Answering Service for Contractors: What It Costs per Call

An answering service is worth paying for when the calls you miss are worth more than it costs to answer them. On the smallest plans at six live services, one three-minute call costs about $3 to $15. Two of the services say that's a typical call. Set your phone to ring you first and send only the calls you miss to the service. Then the math is simple: if one saved job a month leaves you more than the bill, the service covers its cost.

Before you pay anyone, try the free fixes below, and count what your missed calls cost you now.

Every price here comes from the service's own website, read on 5 October 2026. We don't answer phones, and we don't sell answering. Nothing here is a result from one of our clients.

What a missed call costs you

Start with what a missed call is worth to you. Our missed-call calculator multiplies the calls you miss in a week by 4.33 weeks, by the share that would have booked, and by your average job. At its starting numbers, a 40% chance the caller books and an $800 job, each missed call is $320 of work. That's revenue, before what the job costs you to do.

If the call came from a Google search ad, you paid for it too. Google Ads charges "when someone clicks your ad," whether or not anyone picks up. LocaliQ's 2025 benchmarks cover Google and Microsoft search campaigns. The median cost per lead, what the ads cost for each lead such as a call or a form, was $129.02 for plumbing, $127.74 for air conditioning, $93.69 for electricians and $228.15 for roofing and gutters. On Local Services Ads, a voicemail can count as a charged lead, and Google says "Missed calls may negatively affect your responsiveness." Here's what a Local Services Ads lead costs.

Count your own missed calls first

You'll find figures online for how many callers hang up on voicemail. The ones we found come from companies that sell answering or call tracking, they disagree with each other by a wide margin, and none shows how it was counted. Your own numbers are better, and free. For two weeks, write down every missed call from your phone's call log: whether the caller left a voicemail, and whether you won the job when you called back. To see which hours your calls come in, call tracking logs every call with the day and time.

Free fixes to try first

Three fixes cost little or nothing.

1. A voicemail that says when you'll call back. "I'm on a job. Leave your name and address, and I'll call you back within the hour." Then do it. The promise only works if you keep it.
2. Send the calls you miss to a person. Most carriers can forward a call you don't pick up to another number: the office, a spouse, a crew lead who isn't up a ladder. Google's help center calls it "Conditional Call Forwarding (CCF) or No answer/busy transfer." On Verizon you dial *71 and the number, and a call goes there when your phone is busy or rings 3 to 6 times unanswered. On an iPhone, Apple says to ask your carrier to set up forwarding for a busy or unreachable line.
3. Show the hours someone answers. Google asks for your "regular customer-facing hours of operation," and Google Ads shows ads "All day" unless you set a schedule. If nights go to voicemail, set your listing's hours to the hours someone answers, and stop the ads when nobody answers.

What live answering services charge

An answering service, sometimes sold as a virtual receptionist, is a company whose staff answer your calls in your business name and send you each message by text or email. They charge one of two ways: by the call, or by the minute a receptionist spends on the phone. Here is the smallest plan with calls or minutes included at six of them, from their own websites, read on 5 October 2026.

Service	Smallest plan with calls or minutes included	Past the plan	Billed by	Worth knowing, from its own pages
ReceptionHQ	$39 a month for 15 calls, ReceptionistPlus 15	$2.99 a call	The call	Takes 3 details per call, such as name, number and message. Adds $0.30 a call outside 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. Arizona time on weekdays, and on federal holidays. Calls it identifies as telemarketing aren't counted. Plus sales tax.
PATLive	$99 a month for 50 minutes, "About 20 calls"	$2.29 a minute	The minute, with the first billed in full, then every 6 seconds	No extra charge for nights, weekends or holidays. Prices exclude taxes and fees.
Map Communications	$179 a month for 125 minutes	$1.30 a minute	The minute	No credit card to start, and "No Long Term Contracts."
Answering Service Care	$179 a month for 100 minutes	$1.70 a minute	The minute	A one-time $50 setup fee.
Ruby	$250 a month for 50 minutes	Not listed on its pricing page	The minute	No fees for setup or for coverage at certain times.
Smith.ai, live receptionists	$300 a month for 30 calls	$11.50 a call	The call	No charge for spam or sales calls if your line passes caller ID; booking an appointment adds $1.50 a call.

Three services that came up when we searched don't list prices on their websites. Absent Answer builds "custom-made pricing packages for each customer upon request," AnswerPro will "suggest a customized minimum base rate," and The Best Call Center's pricing page shows none.

To compare a per-minute plan with a per-call one, you need a call length. Answering Service Care says calls "last roughly three minutes," and PATLive's help center says "Most calls fall within the 3 to 3.5-minute range." At three minutes, one call on each smallest plan costs about $3 to $15. That holds only if you use the whole plan. Use half of it, and each call costs twice as much. The Best Call Center says most of its calls take "a minute or less," so your own call log is the real test.

What one call costs on each service's smallest plan

Billed by the Call

ReceptionHQ$2.60

Smith.ai$10.00

Billed by the Minute: One 3-Minute Call

Map Communications$4.30

Answering Service Care$5.37

PATLive$5.94

Ruby$15.00

You'll also see automated answering in these search results: software that answers in a computer voice. This guide is about live receptionists.

The napkin math: how many saved jobs cover the bill

Here is the whole method. Take the monthly bill and divide it by what one job leaves you after materials and labor. That's how many saved jobs, jobs you would have lost to a missed call, the service has to bring in each month just to cover itself.

Say you miss 3 calls a week, the calculator's starting number. That's about 13 a month. Forward only those, and at three minutes each they use 39 minutes, inside PATLive's 50-minute plan at $99 a month. If your average job leaves you $180, the same example we use for Thumbtack and Angi leads, one saved job covers the month with $81 to spare.

One saved job a month, in this example

About 13missed calls a month, at 3 a week39 minutesat about 3 minutes a call$99a month: PATLive's 50-minute plan covers them1 jobthat leaves you $180 covers the month

Plan	Monthly price	Saved jobs a month to cover it, if a job leaves you $180
ReceptionHQ, 15 calls	$39	1 (0.22)
PATLive, 50 minutes	$99	1 (0.55)
Map Communications, 125 minutes	$179	1 (0.99)
Answering Service Care, 100 minutes	$179, plus $50 once	1 (0.99); 2 in the first month, with the setup fee (1.27)
Ruby, 50 minutes	$250	2 (1.39)
Smith.ai, 30 calls	$300	2 (1.67)

Each count is rounded up to a whole job, because you can't save part of one. The number in parentheses is the exact share.

One catch: a message isn't a booked job. On ReceptionHQ's plans the receptionist takes a message and texts or emails it to you, and you still call back. Booking costs extra at some services: Smith.ai charges $1.50 a call, and ReceptionHQ sells it as its own plan. PATLive and Ruby list scheduling on every plan, so ask how it works with the calendar you use. Either way, count only the jobs that booked, not the messages.

Five questions to ask before you sign

Get each answer in writing.

1. By the call or by the minute, and how is a minute counted? PATLive bills "the first minute in full," then every 6 seconds. ReceptionHQ's per-minute plans count exact seconds.
2. Can my phone ring first? PATLive says calls can "ring you first and then roll over to us if you don't answer." ReceptionHQ lets you send "only unanswered calls." This setting decides which calls you pay for.
3. Do nights, weekends and holidays cost more? PATLive says no extra charge. Ruby lists no fees for coverage at certain times. ReceptionHQ adds 20 to 30 cents a call outside weekday hours.
4. Do spam calls and wrong numbers count? Smith.ai says no, if your line passes caller ID. ReceptionHQ doesn't count calls it identifies as telemarketing, but its terms say misdialed calls can still be charged. Ask everyone else.
5. Is there a setup fee or a contract? Answering Service Care charges $50 to set up. PATLive, Map, ReceptionHQ, Smith.ai and Answering Service Care all say there's no long-term contract.

Then test it before you decide, and judge it on a full month of calls. Map and ReceptionHQ start free with no credit card. PATLive's 14-day trial takes a card and becomes a paid plan unless you tell them. Smith.ai offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, up to $1,000, that doesn't cover calls past the plan.

When an answering service makes sense

An answering service makes the most sense when you miss calls you can't get to. Maybe you're on a roof or under a house all day. Maybe you're a plumber, and people call at night when water is on the floor. It helps most when one job is worth many months of the service. It makes less sense when you miss only a few calls a week, when most are existing customers or suppliers, or when you can't call back the same day anyway. A message nobody returns books nothing.

If someone really does pick up at 2 a.m., your website can say so. A button is a promise: "We Answer 24/7" only when it's true.

The calculator below puts a number on the calls you miss now. Slide it to your week, then hold the total against the plans above.