An honest comparison series By James Mulholland Updated May 2026
Compare AI receptionists. Four honest comparisons, signed by the founder.
Four vendors UK service businesses shortlist alongside Clevaa: Moneypenny (the human-PA incumbent, since 2000), EBI.ai (the IBM-Watson-lineage enterprise platform, since 2014), Yomdel (the managed live-chat service for UK estate agents, since 2012), and Tidio (the e-commerce live-chat and chatbot platform, since 2013). Each comparison is written by James Mulholland, CEO of Clevaa, with public sources for every concrete claim. Clevaa is EU-hosted on Hetzner Germany and fully crawlable by AI assistants, where several managed incumbents block them.
- 4 pages live
- UK service businesses
- Public sources
- Updated May 2026
Four honest comparisons, side by side.
Click the page that matches your shortlist. Deeper reading lives below.
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Moneypenny
Est. 2000
UK telephone answering & live chat.
- 1,000+ trained receptionists
- 24/7 phone cover
- Quote-only pricing
- English only
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EBI.ai
Est. 2014
Enterprise AI conversation platform.
- 7,000+ businesses
- Built for big orgs
- Configuration required
- Custom pricing
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Yomdel
Est. 2012
UK-managed live chat for estate agents.
- 2,500+ UK agencies
- Human agents, not AI
- Per-branch fees
- English only
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Tidio
Est. 2013
E-commerce live chat and chatbot.
- 300,000+ businesses
- AI priced per conversation
- Built for online stores
- Chat only, no voice
How we picked, wrote, and update these.
A comparison page is only useful when it tells you what each tool actually does, in your context, with sources you can verify.
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Public sources only
Every concrete claim is anchored to a public URL: vendor site, gov.uk Contracts Finder, Companies House, ICO Register, or a third-party listing. No private intel, no leaked emails.
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Same criteria across all four
10 anatomy rows, 10 feature rows, 6 use-cases per page, written so a UK SMB buyer can scan in under a minute.
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Where they win, named
Each page surfaces 2 to 3 things the other vendor genuinely does better than Clevaa. UK ASA CAP rules require fair comparison. Buyers read past the puff anyway.
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Updated when we notice
Pricing, language counts and customer stats are dated against the public source on the day each page was written. Spot a stale fact? Email hi@clevaa.com.
Vendors we deliberately did not include, and why
- Drift / Intercom Enterprise SaaS-marketing intent. Different buyer, different price band.
- Smith.ai US-anchored receptionist. UK GDPR posture less clear; not a typical UK SMB shortlist.
Looking for a specific fit?
Match by the thing that matters most to you, then read the matching comparison.
- You want real humans answering inbound calls
- Moneypenny is the honest pick. Read our take to see when Clevaa makes sense alongside.
- You're evaluating a UK enterprise AI conversation platform
- EBI.ai is the long-lineage option. Clevaa is the SMB-focused one.
- You run a UK estate agency and want a managed chat service
- Yomdel is the managed default. Clevaa is the AI-first alternative.
- You run an online store and want chat that recovers carts
- Tidio is the e-commerce pick. Clevaa is the receptionist for service businesses.
- You run a New Zealand tour operator currently evaluating Yonder
- Read the Yonder comparison from the NZ-tourism playbook. Honest both ways.
- You want a single AI receptionist across voice, text, and 13 languages
- That's Clevaa. Start a free trial or talk to us.
Questions about these comparisons
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Who writes these comparison pages?
James Mulholland writes the long-form comparison pages himself. He is CEO of Clevaa and runs Revenuru Ltd, the company behind it. The point of a first-party comparison is that it's signed by the operator, not delegated to an outsourced content team. If you disagree with any claim on these pages, email hi@clevaa.com and we'll fix it.
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How current are the public-fact claims?
Pricing, language counts, and feature claims for each competitor are dated against the public source on the day each page was written, and noted on the comparison rows where the value is most likely to move. We update when we notice changes or when a reader tells us a fact has shifted. If you spot a stale number, email hi@clevaa.com and we'll fix the page and date the update.
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Why is the Where they win section always there?
Three reasons. UK ASA CAP rules require fair comparison, not selective. Google's HCU and E-E-A-T updates penalise content written for SEO over readers. And buyers read past the puff anyway, so being honest about trade-offs builds more trust than any superlative.
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Do you take affiliate fees from any of these vendors?
No. There are no referral or affiliate fees on these pages. We compare against vendors we lose deals to, not vendors we monetise.
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Written by James Mulholland CEO, Clevaa Updated May 2026