The two options have completely different cost shapes, which is why comparing them on price alone gives the wrong answer. A receptionist is paid for hours of availability, roughly forty a week, whether the phone rings two hundred times or twice. An AI phone agent is a monthly plan with an allowance of call minutes, and that one price covers every hour of the week, so nights and weekends add nothing to it. For most small businesses the deciding factor is not the hourly rate, it is how many hours you need covered and how predictable your call volume is.
The salary is the number people quote, and it is the smallest part of the picture. On top of it sit employer social contributions, holiday pay, sick cover, the cost of recruiting and training a replacement when they leave, and a desk with a phone and a computer.
In Austria the pay itself is set by the applicable collective agreement for your sector, so look up the current rate for your own industry rather than trusting a figure from a blog. Whatever it is, budget for meaningfully more than the headline salary once employer costs are included.
The important part is not the amount, it is the shape. That cost does not move when your calls do. A quiet January costs the same as a busy December. And one person covers roughly forty hours a week, so evenings, weekends, holidays, lunch breaks, and sick days are either uncovered or cost extra.
The shape is different. There is no salary, no employer contributions, no recruitment, and no desk. You pick a monthly plan that includes an allowance of call minutes, and that plan answers the phone around the clock rather than for forty hours.
With PhoneMyAgent the plan price is all-inclusive: it covers both the AI and the telephony, so there is no setup fee and no separate line for call charges. Plan minutes reset each billing cycle, and if you use them up, calls stop rather than turning into an unexpected invoice. You can add top-up minutes, which do not expire. There are 45 free minutes to try it, no card, enough to hear it handle your real calls before you decide anything. The current plans are on our pricing page.
The consequence is that the maths flips depending on volume. At low and medium call volumes a plan is dramatically cheaper than a salary, because you are not paying for the forty hours of standing by. At very high, sustained volumes a salaried person handling calls back to back becomes more competitive per call, because a fixed cost spread over enough calls gets cheap.
This is worth saying plainly, because a comparison that concludes "buy ours" for everyone is not a comparison.
A receptionist does things an AI phone agent does not. They greet people who walk through the door, sign for deliveries, handle the post, and do the small administrative work between calls. If you need a front desk rather than a phone answered, that is a person.
They also handle the calls that need judgement. A complaint from an angry long-standing customer, a delicate negotiation, an unusual request that does not match any policy you have written down. A human reads the room, decides to bend a rule, and repairs a relationship. An agent takes the details and passes them to you, which is correct behaviour but slower.
And they build relationships. A regular who has spoken to the same person for six years values that, and it does not show up in any cost model.
| Receptionist | Traditional answering service | AI phone agent | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost shape | Fixed salary plus employer costs | Monthly retainer | Monthly plan with a minute allowance |
| What you are paying for | Hours of availability | A retainer | Minutes actually spoken |
| Hours covered | About 40 per week | Business hours, extra for nights | Every hour, same rate |
| Two calls at once | No | Yes | Yes |
| Knows your prices and policies | Yes | No | Yes, from your documents |
| Greets walk-ins, handles post | Yes | No | No |
| Handles a complaint well | Yes | Sometimes | Passes it to you |
| Written record of every call | If they write it | Sometimes | Transcript and summary |
| Holiday, sickness, turnover | Your problem | Covered | Not applicable |
An AI phone agent will answer every call at any hour, quote from your price list, give hours and directions, book appointments, take clean messages, transfer when you want, and email you a transcript and summary of each call. It tells every caller at the start that it is an AI assistant.
It will not staff a front desk, exercise judgement that belongs to a person, or give medical, legal, or financial advice. It is not an emergency line.
The realistic answer for most small businesses is not one or the other. It is a person during the hours you can afford one, and the agent covering the overflow, the second caller, the lunch hour, the evenings, and the weekends, which is where most of the losses actually happen.
At typical small-business call volumes, yes, and by a wide margin, because a monthly plan with a minute allowance costs a fraction of a salary plus employer costs, and it covers every hour of the week rather than forty. The gap narrows as call volume rises, since a salaried person handling calls continuously spreads that fixed cost across many more calls.
You choose a monthly plan that includes an allowance of call minutes, and the price is all-inclusive: it covers both the AI and the telephony, with no setup fee and no separate call charges. Plan minutes reset each billing cycle, and top-up minutes do not expire. You can try it with 45 free minutes without giving a card.
When you need a front desk rather than a phone line: greeting visitors, taking deliveries, handling post. Also when your calls routinely need judgement, such as complaints, negotiations, or long-standing relationships where the same familiar voice matters.
Yes, and it is the most common sensible setup. Your team answers during the day, and the agent picks up what they cannot: the second caller while the first is on the line, the lunch hour, evenings, weekends, and holidays.
No. You keep your existing number and forward it to the number we provide, and you can remove the forward from your own phone at any time. Nothing printed or listed has to change.
An email with the full transcript, a short summary, and any booking or message the agent handled. That written record is something most receptionists and answering services do not reliably produce.
New to this? Start with what PhoneMyAgent is and how it works, or read about the calls you are losing today.
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