SpeedToLead vs Allo: Which Should Contractors Pick?

If you've seen Allo's ads lately — and if you're a contractor, you probably have — you're looking at the two main ways to buy an AI receptionist in 2026. Allo is a polished, general-purpose AI receptionist used by 6,000+ businesses. SpeedToLead is built only for trades shops, and it bills a completely different way. Both answer the phone. The right pick depends on what you're actually paying for.

What Allo costs — and what you get

Allo's pricing is simple flat SaaS: $32/mo per seat, billed yearly — marketed as "$1 a day" — with no per-minute or per-call charges and a 7-day trial. For that you get a capable, horizontal product: it books real calendar slots, remembers repeat callers, and warm-transfers to you with the call history attached. It's G2 top-rated for small business, and its contractor proof is real: $18.4K in jobs recovered for an Ohio plumbing company, 34 appointments in 30 days for a Texas HVAC shop.

The catch is in the model, not the product. The $32 runs every month whether your calls were jobs, price shoppers, wrong numbers, or spam. And because Allo serves restaurants, clinics, salons, and home services alike, the product is configured for trades — not built around them.

What SpeedToLead does differently

SpeedToLead charges per qualified lead: $9–45 depending on trade, with your first 20 leads free and no card required. A junk call costs you nothing. A real job costs you one lead fee.

Behind the answer is trade-specific triage, not a generic script. A plumbing caller gets walked to the shut-off valve. An electrical caller reporting sparking gets the safety screen first. Emergencies are never downgraded, and every qualified lead is in your hand within 60 seconds — plus a won/lost tap on each lead that rolls up into a monthly revenue report, so you can see exactly what the answering made you.

Side by side

	Allo	SpeedToLead
Pricing model	$32/mo per seat, billed yearly	Per qualified lead, $9–45 by trade
Trial	7 days	First 20 leads free, no card
Who it's built for	Any small business (horizontal)	Contractors only: HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, garage doors, restoration
Junk / spam calls	Covered by the flat fee — you pay the same either way	Filtered out; never a billable lead
Booking	Real calendar slots	Real availability windows, trade triage first
Caller memory	Remembers repeat callers	Call recording + transcript with every lead
Proof on record	6,000+ businesses, named contractor results	Founding cohort now forming — proof is being earned, not borrowed

When Allo is the better pick

Honest answer: if you want one flat, predictable bill, you run more than one kind of business, or you value an established product with thousands of customers and published results today, Allo is a strong, safe choice. "$1 a day" is a genuinely good price for what it does.

When SpeedToLead is the better pick

• You only want to pay for work. Ten qualified leads in a month run roughly $90–450 depending on trade — and slow months cost less, not the same.
• Your calls need trade judgment. Shut-off valves, sparking panels, no-heat calls — triage built per trade, not a script you wrote yourself.
• You want proof before payment. Twenty free leads with no card beats a 7-day trial clock: you judge it on real jobs from your own phone, and the won/lost report shows what they were worth.

The bottom line

Allo sells you a seat. SpeedToLead sells you qualified leads. If you want a set-and-forget subscription from a big, proven platform, buy the seat. If you'd rather pay only when the phone produces a job — and have the answering built around your trade — run your numbers on the missed-call cost calculator and take the 20 free leads.