Cut voice costs: migrate from Africa's Talking to Sautikit in an afternoon

If you already run programmable voice on Africa's Talking (AT) and want to move it to Sautikit, this guide is the short version. Five steps: claim a number, swap the auth header, keep your voice XML (Sautikit accepts XML) and adjust a few verb differences, update webhook signature verification, and point your outbound calls at the new endpoint. Most teams finish a basic move in an afternoon.

The pull is usually cost and self-serve speed:

Instant, self-serve numbers. A Sautikit number is KES 100/month ex VAT (KES 116 incl.), claimed instantly from the dashboard. AT's route to a DID starts around KES 5,000 to get the number plus KES 2,500/month incl. tax.
Keep your voice XML, or go JSON. Sautikit accepts your existing voice XML as-is, and also offers a JSON DSL if you'd rather generate call flows from code and a database with typed, validated actions.
M-Pesa STK push top-up. Fund your wallet in about 30 seconds: your phone rings with the PIN prompt, no Paybill menu.
Per-second billing. Outbound is KES 0.05/sec billed per second after connect; inbound is free; 5 GB of recording storage is included.

None of this makes AT a bad platform; it is multi-channel and broad. If you only need voice in Kenya, Sautikit is the narrower, cheaper-to-start path.

Create a Sautikit workspace and claim a number from the dashboard: instant, KES 116/month incl. VAT, no setup fee. Via the API:

# Browse available numbers, then claim one
curl https://api.sautikit.com/v1/numbers/available \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SAUTIKIT_API_KEY"
 
curl -X POST https://api.sautikit.com/v1/numbers/{id}/claim \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SAUTIKIT_API_KEY"

AT sends an API key header. Sautikit uses a Bearer JWT, the same key on every request:

# Africa's Talking
-H "apiKey: <AT_API_KEY>"
 
# Sautikit
-H "Authorization: Bearer <SAUTIKIT_JWT>"

Store the JWT in your environment (SAUTIKIT_API_KEY) and update your HTTP client's default headers once.

Good news: this step is small. Sautikit accepts XML voice actions directly (it forwards the raw XML to the telephony engine), so your existing AT <Response> flows keep working. You don't port or rewrite anything to move over; you only adjust a couple of small verb differences.

Here is a "say a prompt, collect one digit" flow in Sautikit's XML on the left and the same flow in JSON on the right, both accepted at runtime. Two things change versus AT: the prompt <Say> nests inside <GetDigits> rather than sitting beside it, and the digit-count and callback attributes are maxDigits/action rather than AT's numDigits/callbackUrl. The JSON column is optional: reach for it only if you want Sautikit-side validation and typed SDKs; otherwise keep returning your XML.

{
"actions": [
  {
    "say": {
      "text": "Press 1 for account balance, or 2 to speak with an agent.",
      "voice": "alice",
      "language": "en-KE"
    }
  },
  {
    "getDigits": {
      "numDigits": 1,
      "timeout": 5,
      "finishOnKey": "#",
      "nested": [
        { "say": { "text": "Press 1 for balance, 2 for an agent." } }
      ]
    }
  }
]
}

<Response>
<Say voice="alice" language="en-KE">Press 1 for account balance, or 2 to speak with an agent.</Say>
<GetDigits maxDigits="1" timeout="5" finishOnKey="#">
  <Say>Press 1 for balance, 2 for an agent.</Say>
</GetDigits>
</Response>

You can keep returning your XML from this handler unchanged. If you opt into the JSON DSL instead, your handler returns the JSON object:

// Express: your voice_callback_url handler
app.post("/voice", (req, res) => {
  res.json({
    actions: [
      { say: { text: "Press 1 for account balance, or 2 to speak with an agent.", language: "en-KE" } },
      {
        getDigits: {
          numDigits: 1,
          timeout: 5,
          finishOnKey: "#",
          nested: [{ say: { text: "Press 1 for balance, 2 for an agent." } }],
        },
      },
    ],
  });
});

When the caller enters a digit, Sautikit POSTs back to your callback URL with a Digits field. The Voice Actions reference lists every verb (say, play, getDigits, dial, record, redirect, reject, hangup, conference, stream) in both XML and JSON; most map one-to-one from their AT XML equivalents.

Swap AT's verification for Sautikit's. Sautikit signs each webhook with HMAC-SHA256 over body + "." + timestamp, delivered in the X-Sautikit-Signature: t=<ts>,v1=<hex> header:

import crypto from "node:crypto";
 
function verifySautikit(req, secret) {
  const header = req.get("X-Sautikit-Signature") || "";
  const parts = Object.fromEntries(header.split(",").map((p) => p.split("=")));
  const expected = crypto
    .createHmac("sha256", secret)
    .update(`${req.rawBody}.${parts.t}`)
    .digest("hex");
  return crypto.timingSafeEqual(Buffer.from(expected), Buffer.from(parts.v1 || ""));
}

Reject any request that fails this check before acting on it.

Point outbound calls at POST /v1/calls. to is an array of E.164 strings; from must be a number your workspace owns:

await fetch("https://api.sautikit.com/v1/calls", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.SAUTIKIT_API_KEY}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    from: "+254712345678",
    to: ["+254700000001"],
    voice_callback_url: "https://yourapp.example/voice",
  }),
});

That is the full loop: claim, authenticate, return your voice actions (XML or JSON), verify the webhook, place the call.

Sautikit is voice-only by design, so if your AT integration also uses SMS, USSD, WhatsApp, or airtime, those channels do not move to Sautikit; they move to Helloduty, the multi-channel CX platform Sautikit belongs to. Voice runs on Sautikit; SMS, WhatsApp, USSD, and the agent desk run on Helloduty, in the same family and the same billing relationship. So a full AT migration is usually voice → Sautikit and everything else → Helloduty, not a single swap.

Create a Sautikit workspace and claim a number: instant, KES 116/month incl. VAT.
Top up over M-Pesa STK push: KES billing, no card.
Point one AT voice flow at Sautikit (your XML works as-is) and place a test call.

Start with Sautikit → · See pricing → · Need SMS, WhatsApp & USSD? Helloduty →