The problem
For a small business, missing a call can mean missing the job. I know owners who lose work this way every week. A full-time receptionist is out of reach for many of them, and callers often move on rather than leave a voicemail.
Yapper was my first SaaS. Everything before it was an iOS app, a website, or a Shopify app. I wanted to learn what it took to run a complete software business, including billing, telephony, onboarding, and support.
About
Forward a business number to Yapper and it answers calls, handles scheduling and common questions, and transfers urgent calls to the owner. Afterward, it sends a summary by text and email.
Setup takes about five minutes. The owner adds a website URL, checks the business details Yapper finds, and forwards the phone number. Businesses without a website can enter the information themselves.
Hear it
A real Yapper demo call for an electrical business. This is what a customer hears instead of voicemail: the AI answers, handles the request, and the owner gets the summary by text and email.
How it works
Add your business
Enter your website URL or type the details yourself, check the information, and forward your business number.
Yapper answers
The AI handles common questions and appointment requests. Urgent calls can be transferred to the owner's cell.
Review the call
After each call, the owner receives a summary by text and email. Full transcripts remain in the dashboard.
Key decisions
Flat pricing in a per-minute market
Most competitors charge per minute or per call, so the monthly bill varies with usage. I chose two flat plans, $199 and $349 a month, because the owners I built for need to know what a service will cost before the bill arrives.
Keep setup near five minutes
The owner enters a website URL, checks what Yapper found, and forwards the business number. If there is no website, they can enter the details manually. Keeping that flow near five minutes meant cutting scripts and a separate AI training session from onboarding.
Send summaries where owners will see them
After each call, the owner gets the caller's details and request by text and email. The people I built for already work from their phones and inboxes, so I treated the dashboard as a record, not the main notification channel.
What went wrong
The biggest delay wasn't code. Twilio took almost two months to approve the toll-free number that Yapper uses to send SMS summaries. While I waited, I kept building the parts I could control. It was a useful lesson in planning around vendor and regulatory dependencies.
The harder problem is finding customers. Yapper is live and works end to end, but it still has zero paying customers. I market it organically every day and keep testing how I explain it and who I approach. The product works; distribution does not yet.
Results
- 5 minutes
- from arriving on the site to having an AI receptionist ready to answer the business line.
- 2 flat plans
- $199 and $349 a month instead of usage-based pricing.
- 0 customers so far
- The product is working, but the customer pipeline is not. That is the problem I am working on now.
With more resources
All of Yapper's marketing today is organic because that's what my budget allows. With more room to test, I would start with small Google and Meta campaigns for trades and service businesses, measure which message brings in qualified trials, and adjust from there. The immediate question is not what else to build. It is how to reach the right owners at a sustainable cost.
Get it
The trial lasts 7 days and requires a credit card. It becomes a paid plan unless you cancel.