What a virtual receptionist really costs a UK small business

Ask "how much does a virtual receptionist cost?" and you will get quotes that are hard to compare: one provider prices per call, another per minute, a third sells a monthly bundle, and hiring in-house is a different sum altogether. The trick is to convert everything into one number: your cost per handled enquiry.

This guide walks through each pricing model, the hidden costs that inflate the headline price, and the maths to compare them fairly for your own volume.

The four pricing models

Per-call pricing: you pay a fixed fee for every call the service answers. Simple to understand, but watch what counts as a "call": wrong numbers, spam and ten-second hang-ups often bill the same as a genuine lead.

Per-minute bundles: you buy a block of minutes each month. Fine for short, predictable calls; expensive when a chatty customer eats your bundle. Unused minutes rarely roll over.

Monthly retainers: a flat fee for an agreed volume. Predictable, but you pay for capacity you may not use in quiet months, and overage rates above the agreed volume are usually steep.

In-house hiring: full control and a human in your business, at a full-time cost. In the UK the National Living Wage is the floor (£12.21 an hour from April 2025), before you add employer National Insurance, pension contributions, holiday cover and the desk they sit at. Even part-time front-desk cover runs to four figures a month.

The maths: cost per handled enquiry

Take one month. Count the enquiries you expect (calls plus messages). Then for each option: divide the total monthly cost by that number. A £150 monthly plan handling 60 enquiries is £2.50 per enquiry. A part-time hire at £900 a month handling the same 60 is £15 per enquiry.

Now weight it by when enquiries arrive. If a third of your messages land outside office hours (evenings, weekends), a 9-to-5 answer costs you those leads entirely, so its real cost per handled enquiry is a third higher than the headline maths suggests.

The hidden costs providers do not lead with

Out-of-hours surcharges: many human services charge extra for evenings and weekends, exactly when your customers are free to message you. Setup and onboarding fees: teaching the service your business is sometimes billed separately. Per-transfer fees: some services charge again when they pass a call to you. Minimum terms: monthly rolling sounds standard, but check.

None of these are scams; they reflect real human labour costs. But they mean the advertised price and your invoice can be quite different numbers.

Where AI changes the sums

An AI receptionist breaks the link between cost and human hours. Susan, our AI business manager, charges $1 an hour only while actually working, answers on WhatsApp around the clock with no out-of-hours surcharge, and does not bill setup: you teach it your business by chatting with it.

The honest caveat: AI is the cheapest option for message-first businesses, but it is not automatically the right one. If most of your enquiries are complex phone calls, or your industry requires a regulated human response, a human service earns its premium. Our comparison of AI receptionists, answering services and hiring covers when each wins.

A quick decision rule

Under roughly ten enquiries a week, your own phone plus good auto-replies is probably enough. From ten a week to a few dozen a day, arriving on WhatsApp at all hours, an AI front desk gives the lowest cost per enquiry by a wide margin. Beyond that, or with heavy regulated phone traffic, price up a human service or a hire, and use the cost-per-enquiry maths above rather than the headline monthly fee.