AI receptionist vs answering service vs hiring: real costs

Three ways to stop losing calls. Hire somebody, pay an answering service, or put an AI receptionist on the line.

Most comparisons of the three are written by whoever sells one of them. The useful way is to take one real month of your own calls and run it through all three. The answer changes with your call volume and the hours you need covered.

Here is how to do that, where each option wins, and what the switch looks like in practice. Prices for the AI version are on the pricing page, flat and written down.

Three options, one month of calls#

Start with four numbers from your own phone system:

• Total calls in a month.
• How many arrive outside office hours.
• How many arrive while your line is already busy or nobody can get to it.
• The average length of a call.

The second and third numbers are the calls all three options compete over. The rest are already being answered, so they are not part of the comparison.

Take an example, not a client. Say 220 calls a month, with 60 of them after hours or into a busy line, averaging 3 minutes. That is 180 minutes of unanswered talk time. Keep those figures to hand for the sections below.

How each one bills#

A hire is paid for time, not for calls. You pay the same whether 10 people called or 200, and you pay nothing for the hours they are not working. Evenings, weekends and vacation are not covered unless you pay somebody else to cover them.

An answering service bills per call or per minute, usually with a monthly minimum. Ask for both rates, ask what counts as a billable call, and ask whether nights and weekends are billed higher. A wrong number is often a billable call.

An AI receptionist here bills flat: a one-time setup fee, then a monthly fee with voice minutes included, then a per-minute rate past them. The ceiling is visible before the month starts.

To compare the three, work out your own hourly cost for the hire properly. The wage is the small part. Add payroll taxes, benefits, the equipment, the training weeks, and what it costs to cover the desk when they are sick or on vacation.

Where a person still wins#

A person is better at the calls that matter most, and it is worth being clear about which ones those are.

Anything that needs judgment. A patient who has missed four appointments, a customer who is angry about a bill, a seller deciding whether to list. Those calls need somebody who can read the room and make a decision.

Anything that needs memory. Your front desk knows which patient's daughter books for her, which customer always pays late, and which account wants the owner and nobody else. None of that is written down anywhere.

Anything in front of them. The person standing at the desk should not be waiting while the phone is answered, and that is exactly what happens when the same person has to do both.

So the real question is not whether to replace a person. It is what to take off their desk so they can do the work only a person can do.

Where AI wins#

After hours. Nobody is paying a salary at 9pm, and a service that only takes a message leaves the booking for the morning. The call that ends with an appointment is the one that keeps the customer.

Overflow. Every call gets answered at once, so nobody sits in a queue while three other people call at the same time. This is the case a single hire cannot solve at any price.

Surges. A heat wave, a flu week, a new listing going live. The cost of a surge is per minute rather than per extra body, and nobody is on hold.

The repetitive questions. Opening hours, parking, what insurance you take, the call-out fee, whether you work on that brand. They are the same every day, and answering them takes your front desk off the work that needs them.

A clinic example and an HVAC example#

A 2-provider practice on the Starter clinic plan pays $299 setup and $199/mo, with 300 voice minutes included. The 180 minutes of after-hours and overflow calls from the example above sit inside that, so the month is $199. Past 300 minutes it is $0.30 a minute. A signed BAA with the practice is included on every clinic tier.

An HVAC shop on the Starter plan pays $199 setup and $199/mo, also with 300 minutes included and $0.25 a minute past them. In a heat-wave month of 150 calls averaging 3.5 minutes, that is 525 minutes, so 225 minutes of overage at $0.25 and a bill of $255.25. The worked version of that month is in the HVAC answering service cost post.

Now put your own numbers beside those two. Multiply your answering service quote by the same month, and divide your fully loaded hire cost by the hours you actually need covered. One of the three will be obviously wrong for your situation, and that is usually the useful result.

How to switch without changing your number#

Nobody has to port a number, and you should not start by trying to.

• Keep your main number exactly as it is. It stays yours.
• Turn on conditional forwarding with your carrier: no answer, busy, and outside your opening hours. Those are the calls that get forwarded.
• Run it alongside your current setup for a week. Your staff keep answering everything they can get to.
• Call your own number from your own phone, after hours, and listen to the whole thing. Then do it again with a question you get asked all the time.
• Read the call summaries every morning for the first two weeks. That is where the script gets fixed.
• Keep a fallback. If the line is unreachable for any reason, the call goes to your existing voicemail rather than nowhere.

If you later want the number itself moved, that is a separate decision and it can wait until you know the thing works.

Where to start#

Talk to it first. There is a live demo you can call, and it is a faster way to judge this than any comparison table, including this one.

Then take one month of your own call data and run the arithmetic above. If the answer is that you need a person, hire the person.

FAQ#

Is an AI receptionist cheaper than an answering service?#

It depends on your call volume and how each one bills. A service billing per call gets more expensive in a busy month, while a flat plan does not. Take your quote, multiply it by a real month of calls, then compare it against a flat monthly fee plus the per-minute overage rate.

Is it cheaper than hiring a receptionist?#

For evenings, weekends and overflow, usually, because you are not paying for hours. For the main desk during opening hours, the comparison is closer than vendors admit, and a person is better at the calls that need judgment. The usual answer is both: a person on the desk, and the AI covering the hours and the overflow they cannot.

What does an AI receptionist cost?#

Clinics are $299 setup and $199/mo for Starter, $750 and $449/mo for Growth, and $1,500 and $799/mo for Pro, with $0.30 a minute past the included minutes. HVAC is $199 and $199/mo, $599 and $449/mo, and $1,250 and $799/mo, with $0.25 a minute past them. For other local businesses the AI Phone Receptionist is $299 setup and $199/mo.

Can it work alongside my staff instead of replacing them?#

That is how most of these are set up. It answers after hours and picks up the calls that arrive while your line is busy, and everything it books lands in the same schedule your staff already look at.

What happens to a call it cannot handle?#

It takes the details, tells the caller when a person will get back to them, and puts the call in the queue with the question written down. Anything urgent goes to a person immediately, by a rule rather than the model's choice.

Do I have to change my phone number?#

No. You keep your number and forward the calls you want covered, which is usually after hours, when the line is busy, and when nobody picks up.