AI receptionist vs answering service
Both pick up the phone. An answering service takes a message, and ours gives the caller a price, a time and a booking.
That is our own line, answered by the AI Receptionist. Ask it for a quote.
An answering service or an AI receptionist
An answering service puts a person on your line who takes a message, and books for an added fee per call. Ours puts an AI on your line that answers the question, quotes the work, and books it while the caller is still there. Smith.ai's smallest human plan is $300 USD/mo for 30 calls, then $11.50 a call. Ours is $97 CAD a month for 75 calls a month, then $0.75 CAD per call. Some calls need a person, and for those the human service is the right buy.
An answering service and ours, call by call
Smith.ai is the one answering service that shows its whole price list on its own site, so it is the one in the matrix. Every cell in their column is read off their pricing page and dated.
Who answers
What happens to the call
AI answering
Price and terms
Sources: smith.ai/pricing/receptionists, checked 20 July 2026 and smith.ai/pricing/ai-receptionist, checked 3 August 2026. US-dollar prices as their owners list them, not converted. Ours are in Canadian dollars and exclude tax.
What an answering service does with the call
A person picks up, in your company’s name, and takes a message. Smith.ai, the one answering service that publishes its whole price list, describes the product as “Professional call answering by real people, trained in your field, available 24/7.” and runs it around the clock.
The plans are per call, not per minute: $300 USD/mo for 30 calls, then $11.50 a call. Then $810 USD/mo for 90 calls, then $10.50 a call. Then $2,100 USD/mo for 300 calls, then $8.50 a call. Their published guarantee: 30-day money-back guarantee on all plans.
Smith.ai also charges for add-ons: booking $1.50, notifications $0.50, recording $0.25, routing $1.50. Booking the appointment, which on our side is the thing the call is for, is priced separately there.
Sources: smith.ai/pricing/receptionists, checked 20 July 2026. US-dollar prices as their owners list them, not converted. Ours are in Canadian dollars and exclude tax.
Where a human answering service beats us
They are ahead of us on three things.
A human can handle an unusual call.
Ours handles the routine call and hands anything unusual to you. A trained intake person carries the whole call, however strange it gets.
A distressed or angry caller wants a person.
If many of your calls are like that, buy the human service.
Judgement.
A trained human intake specialist can decide something ours will escalate instead. Escalating is the right behaviour for an AI, and it is still slower than deciding.
What happens to the call
Sources: smith.ai/pricing/receptionists, checked 20 July 2026 and smith.ai/pricing/ai-receptionist, checked 3 August 2026. US-dollar prices as their owners list them, not converted. Ours are in Canadian dollars and exclude tax. What ours wins is the call itself: it answers the question, quotes the work and books the job while they are on the line, then hands anything unusual to you.
Hear it on our own line.
You can test this yourself, because our own line is answered by the AI Receptionist.
Three things to try
- 1Say you are calling about the work you do, in your town.
- 2Ask what it costs, then ask to book a day next week.
- 3Interrupt it halfway through and change your mind.
The five-step version, including asking it whether it is a real person, is on the AI Receptionist page.
Ask it to quote a job
It will ask you the questions an owner would ask, give you a range, and offer you a time. It is the same agent we would configure on your line, running on ours.
Call 236-500-MANNWhat each call costs you
Take a business whose phone rings 60 times a month, which is two or three calls a working day.
A human answering service
60 calls is past the smallest plan. On it, the month is $300 USD for the first 30 calls plus 30 at $11.50, or $645 USD. The next plan up is $810 USD/mo for 90 calls, then $10.50 a call.
Booking any of them is a separate per-call charge on that side: booking $1.50, notifications $0.50, recording $0.25, routing $1.50.
AI Receptionist
75 calls a month are included, so 60 calls sit inside the allowance and the month is $97 CAD. Past 75 it is $0.75 CAD per call, so a 150-call month is $97 plus $56.25.
Answering, quoting, booking, the recording and the summary are all in that number. There is no per-booking charge.
Sources: smith.ai/pricing/receptionists, checked 20 July 2026. US-dollar prices as their owners list them, not converted. Ours are in Canadian dollars and exclude tax. Both sets of numbers are on this page, so run the same arithmetic on your own call volume.
Buy a human answering service if this is you
A human answering service is the right buy when
- Your callers are in distress when they call, and being met by a person is the service.
- Your intake is complex and a wrong answer is expensive.
- Your call volume is low enough that thirty calls a month covers you and the price is manageable.
- You are in a regulated profession with intake rules the AI would need to be configured around, and you would rather not have that conversation.
Ours is the right buy when
- Your callers want a price and a slot.
- You lose work to whoever calls back first.
- Most of your calls come at seven in the evening and on Saturdays.
- You want the recording and the transcript of every call, not a message about it.
Questions buyers ask
It answers in your company's words, it quotes only what you tell it to quote, and when it does not know something it says so and gets you rather than guessing. If a caller asks whether they are talking to a person, it tells them the truth. The AI Receptionist page sets out exactly what it does and does not do.
No. We forward your existing number to the AI, or we port it onto our system, whichever you prefer. Either way it is your number. If you ever leave, it leaves with you.
It hands it to you. You write the rules for what counts as urgent, and anything that fits them routes straight to your mobile. Everything else is recorded, transcribed and summarised, so you can hear what happened rather than reconstruct it.
Yes, and some businesses should. Point your line at the AI and give it a rule that escalates the calls you want a person on, or keep a human service for your business hours and let the AI take the evenings and weekends. The two do not conflict; they are answering different calls.
Calls past 75 a month bill at $0.75 CAD each. Spam and wrong numbers don't count. You can see the running count in your dashboard all month, so it never arrives as a surprise. All prices are in Canadian dollars and exclude tax.
The full price.
$97CAD a month
One-time $297 implementation fee
Included: 75 calls a month. Past that, $0.75 CAD per call. Spam and wrong numbers do not count.
In your first 30 days, we keep configuring your AI receptionist at no extra charge until it answers, quotes and books the way we agreed. That work is covered by the implementation fee.
No hourly billing.
All prices are in Canadian dollars and exclude tax.
If you are busier than that
75 calls is two or three a day. A month where the phone rings 150 times costs $97 plus $56.25. You see the count in your dashboard all month, so it never arrives as a surprise.
$97/mo, plus $297 CAD for the build.
The build fee is due at signing.
In your first 30 days, we keep configuring your AI receptionist at no extra charge until it answers, quotes and books the way we agreed. That work is covered by the implementation fee.
Answering the phone is one half of it. The AI Website answers the people who find you online the same way: how that works.