You may well have heard of Moneypenny, AllDayPA, AnswerConnect and (evidently) CallChimps, but it can be hard to find a clear outline of the pricing and features offered by each solution.
At CallChimps we believe it's incredibly important to be clear about what features are offered for each pricing tier, so there are never any disappointments or expensive surprises!
With this in mind, we've broken our comparison down into sections which deal with different aspects of telephone answering and virtual receptionist services.
Perhaps most importantly, we have also provided a clear answering service price comparison, so you can gauge the likely expense per month for a variety of call handling volumes and service needs.
First things first, what are the main differences between each call handling service?
Moneypenny have been around since the year 2000 and have over 1,000 staff spread across call centres in the UK and the US. They are one of the more expensive services (we'll come on to that later) but position themselves as quality you pay for.
That said, they are very much about the people and not so much about the technology, so don't expect much data capture about call sentiment or other data points for analytics. Nor CRM integration or bespoke integrations. Having a dedicated receptionist might sound great (they can be trained in depth) but they become a single point of failure and training multiple receptionists to handle surges in call volume that require parallel operators is going to be eye-wateringly expensive.
Costs start around £99 per month (30 min included) and between £1.65 and £1.85 per min beyond this, but beware of extra costs like evenings (an extra £25 per month) or 24/7/365 cover (an extra £75 per month).
Slightly older than Moneypenny, AllDayPA started in 1999, and have grown to 200 staff, based in Manchester, UK. Looking at Glassdoor and other employment sites, it's clear that AllDayPA have a high staff churn, so don't get too attached to anyone there.
Again, AllDayPA are a real-human staffed service and emphasise human engagement over technology - although they do offer more tech than Moneypenny. Typically AllDayPA might be considered a lower-cost alternative to Moneypenny, but for any level of call personalisation you're still looking at a 30-day contract (with 30-day cancellation period) and around £210 per month (150 min included) and £1 per min beyond this.
AnswerConnect have been around even longer than Moneypenny or AllDayPA, they started up in 1994 apparently! And this long history shows in their somewhat outdated perception of technology. We can all have a good laugh at the answer 1990s 'bot' video on their homepage, but technology has moved on a LOT since then.
Their older and more traditional approach is also reflected in their call answering time - within 4 rings, not the 3 rings others normally quote.
Their pricing starts at £244.99 per month (150 min included) with calls charged at £1.75 beyond this. Eschewing technological assistance comes at a cost!
Full disclosure, this may come across as a bit biassed, but we built our service by looking at the common complaints and flaws in others. We've taken the very latest in AI technology and built on the most robust cloud infrastructure, so we can offer the most scalable, reliable and knowledgeable call handling service out there.
It's unfair to compare CallChimps to the others in this list, because our agents can respond in depth to questions about any business that provides us with FAQs or other documentation. Gone are the days of awkward pauses, or "press 1 for..." IVR systems. Don't believe it? Check out a call recording here, or even better - sign up for a free account and test it yourself!
It's not just that the CallChimps service outshines the competition, but the use of technology enables us to do this at a fraction of the cost. Our pricing starts at £0.00 per month (30 min included) and just £0.97 per min beyond that. That's right - it's FREE (not just for the first month) for 30 min of calls. Or you can pay a little more to drop the excess call costs to just £0.27 per minute.
Okay, so let's dive into more detail then...
One of the most important points to consider for a telephone answering service is their availability. Businesses look to answering services to answer the phone when they cannot - such as managing peaks in customer demand, out-of-hours, holiday and sickness cover and everything in between.
A call service that is only available between certain times, on certain days, or has limitations on how many staff are available to pick up the phone when there's a high demand, can be a bit of a let down.
The table below shows some notable differences, probably the most significant point is Moneypenny do not offer 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year call answering as standard. This is a paid for extra, and only available on some of their tarrifs - £75 per month, or £150 per month extra each month!
| Moneypenny | AllDayPA | AnswerConnect | CallChimps | |
| 24/7/365 Call Handling | from £174 per month | from £90 per month | from £195 per month | from £0.00 per month |
Thankfully, all other service seem to manage this as standard. So, let's look at the next most important factor - how quickly do they pick up the phone?
| Moneypenny | AllDayPA | AnswerConnect | CallChimps | |
| How long to answer all calls | Not specified | 98.6% within 3 rings | 98% within 4 rings | 100% within 3 rings |
Well, in most cases people would agree that 2-3 rings implies an attentive customer service. Shorter than 2 rings can seem a bit keen and maybe artificial. More than 3 rings seems a bit slow. Moneypenny don't make any claims here (so one would assume there's a high degree of variance), AllDayPA claim to answer 98.6% within 3 rings (pretty good!) and AnswerConnect claim to answer 98% within 4 rings (a bit slow, but they do get there).
Oh, and CallChimps? Well, we don't want to brag, but we provide some customers with the flexibility to set whether calls are answered within 1, 2, 3 or 4 rings. But our default is within 3 rings, as that suits most companies best. And we answer 100% of your calls within this time. Yes, that's right - 100%.
First impressions count, so it's important that your call handlers have a cheerful and professional tone, giving your business name and asking the customer how they can help. This is a bare minimum for call handling. All services we looked at do this, but few go much further (e.g. call scripts or answering questions about the business) unless you pay for one of their higher tiers, with a dedicated team. For instance this would only be covered by AnswerConnect if you're paying for their 'Growth' tier at £250 per month.
And yes, you've guessed it, CallChimps is able to respond to questions about the business, you can create scripts or set our agents up to ask a series of questions of the caller to capture useful details (e.g. lead capture), and we do all of this on all tiers, even the FREE Business tier!
| Moneypenny | AllDayPA | AnswerConnect | CallChimps | |
| Answer questions about your business | from £174 per month | from £200+ per month | from £225 per month | from £0.00 per month |
The next most important customer interaction for virtual receptionists is information gathering. Never miss a call again, always capture detailed messages for a call back.
Asking the contact to provide details that can be used to follow up on their request. In the simplest sense, this may just result in a note being created and passed on, but some providers allow for a large number of data fields to be captured in their messages.
CallChimps excels in this regard, with extensive message taking capabilities and summarising each call (with a link to the original call recording) for ease of reference.
| Moneypenny | AllDayPA | AnswerConnect | CallChimps | |
| Message type | Handwritten call notes | Handwritten call notes | Handwritten call notes | Call summary and transcript |
All of the services compared here are priced to the nearest minute for call time, and all come with inclusive minutes in their various packages.
It's rare to see no setup fee, but CallChimps offer this for all tiers.
The efficiency of these services should make cost comparisons to hiring additional in-house staff favourable, but it's important to factor in all costs when evaluating each. For complete transparency, we have listed the cost of each for the first month below, including setup fee, monthly subscription, cost per minute (and cost per minute if you go over the allocated allowance at Moneypenny or AllDayPA).
For basic capabilities - 24/7/365 call answering and message taking
| Moneypenny | AllDayPA | AnswerConnect | CallChimps | |
| 1 hour of calls | £223.50 | £90 | £244.99 | £29.10 |
| 5 hours of calls | £661.50 | £372 | £507.49 | £261.90 |
| 10 hours of calls | £1,216.50 | £822 | £1032.49 | £552.90 |
Whilst the earlier table shows clearly that CallChimps comes in at a lower cost, we thought it might be useful to show this as a saving you'd make with CallChimps, rather than selecting an alternative in each case.
And just to really rub it in, we've also shown how many times more expensive each alternative is than CallChimps.
Moneypenny is £194.50 more expensive than CallChimps, so you'd spend 7.7x the cost if you went with Moneypenny!
AllDayPA is £231 more expensive than CallChimps, so you'd spend 9x the cost if you went with AllDayPA!
AnswerConnect is £196 more expensive than CallChimps, so you'd spend 7.8x the cost if you went with AnswerConnect!
Moneypenny is £543.70 more expensive than CallChimps, so you'd spend 5.6x the cost if you went with Moneypenny!
AllDayPA is £292.20 more expensive than CallChimps, so you'd spend 3.5x the cost if you went with AllDayPA!
AnswerConnect is £194.70 more expensive than CallChimps, so you'd spend 2.7x the cost if you went with AnswerConnect!
Moneypenny is £987.70 more expensive than CallChimps, so you'd spend 5.3x the cost if you went with Moneypenny!
AllDayPA is £631.20 more expensive than CallChimps, so you'd spend 3.8x the cost if you went with AllDayPA!
AnswerConnect is £608.70 more expensive than CallChimps, so you'd spend 3.7x the cost if you went with AnswerConnect!
Telephone answering services have traditionally taken a long time to set up, therefore came with long contracts making it difficult and expensive for a business to opt out. The world has changed though, and people expect greater flexibility, which CallChimps has ensured through our commitment to abolishing lengthy contracts and cancelation periods.
For example, CallChimps allows customers to leave our service the very next day. There is no contractual lock-in and no notice period beyond our daily billing cycle.
Interestingly, AllDayPA claim similar, but talking to existing and prospective customers of theirs, they have a 30-day contract as a minimum, with a 30 day notice period. In fact, you can see mention of this in their Trustpilot reviews here.
AnswerConnect and Moneypenny are a bit more up-front with their commitments, but Moneypenny's 3 to 6-month contracts with 1 to 3-month cancellation periods might be a bit much for many to stomach.
| Moneypenny | AllDayPA | AnswerConnect | CallChimps | |
| Minimum Contract | 3 months | 30 days | 1 month | 1 day |
| Cancellation Period | 1 month | 30 days | 1 month | 1 day |
This will make you laugh - the majority of these call answering services will want to call you to talk about pricing and service before you can get set up. Hang on, isn't receiving MORE calls something you're trying to avoid? From then it can take a few days to weeks for training and systems to be set up.
At CallChimps, we are proud of our ability to set up clients in just a few minutes, via our online form. Even supplying business FAQs and other documents, for our agents to learn from, can be done easily and securely online during the setup process.
It's important to focus on a number of red flags when looking for an answering service or virtual receptionist service. Firstly, check for poor reviews and reputation online. Poor customer support will be flagged more swiftly than customer satisfaction.
Unclear answering service pricing and plans, and high costs, as well as limited features and services could impact the ability of the answering service to meet your customers' needs.
However you evaluate the options, it's clear that CallChimps offers unbeatable value - providing more features for less cost than any of the other options in this comparison.
Whether you are looking for 24/7/365 call handling without limits on parallel call handling, or deep integration with CRM or other systems in your business, CallChimps has a solution for you at a lower cost than these alternatives.
Why not test CallChimps out on a 30-day no obligation free trial - no cancellation fees, no contractual lock-in, just test out what our Pro tier of customers receive, without paying a penny.