The short answer
Hire a person when you need someone in the building: greeting walk-in customers, handling paperwork, chasing invoices, ordering parts, and answering the phone in between. Choose an AI receptionist when the job is mainly the phone, when calls come in nights and weekends, or when the cost of a full-time hire is more than the calls are worth.
You can also have both: a person during office hours, and the AI receptionist on every call the person can't get to.
What a hire really costs
The median pay for receptionists in the United States was $38,010 a year, or $18.27 an hour, in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Half earn more and half earn less, and pay varies by area and by experience.
The wage is not the whole cost. Across private industry, wages and salaries are about 70 percent of what employers spend per hour worked; the other 30 percent is benefits, such as paid leave, insurance, retirement and the employer's share of payroll taxes (BLS, June 2026). On top of that come the costs of hiring: the job ad, interviews, training time, and doing it again when someone leaves.
An AI receptionist is a monthly fee. At B&G Solutions it is flat, from $149 a month for plans that include phone answering, from $497 a month for emergency trades, and the price does not change for 12 months. There is no per-minute charge and no surcharge for nights, weekends or holidays.
Coverage: hours in a week
A week has 168 hours. A full-time receptionist covers about 40 of them, less lunch and breaks, and fewer in the weeks they are on vacation or out sick. Covering evenings and weekends with people means a second and third hire, or paying someone to keep a phone with them at night.
This quarter, 1 in 3 calls we answered came in outside business hours, and 1 in 5 on a weekend.
An AI receptionist answers every hour of the week, including holidays, in your company's name. Nothing changes when someone is sick or on vacation.
Calls that arrive at the same moment
One person answers one call at a time. When two customers ring at once, after a storm, first thing on a Monday, or while the receptionist is helping someone at the counter, the second caller waits on hold or reaches voicemail. A caller with an urgent job often hangs up and tries the next company.
An AI receptionist answers each call as it arrives, so a rush on the phone does not turn into a queue.
What a person does better
- Greets walk-in customers and keeps the front office running
- Does the work between calls: invoices, parts orders, permits, following up on quotes
- Recognizes your regulars by voice and knows their history without looking it up
- Handles the unusual call that fits no rule, using judgment and your trust
- Calms an upset customer face to face
If most of the value of the role is in that list, you need a person, and the phone is one task among many.
What an AI receptionist does better
- Answers every call, 24/7, in your business's name, with no hold queue
- Answers in English and Spanish
- Books jobs and appointments into the calendar or booking app you already use, and texts the caller a confirmation
- Sends the calls you mark as urgent straight to you or your on-call person, with the address and the problem already taken
- Stops spam and robocalls before they reach you
- Gives you a summary of every call, so you see what came in while you were working
- Costs the same in your busiest month as in your quietest
Using both
A setup that keeps the person adds the AI receptionist behind them. Your phone, or your receptionist's phone, rings first. If nobody picks up after a few rings, if the line is busy, or if it is after hours, the call forwards to the AI receptionist instead of voicemail. Most carriers call this conditional call forwarding.
Lunch breaks and Monday mornings stop sending callers to voicemail, you stop paying for voicemail that loses jobs, and the person's hours go to the work only a person can do.
How to decide
- Count the hours your phone rings that nobody is there to answer. If most missed calls are after hours or during busy spells, an AI receptionist covers them for less than another hire.
- List the tasks you would give a hire besides the phone. If that list is long, hire the person, and consider the AI receptionist for the hours they are not there.
- Count how often two calls come in at once. If it happens every busy morning, one person will always miss some.
- Compare the full cost of a hire, wages plus benefits plus hiring, with a flat monthly price.