Bubo and Voicelabs are both AI phone assistants built in the Netherlands, and both pair phone answering with WhatsApp follow-up rather than treating voice as the only channel. The real differences show up in how many languages each runs at full depth, whether payment collection is part of the built-in flow, and whether you want a managed setup or a dashboard you configure yourself.
Everything below about Voicelabs comes from Voicelabs' own website, checked in August 2026. Voicelabs was not asked to review this comparison, and vendor pages change — check theirs directly before deciding.
What Voicelabs does
Voicelabs is a Dutch company based in The Hague, offering an AI phone assistant named "Robin" alongside WhatsApp and website-chat channels on one platform. According to Voicelabs' own site, Robin answers calls, recognises intent, books and modifies appointments directly in a business's calendar or CRM, sends automatic WhatsApp or SMS confirmations, and hands off to a member of staff — with a call summary attached — when a request needs a person. Voicelabs states that calls and transcripts are encrypted and stored within the EU, with the business controlling who has access and how long data is kept.
Voicelabs publishes dedicated pages for several trades, including plumbers ("loodgieters"), dental practices and gyms, and names real customers on its site — a dental practice, a bowling venue, a fitness chain among them. It offers both a self-service option, where a business configures and manages the assistant itself through a dashboard, and a fully managed option where the Voicelabs team builds, connects and maintains the setup.
Where Bubo and Voicelabs genuinely differ
Managed or self-service. Voicelabs explicitly offers both: a self-service dashboard at lower cost that the business runs itself, and a managed tier where its team builds and maintains it. Bubo is managed by the Bubo team as the default and only approach — there is no self-service dashboard for configuring the assistant yourself. A business that wants to open the settings and change a script at eleven at night, without going through a vendor, has a real reason to prefer Voicelabs for that alone.
Payment collection. The Voicelabs pages reviewed here describe appointment booking, FAQ handling, call routing and automatic WhatsApp or SMS confirmations, but do not describe an equivalent to Bubo's in-call payment link or deposit collection as a stated feature. For a business that wants a deposit secured during the same call that makes the booking, that is a concrete difference on what each company publishes.
Language depth. Voicelabs' own materials mention multilingual handling inside specific case studies — one describes an assistant answering in both Dutch and French for a group of schools — but do not state a language count that holds across plans. Bubo answers in 70+ languages with no fixed shortlist: the caller's language is detected rather than picked from a preset, a language can be added on request, and a returning caller's language is remembered so nobody chooses it twice.
What happens after the booking exists. This is the part a feature list rarely shows. Availability is locked the instant Bubo checks it, so two callers cannot take the same slot; a phone order is priced server-side from your real menu and waits for your approval rather than auto-confirming; a booking waiting on you times out instead of holding a table for nobody; closed days block the diary and anything already booked into one is flagged, with the guest told. Voicelabs' pages describe the conversation and the confirmation in detail and say less about this side.
Vertical breadth. Voicelabs' named pages lean towards Dutch trades and health-adjacent local services — plumbers, dentists, gyms. Bubo is built around six named verticals (restaurants and hospitality, health and personal care, trades and automotive, property and professional services, retail and e-commerce, rentals) with configuration for each, including hospitality, which is not a named focus on Voicelabs' site.
Contract flexibility. Voicelabs states its plans are cancellable monthly with no long-term contract, positioned explicitly against traditional answering services that tie businesses into longer terms. Our own terms are on our pricing page.
Pricing
Voicelabs' fully managed "Robin Compleet" plan starts at €299 a month according to its own pricing page, with €0.30 per additional minute beyond the included bundle and no surcharge for evening, weekend or holiday calls. A lower-cost self-service tier is also offered, where the business configures the assistant itself. Our own plans are on the pricing page.
Because Voicelabs' pricing splits by how much configuration work you hand to the provider, the headline monthly figure is not the comparison. The question is which side you are actually comparing: their self-service tier, which costs less and asks for your time, or their managed tier, which is the like-for-like against ours. The real cost of a missed call is the other half of that sum.
Which one actually fits your business
Voicelabs is a strong fit for a Dutch business that wants to configure and adjust the assistant itself through a dashboard, particularly at the lower price of the self-service tier, or for a plumbing, dental or fitness business drawn to the pages written for it. Bubo is the better fit for a business — in any of its six verticals — that wants payment or deposit collection inside the call flow, wants full language depth regardless of plan, or would rather the setup were somebody else's job as standard.
As with any vendor comparison, testing both against your own actual calls beats reading either company's marketing. How to choose an AI phone answering service sets out what to test for, and a demo is built around your own business.
Frequently asked questions
Is Voicelabs GDPR compliant?
Yes, according to Voicelabs' own materials, which state that calls and transcripts are encrypted and stored within the EU, with the business controlling access and retention periods.
Can I switch from Voicelabs to Bubo?
In most cases yes — both typically work through call forwarding on your existing number rather than requiring a change of number, so switching usually means redirecting the forwarding. Check any Voicelabs-specific contract details first, though Voicelabs states its plans are cancellable monthly.
Does Voicelabs take payments during a call?
The Voicelabs pages reviewed for this comparison describe booking, FAQ answering and WhatsApp or SMS confirmations, but do not describe in-call payment or deposit collection as a stated feature. Confirm directly with Voicelabs if this matters to you.
Does Voicelabs support WhatsApp?
Yes — Voicelabs states that Robin sends automatic WhatsApp or SMS confirmations after a call, and can carry the conversation on over WhatsApp if a customer replies.
Which one is cheaper?
It depends on which Voicelabs tier you mean: the self-service one, which costs less and asks more of your own time, or the managed "Robin Compleet" tier, stated at €299 a month. Get a current quote from both against your own call volume and how much setup work you want to do yourself.
Is this comparison biased, since it's published by phone-assistant.ai?
Reasonably assume some bias in any vendor-published comparison — which is why this piece states plainly that Voicelabs' self-service option, EU-hosted data handling and trade-specific pages are genuine strengths, rather than claiming Bubo is simply better across the board.