What an AI receptionist handles, where it fails and what it costs
An AI receptionist is a voice agent that answers your phone, deals with the routine calls (opening hours, simple questions, bookings, messages) and passes the rest to a person. Published prices start at 27.5¢ a minute with no monthly fee, or £39 a month in the UK, and run to a few hundred a month.
It's good at predictable calls and poor at upset callers and anything unusual. Below: where it falls short, what four vendors charge, the recording rules in Australia and the UK, and how to pilot one.
Serkan Honeine, Co-founder, CoSauce
Published · Last updated
What an AI receptionist does today
Across the vendors we looked at, the core of the product is the same:
- Answers every call, at any hour, with no hold queue.
- Answers the questions you load into it: opening hours, service area, prices, how to find you.
- Books appointments straight into your calendar, on plans that connect to one.
- Takes a message and sends you a summary by email or text.
- Transfers the caller to a person, or to the right number, when the call matches a rule you set.
It only knows what you tell it. With thin answers and no hand-off rules, it sounds polite and leaves the caller stuck, so most of the setup is writing those.
Where it falls short
Strong accents, bad mobile lines and background noise can still trip a voice agent up, and a misheard name or date ends up in your calendar. Calls with two or three problems go badly, because the agent tends to answer the first and wrap up. Upset callers are the worst fit: a complaint or a billing dispute needs a person from the first sentence.
Then there are calls nobody planned for. The agent either transfers them, which is fine, or answers confidently from whatever it has, which isn't. Keep it away from anything with legal or financial weight, such as a cancellation that changes a contract or a caller reading out sensitive details. The OAIC suggests records should show where information came from an AI, because it's a probabilistic assessment rather than fact (OAIC, AI products guidance).
Some callers won't use it at all. In a Gartner survey released on 4 August 2026, 87% of customers said firms using generative AI for service must offer a human (CMSWire on Gartner's 4 August 2026 release).
What AI receptionists cost
These are list prices from each vendor's own pricing page, checked on 8 November 2026. Siptalk's pricing page says all its prices include GST, and IONOS quotes pounds ex VAT. Rosie and Smith.ai show a dollar sign without saying which dollar, so ask before you compare.
| Vendor | Published price | Charged by |
|---|---|---|
| Siptalk (Australia) | 27.5¢ a minute including GST. No monthly fee, no minimum spend, no setup fee. | Per minute |
| Rosie | $49 a month for 250 minutes, $149 for 1,000, $299 for 2,000. | Monthly bundle of minutes |
| Smith.ai AI Receptionist | Free for 25 calls. Pro is $150 a month for 75 calls, then $2.50 for each extra call. | Per call |
| IONOS (UK) | £39 a month for 30 calls (then £0.49 a call), £69 for 100 (then £0.39), £99 for unlimited calls. All ex VAT. | Monthly bundle of calls |
Sources: Siptalk (and its pricing page), Rosie, Smith.ai, IONOS. Features differ by plan. IONOS, for example, lists calendar booking on its £69 and £99 plans but not the £39 one.
A worked example
Say you get 200 calls a month and they average three minutes, so 600 minutes in all. On the published prices:
- Siptalk: 600 minutes at 27.5¢ is $165, including GST.
- Rosie: the $149 plan covers 1,000 minutes, so $149.
- Smith.ai: $150 for the first 75 calls, plus 125 extra calls at $2.50, is $462.50.
- IONOS: £99 ex VAT for unlimited calls. The £69 plan would come to £108 once you add 100 extra calls at £0.39.
Per-minute plans get dearer when calls run long, and per-call plans when you take lots of short ones. Check your own call data before you pick.
Recording, privacy and telling callers it's an AI
Smith.ai's AI, for one, records every call, so recording rules apply from day one.
In Australia, the OAIC's guide to health privacy names the Telecommunications (Interception) Act and state and territory listening devices laws. Under them, it says, it's illegal to record a telephone consultation without telling the caller. You must tell them at the beginning, so they can end the call or ask not to be recorded (OAIC, Guide to health privacy). The example is written for health providers, but the laws it names aren't limited to health. A recording of someone's voice can be their personal information when they're reasonably identifiable, for instance when it's linked to their customer file (OAIC, what is personal information).
The Privacy Act exempts most businesses with annual turnover of $3 million or less. Some are covered whatever their size, health service providers among them (OAIC, small business). If the Act covers you, the OAIC's AI guidance applies. It says public-facing AI tools should be clearly identified, so people know they're dealing with an AI rather than a human. Your privacy policy should explain how you use AI too. It also warns that some products' terms let the vendor use what your customers say to train its own models. Read the terms.
In the UK, the ICO treats call recordings as personal data, so a caller can ask for theirs through a subject access request. Tell people on the call that you're recording and why. The ICO's guidance treats a recorded message as good practice. The fuller privacy details can go in an email or a link to your website (ICO, monitoring guidance).
We didn't find a rule in either country that says, in so many words, that a voice agent must announce itself. Do it anyway. The first line callers hear should say they're talking to your AI assistant, that the call is recorded, and how to reach a person. This is a summary, not legal advice, so check the details with your adviser.
AI, a human virtual receptionist or a team
A human virtual receptionist costs more per call and copes with the hard ones. Smith.ai, which sells both, lists live receptionist plans at $300 a month for 30 calls and $810 for 90 (Smith.ai receptionists). That's $9 to $10 a call against $2 for its AI plan. If you're choosing between human options, we've compared a virtual receptionist and an answering service separately.
A dedicated team makes sense when the phones are a big share of the work and calls need your systems and product knowledge. At 200 calls a month it doesn't, because a dedicated team needs a full roster of work. Where the volume is there, our AI customer support team in South Africa works in your own helpdesk. AI drafts replies and sorts the queue, and your customers can always reach a person. The South African day lands in the Australian evening, which suits after-hours cover, and it shares the UK working day (more on how we work with UK businesses). Teams go live in about four weeks.
How to pilot an AI receptionist
Sort a month of calls
Group a month of calls by type and note which come up most.
Pick what the AI takes
Choose three or four routine types, such as opening hours and bookings. Everything else goes to a person.
Write the answers and the hand-off rules
Give it the exact answers, and the situations that send a call to a person: a complaint, a refund, anyone who asks for a human.
Start on after-hours or overflow only
Keep your main line as it is and point after-hours or unanswered calls at the AI.
Try to break it
Ring it with different accents, a noisy background, an angry caller and a question nobody wrote an answer for.
Read every transcript for two weeks
Count wrong answers, missed hand-offs and hang-ups, and fix the script each time.
Decide at 30 days
Smith.ai is month to month, IONOS lets you cancel any time and Siptalk has no contracts, so a trial costs a month at most.
It's the same loop we run in our weekly review with client teams. Read more about how we work.
Questions
Can an AI receptionist put a caller through to a person?
Usually, but check the plan. IONOS lists one call forwarding on its cheapest plan, five on the middle one and no limit on the top. Smith.ai lets you choose when its AI transfers a call to a live receptionist.
Is an AI receptionist cheaper than a person?
Per call, on list prices, by a wide margin. But if many of your calls are complaints or complicated, you'll still need a person for those, and the saving shrinks.
Next step
If you're weighing up an AI receptionist against people, book a call with me. Bring a month of call logs if you have them. We'll tell you which calls we think a voice agent can take, which need a person, and whether you need a team at all. If you don't, I'll say so.