Phonely vs Retell.ai: full comparison guide (2025)

Phonely AI bills itself as a half-price, real-time, human-sounding receptionist, but in practice its $45–$900/month tiers hide gates around voice cloning, advanced analytics, and telemarketing workflows, forcing you into Growth or Agency plans just to unlock basic follow-up features. The voice quality can still wobble into robotic stress when handles complex queries, and “0s time to lead” claims evaporate once you factor in the manual routing tweaks and context-handoff hiccups that surface in real deployments. Integrations are limited to Google Calendar, Zapier, and a handful of CRM connectors—anything custom means wrestling with their sparse API docs—while the dashboard feels cluttered and the documentation skimpy. For companies seeking a truly plug-and-play AI receptionist, Phonely delivers half the promise but twice the maintenance.