Answering services for IT companies and MSPs, ranked on the outage call
GreetKeeper is our product, and it ranks first for an IT company or MSP because an outage call reaches the on-call engineer by transfer and by text, the ticket details arrive by webhook into your helpdesk, and the price is $49 a month for 200 answered calls with the overage printed.
An MSP's phone carries two very different calls. One is a client whose server is down at 7am and needs an engineer inside the response time in their contract. The other is a password reset that any queue can hold. The answering service earns its fee by telling them apart on the first sentence and routing each correctly.
AnswerConnect and Nexa answer with people around the clock and both keep their pricing behind a form. PATLive answers with people too and prints every per-minute rate, from $2.99 pay as you go down to $1.49 on its largest tier, so a night of client calls can be priced in advance.
Smith.ai puts a trained human team behind its AI at $150 for Pro, and Ruby's receptionists start at $250 for 50 minutes. Goodcall counts unique customers at $79 for 100 with uncapped minutes, which fits an MSP whose forty clients ring repeatedly.
The IT-specific test is where the ticket goes. GreetKeeper sends a signed webhook per call with the caller's name, company, number, the reason for calling and the answers to your intake questions, and a Zap on a paid Zapier plan writes it into your helpdesk. The engineer opens a ticket, not a voicemail.
How this was put together
Disclosure: GreetKeeper is our product. Compared in September 2026 on an MSP's after-hours outage call, and every rival figure was read on that vendor's own pricing page that month.
What we compared
- Whether an outage is separated from a routine request inside the call, from questions you set.
- Whether the on-call engineer is reached live and by text, and what happens if they do not pick up.
- Whether the call becomes a ticket in your helpdesk, and by what route.
- The billing unit, since a client describing an outage takes minutes.
- Published price, allowance and overage rate, and whether the vendor publishes them at all.
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 |
| AnswerConnect | per minute | Does not publish pricing | Does not publish pricing |
| PATLive | per minute | $49/mo pay as you go with no minutes included, at $2.99 a minute; $99 for 50 minutes | Published on every tier: $2.99 a minute pay as you go, $2.29 on the $99 plan, $1.99 at $349, $1.79 at $759, down to $1.49 at $6,899 (re-read on patlive.com/pricing 2026-09-24) |
| Goodcall | per unique caller | Starter $79/mo ($66 annual) for 100 unique customers | $0.50 per additional unique customer, 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 |
| Nexa | per minute | Not published. Their plans page lists Nexa 100, Nexa 300 and Nexa 500 by included voice minutes with no dollar figures | Not published, because no pricing at all is published |
Read from each vendor's own pricing page in September 2026.
GreetKeeper
Outage sorted from password reset, engineer reached, ticket created by webhook, at $49.
Worth it for: An MSP with a few dozen clients that wants after-hours outage calls to reach the on-call engineer inside the contract's response time, and every call to become a helpdesk ticket.
Charges per answered call. Entry plan $49/mo for 200 answered calls. After the allowance: $0.45 a call on Starter, published.
AnswerConnect
Human answering around the clock, with pricing on request.
Worth it for: An MSP that wants a staffed operator taking every client call at every hour and is willing to run a sales call for the rate.
Not for: Comparing on published numbers, since the price is behind a form and billing is per minute.
AnswerConnect does not publish its rates, so the cost is whatever the sales call produces.
PATLive
Live answering with the whole per-minute rate card printed.
Worth it for: An MSP that wants people answering client calls and wants the night priced in advance, since every tier prints its rate.
Not for: Short routine calls in volume, since per-minute billing rounds each up, and the $49 tier includes no minutes at $2.99 each.
Charges per minute. Entry plan $49/mo pay as you go with no minutes included, at $2.99 a minute; $99 for 50 minutes. After the allowance: Published on every tier: $2.99 a minute pay as you go, $2.29 on the $99 plan, $1.99 at $349, $1.79 at $759, down to $1.49 at $6,899 (re-read on patlive.com/pricing 2026-09-24).
Goodcall
One unit per client contact however often they ring, minutes uncapped.
Worth it for: An MSP whose client contacts ring repeatedly through an incident, since a repeat caller counts once at $79 for 100 customers.
Not for: An MSP with a separate support number per client tier, because pricing is per agent and each phone number is an 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.
Smith.ai
AI with a trained human team behind it, per call from $150.
Worth it for: An IT consultancy whose calls are mostly prospects and executives, where a person available on the line is worth near $2.00 a call.
Not for: Ticket volume on a budget. Pro is $150 for 75 to 300 calls, and a bad patch Tuesday can clear the top of that band.
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.
Nexa
Live receptionists with custom scripting, quoted rather than priced.
Worth it for: An MSP that wants a scripted human intake for each client and is willing to collect a quote.
Not for: Anyone modelling the bill, since no price is published at any tier and the plans page lists voice minutes only.
Charges per minute. Entry plan Not published. Their plans page lists Nexa 100, Nexa 300 and Nexa 500 by included voice minutes with no dollar figures. After the allowance: Not published, because no pricing at all is published.
How to choose for an IT company
Write the outage definition first. Server down, site offline, email out for the whole company and a suspected breach usually qualify, and GreetKeeper routes by what the caller needs from the list you write. Those calls transfer to the on-call engineer and text them the client, the contact and the fault; the rest wait in the queue.
Then the ticket route. GreetKeeper's webhook carries the caller's name, company, number, reason and intake answers, signed so your receiver can verify it, and a Zap on a paid Zapier plan writes it into a helpdesk such as Zendesk. Nexa and AnswerConnect publish no price, so their rate arrives on a sales call.
Last, the bill. A client describing an outage takes minutes, and PATLive prints $2.99 a minute pay as you go. GreetKeeper counts answered calls at $49 for 200, $0.45 past that, and answers calls that arrive together, so a company-wide outage that makes six people call at once does not produce a busy tone.
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
Can an answering service reach our on-call engineer for an outage?
GreetKeeper transfers an outage call to the engineer you name for that rota and texts them the client, the contact and the fault. If the engineer does not pick up, it tries a second number you nominate, so the call reaches a person inside the agreed response time rather than a voicemail.
Does the call become a ticket in our helpdesk?
Yes, through GreetKeeper's signed webhook. A Zap on a paid Zapier plan catches each call and the helpdesk's own Zapier action creates the ticket with the caller's name, company, number, reason and intake answers. The Zendesk ticket carries the transcript link.
Can it answer routine requests like password resets?
It answers the questions you train it on, such as how to reach the self-service portal or what the support hours are, and captures a request it cannot resolve with the caller's details. Each number can have its own hours and greeting, so a client-specific line can answer differently.
Why does an AI service rank above the staffed ones for IT companies?
On the published criteria: the engineer reached live and by text, the ticket created by webhook, calls answered together, and a printed price of $49 for 200 answered calls at $0.45 over. AnswerConnect and Nexa publish no price, and every GreetKeeper plan starts with a 14-day trial with no card.
Hear one of these handle your own call
Your scenario, your greeting, a couple of minutes.