What a virtual receptionist actually costs.
The four ways call answering is priced, what each one really costs once usage is included, and the arithmetic for working out which is cheapest at your call volume.
Pricing in this market is unusually hard to compare, because the four options are priced on different units. One charges per call, one per minute, one per month, and one is a salary. A headline figure tells you almost nothing until you convert them all to the same basis.
This sets out how each is structured, where the costs hide, and how to work out which is cheapest for the volume you actually have. Megabite builds one of these four options, and this page says plainly when the other three are the better answer.
The four options, and how each is priced
| Option | Typical pricing basis | Where the cost hides |
|---|---|---|
| Employed receptionist | Salary plus employer costs | Cover for holiday, sickness and lunch; only covers office hours |
| Virtual receptionist service (human) | Per call or per minute, usually with a monthly minimum | Overage rates, per-call minimums that round up, out-of-hours surcharges |
| Answering service / message taking | Low monthly fee plus per message | Cheap because it only takes messages — the work still comes back to you |
| AI receptionist | Setup plus monthly, with usage by connected minute | Setup cost, and usage if call volume is much higher than expected |
Employing someone
The salary is the visible number and it is not the real one. Add employer National Insurance, pension contribution, holiday cover, equipment and the recruitment cost of replacing them. The practical multiplier on a UK salary is usually somewhere around 1.2 to 1.3 once those are included.
The more important limitation is not cost but coverage. One person covers roughly a third of the week. They do not answer at seven in the evening, at weekends, during lunch, or while already on another call. If the calls you are losing arrive outside office hours, hiring does not solve the problem you have.
Virtual receptionist services, priced per call or per minute
A human answering service is usually sold as a bundle — a number of calls or minutes per month — with an overage rate beyond it. Three things are worth checking before comparing headline prices:
- The billing increment. Per-minute billing rounded up to the minute makes a lot of thirty-second calls considerably more expensive than the rate implies.
- What counts as a chargeable call. Wrong numbers, sales calls and hang-ups are often billable.
- Out-of-hours rates. Evenings and weekends frequently carry a premium, which matters because that is often exactly the cover you are buying.
The genuine strength of this option is that a person is answering. For complex, sensitive or emotional calls that is worth paying for, and no amount of software substitutes for it.
Answering services and message taking
The cheapest option, and cheap for a reason: it captures a message and passes it to you. Nothing is qualified, nothing is booked, nothing is written into your systems. The work returns to your team, just later and with less context than if they had answered.
If what you need is simply that the phone is not unanswered, this is often the right purchase and you should not overspend on the alternatives.
AI receptionist
Priced as an implementation rather than a subscription: a setup cost to configure it around your business, a monthly fee covering hosting, monitoring and management, and usage charged by connected minute.
Megabite's own figures are setup from £1,500 and a managed service from £195 per month, plus usage, excluding VAT. Those are starting points rather than quotations — where they land depends on how many systems are connected and how complex the qualification rules are. Productised AI answering tools exist at lower monthly cost with no setup fee; they will not be integrated with your calendar and CRM, which is the entire point of the higher figure.
The cost behaviour is what distinguishes it. Setup is one-off, the monthly is largely fixed, and only usage scales with volume. Per-call pricing scales linearly with everything.
Working out which is cheapest for you
Three numbers decide it, and you already have all three.
Specifically the ones currently unanswered or poorly handled, not your total inbound.
Per-minute options live or die on this. Two minutes and six minutes are very different businesses.
What a single recovered enquiry is worth. This decides whether any of it is worth doing.
The rough shape, once converted to a common basis:
- Very low volume. A handful of missed calls a month. A message-taking service, or nothing at all. An implementation will not repay itself.
- Low to moderate volume, complex calls. A human virtual receptionist. You are paying for judgement, and per-call pricing is efficient when calls are few.
- Moderate to high volume, repetitive calls. AI starts to win, because per-call pricing is now scaling against you and the calls are consistent enough to handle by rule.
- High volume, or heavy out-of-hours. AI wins clearly. Simultaneous calls and 24/7 cover are where the alternatives get expensive fastest.
The break-even point is genuinely specific to your numbers. There is a calculator on the AI receptionist page that works out the value of the calls you are currently missing using your own figures, which is the other half of this decision.
The cost that is usually larger than all of them
Every option above costs something. Answering nothing also costs something, and it is rarely measured because unanswered calls leave no record.
If you take one number away from this page, take that one: multiply the calls you miss each month by your close rate and by the value of a customer. For a business where a customer is worth a few thousand pounds, a handful of recovered calls a year covers any of these options comfortably. For a business where a customer is worth forty pounds, none of them may be worth it. The arithmetic is the same either way and it is worth doing honestly before you shop on price.
Common questions
How much does a virtual receptionist cost?
It depends entirely on the pricing basis. Human services are typically sold per call or per minute against a monthly bundle with overage beyond it. An AI receptionist is typically a setup cost plus a monthly fee plus usage — Megabite's start at £1,500 setup and £195 per month excluding VAT and usage. Employing someone costs the salary plus roughly 20 to 30 per cent in employer costs, and covers office hours only.
Is an AI receptionist cheaper than a virtual receptionist?
At low call volumes, usually not — the setup cost dominates. As volume rises, AI tends to become cheaper because per-call pricing scales linearly while a monthly fee does not. The crossover depends on your volume, call length and how much out-of-hours cover you need.
What is the cheapest option?
A message-taking answering service, and it is genuinely the right answer for some businesses. It is cheap because it does the least: no qualification, no booking, no system updates.
Are there hidden costs?
The usual ones are per-minute rounding, chargeable wrong numbers and sales calls, out-of-hours premiums on human services, and usage overage on AI services. Ask for the billing increment and what counts as a chargeable call before comparing any two quotes.
Do I need to change my phone number?
Usually not, with any of these options. Your existing number is diverted on the conditions you choose, subject to what your telephone provider supports.
Can I start with out-of-hours only?
Yes, and it is often the sensible first step regardless of which option you choose. It is the cheapest way to test whether the calls you are missing are worth recovering.
We will tell you if the answer is one of the other three.
A short conversation about your call volume, call length and customer value is usually enough to establish which option is cheapest for you — including when it is not us.
Related reading: the AI receptionist in full, and what the lead response research actually says about the cost of answering late.