What does Heyhannah actually do?

Hannah is an AI receptionist for your business. She answers every call and message 24/7, asks the right questions about the job, and sends you the lead on WhatsApp within seconds, so you never lose an enquiry because you couldn't pick up. If you need a website, we build and run one for you as part of the package.

R1,999 a month with 100 minutes of calls included, or R23,988 a year with 150 minutes a month. Extra minutes are R6 each and Hannah never stops answering. A website is included if you need one, and busier businesses can ask us for a package with more minutes.

How does call forwarding work?

You forward your existing mobile number to your Heyhannah number by dialling a few short codes on your phone. It takes about three minutes and works on all the major South African networks; rain is the one exception, so talk to us first if you're on it. When you're available, turn forwarding off and answer calls yourself. When you're busy, turn it on and Hannah handles everything.

Does it sound like a real person?

She holds a normal conversation rather than reading a script: she answers with your business name, listens, asks follow-up questions about the job, and reads the details back to check she got them right. If she mishears something she asks again instead of guessing.

What happens during load shedding?

Heyhannah runs in the cloud, so it keeps answering calls even when your office has no power. This is one of the biggest advantages: you never miss a call due to load shedding again. WhatsApp summaries are delivered over mobile data.

Can it handle Afrikaans callers?

Ja. Hannah can run entirely in Afrikaans: she greets your callers in Afrikaans and understands them in Afrikaans, not just English with an accent. We set your language when we set your account up, and each Hannah answers in one language, so tell us which one your customers actually phone in.

How is this different from a normal answering service?

An answering service takes a message, usually charged per call and often only during business hours. Hannah answers every hour of the day and actually qualifies leads: she asks what they need, when, and how to reach them, and you get a structured WhatsApp message, not a vague callback note. A full-time receptionist doing the same job averages R7,865 a month for office hours alone (Indeed, September 2026).

What about data privacy?

Heyhannah is fully POPIA compliant. We don't collect ID numbers, bank details, or other sensitive information. Call data is stored securely and you can request deletion at any time.

How does billing work?

Pay monthly or yearly. Monthly has no contract: you're billed when you sign up and then each month, and you can cancel anytime. Yearly is paid once for 12 months and renews each year, with an email reminder well before it does. Hannah can be answering your calls within 24 hours of you finishing setup, and if you're not happy in your first 30 days, tell us and we refund your first payment in full, monthly or yearly.

What an AI receptionist, a part-time receptionist and voicemail actually cost

By André Bergan, 2026-10-07

There are really three ways to handle the calls you can't get to on site: let them ring out, pay someone to answer, or get an AI receptionist to do it for you. People usually assume the order of cost runs voicemail, then a part-time receptionist, then an AI receptionist, cheapest to most expensive. When you actually do the sums it doesn't hold up. Here's what each one really costs a small South African business every month.

Doing nothing costs nothing, until it doesn't

Letting the phone ring out or go to voicemail has no invoice attached to it, so it feels free. It isn't. Every call that rings out and doesn't call back is an enquiry you already spent time or marketing money getting, gone to the next business that picked up.

I worked through the actual maths on this in an earlier post: a small business missing five calls a week, closing a quarter of the ones it does answer, on jobs worth R3,000 each, is quietly giving up close to R16,000 a month. That number moves a lot depending on your job value, so if you want your own figure rather than mine, our missed call calculator takes about a minute.

The point for this post is simpler: "free" only means free of an invoice. It is almost never free of lost work.

A part-time receptionist is cheaper than people think, and narrower than people think

Say you bring someone on for four hours a day, five days a week, just to answer the phone and take messages. At R70 an hour, that's roughly 87 hours a month, so about R6,000 before UIF, before the odd day they're sick or on leave, and before the time it takes you to train them on your prices, your service areas and which jobs you actually want to take. That's a rough number to illustrate the shape of it, not a market survey, your area and your rate will move it.

What that R6,000 buys you is business hours, Monday to Friday. It doesn't buy you evenings, it doesn't buy you Saturday mornings, and those are exactly the times homeowners have a spare minute to deal with a leaking geyser or a quote they've been putting off. It also doesn't buy you someone who already knows every job you've got on the go, unless you spend time keeping them updated.

A full-time receptionist fixes the hours problem and costs a lot more for it. Most small trades businesses I talk to aren't at the size where those sums work yet.

An AI receptionist, and what the invoice actually says

Hannah costs R1,999 a month for 100 included minutes, VAT excluded, no contract, cancel anytime. That's about R66 a day, whatever day of the week it is, because she doesn't take weekends or evenings off. If you go over your minutes, it's R6 a minute after that, rounded up, and you're never cut off mid-call because of it. It just shows up on the next invoice.

For context, a typical enquiry call, where Hannah asks what the job is, where it is and takes your caller's number, runs a few minutes. So 100 minutes covers a fair number of enquiries. If you're a high-volume business, look at your own call log before you assume it covers you.

What's included in the R1,999 that isn't in the part-time receptionist's R6,000: every hour of every day, no sick leave, and a website if you need one, built into the same price rather than a second quote. Instead of training someone, you fill in a setup form once with your services, your areas and your hours. If you're not happy within 30 days of your first payment, that first month is refunded in full, so trying it costs you a month rather than a decision you're stuck with.

Side by side

Voicemail: no monthly cost, but you're carrying the full cost of every missed job, which is usually far more than any receptionist.
Part-time receptionist: around R6,000 a month for business hours only, plus training time, plus whatever you lose outside those hours.
AI receptionist: R1,999 a month for 100 minutes, covering every hour, with a website included and the first month refundable if it isn't working for you.

What surprised me when I first did these sums is the hours, more than the price. The AI receptionist is the only one of the three that covers evenings and weekends, which is when a lot of homeowners finally get round to phoning.

If you want to see what that looks like for your own business, our AI receptionist page has a real call you can listen to, and the pricing without any of the guesswork above.