RingCentral AI Receptionist vs Arlay: which AI receptionist does a small business actually need?

Same name, different door

Search for “AI receptionist” and RingCentral's AI Receptionist, sold as AIR, is one of the first products you meet. It is a good product for what it does, and what it does is answer the telephone. Arlay is also called an AI receptionist, and it never picks up a phone. It answers the WhatsApp messages your customers send instead of calling. Before comparing features, check which door your customers actually knock on.

For a dental practice in Manchester, a skin clinic in Sydney or a yacht charter in Dubai, the honest answer is often: both, but not equally. The 60-year-old patient calls. The 32-year-old patient writes on WhatsApp at 21:40 with a screenshot of a price she saw on Instagram. The two leaks need two different fixes.

What RingCentral AI Receptionist does

According to RingCentral's own release notes, AIR answers common business questions on the phone, sends texts, schedules appointments by checking availability across connected calendars, captures the caller's details, and transfers the call to the right person or department with a live summary and transcript. It understands and answers in several languages, including Spanish, Italian, German, and Portuguese, and can switch language mid-call. It sits on top of your existing phone setup, whether that is RingCentral, an older PBX, or another cloud provider, and connects via SIP or simple call forwarding.

Pricing is a monthly subscription with a bundle of call minutes and a per-minute charge above that; third-party reviews list the current numbers. Because the usage unit is the minute, the cost follows your call volume.

What Arlay does

Arlay connects to the WhatsApp Business number you already use. When a customer writes, Arlay replies in seconds, in their language, from the catalog and prices you configured, and only from those. It sends photos of the treatment room or the yacht inside the chat, asks the intake questions you set, offers real free slots from your Google Calendar, collects a deposit through a payment link or your own Stripe before the slot is confirmed, books the appointment, and sends reminders 24 hours and 1 hour before. Clinical or unusual questions are flagged to a human with the thread summarised.

There are no minutes. A WhatsApp conversation costs the same whether it takes four messages or forty, and the customer can come back to it the next morning without starting over, which a phone call cannot do.

Side by side

How to tell which one you need

1. Count last week's enquiries by channel. Open your call log and your WhatsApp Business inbox and count new customers, not existing ones. Most clinics that do this are surprised by the WhatsApp share, especially from patients under 40 and from international patients.
2. Look at when they arrive. Calls cluster in opening hours. WhatsApp messages cluster between 19:00 and 23:00 and on Sunday afternoon. An unanswered evening message is a lost booking; an unanswered evening call is usually a voicemail and a callback.
3. Look at what they ask. Price, photos, availability and “can I pay a deposit to hold it” are WhatsApp questions, and they are the ones that turn into bookings. Directions and “are you open today” are phone questions.
4. Then pick one per channel. A phone-based AI receptionist for calls, a WhatsApp-based one for messages. They do not compete for the same conversation.

Why Arlay

Arlay was built for the WhatsApp conversation specifically: the message that arrives with a screenshot at 21:40, the “how much for two implants”, the “is the boat free Friday”. It answers in seconds from your real price list, sends the photo, offers the slot, takes the deposit and books, while you do nothing. If your enquiries are mostly calls, we will say so on the demo. If they are mostly WhatsApp, this is the receptionist for that door.