Vendor voice AI, or an open framework?
Packaged voice agents are quick and genuinely good. The question is what happens in year two, when the per-minute price changes or you want the agent to do something the product does not do.
The comparison, without the marketing
Every row is something we have actually been asked in a scoping call.
| Packaged vendor product | Betr | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to first call | Days. That is the real advantage. | Two to four weeks including tuning on our own line first |
| Per-minute cost | Set by the vendor and revisable by them | Model and telephony at cost; the framework itself is free |
| Licence of the core | Proprietary | Apache-2.0 for LiveKit Agents, open source for Pipecat |
| Changing telephony provider | Usually means changing product | Portable. The agent moves; your number stays. |
| Custom behaviour | What the product exposes | Whatever you can specify, since the pipeline is yours |
| Where your call data sits | The vendor's infrastructure | Infrastructure you control |
| Who fixes a bad call | A support ticket | Us, against transcripts we can read line by line |
| Sensible when | You want to test whether voice AI works for you at all | You have decided it does and want it to be an asset |
When the other option is the right one
A comparison page that never recommends the alternative is an advertisement, not a comparison.
Packaged vendor product wins when
- You want to find out cheaply whether callers accept an AI agent at all
- Call volume is low enough that per-minute pricing never bites
- You have no appetite for owning any part of the stack
If two of those are true of you, do that instead. We would rather tell you now than take a deposit for something that will not pay for itself.
We win when
- Voice is a core channel and you expect volume to grow
- You want to keep your phone numbers and your provider options open
- The agent needs to reach into your job system, not just take a message
If two of those are true, the build usually pays for itself inside a year. You can check that yourself on the instant scope page.
What this looks like as a build
Priced on the page, and you can add them to a scope without talking to anyone.
AI Receptionist (Open Framework)
Audio streams into transcription, a bounded language model decides what to say next, speech comes back, and the...
AI Outbound Follow-Up Calls
Audio streams into transcription, a bounded language model decides what to say next, speech comes back, and the...
Call Summary into the Customer Record
Documents and photos come in, structured fields come out, and anything the model is not confident about is...
Know which way you are leaning?
Price the build yourself first. If the number does not work, you have saved us both a call.