5 Top Alternatives to Agentforce Voice

Agentforce Voice Competitors Article Summary

1. Agentforce Voice is Salesforce’s voice AI agent. It can automate phone conversations and perform actions within the Salesforce ecosystem.
2. Five Agentforce alternatives worth considering are Airo by Ringover, Fonio, Bland AI, Retell AI, and PolyAI. Each takes a different approach to automating calls and customer interactions.
3. The right choice depends on your needs. CRM integrations, inbound and outbound call management, automation capabilities, conversation quality, and total cost are the main criteria to compare.

When a customer calls your business, they want an answer or to reach the right person without having to jump through hoops. Your team needs to provide that help while remaining available for requests that require human attention.

A voice AI agent can handle some of these interactions. But you need to choose a solution that fits your calls, tools, and automation goals. Answering a question about business hours does not require the same integrations as rescheduling an appointment or updating a customer record.

Salesforce Agentforce Voice is designed for the latter type of use case, but it is not the only option on the market. Other solutions are worth considering, and we’ll look at them in this article. First, let’s take a closer look at Agentforce.

Features and pricing information reviewed on November 13, 2026. The scenarios described in this article are illustrative and do not represent actual customer results. The prices listed in USD were not available in GDP on provider websites. For the most accurate pricing information, contact the provider for a quote.

What Are the 5 Best Agentforce Voice Competitors?

To create a shortlist, start with a measurable task: qualifying a request, booking an appointment, or updating a customer record.

The table below provides a starting point for evaluating the solutions. It is not a performance ranking.

1. Airo by Ringover: Answering and qualifying calls

Airo handles inbound calls and lets you connect actions to business tools, such as creating a ticket or updating a customer record.

Its current scope is focused on inbound calls, although outbound calling is on its roadmap.

Scenario to test: Ask the agent to distinguish between a request for a quote and a support request, then collect only the information needed for each one.

The expected result is not a lengthy transcript, but a correctly qualified request routed to the right destination. Measure the percentage of requests fully qualified and the number of corrections needed after the call.

For pricing, Ringover offers a pay-as-you-go plan at £0.39 per minute, as well as subscription plans with an annual commitment, including 20 conversations per day for £100 per month. Additional usage is charged at the pay-as-you-go rate.

2. Fonio

For a business that still schedules appointments by phone, the problem is straightforward: calls often come in while employees are already busy.

Fonio documents features for appointment scheduling, rule-based call transfers, transcripts, and synchronisation of information with business tools.

Scenario to test: A customer wants to book a service appointment, but their preferred time slot is unavailable. Check whether the workflow offers an alternative that complies with your rules, confirms the details, and avoids creating an incorrect booking.

The relevant metric is the number of appointments successfully recorded without needing corrections—not simply the number of calls answered.

Fonio's Solo phone plan is listed at $119 per month when billed annually, with 1,000 minutes and no concurrent calls.

Additional minutes and simultaneous-call capacity vary by plan. The latter deserves particular attention: a modest monthly call volume can still involve several calls arriving at the same time.

Before choosing a plan, review your peak call periods and ask what happens when a second call comes in after the plan's concurrent-call capacity has been reached.

For Salesforce, also ask for a description of the connector or any custom development required. A general claim of CRM integration does not guarantee support for every operation involving your custom objects and fields.

3. ElevenLabs

ElevenLabs Agents is a conversational AI platform that enables businesses to build AI voice agents capable of handling customer calls. It combines speech recognition, large language models and text-to-speech technology to deliver natural-sounding, real-time conversations.

Businesses can configure agents to answer customer questions using their own knowledge bases, follow predefined workflows and connect with external tools through integrations and APIs. The platform also supports outbound calling, allowing companies to automate follow-ups, appointment reminders and other recurring phone interactions.

For UK businesses, ElevenLabs Agents can connect to existing phone numbers through Twilio or SIP trunking. Pricing begins at $299 per month, with three voice clones. This allows companies to integrate AI voice agents with their current telephony infrastructure without necessarily replacing their phone system. Both inbound and outbound calls are supported.

4. Retell AI

A caller who is already known to your business should not have to provide all their information again.

Retell AI documents a Salesforce integration maintained directly by its team. It can retrieve contacts, leads, accounts, opportunities, and cases, then add summaries, tasks, or notes to the CRM.

Scenario to test: Identify a contact using their phone number, verify their identity according to your rules, and create a follow-up task after the call.

The expected result is information attached to the correct customer record. Check for duplicate records, incorrect associations, and missing fields.

One advantage of this approach is that you can evaluate an alternative voice agent while keeping Salesforce as your system of record.

However, you still need to configure permissions and check how the system behaves when several contacts share the same phone number.

Pricing is usage-based, with a listed range of $0.07 to $0.31 per minute for voice agents. The pricing calculator distinguishes between the model, voice, telephony, and other options, so use your actual configuration to estimate the budget.

Another useful detail: AI agent billing stops after a call is transferred, while phone charges may continue. Silence during a call is also billable.

For a fair comparison, make sure your tests include the pauses and moments of hesitation that occur in real customer conversations.

5. PolyAI

For an established contact centre, replacing the entire business phone system may be excessive.

PolyAI describes connections to existing telephony systems through SIP calling or the public telephone network, as well as API integrations with other systems.

Scenario to test: Automate a recurring request, then transfer an exception to the appropriate team. The agent taking over should receive the reason for the call, the information already confirmed, and the actions already performed.

Measure the resolution rate for the automated use case, but also how often customers have to repeat themselves after the transfer.

To evaluate this solution, bring together your telephony, business operations, and data teams. Each group will have different questions: how should the call be routed, which operations should be authorised, and where should the interaction history be stored?

Also ask how workflows can be changed and approved after deployment.

PolyAI states that its usage-based per-minute pricing includes services such as maintenance, performance improvements, and support. The pricing page reviewed does not publish a specific per-minute rate, so you will need a custom quote.

Ask for a quote that clearly separates implementation, ongoing operations, and future changes. For a contact centre project, the budget should make it clear what happens after launch, particularly when you need to add a new call type.

What Is Agentforce Voice and What Can It Do?

From conversations to CRM actions

“What's the status of my request?” To give a useful answer, an agent needs access to the relevant customer record—not just a general script.

Agentforce Voice uses Salesforce data, actions, and automations to handle voice requests. It can update records, create service cases, and trigger business processes or API calls [1].

Its value is particularly clear when your customer journeys are already structured in Salesforce. You may be able to reuse existing actions rather than rebuild every interaction in a separate platform.

However, this assumption needs to be validated with your Salesforce administrators: an action available in the CRM still needs to be adapted to the phone interaction.

Consider an appointment rescheduling request. The workflow needs to specify how to identify the caller, which changes the agent is allowed to make, when it must ask for confirmation, and what to do if the scheduling system does not respond. The agent’s ability to operate autonomously depends just as much on these rules as it does on its conversational capabilities.

Agentforce Voice vs. Salesforce telephony: What's the difference?

Receiving a call and handling it automatically are two different functions.

Salesforce's native telephony capabilities cover the phone channel, including its configuration and operation. Agentforce Voice adds the AI agent that can participate in the conversation. These two concepts should not be confused [3].

Similarly, a CTI integration connects a phone system to a CRM to make it easier to, for example, display customer records or access call logs. It does not, by itself, provide an autonomous voice agent.

Before comparing solutions, separate your requirements into three distinct needs:

• Routing the call.
• Understanding the customer's request.
• Performing the required action.

A provider may cover several of these functions, but simply displaying a Salesforce logo does not demonstrate how deeply its solution integrates with the platform.

When Should You Consider an Agentforce Voice Alternative?

Match the solution to your CRM and phone system

A small business that wants to qualify calls outside business hours has a different project from a customer service team looking to automate operations in Salesforce.

In the first case, start with a limited scope: identify the reason for the call, collect the caller's contact details, and determine the next step. In the second, examine access permissions, CRM objects, and the automations required.

An alternative is worth considering if it meets these requirements and can be deployed in a way that works for your teams. That alone is not a reason to replace your existing tools. Switching voice agents does not necessarily mean switching CRMs.

Ask providers to demonstrate their solutions using your own test data. An integration that can add a note after a call does not offer the same capabilities as one that can retrieve a customer record during the conversation. Both can be useful, but they address different needs.

Assess the total cost and resources required

Two quotes showing a per-minute price may cover very different services.

To compare them, add up any subscription fees, AI usage, telephony costs, call transfers, integration work, and ongoing management.

Agentforce Voice can consume credits based on voice actions or voice minutes. When minute-based billing is enabled, it takes precedence over voice-action billing for the same activity. The documentation states that usage is rounded up to the next full minute: a 61-second call therefore counts as two minutes [2].

The actual length of your calls is therefore an important factor in your comparison.

You should also account for the internal work involved. Who corrects an inaccurate response, updates the knowledge base, or checks changes to a workflow? A low usage fee does not tell you how much the solution will cost to operate.

How Should You Choose and Test a Voice AI Agent?

Test language support, business actions, and human handoff

Ask the agent to repeat an alphanumeric reference, correct a date, and then transfer the call to a human agent. This short sequence will tell you more about the customer journey you are building than a simple question about business hours.

Create the same test scenarios for every solution, with success criteria defined before the demos:

• Understanding: The agent accurately recognises names, numbers, dates, and industry-specific terms.
• Knowledge: It uses the correct information and acknowledges when it does not know the answer.
• Actions: It performs only authorised operations and verifies their outcome.
• Human handoff: It follows a transfer request and passes along the relevant context.
• Failure handling: It does not confirm that an operation has been completed if the connected tool has not responded.

Add a scenario in which the customer changes their mind during the call. If an appointment is rescheduled twice, the system should end up with only one valid booking.

Also test what happens when no human agent is available: a callback, a message, or another predefined alternative.

When it comes to data, collect only the information you need and define an appropriate retention period for each purpose. These principles also apply to systems that use AI [4]. Ask your data protection officer or privacy lead to review caller notifications, access permissions, subprocessors, and data deletion procedures. A vendor's marketing claim that its solution is compliant is not a substitute for this review.

Measure resolution rates and actual costs

A call that ends without being transferred is not necessarily a resolved call. The customer may have abandoned the conversation or received an incorrect answer.

Define success in terms of a verifiable outcome: an appointment booked, accurate information provided, or a request correctly routed.

Track the following metrics together:

• Task completion rate.
• Human handoffs.
• Corrections made after calls.
• Repeat contacts about the same issue.

Also monitor the time between the end of a customer's sentence and the agent's response.

For budgeting, use a consistent formula:

Cost per resolved request = costs attributable to the solution over the period ÷ number of requests actually resolved.

Include usage fees, subscriptions, telephony, and supervision time.

Make sure you are comparing equivalent use cases. An agent that only qualifies inbound calls should not be evaluated in the same way as one expected to resolve complete customer requests.

Choose an Alternative Based on What It Can Do, Not What It Promises

Select two solutions and have them handle the same workflow, using the same test data and failure scenarios. Then ask for the full cost of operating each one.

This will give you more reliable information than a general ranking.

Agentforce Voice is still worth considering if your project relies heavily on Salesforce. The five alternatives offer different ways to approach call answering, integrations, and automation.

The right choice is the one whose results you can verify and whose ongoing operation you can manage.

Is your priority answering and qualifying inbound calls? Request an Airo demo based on a scenario that reflects your business.

Agentforce Voice Alternatives FAQ

How much does a voice AI agent cost?

The cost depends on call volume, call duration, integrations, and the level of support required.

The five alternatives use different pricing models: pay-as-you-go usage, subscriptions with included minutes, or custom quotes. Compare them using the same usage scenario, including telephony, overage fees, and maintenance, rather than looking at an entry-level price in isolation.

Can you keep Salesforce and use a different voice agent?

Yes, provided the integration supports your requirements.

Retell AI, for example, documents read and write operations in Salesforce. Check which objects the integration can access, how permissions work, and how errors are handled. The presence of a connector does not guarantee that every workflow is supported.

Is a telephony integration enough to automate calls?

No. Connecting your phone system to your CRM makes it easier to access customer data, but you also need an agent configured to understand requests, respond, and take action.

Always distinguish between data synchronisation after a call, retrieving information during a conversation, and executing a business operation.

You can explore Ringover's integrations to see how telephony and CRM tools can work together.

Citations

• [1]https://www.salesforce.com/agentforce/voice/
• [2]https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=ai.agentforce_voice_considerations.htm&type=5
• [3]https://cloud.mail.salesforce.com/servicecontactcenterpartnerpocketguide
• [4]https://www.nist.gov/itl/ai-risk-management-framework

Published on November 13, 2026.