If you have looked at answering services, you have met two very different prices and very little explanation of why. This is the honest version, with every figure taken from the company's own pricing page on the date shown at the bottom.
The prices, side by side
| Harkbell | Rosie (AI) | Smith.ai (AI) | Smith.ai (human) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry | $0 · 30 min | $49 · 250 min | $0 · 25 calls | $300 · 30 calls |
| Middle | $49† · 500 min | $149 · 1,000 min | $150 · 75 calls | $810 · 90 calls |
| Higher | $149† · 2,000 min | $299 · 2,000 min | $500 · 300 calls | $2,100 · 300 calls |
| Books at the entry tier | Yes | No — from $149 | Yes | No — $1.50 a booking |
| Over the limit | Agent pauses | Not stated | $2.10–$3.00 per call | $8.50–$11.50 per call |
† Our discounted prices: $49 is usually $99, and $149 is usually $199. Every other price here is that company's standard one. The columns are also not directly comparable and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. Smith.ai bills per call, Harkbell and Rosie bill per minute, and Smith.ai's AI plans price by volume inside a tier, so its $150 and $500 are where those tiers start. A three-minute call and a nine-minute call cost a per-call service the same and cost a per-minute one three times apart. Compare the shape of the pricing, not the numbers in a row.
The cheap end, where the difference actually is
Smith.ai is in the table twice because it sells both, and quoting only the expensive half would be the exact trick this post exists to complain about. Its human service starts at $300 for thirty calls; its AI service starts at nothing for twenty-five. Put the AI columns beside each other and price stops being the interesting number.
What is left is what the cheap tier can actually do. Rosie's $49 plan answers, takes messages and screens spam; appointment booking starts on the $149 one. Smith.ai's human plans will book, at $1.50 a booking on top of the plan. Harkbell books on every tier including the free one, because an agent that cannot put a name in the diary is an expensive answerphone.
Our own asterisk on that: the free tier is thirty minutes and no phone number, so what it books there are calls that came from your website. A number — and so a booking taken off the phone — comes with the paid plans, which start at $49 a month, discounted from $99. Email us about one.
What the human service is actually selling
Judgement, and somebody who can be held responsible. A trained receptionist handles the caller who is angry, confused, or describing something that does not fit any script. They can be briefed in a sentence and will apply it sensibly to a situation nobody anticipated. For a business where one call is worth four figures, that is worth $300 a month without much argument.
What you are not buying is availability at volume. Thirty calls is one a day. An appointment business taking eight calls a day is on the $810 plan before lunch, and a busy Saturday is billed at $10.50 a call on top.
What the AI one is actually selling
Volume, patience and consistency. It answers the fourth simultaneous call the same way it answered the first, at 2am, on a bank holiday, without a queue. It quotes the same price every time because it is reading the same list every time.
What you are not buying is judgement. It does what its brief says and stops where its brief stops. Whether that is a problem depends entirely on how good the brief is — which is the actual thing to compare, and the thing nobody's pricing page tells you.
The comparison that matters more than price
Ask any of them, including us, what the agent does when it does not know the answer. There are only three possible behaviours and they are wildly different in what they cost you:
- It guesses. Fluent, confident, and occasionally quotes a price you do not charge. You find out when somebody arrives expecting it.
- It deflects and the call dies. Safe, and you lose the enquiry along with any record that it happened.
- It says it will find out, takes a message, and tells you exactly what it was asked. You answer that question once, and it is answered forever.
The third is the only one that gets better over time, and it is the one worth paying for. It is also the one you can test in ten minutes: ask any demo something deliberately obscure about the business and see which of the three you get.
Where each one loses
A human service loses on cost per call at volume, on nights and weekends, and on consistency — three receptionists give three slightly different answers about your deposit policy.
An AI service loses on anything genuinely unusual, and on trust: you are handing your phone line to software on the strength of a demo. That is why Harkbell's free plan answers on your own website, so you judge it on your real callers' questions before you pay anything.
The honest recommendation
If you take fewer than about thirty calls a month and each one is worth four figures, a human service is a reasonable buy. If you take more than that, or your calls arrive at 8pm, or you are losing the enquiry rather than fumbling it, the economics are not close.