Contents
Key points
- A virtual receptionist answers your calls from outside your office. It can be a trained person at a remote service or software that talks to the caller.
- The published gap between the two is large. Staffed plans start around $250 a month for 50 minutes, software around $49 a month for 100 to 250 minutes.
- A virtual receptionist does more than a plain answering service: it screens, transfers and books, rather than only writing down a message.
- Neither version should handle an upset customer, a technical judgment call, or anything needing authority to make an exception. Route those to a person.
- If you run a trade business, judge it on the questions it asks: the job, the address, and whether it can wait. Most guides on this subject are written for an office.
A virtual receptionist answers your business calls from somewhere other than your office. What is a virtual receptionist in practice: either a trained person sitting at a remote service, or software that speaks to your callers, working from your business name, your hours and your prices. The caller rings your usual number and hears your business greeting either way.
The term is used loosely enough to be genuinely confusing. One widely read article insists a virtual receptionist is always an actual person and never software, while three others on the same first page of results describe it as either. This guide takes the broad meaning, sets the published prices side by side, and is honest about the calls neither version should be taking.
What a virtual receptionist does
The job is the same one a front-desk receptionist does, minus the desk. You forward your business number, either all the time or only when nobody picks up, and the calls you miss are answered on your behalf.
- Answers in your business name, so the caller thinks they reached your office.
- Screens calls and passes the ones you want straight through to your phone.
- Answers routine questions from what you provided: hours, service area, what you charge for a callout.
- Books work or agrees a time inside the hours you are open.
- Takes a message when the caller needs something only you can answer.
- Sends you the details of the call, in most cases by email.
That list is what separates a virtual receptionist from a plain answering service. An answering service writes down that somebody rang. A virtual receptionist is supposed to deal with the call. Providers blur the two names constantly, so read what the plan actually includes.
Not the same as a virtual assistant
This is the mix-up worth clearing up first, because the two are sold side by side and cost very different amounts. A virtual receptionist works your phone: answering, screening, booking, taking messages. A virtual assistant works your admin: email, invoices, scheduling, research, chasing suppliers. One is bought by the minute or the call, the other by the hour or the month. If what you want is somebody to answer the phone at seven in the evening, a virtual assistant is the wrong purchase and a more expensive one.
What actually happens when someone calls
Most guides skip the mechanics, which is a shame, because the mechanics are simple and they answer the question people are really asking, which is whether this looks strange to a customer.
You keep your existing business number. You set up call forwarding on it, which every mobile carrier and phone system supports. You can forward every call, or only the ones you do not pick up within a few rings, or only outside your working hours. Nothing about the number a customer already has changes.
When a call comes in and you do not answer, it lands at the service instead of at voicemail. The caller hears your business name. They explain what they want. They get their questions answered, or they get booked in, or they get told somebody will call them back and roughly when. Then the details of that call reach you, in most cases by email, usually within a minute or two of the call ending.
The setup work is on the other side of it. Before any of this is useful, somebody has to write down your services, your hours, your prices and your rules about what counts as urgent. With a staffed service that is an onboarding call and a script. With software you fill it in yourself. Either way, the quality of that half hour decides the quality of every call afterwards, and a thin setup is the most common reason people are disappointed.
A person or software: what each costs
This is the decision, and the price gap is the reason it is a real decision rather than an obvious one. Every figure below is from the provider's own published pricing page on the date shown.
Staffed by people
- Ruby: $250 a month for 50 minutes, $395 for 100 minutes, and $1,725 for 500 minutes. No overage rate is published (checked 2026-07-12).
- Smith.ai: $300 a month for 30 calls, with $11.50 for every call past the allowance (checked 2026-08-03).
- AnswerConnect: $350 a month for 200 minutes plus a $49.99 setup fee, then $2.50 a minute after that. Its next tier up is $395 for 300 minutes with no setup fee (checked 2026-08-03).
Software
- Rosie: $49 a month for 250 minutes. No overage rate published (checked 2026-07-11).
- RingCentral: $49 a month for 100 minutes on its standalone plan (checked 2026-07-26).
- Smith.ai's software option: $150 a month at $2.00 a call, against $300 a month for the same company's people (checked 2026-07-11).
- EveryDial: $49 a month for 100 minutes or $149 for 400, with minutes past your plan at $0.49 and $0.37.
Compare the entry plans and the staffed end starts at five to six times the software end, and the gap widens once you look at what the money buys: $250 gets you 50 minutes at Ruby, while $49 gets you 100 to 250 minutes on the software plans. That is not an argument that the people are overpriced. Someone has to be paid to sit there. It is an argument for being clear about what you are buying. A person handles the odd call better. Software answers at eleven at night without a surcharge and never has a bad week.
Against hiring your own receptionist
Every provider in this market makes this comparison, and it is worth reading with one eye open. Smith.ai states on its own pricing page that even its $2,100 a month plan is about $33,000 less than a full-time receptionist's yearly salary. The arithmetic is probably fair, but the comparison is not a like-for-like one. A person you employ chases suppliers, handles the walk-in, and remembers the customer who rang in the spring. None of the options above do any of that. The honest framing is that a virtual receptionist replaces your voicemail, not your office manager.
What neither version should be doing
Almost every article on this subject is a list of benefits. The limits matter more, because they decide which calls you still have to take yourself.
- An upset customer. Somebody whose job went wrong needs a person who can put it right, and being screened makes it worse.
- Anything needing a judgment call about the work. If the answer depends on seeing the property, no receptionist of either kind can give it.
- Anything needing authority. Discounts, exceptions and complaints belong to you.
- Deep questions about your trade. Both versions work from what you gave them and stop where that runs out.
- Calls where the caller cannot be understood. Heavy background noise and strong accents cause trouble for software, and a busy remote service is not immune either.
EveryDial is an AI receptionist built for home services businesses. Sign up with an email, no credit card, and 10 receptionist minutes are enough to ring it yourself and judge it on a real call.
If you run a trade business, judge it differently
Nearly every guide on virtual receptionists is written for an office: a law firm, a clinic, a real estate team. Somebody is at a desk, and the receptionist protects them from interruption. That is not your situation if you are under a sink, on a roof, or halfway through a load at the transfer station.
Your calls are different in three ways. They are often urgent, so a callback tomorrow is a lost job. They need an address, because half the answer depends on where the property is. And they need a decision about timing there and then. So judge a virtual receptionist on the questions it asks, not on how polished the greeting sounds. If it cannot come back with what the job is, where it is, and whether it can wait, it has not saved you a phone call, it has just delayed one.
It also matters most outside working hours, when there is nobody in the office at all and the alternative is voicemail. Our page on after-hours call answering covers that case in more detail, and there is a version written for contractors specifically.
How to work out whether you need one
Do it from your call log rather than from a sales page. Count the calls last month that nobody answered, then narrow that to the ones from numbers you did not recognize. Those are people who were trying to hire you.
Multiply that count by what an average job is worth to you, and be conservative, because not every enquiry becomes work. Put the result next to the monthly prices above. On a $300 job, a $49 software plan pays for itself on one recovered job a month and a $250 staffed plan needs one as well, but the staffed plan only gives you 50 minutes to find it in. If your count of missed calls is zero, you have your answer, and it is that your phone is fine.
Frequently asked questions
What do virtual receptionists do?
They answer your business calls from outside your office, greet callers in your business name, and handle the call rather than only noting it. That usually means screening, transferring urgent calls to you, answering routine questions, and booking work. Anything they cannot answer comes to you with the details attached.
How much does a virtual receptionist cost?
Staffed services published between $250 and $2,100 a month when we checked, sold by included minutes or calls. Software-based ones publish plans starting around $49 a month. Watch the overage rate as closely as the headline price, because several providers do not publish one at all.
How do virtual receptionists work?
You give the service your business name, hours, services and prices, then forward your phone number to it, either always or only when you do not pick up. From then on, missed calls are answered on your behalf and the details reach you afterwards, usually by email. Turning forwarding off puts your phone back to normal.
What is the difference between a virtual receptionist and an answering service?
An answering service mainly takes a message and passes it on. A virtual receptionist is expected to handle the call: screening, transferring, answering questions and booking work. In practice many providers use both names for the same product, so compare what the plan includes rather than what it is called.
Can a virtual receptionist book jobs, or only take messages?
It depends entirely on the plan, and this is the thing worth checking hardest. Cheaper plans at both the staffed and software ends often stop at taking a message, which leaves every callback with you. A plan that agrees a time with the caller inside your working hours is doing a different and much more useful job.
Is a virtual receptionist worth it?
It is worth it when the calls you currently miss are worth more than the monthly fee. Count the unanswered calls from unfamiliar numbers over a month and multiply by your average job value. If you answer nearly every call today, this is not the thing to spend money on.