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Plumber answering service: what AI and live answering cost a year
B2B Fees priced 9 answering services from their own pages (read 2026-10-27) for a plumber taking 90 calls a month at 3 minutes each. The AI services cost US$60 to US$195 a month (US$719 to US$2,340 a year); the cheaper of the 2 person-answered plans we priced costs US$9,720 a year. We also phoned four services with a burst-pipe call.
See the cost at 30, 90 and 300 calls
Service names in the tables are plain links to each vendor's own site; no vendor has paid for this page or its order. How we are paid. US dollars, before tax. Nothing here is a ranking: we ran one call per service. The lowest-cost AI plan at 90 calls is Upfirst, Premium; the highest is Smith.ai AI Receptionist, Free plan. Other person-answered services exist that we did not price.
What it costs a year, at three call volumes
| Service | 30 calls a month | 90 calls a month | 300 calls a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upfirst | US$299 (Starter) | US$719 (Premium) | US$1,919 (Pro) |
| Goodcall | US$948 (Starter) | US$948 (Starter) | US$1,548 (Growth) |
| My AI Front Desk | US$1,188 (Business In A Box) | US$1,398 (Business In A Box) | US$3,288 (Business In A Box) |
| Dialzara | US$521 (Business Lite) | US$1,458 (Business Pro) | US$4,188 (Business Elite) |
| RingCentral AI Receptionist | US$588 (Standalone) | US$1,608 (Standalone) | US$5,388 (Standalone) |
| Rosie | US$588 (Professional) | US$1,788 (Scale) | US$1,788 (Scale) |
| Smith.ai AI Receptionist | US$180 (Free plan, per-call fees on top) | US$2,340 (Free plan, per-call fees on top) | US$6,000 (Enterprise) |
| Smith.ai (people) | US$3,600 (Starter) | US$9,720 (Basic) | US$25,200 (Pro) |
| Ruby (people) | US$4,740 (100 Minutes) | US$20,700 (500 Minutes) | not priced |
Estimates. The plan with the lowest total that covers the month, 12 months, monthly billing, no tax, USD. Calls are 3 minutes each, an assumption: a plumber's emergency call can run longer, and services that bill per minute rise with it; per-call services do not. A service that prints no overage rate is priced only on a plan whose allowance covers the month and is not priced above its largest plan (Rosie says it moves you up to the next plan at that plan's standard price, so a bigger month is priced on the bigger plan; Ruby says nothing about overage). Prices read 2026-10-27 from each vendor's own pages; the date for each is in the tool.
What a "call" is differs by service. Upfirst bills per answered call and does not bill calls under 15 seconds, spam or calls where the caller never speaks. Goodcall bills unique callers: one phone number counts once a month, and we count 1.5 calls to a unique caller as its own page does. Smith.ai bills per call, not per minute. Dialzara, Rosie, Ruby, My AI Front Desk and RingCentral bill per minute. The cost page has every plan and what is not in the price.
What we saw when we called: one burst-pipe call, four services
How we tested. On 2026-11-03, between about 10:50 and 12:40 Vancouver time, a person (Ian) phoned each service through a recorded line as a fictional homeowner, "Dana Whitfield" in Tacoma, with a burst pipe in the basement. Same lines each time: report the burst pipe and ask for someone right now, give name, address and callback when asked, ask whether someone can come today and at what time, ask the after-hours call-out price (we deliberately never gave the service that price), and say goodbye. Where we control the agent, we set it up as "Northside Plumbing" with a US$129 standard service call, Monday to Friday 9 to 5, and no after-hours rate. One service (OnCrew) is a vendor's own public demo line, a sample business and not a customer setup. Four services, five calls: Rosie twice, Upfirst, OnCrew, ReceptionHQ.
How we set each one up. The two AI services we configured, Upfirst and Rosie, got the same short sheet: business name, the services, a US$129 standard service call, weekday hours, and "after hours the office takes a message". No website training (we switched it off), no after-hours price, no FAQs. We counted the first clean call after a correct setup; calls with our own setup errors are not counted. ReceptionHQ is people-answered and OnCrew is the vendor's own demo line, so we set up neither.
A short sheet is not how you would run one. Upfirst told us (email to B2B Fees, 2026-11-04) that a home service company usually trains the agent on its website, then places a call, adjusts the knowledge base and calls again, and that after five or so calls they are usually happy with how it answers. Its own pricing page (read 2026-11-04) says it trains on the website you enter, lets you customise the questions it asks, and offers a free 30-minute onboarding call. What that means for you: budget about an hour to test and tune any AI service on your own calls before you rely on it, and read what we saw as a first call on a thin setup, not the most the service can do.
Limits. One caller, one script, daytime, one run per service (a few have a second run, marked). Services remember a caller's number, so only the first call from a number is a clean test of how much detail it collects. Answer times are estimated from our phone records. We did not hear any audio: each row says what it rests on. These are dated single runs, not a ranking, and we do not score tone.
| Service and run | Answered | What it captured | What it missed or got wrong | Summary email |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rosie, default message taking | about 2 s | Name. Used the caller ID for the number. | Did not ask the address, callback number or email. Arrival: "I don't have tonight's arrival times", team will call back. No after-hours price invented. | about 21 s after the call |
| Rosie, with a custom "Plumbing service request" scenario (a returning caller) | about 2 s | Name, address, callback number, email, and whether the emergency was still active. Added safety advice unprompted (shut the main water valve). | Accepted a mistyped 13-digit callback number, read it back as "(604)3373303947" and put it in the summary unchanged. | about 16 s after the call |
| Upfirst, clean daytime run | about 2 s | Right time of day, confirmed address and callback, quoted the US$129 call. | Said it would "arrange a technician to come out as soon as possible today" with no arrival time in its knowledge, and said "We don't offer after-hours call outs", which was not in what we gave it. Did not ask name or email: it remembers a caller by phone number. | about 20 s after the call |
| OnCrew public demo line | about 1 s | Name, address and callback (read back correctly). | No email asked; no after-hours dollar amount; said the sample business was closed at midday, which we could not check. No booking or text. | none (public line) |
| ReceptionHQ, people | about 8 s, then a hold of about 30 s | Name, number and reason ("a pipe busted in his basement and water is coming through the ceiling"). | No address, email or urgency. It assumed the caller's gender. | about 6 s after the call |
Basis: Rosie and Upfirst rows rest on each vendor's own transcript and summary email, read by us. The OnCrew row rests on Ian's spoken notes only (no transcript exists for a public demo line). The ReceptionHQ row rests on its message email plus Ian's notes on the hold and manner. Each row is "our test call, 2026-11-03". The Upfirst first call and two later runs are not counted: our setup was wrong (the wrong business, and a time zone we had not saved).
Three short quotes from the services, all from our test calls: Rosie, "I don't have a separate after-hours rate, so the team will confirm the cost when they call you back." Upfirst, "I'll arrange for a technician to come out as soon as possible today." Upfirst, "We don't offer after-hours call outs." The first answer did not invent a price; the other two stated things we had not told the service.
What this does and does not show. It shows how four services behaved on one plumbing call (five calls): a speed, what each collected, and where each stepped past what it knew. It does not rank them, and it is not a test of your business: your own hours, prices and scripts decide what an AI says. On our call Rosie's default message taking asked only for a name and took the number from caller ID; collecting an address needs a custom scenario (its Professional plan lists two, Scale lists five).
Job software, transfers, texts and after hours: what each service states
If your crew books jobs in Jobber, Housecall Pro or ServiceTitan, the question is whether the answering service can put a booking or a customer into it, and whether it can hand a burst-pipe call to your phone. This is what each service says on its own pages:
| Service | Books into job software | Live transfer | Texting | After hours | Pages read (2026-11-04) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Upfirst | Not stated. Zapier, Make and custom API are named. | Warm transfers on every plan; fallback numbers can be added. | Two-way texting on every plan. | Owner alert rules, for example "text me only for emergencies". Call handling by time of day is not confirmed by us. | 1 2 3 4 |
| Rosie | Jobber: logs calls and clients, cannot book jobs. Its help centre lists other connectors (Housecall Pro on Housecall Pro's MAX plan, ServiceM8, Workiz). | Cold or warm on Scale and Growth; a waterfall of up to 5 numbers on Growth. | Appointment links by text on Professional; texts during a call from Scale. | After-hours-only mode; an emergency waterfall to an on-call list. | 1 2 3 |
| Goodcall | Not stated. Google Calendar, Google Sheets and HighLevel are native; the rest via Zapier. | Escalation contacts; tries the next, up to three. | Texts a caller a link; cannot receive replies yet. | Hours and holidays can be set; no emergency routing stated. | 1 2 |
| Dialzara | Not stated. CRMs through Make, Zapier or API. | Blind transfer on all plans; warm transfer from Pro. | Summary texts on all plans; a two-way SMS agent is a US$19 a month add-on. | After-hours rules and escalation from Pro; takes messages and texts a summary when closed. | 1 2 |
| My AI Front Desk | Not stated. HubSpot, GoHighLevel, Zapier and webhooks are listed. | Hot or cold transfer, with backup numbers. | Missed-call text-back and two-way texting described on its home-services page; plan limits not confirmed by us. | A home-services page describes after-hours emergency triage that pages the on-call tech (plan not stated). | 1 2 3 4 |
| RingCentral AI Receptionist | Not stated. Salesforce, HubSpot and Zoho are listed. | To users, extensions, queues or external numbers. | AI text agent included; "additional charges may apply". | Custom schedules; no emergency routing stated. | 1 2 |
| Smith.ai (people and AI) | Integration pages for Jobber (booking marked native, clients created through Zapier), Housecall Pro and ServiceTitan; type not stated on the last two. | AI plans list warm transfers; people plans include 1, 2 or 10 free transfer destinations. | People plans: US$0.50 a call add-on. AI plans: not stated. | Outside working hours the after-hours instructions apply and no transfers are attempted. | 1 2 3 4 5 6 |
| Ruby | Lists FieldPulse and JobNimbus (type of integration not stated). | To any phone number, all plans. | Texting from your business number is listed on its plans page. | Live answering 24/7, including after hours and holidays. | 1 2 3 4 |
| Jobber Receptionist (add-on) | Books into Jobber only, through its Online Booking settings. | A keyword you set, such as "emergency" or "urgent", can transfer the call at once. | Answers texts and texts callers who hang up. | Separate after-hours greeting and phone menu. | 1 |
From each vendor's own pages; the numbers in the last column link to the pages each row rests on. "Not stated" means the pages we read are silent, not that the service lacks it. We ran no transfer, booking or text test on any service, so "states" is what the vendor says, not what we saw. Rosie: Rosie's pricing-page FAQ says direct CRM integrations are still being built; its help centre documents the log-only connectors. We use the help centre. Goodcall: Goodcall says its numbers are US local only; Canadian and toll-free are not yet available. RingCentral AI Receptionist: Its marketing page marks CRM and scheduling app sync "coming soon"; its pricing page lists the CRMs without that mark. Smith.ai: These are Smith.ai (people and AI) rows; Smith.ai AI is the same vendor with the AI plans.
Which kind of service fits, by situation
A plumber answering service picks up the calls you miss, takes the caller's details and sends them to you; some also book jobs and transfer an urgent call to your phone. We rank none of them. Start from your situation:
- You want every missed call captured at the lowest price: an AI plan. At 90 calls a month AI plans cost US$60 to US$195 a month (table above). Test it on your own calls before you rely on it.
- You book jobs in Jobber: the services that state a Jobber booking are Jobber's own Receptionist (an add-on to a paid Jobber plan) and Smith.ai. Rosie connects to Jobber but states it only logs calls and cannot book jobs.
- A caller with an emergency must reach a person: read the live-transfer and after-hours columns, and ask what happens out of hours. Smith.ai's docs state no transfers are attempted outside working hours. We tested no transfer.
- You get under about 30 calls a month: a free plan or trial may cover you. Smith.ai's AI has a US$0 plan with 25 calls, and Upfirst's trial is 14 days or 100 calls.
- You are in Canada: these are US prices, and Goodcall says its numbers are US local only.
AI or a person, for a plumber
On price: at 90 calls a month the cheapest person-answered plan we priced is US$9,720 a year, against US$719 to US$2,340 for the AI services. Those are published plan prices, not a test of quality. On our one call each, the person-answered service took about 8 seconds to connect plus a hold of about 30 seconds, against one to two seconds for the AI services, and collected name, number and reason but no address, more than Rosie's default setup got and less than Rosie with a custom scenario. Rosie and Upfirst sent a summary within about 21 seconds (OnCrew's public demo line sends none), but Upfirst spoke beyond what it was told and Rosie accepted a mistyped number. If you take a burst-pipe call that must reach a person, ask any service how it hands off to your phone: we did not test transfers.
Not tested by us, and who each is not for
- Not tested: Smith.ai (people and AI), Dialzara, My AI Front Desk, Goodcall (no phone number to call), RingCentral, Ruby, Posh, Abby Connect and PATLive. Of these, Smith.ai, Dialzara, My AI Front Desk, Goodcall, RingCentral and Ruby are in the price table from their own pages; Posh, Abby Connect and PATLive are not priced here. We have not heard any of them answer. Reasons: a card was required, no trial, or not set up.
- Not tested: transfers to a person, booking into your calendar, texting the caller, and any trade-specific script beyond plumbing.
- Not for you if your calls are mostly existing customers asking for a named plumber, where a plain voicemail or a forwarded line may be enough, or you need a firm dispatch promise from the service: none of the AI services we called knew your technicians' arrival times.
- Not for you if you are in Canada: these are US prices. Canadian prices are not on this page.
Quick answers
How much does a plumber answering service cost?
B2B Fees priced 9 answering services from their own pages (read 2026-10-27) for 90 calls a month at 3 minutes each. AI services cost US$719 to US$2,340 a year, about US$60 to US$195 a month; the cheaper of the 2 person-answered plans we priced costs US$9,720 a year (US$810 a month). Other person-answered services exist that we did not price. Your own call volume and call length change this.
Is an AI answering service good enough for a plumber?
In our burst-pipe test calls on 2026-11-03 (four services, five calls), the AI services answered in one to two seconds, and Rosie and Upfirst sent a summary within about 21 seconds. One (Upfirst) promised a technician "as soon as possible today" and stated a policy it had not been given, and one (Rosie, with a custom scenario) accepted a mistyped phone number. One call each is a single run, not a ranking.
What does a person-answered service do differently?
The person-answered service we called (ReceptionHQ) took about 8 seconds to connect plus a hold of about 30 seconds, and its message email gave name, number and reason but not the address. Rosie's default setup asked only for a name and took the number from caller ID. The person-answered plans we priced cost several times more than the AI ones.
What should I ask a plumber answering service before I sign up?
Ask: how a call is handed to your phone when a caller says a pipe has burst (we did not test transfers); whether it will ever promise an arrival time or a price you did not give it (one AI service did on our call); what it collects by default and whether the address is included; what counts as a billable call or minute; and whether you can change plan or cancel in a busy month. The cost page lists what a call or minute means for each service.
Does an answering service book into Jobber, Housecall Pro or ServiceTitan?
Of the services we read, Smith.ai lists integrations with Jobber, Housecall Pro and ServiceTitan (its Jobber booking uses your Jobber Online Booking link). Rosie connects to Jobber, Housecall Pro, ServiceM8 and Workiz but logs calls only and cannot book jobs. Jobber's own Receptionist books into Jobber. Upfirst, Goodcall, Dialzara, My AI Front Desk and RingCentral name no field-service software on the pages we read, only Zapier, Make, CRMs or calendars. These are what each vendor states, read 2026-11-04; we did not test any integration.
Which answering services did you not price?
We did not price Posh, Abby Connect or PATLive, nor ReceptionHQ or the OnCrew demo line, which we called. Ruby is person-answered and prints no overage rate, so it is priced only where a plan covers the month.