The AI call only pays off for a sales team at one moment: when a qualified lead is on the line and a rep says hello. On Bland's self-serve Start and Build plans, the AI can push a call through to a number, but the warm transfer, where your rep hears who's coming before the lead joins, is an Enterprise feature.
Callingly is built around that moment. Our AI Agent calls each new web lead within seconds while your team is open, asks your qualifying questions, then rings the reps who are free and puts the live lead through to whoever picks up. On our platform, 51.3% of leads got their first call in under 30 seconds in April 2026. Every plan has it, from $100 a month, with a 14-day free trial and no credit card.
Can you warm transfer a lead to a rep on Bland's Start or Build plan?
No. In the compare-plans table on Bland's pricing page, Warm Transfers and Live Transfers show a dash for Start and Build and "Included" for Enterprise. Bland's warm transfer guide says the same: "Warm Transfer requires an enterprise account." The guide also lists the Agent Phone Plan, but that's a $29.99-a-month number for a personal AI assistant that makes one call at a time, not a line for a sales team.
What Start and Build do have is a cold transfer. Your agent can send the call to a phone number or a list of numbers you set, such as one per department, and you pay for transfer time by the minute. The lead goes straight through, and your rep picks up with no idea who it is or what they want.
Callingly hands off differently. Once the AI has asked your questions, it rings the available reps in your first priority group at the same time, up to a set limit (the lead owner first, when they're free and your routing says so), and connects whoever picks up. A rep who takes it on their phone hears a short briefing before the lead joins. If nobody in that group answers, the next group rings, then your fallback team. Still nobody? The AI offers the lead a callback at a time they pick.
How many leads can Bland's Start plan call in a day?
About 50, if you call each new lead twice. Start allows 100 calls a day and 10 at once. Here are Bland's three plans as of October 28, 2026:
| Bland Start | Bland Build | Bland Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | $0 | $299 a month | Custom, contracted to your volume |
| Talk time | $0.14 a minute | $0.12 a minute | Custom |
| Transfer time | $0.05 a minute | $0.04 a minute | Custom |
| Calls a day | 100 | 2,000 | Unlimited |
| Calls at once | 10 | 50 | Sized to your volume |
Fifty sounds like plenty until a Monday brings 80 new leads. Two attempts on each is 160 calls, and Start stops at 100. Build lifts the cap to 2,000 a day for $299 a month.
Callingly doesn't cap leads or users on any current plan.
What does Bland AI cost compared with Callingly?
The fair comparison is the plan that does the job. For calling a lead and warm-transferring them to a rep, that's Bland Enterprise, and it has no public price. You'll get a number from Bland's sales team once they've scoped your volume.
On Start and Build, Bland bills every minute the AI talks, plus a separate per-minute rate for transfer time. That rate covers the AI's model, speech recognition and voice. Phone service bills separately, by Bland or by your own carrier.
Callingly bills per AI call instead: once, when the call reaches the lead or their voicemail. Calls that ring out or hit a busy line are free, and a long qualifying conversation still bills as one call. Take a team with 1,500 new web leads a month and two AI calls on each: 3,000 calls. On Scale, at $0.40 a call, that's $1,200 a month, warm transfers included. If your account signed up directly on or after September 26, 2026, talk time is included too, even the minutes your rep spends on the transferred call. Each plan's price is a monthly credit toward calls. Calls past it bill at the same rate. In a slow month, you pay just the plan price.
Do you have to rebuild your Bland agent by November 15?
Not by hand. Bland rebuilt its agent builder in September 2026 and says all production agents must move to Bland Agents by November 15. You add the new agents next to your old ones. After that date, Bland moves any pathway still taking calls for you. Accounts created after September 18, 2026 are on the new builder already.
Still, the deadline is a good excuse to ask whether you want to maintain a voice agent at all. If your agent's job is "call the new lead, qualify, hand to a rep," you don't have to build it. Moving to Callingly means connecting your CRM or lead source, writing your qualifying questions into the AI Agent and setting your call hours and who gets transfers. Your current agent's script is a good start for the questions.
Which Bland AI alternatives can you build on yourself?
If you do want to keep building, Retell AI and Vapi are two other voice platforms that bill by the minute. We cover what that build takes for lead calling in Retell AI alternatives. Synthflow was the no-code option, but it now sells only Enterprise contracts, starting at $30,000 a year. Our Synthflow alternatives post has the math by lead volume.
Frequently asked questions
Is Bland AI free?
Not for live calling. The Start plan has no platform fee, needs no card, and comes with two credits and an inbound number. Every call then bills at $0.14 a minute of talk time.
Does Callingly work with HubSpot and Follow Up Boss?
Yes. Callingly connects natively to HubSpot, Salesforce, Follow Up Boss, Pipedrive, CINC, Lofty, GoHighLevel, Zoho and more. For lead sources without a native connection, there's Zapier, webhooks, email and our API. See the full list on the integrations page.
Can Callingly text leads too?
Yes. You can add texts to the same call and text sequence: when the lead arrives, after a missed call or right before a call. For US and Canadian leads, calls and automated texts go out only between 8 AM and 9 PM in the lead's time zone.
Want to hear the handoff before you set anything up? Try a live call from the AI Agent.