Doing it yourself: $0, but with a real hidden cost
Answering your own phone costs nothing directly, but it has a real opportunity cost: every minute spent on a call is a minute not spent doing billable work, and it caps how many calls your business can realistically handle without something falling through the cracks.
A full-time receptionist: roughly $3,000 to $4,500 a month
This range reflects a typical hourly wage for front-desk work once you include payroll taxes, and often benefits, for a full 40-hour week. It buys you a genuine in-person presence during business hours, but no coverage nights, weekends, or when that person is out sick or on vacation, unless you also budget for backup coverage.
A traditional answering service: roughly $300 to $1,000 a month
Traditional answering services are typically priced per minute or per call, and costs scale with your call volume. They provide after-hours coverage, which is a real advantage over doing nothing, but most can only take a message rather than answer detailed questions or book directly into your calendar.
An AI receptionist: starting at $97 a month
Robin starts at $97 a month and covers every call and text, at any hour, with the ability to answer real questions about your business and book directly into your calendar. It costs a small fraction of a full-time hire and is competitive with, or cheaper than, most traditional answering services, while covering more of the actual conversation than a message-taking service can.
Hear it before you read another word about it
Call or text (844) 982-5347 right now. That is the real Robin engine, live, for free.