Alternatives
Voiceflow alternatives
This one is a fork rather than a list, and getting the fork wrong wastes your afternoon. Voiceflow is used to build two quite different things, and almost every page ranking for this search assumes you were building the first. Answer the question below and skip the half that is not yours.
What this page is based on
Voiceflow has roughly 111 reviews on G2. That is enough to notice recurring themes and not enough to be categorical, and the pricing situation is worse: Voiceflow no longer publishes prices at all, so the figures here are historical and labelled as such.
Prices checked: 26 August 2026. Voiceflow sets its own prices and can change them without telling us.
If you were building a phone agent, go here
Answered first and without hedging, because it is the larger half of this search and we are not a candidate for it. Formala is not a phone system. It does not answer a telephone number, it does not dial out, and its voice feature is a microphone inside a website chat.
For outbound calling, IVR or anything answering a real phone line, look at VAPI, Bland, Retell or Synthflow. Those are the products for that job and none of what follows applies to you.
If you were building a website chat agent
This is the branch nobody serves properly. Voiceflow is a build platform, so a website assistant is a project: somebody designs the flow, tests it, and is still there six months later when a price changes and the branch that quoted it needs finding. For a business without that person, a build platform is not a cheaper option, it is an unfinished one.
Formala is the finished version of what most people were building. It answers from what you already wrote, books into your calendar, and hands over to a person when one is needed, none of which you assemble.
Two Voiceflow mechanics are worth naming because they surprise people. Editors are priced individually, so a team is the plan plus the seats rather than the plan. And when credits run out the agent stops responding until the next cycle, with no mid-cycle top-up.
| Plan | Price | Included |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $19 /mo | 150 conversations |
| Growth | $39 /mo | 400 conversations |
| Pro | $79 /mo | 1,000 conversations |
| Business | $149 /mo | 2,500 conversations |
One price, and every core feature on it
Starter at $19 /mo for 150 conversations, Growth at $39 /mo for 400 conversations, Pro at $79 /mo for 1,000 conversations, Business at $149 /mo for 2,500 conversations. 2 months free paid annually. Nothing multiplies by the number of people who log in, nothing meters the answers, and there are no credits to convert before you can work out what a month costs.
A real shared inbox
Several people on the same leads from Growth upward, several live chats at once, and presence so you can see who is on the site right now. Step into any conversation and the assistant goes quiet until you hand it back. Search it, filter by priority, export it.
Messages that survive somebody leaving
A visitor can write to a named person rather than into a void, get the reply by email, and pick the thread back up later. No account, no password, no portal to log into.
A help center that answers for you
A help center you write feeds the assistant's answers, so replies come from your own documentation rather than a short FAQ list, and visitors can browse and read those articles themselves in the widget.
Booking into the calendar you already keep
Google Calendar or Outlook directly. Real free times offered inside the chat, and the appointment written back into your own diary. No third scheduling account to open and keep in sync.
Photos the assistant reads, documents you receive
A visitor can send photos and PDFs, up to ten megabytes each, with nothing to build first. The assistant reads the photos and answers about what it can see. A PDF reaches you on the lead, but the assistant does not open it, so it will tell the visitor a file arrived rather than pretend to have read it.
Voice, on any plan
A microphone in the chat, bought as an add-on on top of whichever plan you are on. The visitor talks, hears the answer read back, and can go back to typing. There is one voice, the same for every business using Formala; it is not a choice.
The badge comes off on the cheapest paid plan
Removing "Powered by Formala" is included from $19 a month, billed monthly upward. It is what a free account pays with rather than an add-on to resell.
One line of code on the site you already have. 30 days free, no card.
What Formala does not do
- No ticket status or lifecycle. A conversation is a conversation, not an object that moves through states.
- No SLAs, and nothing measuring a response against one.
- No saved replies or macros.
- No assignment or routing rules. Everyone on the account sees the same inbox.
- No agent performance reporting.
Those matter when several people answer against targets and somebody reports on it. If that is your week, the referrals below are better answers than we are, and the rest of this page will not change that.
Phone agents, outbound calling and IVR
Purpose-built for telephony, which Formala is not and does not pretend to be.
- VAPI
- Bland
- Retell
- Synthflow
If you ship agents for clients, stay on a build platform
Versioning, staging, testing and API deployment are the category difference, and it is not close: Formala has no concept of a staging version of your assistant and no way to deploy one agent to twenty customers. Multi-step logic and mid-conversation API calls, model-level control across providers, and the most configurable file uploads in this set are all real reasons to stay.
- Voiceflow
- Botpress
Side by side
A dot marks a row where Formala is ahead. Rows where Voiceflow is ahead carry no marker either way.
| What is being compared | Voiceflow | Formala |
|---|---|---|
| Current pricing | By quoteVoiceflow no longer publishes pricing; businesses request a quote. A free tier exists as a one-time credit grant that does not renew. | $19 /mo$15.83 a month, billed annually. One price for the account, no per-seat multiplication and no charge per answer. |
| Last published, April 2025 | $60 /moPro started here for ten thousand credits, and Business at $150 a month for thirty thousand. History rather than a quote, and not updated since. | PublishedFour prices on the pricing page, and you can start without talking to anybody. |
| A team of five | $350 /moEditors were $50 per editor a month, as last published in April 2025, so five people on Business was the $150 plan plus 4 more editors. On the April 2025 prices. | $39 /moTeam seats are on Growth and up and are not priced per person. Five people cost what one costs. |
| Running out | It stopsWhen credits run out the agent stops responding until the next cycle. No mid-cycle top-ups. | Falls backThe widget switches to the contact form, and a paid account can add pay-as-you-go under a ceiling you set. |
| Booking | Build itNo native calendar booking. Scheduling is something you assemble with API steps and then maintain. | Google, OutlookDirect, with real free times in the chat and the appointment written back. No third account. |
| A person taking over | Not built inThe lack of built-in human handoff is among the gaps reviewers raise most often. | Built inSee who is chatting, type into it yourself, and the assistant goes quiet until you hand it back. Every plan. |
| Phone and voice | First classTelephony is a real deployment target, with model-level control and custom speech-to-text and text-to-speech. | One voice, in the chatAn add-on on any plan: a microphone in the website chat. There is one voice, the same for every business using Formala, and it is not a choice. Not a phone line. |
| Visitor uploads | Most configurablePDF, JPEG, JPG, PNG and WEBP, five megabytes each, up to ten per conversation, storable in your own bucket. Their own docs note that PII redaction does not apply to uploaded files. | Photos read, PDFs receivedPhotos and PDFs up to ten megabytes each. The assistant reads the photos; a PDF reaches you on the lead but the assistant does not open it. |
There is a fuller side-by-side on Formala vs Voiceflow, written for somebody still choosing rather than already leaving.
What reviewers say
Across roughly 111 reviews, the themes that recur are confusing credit billing and debugging that gets painful as flows grow. The gaps raised most often are no built-in human handoff, no native WhatsApp or Instagram, and no EU hosting or self-hosting option, which is a real obstacle for European buyers with GDPR obligations. Reported as reviewer accounts.
Sources: G2, about 111 reviews.
What we could not confirm
- Voiceflow's current pricing. It is not published and businesses are asked to request a quote. The April 2025 figures on this page are shown as history and are not what you would pay today.
Questions
VAPI, Bland, Retell or Synthflow. Those are built for telephony. Formala is not a phone system: it does not answer a phone number, and its voice feature is a microphone inside a website chat.
Leaving something else
Stop losing the visitors who almost reached out.
Set Formala up in the time it takes to read this page.
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