ConverseNow review and alternatives

ConverseNow suits a pizza or quick-service brand that wants phone and drive-thru ordering from one vendor and will buy through a consultation. An independent restaurant that wants a printed monthly price for phone orders should compare Maple and Certus first, then get quotes from Loman and Kea. If most calls are about tables, look at Slang.

ConverseNow does not print a price, and the brands on its home page are national chains. Its about page says it began adding mid-sized and regional brands in 2022. Put each vendor's scope and printed price side by side, shortlist two or three, and spend your demo time on your own menu. Everything below comes from each company's own site or press releases. We have not tested these products.

Which phone-ordering vendors compare with ConverseNow?

Vendor	Phone ordering, per its site	Other channels	Price on its site	Start here if
ConverseNow	Phone Order AI, multilingual, 24/7; POS logos include Brink, NCR Aloha, Olo, PAR, Qu and Xpient	Drive-thru, SMS, and an order API for apps and kiosks	Not on the site. Book a consultation.	You run a brand on one of those systems and want phone and lane from one vendor
Maple	Pro takes phone orders into Toast, Square, Clover, SkyTab (now Shift4 Dine) and other listed POS systems, with payment by phone and OpenTable reservations	Drive-thru and kiosk in early access	Voice $150/month billed monthly or $85/month billed yearly. Pro $350/month billed monthly or $220/month billed yearly.	You want a printed flat price and a POS on Maple's list
Certus	Phone orders and reservations; names Toast, Square, Clover, SkyTab and Aloha NCR; Spanish included	Not described on its home page	Its home page comparison lists $250/mo with ordering and monthly billing for Certus.	You want a printed price and use one of those POS systems
Loman AI	Premium plan covers takeout and delivery orders, POS integration, payment by phone and reservations	Outbound SMS in the Starter plan	Request pricing. The page says no per-minute fees.	You want a quoted ordering agent and use Toast, Square, Clover, SpotOn or another POS it lists
Kea	Voice and text ordering with 11+ direct POS integrations, including Toast, Square, Clover and Olo; payments; reservation and waitlist handling	Text ordering	Submit a form to get your price.	You run takeout or pizza and want voice and text from one vendor
Slang AI	Answers calls and manages reservations; texts guests ordering links	Guest text messages	Core from $399 and Premium from $599 per location; Enterprise custom. Billing period not printed beside the price.	Most of your calls are about tables
SoundHound	Phone ordering on its OASYS platform; partners page names Toast and Square	Drive-thru, kiosk, SMS, apps and in-car assistants	Not on the page.	You are a chain buying for phone, lane and kiosk at once

What does ConverseNow sell?

ConverseNow was founded in 2018 in Austin, Texas. Its about page says one of the largest U.S. pizza chains went live in 2020. Brands shown on its home page include Domino's, Wingstop, Hardee's, Denny's, Fazoli's, Jet's Pizza and Blake's Lotaburger.

Its products page lists four products: Phone Order AI, Drive-Thru Automation, SMS AI Conversations, and an Order Injection API for mobile apps and kiosks. The phone demo calls on that page run in English and Spanish, and include a caller who is offered a saved favorite order.

ConverseNow calls its setup "AI Your Way." Brands set the tone and persona, the upsell rules by time or order size, menu and prices by region or store, and how coupons are honored or offered. A "flexible usage" setting lets staff pick up calls at any time or let the AI handle everything.

What changed when ConverseNow bought Valyant AI?

ConverseNow announced the purchase of Valyant AI in July 2024 to grow its drive-thru business. Valyant's assistant, Holly, joins drive-thru audio systems such as PAR and HME through its own hardware, and connects to POS systems including Brink, Xenial, NCR Aloha and Oracle. The release named CKE and Checkers among Valyant's approved customers and said both companies would keep serving customers under their own brands for the time being.

In December 2024 ConverseNow moved its whole customer base to a new generative AI platform across phone, text, drive-thru and kiosk.

What does ConverseNow claim about its own results?

These are ConverseNow's own figures, and its pages give no method for them:

• 95%+ order accuracy, listed under Phone Order AI on the products page.
• For drive-thru after the December 2024 update: 95% of orders handled end to end by AI with no remote live agent help, and over 90% order accuracy.
• After a May 2025 update: guest satisfaction of 4.55 out of 5 and order time down 25%, across more than a million calls.
• 2,000,000+ conversations and 83,000+ labor hours repurposed per month, on the home page.

ConverseNow's insights page quotes unnamed customers on the May 2025 update, such as "I liked the soft upsell approach it didn't push too hard." Ask ConverseNow for references with a menu, POS and call volume like yours, and call them.

What if you need drive-thru ordering too?

ConverseNow is one of a handful of vendors selling both phone and drive-thru ordering. For the lane, these vendors publish their own drive-thru products:

• Hi Auto: drive-thru only on its product pages, with a remote human supervisor behind the AI; names HME, PAR and Xenial.
• Presto: drive-thru, plus a phone unit launched in April 2025; joined the Toast Partner Ecosystem in September 2026.
• SoundHound: one platform across phone, drive-thru and kiosk.
• Omilia: Taco Bell's drive-thru voice AI partner, which it says is live in 890+ U.S. Taco Bell restaurants.
• Incept AI: drive-thru and phone; named as a voice partner in Toast Drive-Thru.
• Maple: a drive-thru unit in early access with a small number of restaurants, priced per unit with no public price.

Our AI drive-thru vendor comparison covers lane hardware, named partners and each vendor's own results.

What should you ask ConverseNow and the alternatives?

1. How is it priced: per location, per order or per minute? Are there setup fees, and what are the contract length and exit terms?
2. Which POS versions do you write into, and do modifiers, coupons and payment reach my POS as staff would enter them?
3. Do your staff or live agents ever join my calls? If so, when?
4. How do you measure a correct order, and who checks it?
5. Which languages do you support on my menu, and how does a caller switch?
6. Which restaurants like mine can I call?

Test every vendor on the same orders from your own menu with the shared-menu demo checklist. For head-to-head pages, see Certus vs Maple, Loman vs Maple and Kea vs Maple. To check whether your POS works with Maple, start with the integrations directory.

Published by Maple, which sells restaurant phone answering and ordering and is one of the vendors listed. This AI-assisted guide combines each company's own pages and press releases. It does not rank vendors, verify any vendor's figures or report a Maple test of these products.