What an answering service really costs per month
Per minute, per call, or flat monthly, and which one leaves you with a bill you did not expect. Price bands first, then a calculator that totals your bill at your call volume.
The short answer
A live answering service usually bills by the minute; published guides cite roughly $0.75 to $1.50 per minute, plus setup or after-hours fees on some plans. An AI receptionist is usually a flat monthly plan: DIPAZE starts at $29/month with 60 minutes included, and extra minutes are billed by the second: Starter monthly 39¢/min, Pro monthly 29¢/min, Business monthly 25¢/min. Extra minutes only apply if you approve a usage cap.
Start 28 days free, no credit card required. Estimates below come from the plan prices on dipaze.com and are not a quote.
DIPAZE price bands
| Minutes per month | Cheapest plan | Estimated monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | Starter | $29.00 |
| 60 min | Starter | $29.00 |
| 100 min | Starter | $44.60 |
| 200 min | Pro | $79.00 |
| 400 min | Pro | $137.00 |
| 600 min | Pro | $195.00 |
| 1000 min | Business | $299.00 |
| Plan | Per month | Minutes included | Texts included | Extra minute |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $29 | 60 | 100 | 39¢ |
| Pro | $79 | 200 | 400 | 29¢ |
| Business | $149 | 400 | 800 | 25¢ |
Estimate = plan price + extra minutes x that plan's rate (Starter monthly 39¢/min, Pro monthly 29¢/min, Business monthly 25¢/min). Extra minutes are billed by the second and only apply if you approve a usage cap.
The three ways answering services bill
Per minute
You pay for every minute the operator is on the phone. It is easy to compare, but the bill moves with call length, and some providers round every call up to a full minute.
Per call
A flat price per answered call. Good when calls are long, bad when you get many short or unwanted calls, because each one counts.
Monthly plan with a minute allowance
A fixed fee that includes some minutes, then a per-minute rate after that. This is how DIPAZE works: the plan price covers your included minutes and you can see the rate for anything above.
What makes the bill go up
- Hold time and long calls billed in full.
- Spam, robocalls and wrong numbers counted as calls.
- Minutes rounded up (a 20-second call billed as a minute).
- Setup fees, after-hours surcharges and cancellation penalties.
Calculate your own bill
How to use this tool
- Enter your call volumeAdd calls per month and the average length of a call to get your monthly minutes.
- Edit the other optionsSet a receptionist wage and hours, and the per-minute range of any live service you are considering.
- Compare the monthly costSee all three DIPAZE plans side by side with the cheapest marked, next to the other two options.
How we calculate it
- Monthly minutes = calls per month × average minutes per call.
- Receptionist = hourly wage × hours per week × 52 ÷ 12 × (1 + overhead %). The 24/7 equivalent scales this by 168 ÷ hours covered.
- Live answering service = monthly fee + minutes × per-minute rate, shown as a low to high range.
- DIPAZE = plan price + (minutes above the plan allowance) × that plan's rate (Starter monthly 39¢/min, Pro monthly 29¢/min, Business monthly 25¢/min). All three plans are calculated and the cheapest is marked. It works at any volume, including above 400 minutes.
Sources: DIPAZE plans from dipaze.com. Typical live-service rates from published guides, for example Alliance Virtual Offices, Nextiva and Ringly. These are vendor blogs and ranges differ, so confirm with real quotes.