Answering service or AI receptionist: what does each cost?

Ruby shows the human model most clearly. Its entry plan is $250 for 50 minutes and its tiers climb to $1,725 for 500 minutes, with no overage rate on the pricing page.

Per-minute receptionist time adds up fast. PATLive's live-answering tiers run $99 for 50 minutes up to $759 for 500, and Posh's run $130 for 50 minutes up to $1,900 for 1,000. Smith.ai sells per call instead, with an AI tier at $150 a month and people behind it.

AnswerConnect puts its prices behind a quote form, so you meet sales before you see a number. That tells you something too: a price you can't read is an overage rate you can't read either.

The billing unit comes first. Human services sell staffed minutes, so a long, useful conversation costs more than a short one. GreetKeeper sells answered calls, so a six-minute booking costs the same as a thirty-second question.

Concurrency decides your busiest hour. A staffed room has a set number of agents on shift, and a rush puts callers in a queue. GreetKeeper answers calls that arrive together at the same time, so nobody waits in line on your best day.

The overage rate decides your worst month. When it isn't published, a busy month has no price until the invoice lands. GreetKeeper prints all three: $0.45, $0.35 and $0.25 a call.

Your people stay in the loop either way. You name the calls that need a person, and GreetKeeper transfers them to your team with the caller's details already captured.

Take two businesses. The first is a pest control company with 400 calls a month at about three minutes each, so 1,200 minutes. Ruby's largest published plan, as of September 2026, is 500 minutes for $1,725, and this company would need more than double that allowance. On GreetKeeper the same 400 calls cost $139 on Starter with overage, or a flat $149 on Professional. The calls are mostly the same five questions about ants, quotes and scheduling.

The second is a funeral home with 60 calls a month averaging six minutes. Volume is low and the price gap is a few hundred dollars. Nearly every caller is having one of the worst weeks of their life, and what they need from the first voice they hear is patience and judgment. A trained person earns that fee. We'd tell this owner to pay for the human service.

For a human service, the number that matters is answer time in your own peak hour, not the daily average. Ask for it. Then test it: call your trial line at 12:15 on a Monday, three weeks running, and count the rings.

Ask how many accounts each agent covers and how script changes reach them. Will a Tuesday change to your emergency policy reach agents that afternoon, or after the next training cycle? Get the overage rate and any holiday or after-hours surcharge in writing, since a minute on Thanksgiving may not cost what a minute in March costs.

For an AI vendor, us included, the questions are different. What does it do with a question outside its brief? Who gets the call when it hands over, and what do they see? What does a busy month cost, worked through with your own numbers?

One test applies to both. Give each a genuinely awkward call, such as an upset customer with a vague complaint, and then read or listen to what comes back.

GreetKeeper answers every call at any hour and hands the calls that need a person to your own team. The caller's name, number and reason arrive with the transfer, so nobody asks twice.

Pricing is per answered call with the overage published: $49 for 200 at $0.45 over, $149 for 750 at $0.35, $349 for 2,000 at $0.25. There is no setup fee.

Booking and transfers are on every plan. GreetKeeper reads the caller's details back before it books, so your calendar holds what the caller actually said.