What an AI receptionist costs, and whether it pays.
A missed call is usually a missed job. The question is what it costs to stop missing them, and whether that is worth paying for a business your size.
The three ways to cover your calls
There are three ways to answer the phone, at very different prices. A human answering service in Australia charges roughly $2 to $5 a call, which for a busy line runs to around $1,900 a month once the volume is there (Australian provider pricing, 2026). A rented AI receptionist runs from about $25 to $300 a month depending on how many calls it takes. And a custom agent, built for your business and owned by you, is a one-off build from $3,000 plus a small monthly figure for the calls and usage, billed at cost. The generic rented tool is the cheapest to start; the custom one costs more up front and then fits your business and answers to you. Doing nothing has its own price, which is the calls you miss, and it is the option most small businesses are quietly on.
What a missed call actually costs you
The figure that matters is your own, so run your own numbers rather than ours. Take the average value of a job and multiply it by the calls you miss in a week, then by fifty-two. As an illustration, a business missing two calls a week on jobs worth $500 is letting roughly $52,000 of enquiry a year go past, before you even count the ones that ring after hours when nobody is there to pick up. Most of it will not convert, and your real numbers will differ, but even a fraction of a figure like that dwarfs the cost of answering the phone. That is the first calculation to run.
We built our own, so we know what it takes
HeimMax runs an AI receptionist called Max on our own main line. Max answers in a real voice, knows what we do, books a time and texts the link, and takes a message as a transcript when nobody picks up. It does not pretend to handle everything: when a caller needs a person, or the conversation is beyond it, it puts them through to Alex or Dave rather than guessing, and you decide where that line sits. We built it from the ground up on our own number before we offered one to anyone else, so we can tell you what an agent handles well, where it still needs a person, and what it costs to keep on, from our own bill rather than a sales page.
Calls
Missed while you are on the tools, and the job goes to whoever picks up.
We build call handling for businesses in any industry: an AI receptionist, a missed-call agent, or a call notes agent, from $3,000.
Check it outIs it worth it for your business?
The maths is simple: if the calls you miss are worth more than the cost of answering them, an agent pays for itself, usually many times over. That is true for most businesses that live off the phone, and especially for trades and services where a missed call goes straight to a competitor. If your phone rarely rings, or every call is a complex conversation only you can have, it is the wrong tool, and we will say so. The way to know is to look at your own numbers, which is where a conversation starts.
Sources
Australian virtual receptionist provider pricing, 2026. HeimMax rate card, 2026 (custom agent from $3,000). Max, HeimMax internal build. The missed-call figure is illustrative, worked from first principles.
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Common questions
Will an agent sound like a robot?
No. You can choose from hundreds of voices to get the right tone for your business. We write the script together to support the functionality, so the agent sounds as natural as possible.
What happens when it does not know the answer?
It does what you tell it to: take a message, book a callback, or put the caller through to you. Best practice is that if an agent is unsure, it hands over to a human rather than guessing.
Can it work with the tools I already use?
Usually, yes. If your calendar, CRM, accounts or inbox has a way to connect, the automation works with what you have rather than making you move.