Moneypenny vs AllDayPA vs AnswerConnect: what each one actually publishes

The short answer

Moneypenny, AllDayPA and AnswerConnect are three established UK answering services that all put people on the phone. On 5 September 2026, only one of them published anything close to a usable rate. Moneypenny advertises an AI receptionist from £25 a month and quotes for its human service. AnswerConnect advertises from £45 a month and shows its plans only after you enter your details. AllDayPA publishes no prices at all.

That makes a straight price comparison between the three impossible without three phone calls, which is the single most useful thing to know before you start. What you can compare is who answers, what you commit to, and how quickly each will tell you a number.

What each one publishes

Checked at source on 5 September 2026 against each company's own pages.

Voco is in that table because this article is published by Voco, and leaving it out would be the more dishonest choice. Treat the comparison accordingly.

Moneypenny in detail

The best known of the three, and the only one selling both a human service and its own AI receptionist.

What they publish. The AI receptionist page states you can get started from £25 a month, and that the product is built on the 180 million calls the business has handled for clients. That is a real advantage over an AI trained on generic data, and it is the lowest published entry price of any provider we have checked.

What they do not publish. Everything past the entry figure. Their telephone answering FAQ says pricing is flexible and based on your call volumes and hours of coverage, and asks you to get in touch for a quote.

The commitment. Their own FAQ is unusually clear here, and it is worth reading before the price. Smaller telephone answering schemes, those with 150 inclusive minutes and below, carry a minimum contract of three months, with one month's notice to close the account after that. Larger schemes require a six or twelve-month commitment with three months' notice to terminate.

Who it suits. Businesses that want scale and a recognised name, that may want to move between human and AI answering with one supplier, and for whom a minimum term is not an obstacle. More detail on the Moneypenny comparison page.

AllDayPA in detail

The longest established of the three and the most private about pricing.

What they publish. On price, nothing. Their pricing packages page carries no figures, only "Get A Quote" and the line "Pay per call/per minute, you choose". Their virtual receptionist page says every plan is tailored, with features such as setup, scripting, dedicated numbers and Virtual Office app access available "depending on your quote".

The scale is real. Operating since 1999 from Salford, they state they have handled over 500 million calls for more than 26,000 clients, backed by a £15m investment in call handling technology spread across three separate contact centres so the service survives a failure at any one of them. That is operational resilience a younger company cannot claim.

The billing choice is genuinely useful. Letting you pick between per-call and per-minute billing is more flexible than most. Per call suits businesses whose calls run long, because a six-minute booking costs the same as a thirty-second one. Per minute suits short calls. The crossover sits around the two-minute mark, so count last month's calls and their average length before you choose.

Who it suits. Businesses that value a long track record and multi-site resilience, and that are comfortable having a conversation before they can compare. More on the AllDayPA comparison page.

AnswerConnect in detail

The clearest positioning of the three, and the most consistent about it.

What they publish. A promotional line, "Get started for only £45/month". Beyond that, both the pricing page and the "See pricing" section of the homepage ask for your name, email and phone number before showing you any plans.

The positioning. "Always people, not bots" is their own wording, repeated across the site, alongside "Real people, 24/7". They answer 24 hours a day with UK-based live answering, and they do not hedge on the human question the way providers adding AI products tend to. If that is what you want, you are not going to be talked out of it halfway through the contract.

Who it suits. Businesses that specifically want people rather than software, at any hour, and that are willing to hand over contact details to see a price. More on the AnswerConnect comparison page.

The comparison you cannot make, and what to do instead

You cannot rank these three on price from their websites. Two publish a starting figure that tells you almost nothing, one publishes nothing at all, and none publishes the two numbers that actually determine your bill: the included allowance and the overage rate.

So do this instead. Work out your own number first, then make them compete against it rather than against each other.

1. Count last month's calls and their average length. Not an estimate. Most businesses guess high on volume and low on duration.

2. Work out your out-of-hours share. The proportion arriving outside your opening hours is usually higher than expected, and it is where human plans get expensive.

3. Ask all three for the same four things in writing: the per-minute or per-call rate, the monthly minimum, the out-of-hours rate, and the notice period.

4. Compare the quotes at your volume, not at their headline. A £25 entry price and a £45 entry price mean nothing until you know what each includes.

How quickly each provider answers that request tells you something useful in itself about what working with them will be like.

Commitment: the difference nobody advertises

Price gets the attention and the notice period does the damage. Of the three, only Moneypenny publishes its terms, and they range from a three-month minimum on smaller schemes to a twelve-month commitment with three months' notice on larger ones. AllDayPA and AnswerConnect do not publish theirs at all.

Ask for the minimum term and the notice period before you ask for the price. A lower rate on a twelve-month commitment is a different product from a slightly higher rate you can leave in a month, and the difference only becomes obvious at the point you want out.

Where an AI-first service changes the maths

All three of these put people on the phone, and for some businesses that settles it. A caller who needs to be heard rather than processed, an enquiry that fits no script, a situation where judgement matters more than speed: a person handles those better, and no per-minute rate makes up for it.

Where AI changes the arithmetic is in the shape of the cost rather than the size of it. Voco charges 29p a minute ex VAT with no monthly fee and no contract, billed by the minute and rounded up to the whole minute. On Voco's observed data the average billed call runs about 1.9 minutes, so a typical call costs around 55p. A quiet month costs close to nothing, because there is no minimum to pay whether the phone rings or not.

Three structural differences follow, and they hold whatever the competitors' rates turn out to be. There is no monthly minimum, so seasonal and unpredictable volume is not penalised. There is no contract, so nothing to give notice on. And every call is answered at once rather than queued, which matters most during the events that generate call spikes in the first place.

What Voco does not do is build a relationship with a regular caller the way a named PA does, and an unusual call still needs a route to a person. If your callers expect a person, these three are answering a need Voco is not.

Switching: what to ask for in writing

1. Your notice period and the earliest date you can leave. Get it from your current provider before you talk to anyone new.

2. Number porting. Whether your number moves, how long it takes, and whether it costs anything.

3. Your call data. What happens to recordings and transcripts when you leave, and how quickly they are deleted.

4. Overlap. Whether you can run both services for a fortnight while you test, and what that costs.

5. The script. Who writes it, how long it takes to get right, and what happens in the first week while it is being tuned.

Common questions

Which is cheapest, Moneypenny, AllDayPA or AnswerConnect?

Nobody can tell you from their websites. Moneypenny publishes £25 a month for its AI receptionist, AnswerConnect advertises from £45, and AllDayPA publishes nothing, and none of them publishes the included allowance or the overage rate. Get all three to quote at your actual call volume and compare those figures instead.

Does Moneypenny publish its prices?

Partly. Its AI receptionist page states you can get started from £25 a month. Its human telephone answering service publishes no rate card, and the FAQ asks you to get in touch for a quote based on your call volumes and hours.

What are Moneypenny's contract terms?

Their FAQ states a minimum contract of three months on schemes with 150 inclusive minutes and below, with one month's notice thereafter. Larger schemes require a six or twelve-month commitment with three months' notice to terminate. Checked 5 September 2026.

Why can I not see AnswerConnect's prices?

Their plans are shown after you enter your name, email and phone number, on both the pricing page and the homepage. The only figure visible without doing that is a promotional "from £45 a month".

Does AllDayPA charge per call or per minute?

Either, and they let you choose. Their own wording is "Pay per call/per minute, you choose". Per call suits businesses whose calls run long; per minute suits short calls. The crossover is around two minutes of average call length.

Are there alternatives to these three?

Yes. JAM publishes from £35 a month with 24/7 human PAs, Face for Business publishes a full rate card from £49, and AI-first services including Voco publish per-minute rates. There is a fuller list in our UK virtual receptionist comparison.

Is a human answering service worth the extra cost?

It depends entirely on what your callers need. If the first conversation is where the relationship starts, or if enquiries are few and high value, a person is worth paying for. If your calls are repeatable and the job is to capture the enquiry and book it, the cost difference is harder to justify.

What should I ask before signing with any of them?

Four things, in writing: the per-minute or per-call rate, the monthly minimum, the out-of-hours rate, and the notice period. Those four determine your bill and your exit, and only one of the three publishes any of them.

How often do these prices change?

Often enough that you should check. Everything on this page was read on each company's own site on 5 September 2026, and quoted figures are entry prices rather than what you would pay at volume.

Where can I compare costs on my own numbers?

Work out what your missed calls are costing first with the missed call calculator, then read Voco's published rate on the pay as you go page and put it next to the quotes you collect. There is more on how the pricing models differ in our guide to UK answering service pricing.

All competitor figures in this article were read on each company's own public pages on 5 September 2026, and the product each figure refers to is named. Providers change prices without notice, so verify before you buy. Published by Voco, which is included in the comparison above.