Cape Town· —:—· We're answering. They're not.We're awake
—:— Cape Town Their phones are off
Drag the day 21:45

Every competitor's phone is off right now.

Don't take our word for it.Time us.

We build the AI agents and automation that answer for South African businesses — day, night, weekends and load reduction. Send us a WhatsApp and start the clock.

00.0s
Ready when you are
See what we build

Real number, real agent, real reply. Reset any time — .

AIAwake AIonline

No queue. No hold music.Start the clock and watch what happens.

Six seconds. Easy.
TRY!
The actual problem

You're not losing to better businesses. You're losing to faster ones.

Nobody chooses the dentist with the nicest website or the installer with the best reviews. They choose whoever picks up. And in most South African small businesses, the person who picks up is also the person doing the work — so half the time, nobody does.

The call that rings out

It goes to voicemail. Almost nobody leaves one. You never learn it happened, so it never shows up as a problem — it just quietly shows up as a slower month.

The quote that takes two days

By the time it lands, they've had two others. The Lead Response Management study — MIT's James Oldroyd with InsideSales, 15 000 leads and over 100 000 call attempts — found the odds of qualifying a lead fall twenty-one-fold between a five-minute reply and a thirty-minute one.

The admin that eats the week

Rescheduling, reminders, chasing, re-typing the same details into three systems. None of it grows anything. All of it costs you evenings.

Two minutes · no email required

Put a number on it.

Three sliders. Move them to roughly match your business and see what the enquiries you never answered are worth.

Walking out the door, every month
R92 400

That's roughly 6 jobs a month going to whoever answered first. Not lost to price. Lost to silence.

Over a year: R1 108 800
Your month, one dot per enquiry
Answered Never got to Would have bought
Left alone, it compounds — by DecemberR1 108 800
JanDec

Nothing on this block is a statistic we are asserting. The sliders open on a plausible shape so the page isn't empty, and every vertical page has its own version with its own starting point. Move them to your figures and the number is yours — the only claim we make here is the multiplication. Where a real published figure is used anywhere on this site, it is named and sourced on the spot.

Where the results section will go

We'd rather show you nothing than show you something we made up.

Awake AI is new. Most agencies would fill this space with stock logos and a made-up percentage. Instead, here's exactly what we measure from day one — and the moment there are real numbers from a real South African client, they go here with their name on them.

Speed
Median first reply, by channel and hour
Capture
Enquiries answered vs enquiries missed
Conversion
Booked jobs traced to the agent
Time
Owner hours no longer spent on admin
Pricing

Published, in Rands, on the page.

Ranges rather than a single number, because a five-person practice and a forty-person firm aren't the same job. No "contact us for pricing" tier.

The promise, in public
Live in 30 days, or the first month is on us.

Not "live" as in a demo you can look at. Live as in answering your real enquiries, in your voice, on your real number. If we miss the thirtieth day for any reason that is ours, you do not pay for that month. We publish this because nobody else in this market will.

30 daysFrom signed to answering, every time
In publicPrices on the page, not "contact us"
You approveEvery word before a customer sees it
Month to monthNo lock-in after the build is paid
Awake Reception

For the business whose main leak is simply not answering fast enough.

R2 450–3 900 /m
Plus once-off setup
  • WhatsApp, web chat, forms and email
  • Screening, quoting and booking
  • Written in your voice, approved by you
  • Monthly review of what it caught
Start here
Most chosen
Growth Engine

Reception plus voice plus the operations behind it. Where most clients land.

R5 900–9 500 /m
Plus once-off setup
  • Everything in Reception
  • Awake Voice on the phone line
  • Follow-up, reminders and the no-show chase
  • Your dashboard, one screen, before coffee
  • Fortnightly tuning for the first quarter
Book a call
Awake Custom

When what you need doesn't exist yet and buying it isn't an option.

R45 000 – 280 000
Milestone-billed · maintenance from R2 500/m
  • MVP in eight to twelve weeks
  • Apps, portals, internal platforms
  • Built on your data, kept in your control
  • Ongoing maintenance retainer after launch
Talk it through
The R299 tool

You can absolutely buy a chatbot subscription for the price of a takeaway. It'll be live this afternoon, it'll answer generic questions, and it will be exactly as good as the hour you spend configuring it. For some businesses that's genuinely enough, and we'll say so on the call.

Built for you

We map your actual enquiry flow, write what it says in your words, connect it to your diary and your systems, watch every conversation for a fortnight, and change it when it's wrong. It's the difference between owning a tool and having the job done.

Your competitors are asleep. That's the opportunity.

Start with the audit. It's free, it takes a week, and you keep the report whether or not you ever work with us.

The ladder · Growth Engine

The whole front desk, hired

Reception plus Voice plus the follow-up, the reminders and the dashboard. The complete front of your business, running itself.

This is where most clients end up, and it's the tier the whole business is built around. Everything in Reception and Voice, plus the parts that happen after the first reply — the follow-up when someone goes quiet, the reminder before the appointment, the chase after a no-show, the review request afterwards, and one dashboard that shows you the lot. Think of it as the work a receptionist, a follow-up admin and a marketing assistant do between them — comfortably R30 000 a month in salaries. Except it doesn't sleep, resign or take leave.

How it actually works

Four steps. No jargon.

01Growth Engine

Everything Reception and Voice do

Every channel answered in seconds, screened, quoted and booked.

02Growth Engine

Follow-up that actually happens

Most businesses lose more money to not following up than to not answering. Two days later, a week later, a month later — automatically, in your voice, and it stops the moment they reply.

03Growth Engine

Reminders, confirmations and the no-show chase

Sent before the appointment, and again if they go quiet. This alone usually pays for the tier in dental and trades.

04Growth Engine

One screen, every morning

Leads, bookings, response times, what needs you today. On your phone, before your first coffee.

What we need from you

  • The same as Reception and Voice
  • Whatever CRM or spreadsheet you currently use, however messy
  • An hour a month to look at the review and tell us what to change

What it does not do

  • It doesn't generate new demand — that's the Marketing Engine
  • It doesn't do the work you sell; it fills the diary and clears the admin around it
  • It won't fix a business with no leads coming in at all
What it costs
R5 900 – R9 500 per month, plus a once-off setup
Fortnightly tuning for the first quarter is included.
Questions

The ones we actually get asked.

Why is this so much more than Reception?
Because it's three systems, not one, and because the follow-up and reminder work is where most of the recovered revenue actually comes from. Reception stops the bleeding. This one grows the number.
Can I start on Reception and move up?
That's the normal path, and there's no penalty for it. Most people want to see it working on one channel before they hand over the front of their business.
Is there a contract?
Three months to begin with, because that's how long it takes to know whether it's working. Month to month after that, and you keep the workflows if you leave.
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Live — this is running now

Most websites are a brochure.
This one is staffed.

WhatsApp, phone, web form, email — everything lands in one place and gets answered in seconds, at any hour, in your voice. This is a live view of the kind of desk we run.

Nothing held back for the sales call

There are thirty-two of these.

Above is the shape of it. The full catalogue lists every single thing we build — what it is, what it actually does, how long it takes and what it costs — plus the four pods you can buy it as, everything it plugs into, and an honest page on when you should hire somebody else instead of us.

Everything we build, at full length.

No "and much more". This is the entire catalogue — what each thing is, what it actually does, how long it takes and what it costs. If it is not on this page, we do not do it.

The whole list

Every single thing we will build for you.

Filter it if you like, but nothing here is hidden behind a sales call. Each card opens to the full explanation — what it is, why it matters, and what it will and will not do.

Showing
Integrate, don’t replace

It plugs into what you already run.

Nobody wants a system that demands they abandon the diary, the CRM and the accounting package they have used for nine years. This sits on top of what you already have. And where the answer is genuinely a rebuild, we will say so rather than pretend a connector exists.

On models: we are not tied to one vendor. Claude, GPT and Gemini each do some things better than the others, and for legal and medical work we run open-weight models privately so content never leaves infrastructure you control. Which one is behind your build is a decision we make on the merits and tell you about, not a religion.

Including when the answer isn’t us

Who you should actually hire.

There are good firms in this market and some of them are a better fit for you than we are. Here is the honest version, including the cases where you should not phone us at all.

Awake Arcade Cape Town · open all night Credits

No demo.No deck.Just press play.

Eleven toys in the rack, every one of them switched on. Everything marked live is the real thing running in your browser — not a video, not a mock-up, and not something a salesperson has to unlock for you first. Have a go. Try to break it. Judge us on what you find rather than on what we say about ourselves.

Now selected  

 

 

Select a cartridge
← → to browse
Press any cartridge to start · no signup · no card · no call
11toys live right now
0forms between you and them
R0to have a go
0sbefore you can start

Four builds shipped. Two of them open in your browser.

No borrowed logos. No invented percentages. Just the work.

Drawing in, render out

The same building, twice.

Left, the plan that went in. Right, what came back.

Photoreal render of a kitchen produced from the uploaded plan
The architectural floor plan that was uploaded
The drawingThe render

Drag, or focus the slider and use the arrow keys.

Exterior render generated from the same plan
Exterior — same drawing, different camera.
Entrance render generated from the same plan
Entrance — same drawing, different camera.
Why there are still no numbers

We can show you the work. We can't show you anybody's revenue.

The four above are real and named with permission. What is missing is a measured before-and-after — that number belongs to the client, and none has published theirs yet. When one does, it goes here with their name on it.

If you would like that to be you: the first three businesses in each industry pay no setup fee and keep their founding rate for twelve months, in exchange for the case study, a Google review and two introductions. That is the whole deal, and it is on the pricing page with the other four.

Published, in Rands, on the page.

AI automation pricing for South African businesses. Ranges, because a five-person practice and a forty-person firm aren't the same job — but real numbers, not "contact us".

What moves the number

Why we quote a range instead of a price.

Volume

Forty enquiries a month and four hundred are different systems. More volume usually means more edge cases, not just more messages.

Channels

WhatsApp alone is straightforward. WhatsApp plus phone plus three forms plus a shared inbox is a week of plumbing before anything clever happens.

What it connects to

A modern diary and a normal CRM: easy. A practice management system from 2009 with no API: not impossible, but honestly quoted.

How regulated you are

Legal and medical work carries POPIA obligations and, often, private model hosting. It costs more because it should.

Why we are the cheapest on this list

Because we would rather have your numbers than your money.

Every figure on this page is under what the rest of the South African market charges, and that is deliberate rather than desperate. We are new. The Results page is empty and we are not going to fill it with borrowed logos, so the only way we get real South African numbers on it is to be the obvious, easy, low-risk yes for the businesses who go first.

The honest version of the deal: help the business first and the rest follows. If your enquiries get answered, your diary fills and your admin stops eating your evenings, you tell someone. In industries where everybody knows everybody, that has always been worth more than a margin. We would rather be paid properly in three years by people who stayed than squeeze the first thirty.

Two things we will not pretend about. These are founding prices and they will go up as the case studies land — the businesses who come in now keep theirs for as long as they stay, and that is in writing. And cheap does not mean thin: the scope on this page is the same scope at any price, because a system that half works is worse than no system at all.

What the rest of the market charges.

Do not take our word for it. Here is what we are priced against — published, with the sources, in August 2026.

What you'd be buyingSouth African marketAwake AI
Self-serve WhatsApp bot
you configure it
R299 – R799 a monthWe'll tell you to buy one if that's the honest answer
Packaged AI receptionist
off the shelf, limited minutes
R999 – R3 500 a month
Done-for-you AI reception
built, connected and tuned
R3 000 – R20 000 a monthR2 450 – R9 500
Setup / implementation R5 000 – R150 000R0 – R2 500
free for the first three in each industry
Advisory retainer
consulting, not building
R15 000 – R40 000 a month— we build instead
Custom AI application R75 000 – R200 000R45 000 – R280 000
A human doing it
receptionist or junior admin
R8 000 – R15 000 a month
business hours only
Answers at 02:00 on a Sunday

Sources, August 2026: BizAI (self-serve bots R299–R799, receptionists R999–R3 500, human receptionist R8 000–R15 000); BlueBird Digital (managed R3 000–R20 000 a month, setup R25 000–R150 000+, junior admin clerk R8 000–R15 000); Auto Alpha Advisory (professional setup R5 000–R30 000, advisory retainer R15 000–R40 000, custom agent R75 000–R200 000). Every figure above is theirs, not ours. If one of them has moved, tell us and we'll change the table.

The audit comes first

You get a number before you get an invoice.

Every engagement starts with the audit — free version in a week, paid deep version a flat R2 500 and credited in full against any build you go ahead with. It tells you where the money is leaking and what fixing it would cost. If the honest answer is that you don't need us, that's what it'll say.

Pricing questions

The ones that stop people booking.

What's the setup fee, really?
Usually one to two months of the retainer, depending on how many channels and systems we're connecting. It's quoted after the audit, as one number, before you commit to anything.
Am I locked into a contract?
Month to month after the first three, and the first three exist because that's how long it takes to know whether it's working. If you leave, you keep the workflows and the documentation.
What if my volumes are tiny?
Then Reception at the bottom of the range, or honestly, one of the R299 tools. We'll tell you which on the call and we won't be precious about it.
Do you charge per message or per conversation?
No. Flat monthly, so a good month doesn't cost you more. Model costs are ours to manage — that's our problem to optimise, not yours to worry about.
Is there a cost when it hands over to me?
None. It's meant to hand over. Charging you for the escalations would be an incentive to build something that never escalates, which is exactly the wrong incentive.

A media agency that got tired of watching leads die.

Awake AI is the sister company to Awake Media Agency, and it exists because of something we kept seeing from the marketing side.

For years we ran campaigns for South African businesses and watched the same thing happen. The ads worked. The leads arrived. And then a good third of them simply evaporated between arriving and being answered.

Not because anyone was lazy. Because the person meant to answer was on a roof, in a patient's mouth, or in court. Because the enquiry came in at 20:40 on a Saturday. Because three quotes went out on Monday and ours was the second one.

You cannot fix that with more advertising. You fix it by putting something at the front door that never sleeps, never gets busy, and never forgets to follow up.

Why South Africa specifically

Most AI automation being sold here is repackaged from somewhere else — American playbooks, American assumptions, dollar pricing with a Rand conversion. It doesn't account for WhatsApp being the default channel, for load reduction, for medical aids, for POPIA, or for the fact that a South African customer can tell within one message whether they're talking to something local.

We're in Cape Town. We price in Rands. And we only take on four industries, because going deep in four beats being adequate in thirty.

What we're not

We're not a reseller with a white-labelled chatbot. We're not going to tell you AI will transform your business. And we're not going to put logos on the results page that aren't ours. If a R299 tool would do the job, we'll say so on the call — we'd rather lose the sale than take a fee for something that won't move.

Test us on the way in. Message us.

Whatever route you pick, you'll hear back in seconds — which is the point of the whole exercise.

Thirty minutes, weekdays 09:00–16:30 South African time. It goes straight into the diary.

We use what you send here to reply to you and nothing else. See POPIA & your data.

Where we are

Cape Town, South Africa. We work across the country and with clients abroad, but the office and the humans are here.

You are in the diary.

Confirmed — the details are below.

Length30 minutes
WhereWe phone you
CostNothing

What happens now

  1. Right now. A confirmation is on its way to the address you gave us. If it is not there in a minute, look in the promotions tab before you worry.
  2. Before the call. Nothing to prepare. No forms, no questionnaire. Bring the thing that is annoying you most and we will start there.
  3. On the call. Thirty minutes, no deck. If we are not the right people for the job we will say so and point you at who is.

While you wait

You do not have to take our word for any of it. Everything in the Playground runs in your browser, right now, with no form in front of it.

Need to change it? Reply to the confirmation email, or send us a note and we will move it.

POPIA & your data

Written to be read, not to be defensible. Last reviewed July 2026.

Written for owners, not for the algorithm.

Practical writing about AI automation, speed-to-lead and running a South African business that answers.

Ten articles, all of them written, all of them free to read without giving us anything. Every figure in them is either sourced against a named study or marked as your own number to fill in — we do not estimate on your behalf, and we do not publish percentages we cannot trace.

An AI agency vs a R299 tool.

An honest comparison, including the cases where the cheap tool is genuinely the right answer.

 Off-the-shelf toolBuilt for you
Live inAn afternoonTwo to six weeks
Monthly costR299 – R1 500R2 450 – R9 500
Who configures itYou, in your eveningsUs, and we keep tuning it
Knows your prices & availabilityOnly what you paste inConnected to your actual systems
Books into your diarySometimes, with add-onsYes, with your buffer rules
Phone callsNoYes, with Awake Voice
POPIA & private hostingGeneric terms, offshoreAgreed per client, SA-aware
When it gets something wrongYou find out from a customerWe're watching, and we fix it

Choose the tool if…

You're under about thirty enquiries a month, they arrive on one channel, the questions are simple and repetitive, and you enjoy tinkering. That's a real scenario and we'll say so on the call.

Choose built-for-you if…

Your jobs are worth more than a few thousand Rand, enquiries come from everywhere, the answers depend on things only your systems know, or you're in a regulated industry. The maths gets obvious fast.

Come find us We answer on all of these too — usually before anyone else does.
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