AI phone agent
What does an AI receptionist actually cost?
Most pages selling one will not tell you until you book a call. Here are the numbers, what moves them, and a recording of ours answering a call so you can decide whether it is worth any of it.
An AI phone agent that answers your calls, screens them and sends you every conversation in writing costs $750 to $1,000 to set up. One that also answers questions from your own material and books appointments costs $1,500 to $2,500. Both run from $250 a month, which covers the number, the minutes, the models and somebody watching that it still works.
Those are ranges rather than one number for a reason worth two sentences. An agent that takes a message and an agent that books an appointment are not the same product, and pricing them the same would mean overcharging one buyer to subsidise the other.
The voice agents we build can actually do work. Not just speak.
Everything else in this category is a conversation and nothing more. It talks, it writes down what was said, and it stops. Every piece of work that call created is still sitting there waiting for a person: the lead to enter, the job to raise, the quote to chase, the follow-up to remember on Thursday.
Ours reaches into the systems you already run, which is the line none of them cross.
The appointment goes into the calendar your team actually opens. The lead lands in your CRM with the fields your people quote from already filled in. The job is raised in whatever you raise jobs in. The follow-up goes out because the system sent it, not because anyone remembered. By the time you read the transcript, the work it created is already done.
Out of the box, the call gets answered and the work sits there waiting for you. Ours finishes it.
Hear one answer a call
Nothing we write about how it sounds is worth as much as thirty seconds of it. This is recorded at phone quality, not studio quality, because that is what your callers get and a cleaner version would be a nicer recording of a different thing.
A demonstration, not a customer call. The caller is scripted and the business does not exist.
What was said
- AgentGood evening, thanks for calling Lumen Aesthetics. You are speaking with an assistant, and I can book you in or take a message. What can I help you with?
- CallerHi. I wanted to ask whether you do hydrafacials, and whether you have anything Thursday.
- AgentWe do offer those, and Thursday we are open ten to six. Would you rather come in the morning or the afternoon?
- CallerAfternoon, if there is anything.
- AgentI have two thirty and four fifteen on Thursday. Either of those work for you?
- CallerActually, could you do Friday morning instead? Thursday is tighter than I thought.
- AgentI can. Friday I have nine forty five, or eleven fifteen.
- CallerEleven fifteen.
- AgentBooked. Can I take your name, and the best number for the confirmation?
- CallerDana Reyes. Five five five, zero one four seven.
- AgentThank you Dana. Friday at eleven fifteen, and a confirmation text is on its way to that number. Anything else before you go?
- CallerNo, that is everything. Thanks.
- AgentHave a good evening. We will see you Friday.
That call is the second tier: it answered a question about the business, moved the booking when the caller changed her mind, and confirmed in writing. The first tier would have taken her name and number and sent you the message.
Three things it can be, and what each costs
What moves the price is which of these you want, not how the conversation goes. Most businesses that call us about the first one end up wanting the second once they hear it, so read both before deciding.
It answers, and you get the message
$750 to $1,000
It picks up every call, day and night. It works out what the caller wants, takes their name, number and the reason they rang, and sends you the whole conversation in writing. Nobody reaches a voicemail box and decides to try the next listing instead.
This is what answers Fathom's own line. If you call us, this is what you are talking to.
It answers from your own material, and it books
$1,500 to $2,500
Everything above, and it can answer real questions about your business rather than deflecting them: what you offer, what your hours are, whether you cover an area, what a first visit involves. It can book the appointment or capture the details your team needs to quote, and hand a caller to a person when a person is the right answer.
What moves it inside the range is how much of your material has to be turned into something an agent can read, and whether you hand over calendar access or sit at the keyboard with us for an hour.
It does work in your systems
Scoped, no number
Writing into your CRM, moving a job through your scheduling system, triggering the follow-up that normally waits for somebody to remember. This stops being a phone product and becomes automation that happens to answer the phone.
We do not quote this from a page, because the price is your systems and not our work. It starts with the audit, which names what is worth automating before anybody quotes anything.
Then $250 a month and up, for tiers one and two.
That covers the phone number, the minutes, the speech and language models the agent runs on, the machine it runs on, and somebody noticing when it stops working. It includes a call allowance rather than being unlimited, and we set that against what you actually receive instead of guessing at it. A business taking four hundred calls a month does not cost the same to run as one taking forty, and a flat fee that pretended otherwise would end with us renegotiating it.
You get what you pay for. Every out-of-the-box option is inferior, and some of them will quietly hurt your business.
These products are built by phone companies, and by teams shipping a feature on top of a phone system. Answering is the part they got right, because answering is the part they already did. Everything after it is somebody else's problem, which turns out to mean yours.
Every line below is something we check for on these platforms, and find.
What it cannot do, however much you pay
- It cannot hang up on a caller you already know is a problem. The best most of them offer is a polite dead end that still costs you the minutes.
- It cannot check the number against the list of people who have already wasted your time.
- It usually cannot read the carrier's own spam signal, which is attached to the call as it arrives.
- It cannot establish that anyone is who they say they are. Nothing sold for inbound calls does, and any product implying otherwise is describing a wish.
- It cannot do the one check that actually works on a high-stakes call, which is ending it and dialling back a number already on file.
What it does by default, that you would never choose
- It hands the call to a human the moment the caller sounds annoyed or says the word human. Insistence is the first tool of every scammer and every cold caller, so the default setting rewards exactly the people you wanted screened.
- It is built to be helpful above all, so a caller who says she knows me, just put me through is running a con on a language model that has been tuned to say yes.
- It tells the caller you are available before it has asked a single screening question. Every receptionist manual written says do it the other way round, because once a stranger knows you are reachable, every answer they give afterwards is one they have a reason to lie about.
- It answers, writes down what was said, and stops. The lead still has to be entered, the job still has to be raised, the follow-up still has to be remembered by a person.
What you are allowed to change, and what you are not
- You get the fields somebody else decided you should have. On one of the largest platforms, everything the agent is ever allowed to know about your business goes in a single box capped at five hundred characters.
- Some behaviour is not in those fields at all. We have written the instruction, written a blunter one, and changed the setting that supposedly governs it, and watched the product repeat the same sentence word for word.
- The fields interact and nothing warns you. Trimming words to make one instruction fit has silently broken an unrelated answer, and has removed the line disclosing that the caller was talking to a machine.
- Nothing keeps it honest over time. Wrong timezones sit there for months, and an offer that expired last winter will be read out to a caller this summer, because no part of the product is watching.
None of that is a settings problem. It is what the thing is.
You cannot configure your way to a product that was never built to do this. You can buy one that was.
We build the agent for your business rather than handing you a form to fill in. What it knows comes from your own material, including the things you know and have never written down. What it refuses is written and tested before a customer meets it. If it should ask three questions before it puts anyone through, it asks them, and it does not stop asking because the caller got loud.
That is the difference between buying a setting and buying a system, and it is the whole reason the numbers above are what they are.
What it will not do
It will not pass for a person. It is good, and it is not indistinguishable, and it says it is an assistant in the greeting anyway. If your callers finding out would be a problem, this is the wrong product and you should know that before paying rather than after.
It will not sell for you. It answers, captures and books. It does not talk a hesitant caller round, and it does not know when to push. The calls worth pushing on are the ones it should be handing to you, which is what it does.
It will not quote your prices unless you tell it to. Pricing is where a wrong answer costs the most. Ours quotes nothing at all, on purpose, and yours starts from the same place until you decide otherwise.
It will not sound perfect on a bad line. Phone audio is narrow, and it is narrow for everybody on it, including you. Some of what you hear in the recording above is the phone network rather than the agent, and no amount of paying us changes that.
When not to buy this
If you already answer every call. Some businesses do, and the owner knows it because the phone is never ringing while nobody picks it up. Spend the money on whatever is actually leaking.
If your problem is that people are not calling at all. An agent answering an empty line changes nothing. That is a different leak and this is not the fix for it.
If every one of your missed calls arrives during business hours because your team is busy, and none of them arrive after you close. Missed-call text-back is built for exactly that and it is the smaller piece of work, so ask us about that one first.
Questions
How much does an AI receptionist cost?
Ours is $750 to $1,000 to set up if it answers, screens and sends you the message, and $1,500 to $2,500 if it also answers questions from your own material and books appointments. Monthly starts at $250 and includes a call allowance we set against your actual volume. Those numbers are for an agent built around your business and connected to the systems you already run, which is a different piece of work from software that answers a call and hands you a transcript.
Why is the price a range and not one number?
Because it is not one product. An agent that answers and takes a message is a different piece of work, and worth a different amount, from one that answers questions about your business and books the appointment. Quoting a single number would mean overcharging one of those buyers and underdelivering to the other. The range is the honest version, and which end you land on is decided by the tier you pick, not by negotiation.
What is the monthly fee for?
The phone number, the minutes, the speech and language models the agent runs on, the machine it runs on, and somebody watching that it still works. It is not unlimited, and we would rather say that than sell you a flat fee and then come back about your call volume. We set an allowance against what you actually receive.
Is an AI receptionist cheaper than hiring a receptionist?
Yes, and that is the smaller half of the answer. A receptionist takes the message; this one can take the booking, put it where your team will see it, and start the follow-up. The comparison that matters more is against the jobs going to whoever picked up when you did not, and if you do not know what that is costing you, the audit measures it.
Will it sound like a robot?
Play the recording on this page and decide for yourself. It is a real call through the same system a customer would reach, recorded at phone quality rather than studio quality, so you are hearing what your callers would hear and not a cleaner version of it. It is not indistinguishable from a person and we do not claim it is.
Does it tell callers it is an AI?
Yes, in the greeting, before anything else happens. That is not a setting we leave to preference. Some states require disclosure, callers work it out anyway, and a caller who feels misled is worse for you than a caller who knows.
Can it use my existing phone number?
Usually. Most businesses forward their existing number to the agent, so the number on your cards and your listings does not change. What you keep is your number and what changes is who picks it up.
What happens when it cannot answer something?
It says so, takes the details and hands it to you, rather than guessing. An agent that invents an answer about your business is worse than no agent, and it is a failure mode we deliberately design for instead of hoping past.
Will it quote prices to my customers?
Only if you want it to, and ours does not quote for Fathom. Pricing is where a wrong answer costs the most, so the default is that it captures the question and gets it to a person. That is a decision we make with you during setup.
How long does setup take?
We will not give you a number on a page, because the honest answer depends on how quickly your material and your access reach us, and that is not a thing we control. We scope it before you pay anything.
Tell us about your line.
A short conversation settles which tier you actually want, what it would connect to at your end, and what it costs. If you would rather see the size of the problem first, the audit calls and messages your business the way a customer does and puts a number on what is currently getting missed.