How much does a virtual receptionist cost for a home service company?

If you run an HVAC, plumbing, or cleaning company, you already know the problem. The phone rings while you're on a job, with a customer, or driving, and you can't pick up. Hiring a full-time person feels like a big step, so most owners start looking at virtual receptionists and answering services. Then they find out the pricing is hard to compare.

I've spent more than 25 years in customer service, sales, and operations. In this guide I'll walk through what the published prices actually are, how each company bills you, and how to estimate your own monthly cost before you talk to a salesperson.

The three ways you get billed

Answering services don't all bill the same way, so comparing their headline prices directly can mislead you. Before you look at any price, figure out which of these models you're looking at.

• By the minute (live people). Ruby sells plans by receptionist minutes per month. Long calls use up your plan faster. If a customer takes four minutes to describe a problem and give an address, that's four minutes.
• By the call (live people). Smith.ai's live receptionist plans include a set number of calls, with a per-call charge above that. Extras like booking appointments or a dedicated Spanish line are charged per call on top.
• By the call (AI). AI receptionists like Smith.ai's AI plan charge a much lower per-call rate. You can pay extra to send a call to a live person when the AI can't handle it.

Published prices, side by side

These are the monthly list prices on each company's pricing page as of October 23, 2026. Taxes, discounts, and custom plans aren't included.

Ruby (live receptionists, billed by minutes)

Per-minute cost is my math (price divided by minutes), assuming you use the whole plan. Ruby's pricing page says 24/7 coverage, bilingual answering, scheduling, and payment collection are available on every plan with no setup fees. Ruby's help center lists the overage rate for each plan (the "each extra minute" column) and says calls are billed in 60-second increments, rounded up, so a 10-second call counts as a full minute. *The 350-minute plan is listed in Ruby's help center but not on its main pricing page.

Smith.ai (live receptionists, billed by calls)

Per-call add-ons listed by Smith.ai include appointment booking ($1.50), a dedicated Spanish line ($1.00), and text or email follow-up ($0.50). Smith.ai says it doesn't charge for spam calls on these plans, the service is month-to-month, and paying for 12 months gets a 10% discount.

Smith.ai AI receptionist (billed by calls)

Smith.ai bills a live-agent add-on at $3.00 per call, only on calls where it's used. Cancelling an AI plan takes 30 days' notice. On AI plans, answered calls count toward your quota, but you can remove up to 10% of them each cycle as spam.

What an in-house receptionist costs

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a median wage of $18.27 an hour ($38,010 a year) for receptionists in May 2025. That's the national median. South Florida wages can be higher or lower, and the CareerOneStop salary tool linked in the sources lets you check by ZIP code.

Wages aren't the whole cost. BLS also reports that in private industry in June 2026, wages and salaries made up 70.0% of what employers spend on compensation, and benefits made up the other 30.0%.

One person also covers one shift. Calls at 7 p.m. or on a Saturday still need a plan, and those are often the calls home service customers make when something breaks.

How to estimate your own monthly bill

The most useful number here is one you already have: your own call volume. Here's how I'd work it out.

1. Pull 30 days of call history from your phone carrier or business phone app. Count all incoming calls, including ones you missed.
2. Note the average call length if your carrier shows it. This decides whether per-minute or per-call pricing is cheaper for you.
3. Mark which calls come after hours and on weekends. Those are the ones you'll most want covered.
4. List what you want done on each call: take a message, book the job, quote a service fee, or send emergencies to the on-call tech. Each one can change the price.

A worked example (made-up numbers, for the math only)

Say your call log shows 120 calls a month that average 3 minutes each, or 360 minutes in total. These are example numbers, not industry averages. Using the published prices above:

On Ruby's other plans, the same 360 minutes would cost $1,424 on the 200-minute plan ($720 + 160 × $4.40) or $1,725 on the 500-minute plan. The Ruby figures assume 360 billed minutes; because Ruby rounds each call up to the next minute, your billed total can be higher than your call log's average suggests. Change any input and the ranking can change, so run your own numbers.

An in-house person costs the most, but they can also do much more than answer phones. That's the real decision: are you buying call coverage, or someone to run the office?

Questions to ask before you sign

• What's the overage rate, and what happens when I go over? Do I get bumped to a bigger plan?
• Do spam calls, wrong numbers, and robocalls count against my minutes or calls?
• How do you handle after-hours emergencies? Can you reach my on-call person, and what happens if they don't answer?
• Can you book jobs directly into the software I use (Jobber, Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan), or only into a general calendar? Smith.ai lists Calendly and Acuity, for example.
• Is Spanish included or extra? In South Florida, this matters.
• What are the contract and cancellation terms, and is there a money-back period?
• Will callers hear my business name and get the same answers my team would give on pricing and service area?

What an answering service usually won't do

A virtual receptionist solves the phone problem. In my experience, missed calls are only part of what keeps owners in the office at night. Here's what usually falls outside a standard answering plan, so check before you assume it's included:

• Deciding which tech goes where and rearranging the day when a job runs long
• Following up on estimates that haven't been approved
• Sending invoices and chasing unpaid ones
• Asking happy customers for reviews
• Keeping customer records and job notes clean in your field service software

If all you need is someone to pick up and take a good message, one of the services above may be the most affordable fix, and I'd tell you that. If the phones are just the start, it's worth comparing those prices with having one team handle calls, dispatch, follow-ups, and invoicing together.

More guides

• How much do missed calls cost an HVAC or plumbing business?
• Jobber vs Housecall Pro vs ServiceTitan for small shops
• Scheduling and booking software for cleaning companies
• Payroll for a small cleaning business: Gusto vs QuickBooks vs ADP
• Bookkeeping for HVAC and plumbing companies

Sources

All prices and figures were checked on October 23, 2026. Vendors change prices, so confirm on their sites before you buy.

1. Ruby, "Ruby plans and pricing": ruby.com/plans-and-pricing
2. Ruby Help Center, "Am I on the right billing plan?" (plan prices and overage minute rates): rubyhelpcenter.helpjuice.com
3. Ruby Help Center, "Ruby Billing Basics" (60-second billing increments and overage billing): rubyhelpcenter.helpjuice.com
4. Smith.ai, "Plans & Pricing" (live receptionists): smith.ai/pricing/receptionists
5. Smith.ai, "Plans & Pricing for AI Receptionist": smith.ai/pricing/ai-receptionist
6. Smith.ai AI Receptionist help center, "Live Agent Add-on Billing Overview": smithaivoiceassistant.freshdesk.com
7. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, "Receptionists" (May 2025 wages): bls.gov/ooh/.../receptionists.htm
8. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026" (released September 9, 2026): bls.gov/news.release/ecec.nr0.htm
9. CareerOneStop (U.S. Department of Labor), salary lookup by location: careeronestop.org

Last updated October 23, 2026. Disclosure: this guide contains no affiliate links. Infinite Time Solutions offers services that compete with the companies named here. Read our disclosure policy.