Industry insights
Retell AI is powerful voice infrastructure for engineering teams — but revenue teams need more. I evaluated 8 alternatives that deliver multichannel execution, CRM integration, predictable pricing, and no-code operational ownership for inbound lead conversion.
If you've been evaluating Retell AI for your revenue team, you've probably noticed the gap between what the platform promises and what it takes to actually ship a production agent. Retell is API-first voice infrastructure — powerful for engineering teams assembling custom stacks, but a heavy lift for RevOps, marketing, and sales leaders who need to convert inbound leads across voice, SMS, and email without standing up a voice engineering project.
Retell's stacked pricing (infra + LLMLarge Language Model (LLM)A machine-learning model trained on massive text data, used as the reasoning engine that drives a voice agent's understanding and responses. + TTSText-to-Speech (TTS)The system that turns the agent's generated text into spoken audio — the voice the caller actually hears. + add-ons), developer-dependent production path, and voice-only scope are the three triggers that most commonly send revenue teams looking for alternatives. G2 reviewers consistently flag the learning curve for non-technical users, pricing complexity at scale, and limited support outside of Discord.
I evaluated eight platforms that solve different parts of the problem Retell leaves open: multichannel execution, CRM-native workflows, predictable pricing, and the ability for non-engineers to ship and own production agents. Here's what I found.
Every platform was evaluated against the specific gaps revenue teams hit with Retell: the need for multichannel reach, CRMCRMThe system of record for leads, contacts, deals, and activity. Thoughtly reads from and writes to your CRM continuously. integration depth, operational ownership without engineering dependency, pricing predictability, and production readiness for inbound lead conversion workflows.
Retell is voice-only with SMS as a paid add-on and no email channel. Revenue teams converting inbound leads need voice, SMS, and email working as co-equal channels — not bolted on separately. I looked for platforms that ship multichannel natively, where a single workflowWorkflowAn automated, multi-step process — usually triggered by an event (form fill, new lead) and orchestrating one or more voice / SMS / email actions. can call a lead, send a follow-up text, and trigger an email sequence without requiring separate tools or custom integrations for each channel.
Retell pushes events via webhooks, but true two-way CRM write-back — contacts, deals, activities, call notes syncing back to Salesforce, HubSpot, or Zoho — requires custom engineering. I evaluated how deeply each platform integrates with the CRM and workflow tools revenue teams already use, and whether sync is native or a build-it-yourself project. Platforms with out-of-the-box CRM connectors that write back call outcomes and lead status without middleware scored highest.
Retell requires a developer to ship a production agent. For revenue teams, that means engineering bottlenecks, slow iteration cycles, and constant dependency for prompt changes or workflow tweaks. I prioritized platforms where marketing, sales ops, or RevOps can build, edit, and deploy agents directly — with no-code or low-code interfaces that let the team closest to the funnel own the agent without waiting on engineering sprints.
Retell stacks pricing across infra ($0.055/min), LLM ($0.006–$0.08/min), TTS ($0.015–$0.040/min), and metered add-ons for SMS, knowledge base, PIIPersonally Identifiable Information (PII)Any data that can identify an individual — name, phone, SSN, account number. Voice agents must redact and protect PII per privacy law. redaction, and denoising. Total cost requires an architect to forecast. I looked for platforms that offer bundled or all-in pricing models where a finance team can model cost without assembling a spreadsheet of provider rates. Transparent per-minute or per-plan pricing scored better than stacked à-la-carte models.
Revenue teams in regulated industries — healthcare, insurance, mortgage, financial services — need HIPAA, SOC 2, and GDPR compliance out of the box, not as a DIY project. I evaluated each platform's compliance certifications, PII handling, uptime track record, and whether enterprise-grade security is included or requires a separate engineering effort. Platforms with published compliance postures and automatic PII redaction scored highest.
| Platform | Best for | Channels | Pricing model | Key limitation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thoughtly | Revenue teams converting inbound leads | Voice + SMS + email | Bundled per plan | Best when GTM workflow is clearly defined |
| Bland AI | High-volume programmable voice campaigns | Voice (SMS/email enterprise only) | $0.11–$0.14/min all-in | Enterprise gate on key features (warm transfer, SMS) |
| Vapi | Engineering teams building custom voice apps | Voice only | $0.05/min + stacked providers | No GUI, no CRM, engineering required |
| Regal.io | B2C teams augmenting human SDR orgs with AI | Voice + SMS | Hybrid (AI + human rep) | Pricing assumes human reps in the stack |
| Synthflow | Agencies white-labeling voice agents | Voice (SMS metered) | PAYG + enterprise tiers | Built for resellers, not in-house operators |
| Voiceflow | Teams designing multi-turn conversational AI | Voice + chat + web | Free tier + $50/mo pro | Not a telephony platform — needs integration |
| Dasha AI | Developers optimizing for ultra-low latency | Voice | $0.08/min (growth) | Early-stage; limited enterprise track record |
| Conversica | AI-powered email and SMS lead nurture | Email + SMS + chat | Contact vendor | Not a voice platform — email/SMS focus |
Thoughtly is the platform built for the team that actually runs the inbound funnel. Where Retell gives you voice infrastructure primitives to assemble, Thoughtly ships a production-ready conversion engine: voice agents that call leads back within 60 seconds, SMS and email follow-up sequences triggered by call outcomes, two-way CRM sync to Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, and 200+ other tools, and a no-code builder that lets RevOps own the entire motion without filing an engineering ticket.
The platform supports 30+ languages with sub-second voice latency, branded calling, IVR with DTMF, warm transfers, and automatic PII redaction across names, addresses, dates of birth, and financial details. Compliance covers HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II, and GDPR — included, not an add-on. Thoughtly's bundled pricing means one predictable number per plan, not a spreadsheet of stacked provider rates.
Thoughtly serves high-consideration consumer industries — insurance, mortgage, healthcare, real estate, education, home services — where the job is converting the leads companies are already getting, not just making calls.
Revenue teams — RevOps, growth marketing, sales operations — that need to convert inbound leads across voice, SMS, and email without engineering dependency. Strongest fit in high-consideration consumer industries where speed-to-lead and follow-up persistence directly impact conversion rates: insurance, mortgage, healthcare, real estate, education, and home services.
Custom bundled pricing per plan. Phone numbers, concurrency, knowledge base, PII redaction, and compliance features included. No stacked per-component costs. Contact Thoughtly for specific plan details.
Bland AI positions itself as the all-in-one voice AI platform that handles every call, 24/7. With over 1.2 billion calls resolved to date, it's clearly built for volume. The platform offers all-in per-minute pricing without separate token charges or provider pass-throughs — a meaningful simplification compared to Retell's stacked model. Bland's conversation builder lets teams design structured call flows, and its voice cloning and custom voice actor capabilities are genuine differentiators for brand-consistent voice experiences.
Where Bland differs from Retell most sharply is in its enterprise-forward approach: forward-deployed engineering teams work directly with customers to build and optimize deployments, SOC 2 Type I/II and HIPAA-eligible compliance, and a 28-day deployment framework for enterprise rollouts. The platform is trusted by 250+ enterprises.
The challenge for revenue teams: Bland's most valuable features — warm transfers, live transfers, SMS, appointment scheduling, guardrails, and outcomes — are gated behind the Enterprise plan. Self-serve tiers (Start at $0.14/min, Build at $0.12/min, Scale at $0.11/min) handle basic voice, but the operational features needed for lead conversion workflows require an enterprise contract.
Engineering-resourced teams running high-volume outbound or inbound voice campaigns where voice is the primary (or only) channel. Best when you can commit to an enterprise plan that unlocks the operational features, and have technical staff to manage agent behavior and edge cases.
Self-serve: Start ($0.14/min), Build ($0.12/min), Scale ($0.11/min) — all-in per-minute with no platform fee. Enterprise: custom pricing with forward-deployed engineering, unlimited concurrency, and full feature access.
Vapi is the developer-first voice AI platform that raised $50M in Series B funding to power enterprise voice AI at scale. If Retell is an API-first toolkit, Vapi is the even more developer-centric alternative — a thin orchestration layer where you bring your own LLM, STTSpeech-to-Text (STT)The system that turns the caller's speech into text the agent can reason over., TTS, and telephony, then wire it all together via API. The $0.05/min platform fee is the cheapest entry point in the voice AI space, but the actual total cost depends entirely on which providers you choose for each component.
Vapi's strength is maximum flexibility and provider agnosticism. Teams can swap LLMs, voice engines, and telephony providers without rebuilding their integration — useful for engineering shops optimizing for cost, latency, or specific model capabilities. The platform supports lead qualification, appointment scheduling, and customer support use cases, and the developer experience is widely regarded as one of the best in the category.
The trade-off for revenue teams is clear: Vapi has no GUI, no CRM integration, no marketer-friendly surface, and no workflow engine. Everything beyond the voice orchestration layer — CRM sync, attribution, follow-up sequences, compliance — is your engineering team's responsibility to build and maintain.
Engineering teams building custom voice applications where maximum provider flexibility and cost optimization matter more than time-to-value. Best when your team can staff ongoing integration maintenance, CRM sync, and compliance as separate engineering workstreams.
Usage-based starting at $0.05/min platform fee. LLM, STT, TTS, and telephony costs are separate and depend on chosen providers. Volume discounts available on enterprise plans.
Regal.io started as an outbound dialer for human SDR teams — call coaching, conversation intelligence, agent-assist tooling designed to make human reps more productive. When the AI wave arrived, Regal layered AI Phone Agents on top of that foundation. The result is a hybrid platform built for contact center leaders who want AI to handle overflow and routine calls while human reps take high-intent conversations.
For revenue teams already running human SDR or BDR organizations, Regal is a legitimate option. The platform supports branded calling, journey-based orchestration, and integrates with CCaaS systems like Five9 and Genesys that contact centers already use. Regal's AI agents can qualify leads, set appointments, and hand off warm to human reps — a natural fit for teams that aren't ready to fully replace their human workforce.
The limitation is structural: Regal's pricing, architecture, and feature set assume a hybrid human + AI motion. If your goal is AI-first lead conversion without human-rep overhead, you're paying for infrastructure and workflows designed around a staffing model you don't need.
B2C revenue teams with existing human SDR or contact center operations who want to augment — not replace — their workforce with AI. Strongest when the organization has a VP of CX or contact center director with budget for hybrid rep + AI tooling and an existing CCaaS investment.
Contact Regal.io for pricing. The model is built around hybrid AI + human-agent deployment — expect pricing that reflects both sides of the motion.
Synthflow positions itself as an enterprise-ready voice AI platform with in-house telephony and a proven deployment framework. The company has built a strong agency ecosystem: its $2,000/month white-label add-on lets consultancies resell voice agents under their own brand to downstream clients. Synthflow's compliance posture is among the strongest in the category — SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, and ISO 27001 certifications are all in place.
The platform offers a flow designer for visual agent building, knowledge base integration, and action-based workflows. Voice quality claims sub-100ms latency, and the platform supports custom voice cloning as an add-on. For agencies evaluating Retell alternatives, Synthflow's combination of white-label capability, compliance breadth, and visual design tools makes it a natural fit.
For in-house revenue teams, the fit is less clear. Synthflow's marquee features and pricing tiers are shaped around the reseller motion. SMS is metered against voice minutes (5 SMS = 1 voice minute), email isn't a native channel, and the product's design center is the agency productizing voice for clients — not the operator converting their own inbound leads.
Agencies and consultancies looking to white-label voice AI agents for their own clients. Also fits in-house teams where voice is the only required channel, compliance breadth (especially ISO 27001 or PCI) is a hard procurement requirement, and the agency-style pricing model works.
Pay-as-you-go and enterprise tiers with contact-sales motion. White-label add-on is $2,000/month. Pricing estimator available on the website for custom configurations.
Voiceflow is a conversational AI design and deployment platform that won a 2026 Best Software Award from G2 for Agentic AI. Unlike the other platforms on this list, Voiceflow isn't primarily a telephony product — it's a visual conversation builder that lets teams design, prototype, test, and deploy AI agents across voice, chat, and web channels. The platform provides a canvas-based workflow editor where teams map conversation flows visually, manage knowledge bases, and connect to external APIs.
Voiceflow's strength is conversation design. Teams use it to build complex multi-turn dialog flows, A/B test conversation branches, manage intents and entities, and prototype agent behavior before connecting to a telephony provider. For revenue teams that need sophisticated conversation logic — branching qualification paths, dynamic objection handling, multi-step booking flows — Voiceflow provides more design control than most voice-first platforms.
The limitation: Voiceflow is not a phone system. To actually make or receive calls, you need to integrate Voiceflow with a telephony provider (TwilioTwilioA cloud communications platform widely used as the carrier layer for voice and SMS. Thoughtly supports Twilio for inbound and outbound traffic., Vonage, etc.) and handle the voice infrastructure separately. This makes it a strong complement to simpler telephony tools but adds integration complexity compared to all-in-one platforms.
Product and design teams building sophisticated conversational AI experiences that need to deploy across multiple channels. Best for organizations that already have telephony infrastructure and need a better conversation design layer, or teams prototyping agent behavior before committing to a full voice platform.
Free tier available. Pro at $50/month. Teams and Enterprise tiers for larger deployments with custom pricing. Telephony costs are separate through your chosen provider.
Dasha AI claims the #1 ranking on voicebenchmark.ai, reporting 1,091ms end-to-end response time versus Vapi's 2,679ms — a 59% speed advantage. With nearly 488 million calls powered to date, the platform is built for developers who prioritize voice latency and natural conversation flow above all else. Dasha offers both a REST API for quick integration and a DashaScript SDK for fine-grained conversation control.
The platform's approach gives developers granular control: custom conversation scripts, real-time speech processing, and the ability to scale to 10,000 concurrent calls per agent. For engineering teams building voice-heavy products where milliseconds matter — think high-frequency call operations, real-time booking systems, or latency-sensitive customer interactions — Dasha's speed claims are compelling.
For revenue teams, the trade-offs mirror Vapi's but with an even stronger developer focus. There's no no-code builder for non-technical users, limited documentation on CRM integrations, and the platform's enterprise track record is still developing compared to more established alternatives.
Engineering teams building latency-sensitive voice applications where response speed is a competitive differentiator. Best for teams with existing VoIP infrastructure who want the fastest conversation engine and can build the CRM, workflow, and compliance layers themselves.
Developer: Free (1,000 minutes, 1 concurrent call). Growth: Starting at $0.08/min (unlimited concurrent calls, 99.99% uptime SLA). Enterprise: Custom pricing with dedicated infrastructure, premium support, and custom SLAs.
Conversica takes a fundamentally different approach from Retell and most platforms on this list. Instead of voice-first AI agents, Conversica builds AI-powered digital assistants that engage leads through email, SMS, and chat conversations. The platform's Revenue Digital Assistants autonomously reach out to leads, nurture them through multi-touch sequences, detect buying intent, and hand off qualified conversations to human sales reps.
For revenue teams where the primary conversion motion is email and text-based — think long-cycle B2B sales, education enrollment, or financial services where leads need nurturing over weeks — Conversica fills a gap that voice-first platforms don't address. The platform integrates with major CRMs (Salesforce, HubSpot) and marketing automation tools, and its AI is trained on billions of real customer interactions to detect intent signals and optimize follow-up timing.
The limitation is the mirror image of Retell's: where Retell is voice-only, Conversica is email/SMS/chat-only. If your conversion motion requires phone calls — immediate lead callback, real-time qualification, appointment booking via voice — Conversica isn't a replacement for Retell. It's a complement.
Revenue teams where email and SMS are the primary lead engagement channels — B2B sales, education enrollment, financial services lead nurture. Best as a complement to a voice platform for teams that need the full multichannel stack, or as a standalone solution for teams where phone-based outreach isn't the primary motion.
Contact Conversica for pricing. Enterprise-oriented with annual contracts. Not publicly listed.
The right alternative depends on who owns the agent, what channels matter, and how much engineering you're willing to commit.
The three most common triggers are Retell's stacked pricing model (infra + LLM + TTS + add-ons make total cost hard to forecast), the developer dependency for production deployment (non-engineers cannot ship or modify agents without engineering support), and the voice-only scope (SMS and email require additional tools). G2 reviewers also flag the learning curve for complex workflows and limited support options on lower tiers.
Yes. Some teams use Retell for specific engineering-led voice applications while running a platform like Thoughtly or Conversica for the broader revenue workflow. This is common during migration — you can run both in parallel, route different lead segments to each platform, and transition fully once the alternative proves out in production.
Thoughtly and Synthflow both offer no-code visual builders. Thoughtly is designed for in-house revenue teams with a full multichannel stack. Synthflow is designed for agencies with a white-label resale model. Voiceflow offers strong visual design tools but requires separate telephony integration. Bland, Vapi, and Dasha all require engineering involvement.
Retell's pricing stacks across infra ($0.055/min), LLM ($0.006–$0.08/min), TTS ($0.015–$0.040/min), and metered add-ons — total cost ranges from roughly $0.07 to $0.31/min depending on configuration. Bland AI offers all-in pricing at $0.11–$0.14/min. Vapi's platform fee is $0.05/min plus stacked provider costs. Dasha starts at $0.08/min plus VoIP and LLM tokens. Thoughtly, Regal, and Conversica use custom/contact-sales pricing models.
For regulated industries (healthcare, insurance, financial services, mortgage), look for HIPAA with BAA, SOC 2 Type II, and GDPR at minimum. Synthflow has the broadest certification set (adding PCI DSS and ISO 27001). Thoughtly covers HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II, and GDPR with automatic PII redaction. Retell offers HIPAA only. Evaluate each platform's specific compliance documentation against your regulatory requirements.
Thoughtly vs Retell comparison page — thoughtly.com/compare/thoughtly-vs-retell
Retell AI G2 reviews — g2.com/products/retell-ai/reviews
Retell AI pricing — retellai.com/pricing
Bland AI pricing and plans — bland.ai/pricing
Vapi pricing — vapi.ai/pricing
Dasha AI pricing — dasha.ai
Voiceflow platform — voiceflow.com
Thoughtly product overview — thoughtly.com/product
Thoughtly integrations — thoughtly.com/integrations
11 Best AI VoiceAI voiceAn artificially generated, natural-sounding voice produced by a TTS model. Thoughtly supports a library of AI voices and brand-specific cloning. Agents for Lead Generation in 2026 — thoughtly.com/blog/11-best-ai-voice-agents-for-lead-generation
