If your phone is ringing more than you can answer, you have two obvious options: pay someone to answer it, or pay software to. They cost wildly different amounts and they are good at genuinely different things.
Here is the honest comparison, including the parts where hiring a person wins.
The short answer
If you are choosing between the two from scratch, start with the AI, because it costs a fraction of a wage and you can cancel it. If you already employ a receptionist, do not replace them, use AI to cover the calls they cannot get to.
The realistic comparison for most small businesses is not AI versus a great receptionist. It is AI versus voicemail.
Side by side
What hiring genuinely does better
This is the part most vendors skip, so let us do it properly.
Judgement. A person can tell when a caller is upset, when a job is not worth taking, and when to bend the rules. An AI does what you scripted and nothing more.
Difficult conversations. A complaint, a bereavement, a customer who has been let down. These need a human, and using AI for them will cost you the relationship.
Everything that is not the phone. A receptionist also greets people, chases invoices, manages the diary, orders supplies and holds the office together. If you need that, an AI receptionist is not the product you are looking at.
Getting better on their own. A good receptionist learns your business, remembers regular customers and starts anticipating things. AI improves only when someone updates the script.
Being a person. Some customers want a person, particularly older customers and in professions where trust is the product.
What AI genuinely does better
Never missing a call. This is the whole argument, honestly. It answers at 11pm, on Sunday, and on the fourth simultaneous call.
Cost. At $99 to $500 a month against $35,000 a year, they are not really in the same budget conversation.
Consistency. It asks every qualifying question every time. No shortcuts on a busy Friday.
Perfect notes. Every call is transcribed and logged against the contact. Nothing depends on someone remembering.
Scaling instantly. A hundred extra calls this month costs slightly more in minutes. It does not require hiring anyone.
The real numbers
Let us be specific, because "cheaper" is doing a lot of work in most comparisons.
SEEK puts the average Australian receptionist salary at $60,000 to $70,000 full time. The cost to actually employ someone is higher than their salary: the super guarantee is 12 per cent as of 1 July 2025, and on top of that sit annual leave, sick leave, workers compensation, and payroll tax if you are over your state threshold.
Say a genuine part-time role at $32,000 salary.
Add 12 per cent super, about $3,840. Add leave loading, workers compensation and the odd bit of overtime, call it another $2,000 to $3,000. Add the recruitment time and the first month while they learn your business.
You are realistically looking at $38,000 or so in year one for someone who works part of the week.
An AI receptionist at $99 a month plus call costs is roughly $1,500 a year, and it works all of the week.
Work out your own number against that $38,000. Our subscription is $99 a month and the phone costs sit on top: about $10 a month for the number, then roughly 40 cents a minute on the calls it answers.
Charged at $0.40 per minute
Phone number and call charges are billed separately from the subscription. The platform bills us in US dollars, so the Australian figures move with the exchange rate. Treat this as a close estimate rather than a quote. Prices exclude GST.
That gap is not a reason to fire anyone. It is a reason to be honest that these are different purchases. Hiring buys you a colleague. AI buys you a phone that gets answered.
Which one fits your situation
You are a sole trader or a small crew, on the tools, missing calls. Start with AI. You cannot justify a wage yet and you are losing jobs to whoever answers first. This is the clearest case there is.
You have a receptionist and the phone still beats them. Do not replace them. Put AI on overflow and after hours. Your receptionist stops being interrupted and your evenings stop going to voicemail.
You need someone in the office anyway. Hire. If the role involves greeting people, handling paperwork and running the diary, the phone is only part of the job and AI does not touch the rest.
Your calls are emotionally loaded. Funeral services, health crises, legal trouble. Use a person on the front line. AI can still take overflow and after hours, but be careful about what it handles.
You are seasonal or unpredictable. AI, easily. Scaling a wage up and down is painful and unfair. Scaling minutes is nothing.
The setup most businesses land on
Once people stop treating it as a choice, the pattern is fairly consistent.
Nobody rings out, your person is not drowning, and you have not added a wage.
How to decide this week
Count the calls you miss for one week. Not the ones you take, the ones that ring out or land in voicemail. Then ask yourself what one average job is worth to you.
If missed calls times job value is a big number, do something this month, and the fastest and cheapest something is the AI. If it is a small number, you probably do not need either yet.
Our AI receptionist answers our own business line. Ring 0483 963 433 and judge it yourself before you spend anything, on us or on a job ad.
If you want to work out which way to go for your specific setup, have a look at how our AI receptionist works or book a call and we will tell you honestly if you would be better off hiring.
Builds CRM, automation and AI systems for Australian service businesses at Basic Solutions. Gold Coast-based, allergic to messy spreadsheets.
