Best AI Receptionist for Small Business: A Trades Buyer’s Guide (2026)

What “AI receptionist” means for a trades business

An AI receptionist is a voice agent that answers your business line when you can’t. It greets the caller, answers common questions from your website or a short script, takes down the job details, and then does one of three things: texts you a summary, books a slot on your calendar, or transfers the call to you or whoever is on call.

For a plumber, electrician, HVAC tech, cleaner or landscaper, missed calls rarely happen at a desk. They come in while you’re under a sink, on a roof or driving between jobs. So the useful questions are:

• Can it tell an emergency from a routine call and get the emergency to a human fast?
• Can it book straight onto the calendar you already use, or does it only take messages?
• How does it bill: by call, by minute, or by unique caller? And what happens when you go over?
• Can you keep your current number and just forward missed or after-hours calls to it?

Each tool below answers those questions in its own way.

The shortlist at a glance (official pricing, Oct 26 2026)

Goodcall is a fifth AI option worth knowing about. It bills by unique customer instead of by call or minute, with plans at $79, $129 and $299 a month. We compare it head to head in Rosie vs Goodcall.

Upfirst: best value for low and medium call volume

Upfirst charges by call and has four published plans:

• Starter: $24.95/mo for 30 calls.
• Premium: $59.95/mo for 90 calls.
• Pro: $159.95/mo for 300 calls.
• Scale: $299/mo for 600 calls.

Annual billing takes 20% off, so Starter works out to $20/mo. Extra calls cost $1.50 on Starter, $1 on Premium, $0.75 on Pro and $0.70 on Scale.

What matters for trades:

• Every plan includes appointment booking (Google, Outlook, Acuity, Calendly, Square and more), live warm transfers, texting during the call, spam blocking, Zapier and 35+ languages.
• You can set it to answer every call, only overflow, or only after hours.
• Spam, silent calls and calls under 15 seconds are never billed.
• Upfirst’s HVAC and contractor pages say it pushes leads to ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro and Jobber through Zapier. That’s an automation you set up, not a native two-way sync.

Where it falls short: white-glove onboarding and custom integrations come only with Pro and Scale. Human support runs Monday to Friday, 9 to 6 Eastern. Read the full Upfirst review.

Rosie: cheapest per minute, with a catch on overage

Rosie’s three plans:

• Professional: $49/mo for 250 minutes.
• Scale: $149/mo for 1,000 minutes.
• Growth: $299/mo for 2,000 minutes.

Every plan includes 24/7 answering, simultaneous calls, English and Spanish on every call, summaries, recordings and Zapier. Annual billing gets you 2 months free, and there’s a 7-day free trial.

What matters for trades:

• Professional takes messages (2 scenarios) and texts booking links. In-call calendar booking and warm or live transfers start on Scale at $149.
• Rosie’s terms say minutes are billed in 60-second increments, rounded up. If you use more minutes than your plan includes, Rosie moves you up to the next plan, and the upgrade sticks for at least the next two billing periods.

Rosie is a good fit if your calls are short and predictable and Spanish matters. Watch your minutes in the first month. See Rosie vs Goodcall for the head-to-head.

My AI Front Desk: phone, chat and text in one place

My AI Front Desk (the site also calls it Frontdesk) has one self-serve plan, Business-in-a-Box. It costs $99/mo, or $79/mo billed annually. It includes 200 voice minutes, 100 web chats, 400 texts and a 1,000-credit overage pool each month. Extra voice minutes cost 25 credits ($0.25). Larger operators move to custom Partner or Enterprise pricing.

What matters for trades:

• Live calendar booking (Google Calendar, Outlook, Calendly) and rule-based transfers.
• A built-in CRM, plus sync to HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive and GoHighLevel.
• Up to 20 outbound calls a day.
• It suits a shop that wants web chat and text follow-up handled by the same system.

Where it falls short: 200 minutes is not much for a busy line. Its terms say refunds generally aren’t given and that usage fees still apply during the free trial. Read the full My AI Front Desk review.

Smith.ai: AI first, with people behind it

Smith.ai’s AI Receptionist has a Free plan: 25 calls, then $3 per call. Pro starts at $150/mo for 75 calls, with bigger buckets of 150 and 300 calls. Enterprise starts at $500/mo for 300 calls. All AI plans include 24/7 answering, lead qualification and routing, scheduling, and Zapier.

The difference from the others: Smith.ai says calls can be transferred to its live North America-based receptionists when the AI isn’t enough. Its pricing page doesn’t show what that human time costs on AI plans, so ask before you rely on it.

Spam works differently here too. Answered spam calls count by default, and you can remove up to 10% each cycle. Billing is month to month, with 30 days’ notice to cancel.

Ruby: when you want real people on every call

Ruby is a live receptionist service, not an AI receptionist. Its plans:

• $250/mo for 50 minutes.
• $395/mo for 100 minutes.
• $720/mo for 200 minutes.
• $1,725/mo for 500 minutes.

There are no setup fees, every plan gets every feature, and Ruby lists optional AI features at no extra cost. That works out to roughly $3.45 to $5.00 a minute, against well under $1 a minute for the AI tools above.

Ruby makes sense when a single job is worth thousands, like a remodel, an install or a commercial contract, and you want a human answering. For routine service calls, the AI tools cost far less.

How to choose in 10 minutes

1. Count last month’s calls and minutes. Your phone carrier’s log has both. Billing by call (Upfirst, Smith.ai) suits long calls; billing by minute (Rosie) suits short ones.
2. Decide what the receptionist must do. Message only? Rosie Professional or Upfirst Starter. Book jobs and transfer emergencies? Upfirst on any plan, Rosie Scale, or My AI Front Desk.
3. Check where jobs live. If you run Jobber or Housecall Pro, plan on a Zapier step for any of these tools. See Jobber pricing and Housecall Pro pricing for what those plans include.
4. Start with missed and after-hours calls only. Every tool here lets you forward your existing number. Overflow-only forwarding keeps costs low while you check call quality.
5. Run the trial with real calls. Call your own line as a customer with a “no heat” or “water heater leaking” problem and see what happens.

Who should pick what

• Solo operator, under about 30 calls a month: Upfirst Starter ($24.95), or Smith.ai Free if you’ll stay under 25 calls.
• Busy one- to three-truck shop that wants booking and transfers: Upfirst Premium or Pro, or Rosie Scale.
• Shop that wants phone, chat and text in one inbox: My AI Front Desk.
• High-ticket work where a person must answer: Ruby, or Smith.ai with human backup.
• Long calls and lots of repeat callers: also look at Goodcall’s per-customer billing.

Trade-specific guides: plumbers, HVAC, electricians, cleaning businesses, and contractors in general. For full cost math, see how much an AI receptionist costs. If you only want a text sent back after a missed call, missed call text back software is cheaper still.

FAQ

Will callers know it’s AI? Some will. All of these vendors say they use natural voices, but we haven’t tested them ourselves, so call the demo lines and judge for yourself.

Can I keep my business number? Yes. Upfirst, Rosie, My AI Front Desk and Smith.ai all support forwarding your existing number, and Upfirst also offers free porting.

Is a free plan enough? Smith.ai’s Free plan (25 calls) is a real way to test. My AI Front Desk’s pricing page says it has no permanently free plan, only a 7-day trial.