A virtual receptionist answers your business calls from somewhere other than your office. Your calls are forwarded to it, a person or an AI greets the caller in your business name, finds out who they are and what they need, and then passes the call or a message on to you.
Three kinds of service do that job, and they cost and feel different. A staffed service gives you trained receptionists. An AI receptionist answers in their place, and ours comes with the Receptionist plan (coming soon). Call screening on Pro, on sale now, leaves you picking up and checks each unknown caller first. This guide sets them side by side: what four staffed services publish on their own pricing pages, what ours does and doesn't do, and the questions that separate one plan from another before you pay.
What a staffed virtual receptionist does on a call
You forward your business line to the service, and a receptionist answers with the greeting you've set up. Ruby's FAQ describes what happens when the caller might be someone you want to talk to: the receptionist places the caller on hold and contacts you to ask whether you'd like the call. Say yes and it's transferred. Say no, or don't answer, and the caller gets voicemail or a written message, which shows up in Ruby's app and on its site and may be emailed or texted to you.
The plans reach past answering. Ruby lists scheduling, lead qualification and intake, payment collection and outbound call assistance among the features of its plans. Smith.ai lists lead screening, qualification and intake on every plan, and charges per call for extras such as booking appointments or a text when a caller qualifies for a transfer. Davinci Virtual's Business plan covers live answering, call forwarding and screening, and voicemail management, and its Premium plan adds appointment scheduling, outbound calling and order processing.
What four staffed services list, and how they bill
These are the entry plans each service shows on its own site, as listed on October 10, 2026. Prices move, so check the vendor's page before you decide.
| Service | Bills by | Entry plan, as listed on October 10, 2026 | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ruby | Receptionist minutes, in 60-second steps, rounded up. | 50 minutes a month for $250. | Live answering 24/7, including after-hours, weekends and holidays. The overage rate isn't published. |
| Smith.ai | Calls, with a charge for each call over the plan. | Starter: 30 calls a month for $300. | Live staffing 24/7, no setup fees and no charge for spam. Booking appointments is a per-call add-on. |
| AnswerConnect | Minutes answered, with a per-minute rate past the plan. | Entry: 200 minutes a month for $350. | Answers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Its Plans & Pricing page asks for your name, email and phone before it shows plans; the prices are in a PDF guide. |
| Davinci Virtual | Live minutes in a monthly package, counted by the second. | Business 50: 50 live minutes a month for $129. | Includes a free local or toll-free number. Its FAQ lists a one-time setup fee of $95, as of the same date. |
Don't compare the entry plans by price alone. Fifty minutes, thirty calls, two hundred minutes and fifty live minutes are different yardsticks, and what counts toward each one is where the bills part ways. Ruby rounds each call up to the nearest 60-second mark. AnswerConnect rounds every interaction up to the nearest minute, though the first 30 interactions under 30 seconds in a billing cycle are free. Davinci counts its live minutes by the second. Ruby also counts hold time and the time a receptionist spends finishing the notes after the caller hangs up.
Three more places a bill moves. Past the allowance, Ruby charges an overage rate that its pricing page doesn't publish, and Smith.ai charges its per-call rate on every call over the plan. AnswerConnect's guide shows a one-time setup fee on its Entry and Standard plans and a note on a later page saying all plans carry one, so ask which applies to you. Spam is the third. Smith.ai says it doesn't charge for spam on its human plans; put the same question to the others in writing.
Terms differ as well. Ruby has no long-term contract, and a first-time customer who cancels within 21 days, or before using 500 receptionist minutes, whichever comes first, gets the money back. Smith.ai gives a 30-day money-back guarantee on every plan. AnswerConnect says "No hidden fees, no contracts, no notice period."
Hours are the claim to get in writing. Ruby, Smith.ai and AnswerConnect each say a person answers around the clock. Davinci's live receptionist page lists 24/7 availability, while its receptionist FAQ says live receptionists answer from 8 am to 8 pm Eastern, Monday through Friday, and an automated attendant greets callers after that.
An AI receptionist instead of a person
An AI receptionist is a voice agent that answers where a person would, and the services that sell one price it on a scale of its own. Smith.ai's AI Receptionist, as listed on October 10, 2026, has a free tier with 25 calls a month, a Pro tier at $150 a month (the page defaults to 75 calls) and an Enterprise tier at $500 a month (300 calls), each with a per-call rate. The AI takes the call first and can hand something complex to a live receptionist. Ruby says optional AI enhancements come with all of its plans at no extra cost. At the other end, AnswerConnect says its customers "will always reach a human receptionist" and "never bots or voicemail."
Ours comes with the Receptionist plan, $99.99 a month (coming soon), which isn't open for sign-up yet. Here is what the AI receptionist will do when it is. In your business hours your phone rings for 12 seconds and the AI answers if you don't. Outside them, callers who pass screening go straight to it. Before it says a word, the caller hears "Let me connect you to the receptionist. This call may be recorded." Its instructions match the trade you chose at signup. It gets the caller's name and reason, confirms the callback number by its last four digits, asks what days work and tells the caller someone from your team will reach out to lock in a time. Each AI call's summary and transcript go into your dashboard's AI call history.
It has limits, and you should know them before you plan around it. It doesn't book the appointment, so you confirm the time when you call back. It doesn't quote prices; a flat trip charge you set is the one exception. And it doesn't catch every call you miss: a priority call or a saved contact you miss goes to voicemail instead. The AI receptionist page goes through all of it.
Call screening that rings you: Pro
Pro is on sale now, at $29.99 a month with 800 voice minutes. Your cell keeps its number and forwards every call to the VettedCalls number we set up for your account. Saved contacts and anyone who got through in the past 60 days go straight to ringing you. A stranger is greeted in your business name, asked who they are and what they need, and puts the call through with 1 or 2. A caller who says nothing gets the same choice, and one who presses nothing hears "This number does not accept unsolicited calls. Goodbye." before the call ends.
The Cloud Softphone app then rings with the caller's number on screen, and picking up plays their name and reason to you before they're connected. If you can't pick up, your phone rings for up to 25 seconds and the caller goes to voicemail. You get a text alert and an email with the transcript, and a caller who pressed 1 gets a text saying you missed them. Call screening has the full order of checks, and the pages on voicemail to text and missed-call text back cover the rest.
Screening is not a receptionist. Nobody answers for you, and Pro has no AI receptionist to catch the call you can't take. We don't place outbound calls either; you call people back from your own cell. Minutes count every call we answer, the spam we block included, and each call rounds up to the next whole minute.
The three side by side
| What to look at | Staffed service | Our AI receptionist (coming soon) | Call screening (Pro) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who answers first | A trained receptionist, answering as your business. | An AI voice. In business hours your phone rings for 12 seconds first; outside them, callers who pass screening go straight to it. | A greeting in your business name. Then you, if the caller gets through. |
| What you're billed for | Minutes or calls in a monthly plan, with a rate for what goes over. | $99.99 a month (coming soon), with 1,500 voice and 250 AI minutes included and a per-minute rate past them. | $29.99 a month, with 800 voice minutes included and a per-minute rate past them. |
| Fits best when | Every caller has to reach a person, or nobody on your side can return calls during the day. | A missed call often costs you the job, and you want the caller's details waiting when you're free. | You answer most of your own calls and want unknown callers checked first. |
| The catch | The bill follows your call volume and whatever the plan counts. | It doesn't book the appointment or quote prices, and a priority call or saved contact you miss goes to voicemail. | Nobody answers for you. A missed call goes to voicemail, and Pro has no AI receptionist. |
| Available | From each service. | Coming soon, with no buy button yet. | Now. |
Questions to put to any provider before you pay
- What is the unit, and how is it rounded? Minutes, calls or a flat plan. Ask whether hold time and after-call work count, the way they do at Ruby.
- What counts? Spam, sales calls and hang-ups can each be billed or not. We count every call we answer toward your minutes, and a spam call we block usually counts as one.
- What happens past the allowance? Get the rate in writing. One of the four above doesn't publish it.
- When is a person on the line? Ask for the live hours and what answers outside them.
- How does a message reach you? App, text, email or all three, and how fast. On Pro you get a text alert and an email with the full transcript and a link to the recording.
- Who books the appointment, and for how much? Staffed services range from included to a per-call add-on. Ours takes the details, and you set the time.
- How do you leave? Look for the refund window and the notice period. Ours is a 14-day money-back guarantee, and you can cancel any time and keep access through the end of the period you paid for.
Keeping your number
Ruby says you can forward your number to it all the time, part of the time or on a delay, and that it can often port the number instead. Davinci forwards an existing number to its service at no cost; having Davinci take ownership of the number is a one-time $75 porting fee, as listed on October 10, 2026. With VettedCalls the cell keeps its number and every call forwards to ours, and we don't port numbers. That puts the weight on your carrier. Some prepaid and MVNO plans can't forward, and if yours can't, you get a full refund within the first 14 days. Our guides cover how to forward calls, with step-by-step versions for iPhone and Android.
Picking one
If a missed call regularly costs you a job and your callers expect a person, pay for a staffed service, and get quotes from two of them on the same month of calls. We've set VettedCalls beside Ruby, Smith.ai and AnswerConnect, and the comparison hub lists the rest. If you answer your own phone and the trouble is junk and interruptions, start with screening on Pro. Night and weekend calls have their own page on after hours answering, and the answering service guide compares live, AI and screening from the answering-service side. Current plans and overage rates are on the pricing page.
Common questions
How much does a virtual receptionist cost?
It depends on the unit you're billed in. As listed on October 10, 2026, the entry plans were $129 a month for 50 live minutes at Davinci Virtual, $250 for 50 minutes at Ruby, $300 for 30 calls at Smith.ai and $350 for 200 minutes at AnswerConnect. Those measure different things, so work out what a typical month of your calls would cost on each. Our own plans are a flat monthly price with minutes included: Pro is $29.99 a month, and Receptionist (coming soon) is $99.99 a month.
Is a virtual receptionist the same as an answering service?
Mostly it is the same job under two names, and the vendors use the words loosely. Ruby's FAQ says answering services "typically perform only the simplest tasks, such as forwarding messages, and can be impersonal," while virtual receptionists "are real people who sound as if they're right in your office." AnswerConnect calls itself a business answering service and says its customers always reach a human receptionist. The comparison that matters is what a plan includes and how it bills.
Can a virtual receptionist book appointments?
Some can. Ruby lists scheduling among the features of its plans, Smith.ai books appointments as a per-call add-on on its human plans, and Davinci Virtual includes scheduling in its Premium plan. Our AI receptionist doesn't book. It takes the caller's details and the days that work for them, and you confirm the appointment when you call back.
Do I need a new phone number?
Not one you hand out. Customers keep dialing your cell, which passes each call to a number we add to your account, and we don't port numbers. Other services either take your forwarded calls or, at some, take over the number itself.
Can I buy your AI receptionist today?
Not yet. The Receptionist plan, which includes the AI receptionist, is coming soon and has no buy button. Pro is on sale now: it screens calls, blocks spam and takes voicemail with transcripts, but it has no AI receptionist, so a call you miss goes to voicemail.
Can I keep answering my own calls and still use one?
Yes, in different ways. With a staffed service, the receptionist can hold the caller and contact you before transferring the call, which is how Ruby describes its screening. With call screening, you are the one who answers: unknown callers are checked first, and your phone rings with their number showing and their name and reason read to you when you pick up.