AI answering services, compared on the handoff
We lead on the handoff being configurable and priced. Transfer rules by job type and hour sit on our $49 Starter, booking comes with it, and the rate after 200 calls is published. You decide where a call goes when the assistant stops. We have no customers, so that design is untested at scale.
What separates these products is what happens when the assistant cannot help. Smith.ai sends that call to a human team it employs. Ruby, Abby Connect and AnswerConnect are human services with AI attached. The pure AI products, ours included, transfer to your team or take a message, which is a materially different promise.
No assistant here is the whole service, and a vendor selling one as that is overselling. The useful framing is how much it handles and how cleanly it hands over the rest.
On price, Dialzara at $29 and Rosie at $49 anchor the bottom, Smith.ai's Pro plan sits at $150 with people behind it, and Ruby starts at $250 for 50 minutes of human answering.
For a business whose main need is that nothing goes unanswered and everything reaches the right person, the deciding factors are transfer rules and the overage rate rather than the voice.
How this was put together
Compared in September 2026 on handoff behavior and published economics, by the team behind one of the entries.
What we compared
- What happens when the assistant cannot handle the call, in each product's own terms.
- Whether live transfer is available at the entry price.
- The billing unit and the published overage rate.
- Whether booking is included or gated to a higher tier.
What we could not test
- How often each assistant actually needs to hand off, which would need months of comparable call data nobody publishes.
- How natural each handoff feels to a caller mid-sentence.
- Whether any vendor's human team is reachable at the hours they imply.
The shortlist at a glance
Billing unit first, because it decides more of the final bill than the headline price does.
| Charges by | Entry plan | After the allowance | |
|---|---|---|---|
| GreetKeeper | per answered call | $49/mo for 200 answered calls | $0.45 a call on Starter, published |
| Smith.ai | per call | Free tier at $0 for 25 calls, then $3.00 a call | Published, and the per-call rate falls as the tier rises |
| Goodcall | per unique caller | Starter $79/mo ($66 annual) for 100 unique customers | $0.50 per additional unique customer, published |
| Abby Connect | per minute (half-rate AI) | Starter $165/mo for 50 Abby Minutes | Not published; one Abby Minute buys two minutes of AI handling |
| Rosie | per minute | Professional $49/mo for 250 minutes | Not published |
| Dialzara | per minute | Business Lite $29/mo for 60 minutes | Published on every tier, from $0.48 a minute down to $0.35 |
| AnswerConnect | per minute | Does not publish pricing | Does not publish pricing |
Read from each vendor's own pricing page in September 2026.
GreetKeeper
Transfer and booking at the entry price, with the rate after the allowance published.
Worth it for: A business that wants transfer rules by job type and hour, booking included at $49, and the cost of a busy month knowable in advance.
Not for: Anyone who wants the fallback to reach the vendor's staff rather than their own team. We employ no receptionists. No customers, no reviews, no certifications, no uptime figure, and English only at launch.
Charges per answered call. Entry plan $49/mo for 200 answered calls. After the allowance: $0.45 a call on Starter, published.
Smith.ai
The only entry here where the fallback is a person the vendor employs.
Worth it for: A business whose worst outcome is a call nobody could help with, where a trained human catching it is worth more than the price difference.
Not for: Anyone priced out at $150 a month for Pro, or anyone whose calls almost never need a person, where the human team is capacity you pay for and rarely use.
Charges per call. Entry plan Free tier at $0 for 25 calls, then $3.00 a call. After the allowance: Published, and the per-call rate falls as the tier rises.
Goodcall
Uncapped minutes and unique-caller billing, which suits a long handoff conversation.
Worth it for: Businesses where calls run long and callers repeat, since neither costs extra.
Not for: Multi-number setups, where each phone number is a separately priced agent.
Charges per unique caller. Entry plan Starter $79/mo ($66 annual) for 100 unique customers. After the allowance: $0.50 per additional unique customer, published.
Abby Connect
One currency across human and AI, so changing the mix does not change the plan.
Worth it for: A business that wants to start mostly human and shift toward AI, or the reverse, without renegotiating anything.
Not for: Tight budgets, at $165 for 50 Abby Minutes, with no published overage rate.
Charges per minute (half-rate AI). Entry plan Starter $165/mo for 50 Abby Minutes. After the allowance: Not published; one Abby Minute buys two minutes of AI handling.
Rosie
The cheapest entry, with transfer behind the second tier.
Worth it for: Message-taking on a budget where you will handle the callbacks yourself.
Not for: Anyone relying on live transfer, which starts at $149 rather than $49. The unpublished overage rate is the second issue.
Charges per minute. Entry plan Professional $49/mo for 250 minutes. After the allowance: Not published.
Dialzara
Cheap, bilingual, and honest about what overage costs.
Worth it for: Low volume, or a business whose callers speak Spanish as well as English.
Not for: Real volume. Sixty minutes on the entry plan is a handful of conversations.
Charges per minute. Entry plan Business Lite $29/mo for 60 minutes. After the allowance: Published on every tier, from $0.48 a minute down to $0.35.
AnswerConnect
Human answering around the clock, with the price behind a form.
Worth it for: A business wanting established 24/7 human cover, including weekends and holidays.
Not for: Comparing on published numbers, and short calls, since billing rounds up to the whole minute.
AnswerConnect does not publish its rates, so the cost is whatever the sales call produces.
When an answering service is not the fix
If most of your inbound is spam and robocalls, an answering service bills you to answer them. Look at a month of call logs before buying: plenty of businesses discover the phone volume problem they thought they had is mostly noise.
If your customers would rather text, buying voice software is solving a problem they do not have. Check where last month's inquiries actually came from.
And if every call genuinely needs judgment, the honest answer is a person. Ruby and AnswerConnect sell that, and for a small number of high-value calls it is a defensible purchase.
Our own pricing, in full
Including the rate after the allowance, which is the number most of this list leaves off.
| Plan | Monthly | Calls included | After that |
|---|---|---|---|
| StarterFor a single location taking calls one line at a time. | $49 | 200 | $0.45 per call |
| ProfessionalBooking, routing and transfers included, not an add-on. | $149 | 750 | $0.35 per call |
| ScaleFor busy phones and longer opening hours. | $349 | 2,000 | $0.25 per call |
The short version
- Booking is included on every tier. Rosie keeps booking and live transfer behind its $149 plan.
- The overage rate is on the pricing page. Rosie, Ruby, Slang and AnswerConnect do not publish theirs.
- Calls are counted, not minutes, so a long useful conversation costs the same as a short one.
Questions people ask about this list
What happens when the AI cannot answer?
It depends on the vendor, and that is the most important question on this page. Smith.ai routes to its own human team. The pure AI products transfer to your team or take a message. Ask each vendor to describe the mechanism rather than quote a resolution rate.
Why do you not publish a resolution rate?
Because we have not measured one, and a number with no method behind it is decoration. Figures like 90 to 95 percent of calls resolved without a human circulate widely in this category with no primary source we could find.
Is an AI answering service the same as an AI receptionist?
The terms are used interchangeably by most vendors, including us. Historically answering service implied message-taking and receptionist implied booking and routing, and that distinction has largely dissolved.
Why is GreetKeeper first on a list it wrote?
Because the handoff is the subject of this page, and ours is a rule you write rather than a behavior you accept. Transfer sits on the $49 plan. Smith.ai's human fallback and Goodcall's billing model each beat us for the buyers they suit, and both have customers. We have none, and no reviews.
Hear one of these handle your own call
Your scenario, your greeting, a couple of minutes.