An AI receptionist is priced like a phone plan, not like an employee: a monthly fee that includes a block of call minutes, with larger plans buying more minutes and more calls at the same time. The number on the price list is the easy part. What decides whether it is cheap or expensive for your business is what the receptionist can actually do with a call, and how many calls you get in the weeks that matter.
This guide explains the three ways these products are priced, what moves the price, what a free trial does and does not include, and how to work out in two minutes whether one pays for itself. MairyAI's own prices are used as a worked example, because a cost guide that hides its own prices is not much of a guide.
The three ways AI receptionists are priced
A monthly plan with included minutes. The most common model, and the one MairyAI uses. You pay a flat amount each month and get a set number of call minutes and a set number of calls that can be answered at the same time. It is predictable, which is what most owners want from a phone bill. The two things to check are the rate for minutes beyond the plan and the number of simultaneous calls, because the second one decides what happens on the day the phone will not stop.
Per minute. You pay only for the minutes used. This suits a business with very few calls, and it punishes a business with a busy season, because the bill is highest in exactly the month you can least afford to think about it.
Per call or per booking. Sounds fair on paper: pay for results. In practice a busy week costs more than a quiet one, and a call that turns into a booking is worth more to you than it is to the product, so the incentive to book is not where you would want it.
Whichever model a product uses, ask the same question: what does a normal month cost, and what does the worst month cost?
What moves the price
Minutes. Calls multiplied by their length. A booking call for a trades business is usually a few minutes: the caller says what is wrong, the receptionist confirms the address, offers times and books one. A business taking a few calls a day fits comfortably in the smallest plan; a business taking a few dozen does not.
Calls at the same time. A single-line plan is fine until two customers call at once, and then one of them reaches voicemail, which is the thing you were paying to stop. Plans that answer several calls at once cost more and are worth it for any business with a busy season.
What the receptionist can do. This is the real price difference. A product that takes a message and sends you a text is cheap because it does very little. A product that books an appointment into your calendar, answers from your own prices and hours, transfers an emergency to a person and writes the call up afterwards is doing the work of a receptionist, and is priced closer to one. Pay for the second kind if bookings are how your business makes money.
Setup. Some products charge a setup fee or a training fee. MairyAI does not; setup is included on every plan.
Contract. Month to month costs the same as or slightly more than an annual commitment. Month to month is the right choice until you have heard the product handle your own callers for a few weeks.
What a free trial actually includes
A free trial is a fixed number of minutes, usually on a temporary number, with a time limit. Two things separate a real trial from a demo: whether it needs a card, and whether the receptionist answers real callers or only a test call you place yourself.
MairyAI's free trial is 50 minutes of real calls over 14 days on a real business number, with no card required, and it includes every part of the product: the AI disclosure in the greeting, answers from your own business details, booking into your real calendar, transfers to a person, and the written record of each call. The point of a trial is to hear the receptionist handle the people who actually call you, so a trial that only lets you call it yourself tells you less than it seems to.
MairyAI's prices, as a worked example
Every plan includes the same product; what changes is call volume.
- Starter, $199 a month. 500 minutes included. For a business where the owner still answers most calls and wants the ones that get missed covered.
- Premium, $499 a month. 1,500 minutes included and more calls at the same time. For a business where the phone is a full-time job somebody is doing on the side.
- Pro, $1,499 a month. 5,000 minutes included. For a business with several people on the phones today.
- Enterprise, from $0.15 a minute at 10,000 minutes a month and up, priced with you.
Setup is included, billing is month to month, and the plans and their simultaneous-call limits are on the pricing page. Every plan answers on your own number, states in the greeting that the caller is speaking with an AI assistant, books into Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook or the built-in calendar, transfers to a person under your rules, emails the caller a confirmation, and keeps a written record of each call.
Does it pay for itself? The only calculation that matters
You need two numbers, and you already know both.
The first is what one booked job is worth to you. A plumbing repair, a roof inspection that becomes a replacement, a maintenance plan: pick the ordinary one, not the best one.
The second is how many calls a month you miss or return too late. Your voicemail knows. So does the customer who booked with the company that answered.
If one missed job a month is worth more than the plan, the receptionist pays for itself on the first booking, and everything after that is margin. If your phone is quiet and every call already gets answered by a person, it does not, and no pricing model changes that. Most trades businesses are somewhere in between, which is why a trial on real calls beats any calculation on paper.
The costs that are not on the price list
Your time to set it up. Plan on an hour: services, prices, hours, service area, what counts as an emergency, and connecting the calendar. MairyAI reads your website first, so most of it is checking rather than typing.
The calls it should not take. Every business has calls that need a person: an upset customer, a complicated job, a supplier. A good receptionist transfers those under rules you set. Budget the time to write the rules, because they are what make the rest of the calls safe to hand over.
Disclosure. Not a cost, but a fact worth knowing before you buy: MairyAI tells every caller in the first sentence that they are speaking with an AI assistant and that the call is recorded. Callers stay on the line because the answers are right, not because anyone is misled, and the disclosure is never switched off.
The short version
- Expect a monthly plan with included minutes; check the overage rate and the number of calls at once.
- The price difference between products is mostly what they can do: taking messages is cheap, booking the job is not, and booking is where the money is.
- A trial should be real callers on a real number with no card, not a demo you call yourself.
- Do the two-number calculation: the value of one job against the calls you miss in a month.
- MairyAI starts at $199 a month with setup included, and the free trial is 50 minutes of real calls.