An AI receptionist against an answering service
Both of them pick up. The difference is whether your caller gets a message taken, or a price, a slot and a booking.
That is our own line, answered by the same system this page is comparing. Ask it for a quote.
The short answer
An answering service puts a person on your line who takes a message. 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. The reason to buy the human is that a human is a human, and on some calls that is the entire point.
What an answering service actually 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.
The part a buyer meets in month two is the add-ons, so here they are up front: 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. Those are US-dollar prices, published by their owners in US dollars. Ours are in Canadian dollars and exclude tax. We have not converted anything: a converted total is a number nobody published.
Where a human answering service beats us
Three things, and every one of them is a reason to spend the extra money.
A human can handle the call that goes sideways.
Ours is very good at the first ninety seconds of a phone 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 your calls are frequently that call, buy the human. That is not a limitation we are going to talk you out of.
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 and smith.ai/pricing/ai-receptionist, checked 20 July 2026. Those are US-dollar prices, published by their owners in US dollars. Ours are in Canadian dollars and exclude tax. We have not converted anything: a converted total is a number nobody published. The honest limit is unchanged: ours is very good at the first ninety seconds of a phone call, and hands anything unusual to you.
Our number is in the header. Call it.
You do not have to take any of this on our word. The line is answered by the product.
Three things to try
- 1Say you are calling about work in your trade, 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, so it is either $300 USD/mo for 30 calls, then $11.50 a call, with thirty of those calls billed as overage, or the next plan up at $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. Those are US-dollar prices, published by their owners in US dollars. Ours are in Canadian dollars and exclude tax. We have not converted anything: a converted total is a number nobody published. We have not done the last piece of arithmetic for you on purpose. Both sets of numbers are published, and yours is the call volume that matters.
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 genuinely complex and a wrong answer is expensive.
- Your call volume is low enough that thirty calls a month covers you and the price does not sting.
- 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.
- Your phone rings hardest at seven in the evening and on Saturdays.
- You want the recording and the transcript of every call, not a message about it.
The questions this comparison raises
That is the question that comes before the money, and it is the right one. 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.
One-year term, billed monthly. At the end of the year it renews for another twelve months at the then-current rate, unless you tell us before it does. You are billed monthly at the published price the whole way through. If you leave before the term is up, early termination is 3 months of the monthly subscription: $291 CAD at $97 a month. The one-time implementation fee covers work already delivered and is not refunded. If you want to talk through a case this does not cover, call 236-500-MANN and we will tell you straight rather than point you at a terms page.
The whole number, in one place.
$97CAD a month
One-time $297 implementation fee
One-year term, billed monthly. At the end of the year it renews for another twelve months at the then-current rate, unless you tell us before it does.
Included: 75 calls a month. Past that, $0.75 CAD per call. Spam and wrong numbers do not count.
We don't stop configuring until your AI receptionist answers every call, quotes accurately, and books the job. If it's not right in your first 30 days, we keep working at no extra charge until it is, implementation fee included.
No hourly billing. No mystery quotes. No surprise invoice.
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.
$297 CAD to start, then $97/mo on a one-year term.
We don't stop configuring until your AI receptionist answers every call, quotes accurately, and books the job. If it's not right in your first 30 days, we keep working at no extra charge until it is, implementation fee included.
One-year term, billed monthly. At the end of the year it renews for another twelve months at the then-current rate, unless you tell us before it does.
If you leave before the term is up, early termination is 3 months of the monthly subscription: $291 CAD at $97 a month. The one-time implementation fee covers work already delivered and is not refunded.
Answering the phone is one half of it. The AI Website answers the people who find you online the same way: how that works.