order limit belongs to the shop — defaults of 10 items in total and 8 of one item, both editable, plus an optional value limit — with the call ringing your handset above one if you enabled large-party routing, and otherwise the agent saying the order is too large and keeping what fits. The full split is in Kovo vs VOICEplug AI.
Reachify
Reachify is POS-first: phone ordering that pushes the order into the system rather than leaving it as a message, with a text link as the fallback. For a shop whose real fear is an order in a dashboard nobody opens, that framing is right.
The fallback is the weak point. A text link is a step out of the call, and it changes who owns the order between the minute the caller hangs up and the minute a ticket prints. Ask which parts close on the call and which arrive as a link, then price the difference.
Certus AI
Certus AI handles orders, deliveries, reservations, upselling and complaints in English, Spanish and French, which makes language a feature rather than an afterthought. In a kitchen where a third of the callers switch languages mid-order, that is worth more than a longer feature list.
Two questions before a demo. It publicly describes implementation at around five days, slower than the under-24-hours promise elsewhere in this category, and its POS depth is not published, so ask which systems it writes to by name. The Certus AI alternatives page compares it with its neighbours.
Hi Auto
Hi Auto is drive-thru voice AI with hardware and lane integration, sold on a quote. If the lane, not the handset, is where your volume is, Hi Auto is built for that surface and a phone product is not.
Whether phone ordering is supported at all is the question that decides it. A lane product that treats the phone as an optional add-on will not help the calls that ring while the lane is queued to the street.
ConverseNow
ConverseNow is voice AI for QSR and drive-thru at chain scale. It is designed for volume measured in units, not covers, and a group with eight stores will get a more relevant demo there than from a single-site product.
Hi Auto's question applies here one step earlier. Ask whether phone is a first-class channel or a byproduct of the drive-thru build, and what a single location can buy on its own.
What the first ten minutes of a demo should show
Take the call yourself, from a cell phone, on a live line. Ten minutes is enough to disqualify a vendor if you spend it on the order, not the dashboard.
- Use the ugliest item on your menu: the half-and-half pie where each half opens its own choice groups, or the burger with three substitutions.
- Ask for the total before you hang up, then listen for whether the read-back names the modifiers you actually said.
- Ask for the kitchen ticket on your own POS. A transcript is not a ticket, and a PDF by email is not one either.
- Ask about payment on a live call: can a caller read out a new card, or only use something already on file?
- Ask for the phone-only price, with the lane and kiosk removed. That difference is what you were paying for surfaces you do not run.
The last question turns a multi-channel quote into something comparable. If a vendor will not itemise it, you are not buying a phone line, and the pizza-specific shortlist is a better start.
When the phone is not the problem
Kovo is wrong for four kinds of shop, and saying it now saves a fortnight.
If a first-time caller has to be able to read a card number into the call, buy Loman. If the booking has to land in OpenTable or Resy, buy the reservation platform, because Kovo only books in its own book and reads and texts a page for those two. If you run more than one location, Kovo sells one store per subscription: a second site is a second line, menu and subscription, with nothing pooled. And if you run a lane, a kiosk and a phone, buy the multi-surface vendor instead.
VOICEplug is wrong for one kind, and it is the same kind that reads this page: a single shop that wants a phone line and a published price, with no rollout behind it.
FAQ
Why would a restaurant leave VOICEplug AI?
Most often because the phone is the only channel they actually run. VOICEplug spreads voice ordering across phone, drive-thru, kiosk and pizza-specific tools, which is a lot of quote for a single shop with one handset. If the lane and the kiosk are not on your floor, ask for the phone-only line item and set it beside $99 and $299.
Is there a published VOICEplug AI price?
None that a shop can check, as of October 2026. VOICEplug sells on a quote, so the comparison has to be built from one number you request in writing: the monthly cost at your call volume, per location, with any hardware and per-minute component itemised. Without that figure there is nothing to set beside $99 and $299.
Which alternatives publish a price?
Two of the six here do. Loman publishes from $199 a month per location with no per-minute fees, and Kovo publishes $99 for 750 connected minutes or $299 for 5,000 (October 2026). Reachify, Certus AI, Hi Auto and ConverseNow are all quoted, which makes them impossible to rank on cost until each returns a written figure.
What should a replacement demo show in ten minutes?
A read-back, a total, and a kitchen ticket on your own POS, from a call you place yourself. Ask too whether a caller can read out a new card or whether payment needs something already on file, because that answer decides who takes the risk, and ask which of the two a shop like yours would actually use. Ten minutes is enough to disqualify a vendor, and Kovo's shop-set limits (defaults of 10 items in total and 8 of one item) are a fair benchmark to hold the others against.
Can any of these alternatives take a card inside the call?
Loman documents charging any card during the call, including a first-time caller's. Kovo charges a card the shop already holds, off-session while the caller is still on the line, so the ticket reaches the kitchen during the call; a first-time caller gets a Stripe Checkout link with the line held open, and paying it vaults the card for next time. VOICEplug does not publicly document its card path, so ask directly, and ask what a $40 order looks like on the guest's statement.
Final Thoughts
VOICEplug AI is the broader product, and breadth is not a flaw. If a lane, a kiosk and a handset all need a voice front end, one contract is the sensible answer.
The question is what you actually run. Count the surfaces, then ask each vendor for the price of the ones you own. If it is one handset, the shortlist is Loman for full closure and Kovo for a published price with a ticket on the line.
Take the demo on your own menu, ask for the kitchen ticket, and do the cents-per-call sum before signing anything. Take a test call with your own menu when two vendors are left on the list.