A live answering service costs a small service business about $250 a month at Ruby’s entry plan up to $2,100 at Smith.ai’s 300-call plan. A full-time receptionist runs roughly $55,000 a year once benefits are counted. An AI receptionist on TheBigBot is a flat $197 a month plus usage, and it answers around the clock.
Those numbers are billed by the minute, by the call, and by the hour, and each covers a different slice of the week. This post puts them on the same footing so an HVAC shop, plumber, cleaning company, or salon can price a normal month. Prices checked September 2026.
How much does each option cost per month in 2026?
| Option | Monthly cost | Answers after hours | Books appointments | Several calls at once | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voicemail | $0 | Records a message | No | Yes, all go to voicemail | Nobody who depends on inbound calls |
| Full-time receptionist | About $4,600, wages plus benefits (BLS) | No, unless you pay for extra shifts | Yes | One at a time | A front desk with walk-ins, payments, and crew scheduling |
| Ruby (live, per minute) | $250 for 50 minutes to $1,725 for 500 | Yes, 24/7 | Scheduling is listed as a feature | Yes, a staffed team | Low volume, calls that need a warm human touch |
| Smith.ai (live, per call) | $300 for 30 calls to $2,100 for 300 | Yes, 24/7 included | Yes, $1.50 per call add-on | Yes, a staffed team | Intake calls that need human judgement |
| TheBigBot AI receptionist | $197 flat, plus AI minutes at $0.12 to $0.24 | Yes, every hour | Yes, from your live calendar during the call | Yes, no queue | Steady call volume, routine bookings, after-hours emergencies |
The pattern: human services charge more as call volume rises. A salaried hire costs the same whether the phone rings twice or two hundred times, but only during their shift. An AI receptionist’s usage line moves a little with volume; the base price doesn’t.
How many calls is a small service business actually missing?
The data is patchier than most vendor sites suggest. Here is what holds up.
- Home services: Invoca’s platform data found that 27% of calls to home services businesses are not answered.
- Small businesses generally: A frequently cited 411 Locals study found only 37.8% of calls reached a person, 37.8% went to voicemail, and 24.3% got no response at all. Treat it as directional. It was published in January 2016, it tracked 85 businesses, and it came from a marketing vendor.
- What callers do next: In a September 2025 CallRail survey of 1,000 US consumers, 82% said they would call a competitor if a business didn’t answer, and 78% said they had already abandoned a business after an unanswered call. Only 42% said they leave a voicemail.
Voicemail is not a safety net. Most callers won’t leave a message, and most are already dialing the next listing.
What does a live answering service actually cost?
Answering services bill in two ways, and the model matters more than the headline price.
Per-minute plans: Ruby
Ruby’s published plans as of September 2026:
- 50 minutes: $250 a month, or $5.00 a minute
- 100 minutes: $395 a month, or $3.95 a minute
- 200 minutes: $720 a month, or $3.60 a minute
- 500 minutes: $1,725 a month, or $3.45 a minute
Ruby advertises 24/7 coverage, including nights, weekends, and holidays, and says there are no extra fees for setup or onboarding. Its pricing page does not publish an overage rate. Ask for that number in writing before you sign, because a busy July is when you’ll need it.
Per-minute billing punishes long calls. A homeowner describing a leak and giving an address can take three or four minutes, which is over $10 at Ruby’s 200-minute rate.
Per-call plans: Smith.ai
Smith.ai’s live receptionist plans:
- Starter: $300 a month for 30 calls, then $11.50 per extra call
- Basic: $810 a month for 90 calls, then $10.50 per extra call
- Pro: $2,100 a month for 300 calls, then $8.50 per extra call
The service is staffed 24/7 at no extra charge. Smith.ai says calls at 2 pm and 2 am cost the same, and verified spam calls don’t count toward your plan. Booking appointments onto your calendar is a $1.50-per-call add-on, and paying annually takes 10% off.
Per-call billing is easier to forecast than per-minute billing, but the effective rate is high. On the Basic plan, every call costs $9 before add-ons.
Quote-first services: AnswerConnect
AnswerConnect sells 24/7 live answering too, but its plans page sits behind a quote form. Get the quote and compare it against the published rates above.
What does hiring a receptionist really cost?
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median pay for receptionists at $38,010 a year, or $18.27 an hour, as of May 2025.
Wages are not the full cost. BLS employer cost data shows that for private-industry office and administrative support jobs, benefits made up 31.3% of total compensation in June 2026, with wages at 68.7%. Apply that split to the median wage and you get roughly $55,300 a year, or about $4,600 a month. That’s an estimate, and your actual cost will depend on your local wages and the benefits you offer.
Then look at coverage. A full-time hire works about 40 of the 168 hours in a week. The burst pipe at 11 pm and the dead AC on a Sunday fall outside that, and covering them with people means more hires or an answering service on top.
A receptionist can also handle only one call at a time. When three calls come in during a storm or a heat wave, two of them go to voicemail.
That said, a good hire does things no phone service can: greet walk-ins, take payments, calm an upset regular, and rework the crew schedule when a tech calls in sick. If that’s the job, the real question is whether that person should also be your only defense against a missed call.
What does an AI receptionist cost, and what do you get for it?
On TheBigBot, the AI receptionist is included in both plans. Authority Launch is $197 a month and Authority Pro is $497 a month, each with a one-time $499 setup fee and no contract. On top of the plan, AI call minutes are billed at $0.12 to $0.24 a minute, itemized on your statement. A typical two-minute call costs 25 to 50 cents, and there’s no per-call fee and no cap on calls.
Here is what it does on each call, per the AI receptionist page:
- Picks up in under a second, whatever the hour, on your existing number.
- Books while the caller is on the line, checking your live calendar and confirming a real slot before they hang up.
- Transfers the live call to your team when the caller asks for a person.
- Escalates emergencies. You set the keywords, such as “burst pipe” or “flood,” and those calls go straight to your on-call line instead of into a booking.
- Writes the intake (name, number, reason for calling) into the CRM while the call is still going.
- Answers in English, Spanish, French, and Mandarin on the same number.
What it doesn’t do is pretend to be human or guess. If asked, it says it is an AI and offers a transfer. If it can’t answer a question, it books a follow-up, transfers the call, or texts you the question along with the caller’s number. It goes live in three days.
The other difference is what happens after the call. An answering service sends you a message. Because the receptionist runs inside the CRM, the call becomes a contact record that can trigger a follow-up sequence or a review request after the job. For a trade business, that’s the setup described on the small business page: book the job, dispatch the details to the crew, and ask for the Google review once the work is done.
What does the math look like at 150 calls a month?
Say a two-truck HVAC company gets 150 inbound calls a month, averaging two minutes each. That’s 300 minutes of talk time. The call volume is an illustrative assumption, and the prices come from the published rates above.
| Option | How it’s billed at 150 calls | Monthly cost | Coverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ruby | 300 minutes falls between the 200-minute plan ($720, overage unpublished) and the 500-minute plan ($1,725) | $720 plus overage, or $1,725 | 24/7 |
| Smith.ai Basic | $810 for 90 calls, plus 60 extra calls at $10.50 | $1,440, or up to $1,665 if every call is booked at $1.50 | 24/7 |
| Smith.ai Pro | $2,100 for 300 calls | $2,100 | 24/7 |
| Full-time receptionist | Median wage plus benefits (BLS-based estimate) | About $4,600 | About 40 hours a week |
| TheBigBot Authority Launch | $197 plus 300 AI minutes at $0.12 to $0.24 | $233 to $269, plus $499 setup once | 24/7 |
Double the volume to 300 calls and the human-service bills roughly double with it. The AI plan’s usage line goes up by another $36 to $72, and the plan price stays the same.
One caveat is worth being honest about. The AI receptionist comes bundled with a CRM, website, and automations. If you already pay for those elsewhere and only want the phone answered, you’re buying more than you need, and you should weigh that.
When is an answering service or a human hire the better choice?
An AI receptionist is not the right call for every business. Here’s where the other options win. (If an AI receptionist does fit, our comparison of eight AI receptionists covers the tools and their published prices.)
Choose a live answering service when:
- Your calls need human judgement on every call. Delicate conversations, complaints, and callers who want reassurance from a person are what Ruby and Smith.ai are built for.
- You get very few calls. At a couple dozen calls a month, Smith.ai’s $300 Starter plan or Ruby’s $250 plan costs about the same as an AI plan, has no setup fee, and adds no new software for you to learn.
- Your customers won’t talk to an AI. Some older customer bases hang up on anything automated. You know your callers, so trust that knowledge.
Hire a person when:
- The phone is only part of the job. A salon or a busy shop with walk-ins, payments, and crew coordination needs someone physically there, and that person answers the phone too.
- You have the volume and the budget to cover the hours. Two staggered hires can cover a long service day. You’ll still need something for nights, but the daytime experience will be hard to beat.
Choose an AI receptionist when:
- Most calls follow the same pattern: new job, reschedule, service area, price of a service call, emergency.
- Your call volume swings with the seasons and per-call bills would spike right when you’re busiest.
- After-hours calls matter. Night and weekend emergencies are often your highest-value jobs.
Many businesses run a hybrid: the AI books routine jobs and transfers anything nuanced to the office or the owner’s cell. Our breakdown of after-hours calls at dental practices shows the same split for a different kind of caller.
How do you decide in 15 minutes?
Pull last month’s call log from your phone carrier and answer four questions.
- How many calls came in, and how many went unanswered? If you can’t tell, that’s your answer. Invoca’s 27% figure is a reasonable starting assumption.
- What share came outside business hours? A high number rules out a daytime-only hire as your whole solution.
- How long is the average call? Long calls make per-minute services expensive. High call counts make per-call services expensive.
- What fraction of calls are routine bookings? If it’s most of them, an AI can handle those and hand off the rest.
Then price your real month with each option using the tables above, not the entry-level plan on a pricing page. If you’d like to hear how the AI handles a call for your trade before deciding, the AI receptionist page has an example call and a demo booking link. TheBigBot runs for 127+ businesses, including HVAC, roofing, gym, and salon operators.
Frequently asked questions
How much does an answering service cost for a small business in 2026?+
Published live answering plans start at $250 a month for 50 minutes at Ruby and $300 a month for 30 calls at Smith.ai. Larger plans run to $1,725 a month for 500 minutes at Ruby and $2,100 a month for 300 calls at Smith.ai. AnswerConnect gives prices only through a quote request. Prices checked September 2026.
Is an AI receptionist cheaper than an answering service?+
Usually, once call volume is above a few dozen calls a month. On TheBigBot the AI receptionist is included in the $197 Authority Launch plan, with AI minutes at $0.12 to $0.24 and a one-time $499 setup fee. At 150 two-minute calls that comes to $233 to $269 a month, compared with about $1,440 on Smith.ai's Basic plan with overage. At very low volume, an entry-level answering service can cost about the same.
How much does it cost to hire a receptionist?+
The BLS puts the median receptionist wage at $38,010 a year, or $18.27 an hour, as of May 2025. Benefits make up about 31.3% of total compensation for private-industry office and administrative support roles, which brings the all-in cost to roughly $55,000 a year, or about $4,600 a month. That covers about 40 of the 168 hours in a week.
Can an AI receptionist book jobs and handle emergencies?+
Yes. TheBigBot's AI receptionist checks your live calendar during the call and confirms the slot before the caller hangs up. Calls containing your emergency keywords, such as burst pipe or flood, go straight to your on-call line. If a caller asks for a person, the live call is transferred to your team. See the AI receptionist page for details.
When should a service business choose a human answering service instead of AI?+
Choose a human service when most calls need judgement or reassurance, when you get only a handful of calls a month, or when your customers reliably hang up on automated systems. Hire an in-house person when the phone is only part of a front-desk job that includes walk-ins, payments, and crew scheduling.