Tomas LaurinaviciusContributor
Tomas Laurinavicius is a writer and designer. He's a co-founder of Best Writing, an all-in-one platform connecting writers with businesses. He has built multiple online businesses and helps startups and enterprises scale their content marketing operations. He worked with TIME, Observer, HuffPost, Adobe, Webflow, Envato, InVision, and BigCommerce.
Tomas Laurinavicius
Tomas LaurinaviciusContributor
Tomas Laurinavicius is a writer and designer. He's a co-founder of Best Writing, an all-in-one platform connecting writers with businesses. He has built multiple online businesses and helps startups and enterprises scale their content marketing operations. He worked with TIME, Observer, HuffPost, Adobe, Webflow, Envato, InVision, and BigCommerce.
Contributor
Kelly MainStaff Reviewer
Kelly Main is a Marketing Editor and Writer specializing in digital marketing, online advertising and web design and development. Before joining the team, she was a Content Producer at Fit Small Business where she served as an editor and strategist covering small business marketing content. She is a former Google Tech Entrepreneur and she holds an MSc in International Marketing from Edinburgh Napier University. Additionally, she is a Columnist at Inc. Magazine.
Reviewed
Kelly Main
Kelly MainStaff Reviewer
Kelly Main is a Marketing Editor and Writer specializing in digital marketing, online advertising and web design and development. Before joining the team, she was a Content Producer at Fit Small Business where she served as an editor and strategist covering small business marketing content. She is a former Google Tech Entrepreneur and she holds an MSc in International Marketing from Edinburgh Napier University. Additionally, she is a Columnist at Inc. Magazine.
Staff Reviewer
Reviewed
Updated: Apr 6, 2024, 7:16pm
Editorial Note: We earn a commission from partner links on Forbes Advisor. Commissions do not affect our editors' opinions or evaluations.
Customer experience (CX) has become a key differentiator for brands. Readily available phone support is key to improving your customer satisfaction and net promoter scores. But hiring support staff full-time to handle incoming calls and live chat messages 24/7 may be cost-prohibitive. That’s when savvy businesses start evaluating the best answering services. Forbes Advisor selected the top seven answering service companies that offer access to live human attendants and extra software features for managing phone, email, and chat conversations.
Read more
The Best Answering Services of 2024
- AnswerConnect: Best overall
- Specialty Answering Service: Best value for money
- VoiceNation: Best bilingual call answering service
- PATLive: Best virtual receptionist services
- Davinci: Best for remote companies
- MAP Communications: Best for custom scripting
- Moneypenny: Best for global support
Why You Can Trust Forbes Advisor Small Business
The Forbes Advisor Small Business team is committed to bringing you unbiased rankings and information with full editorial independence. We use product data, strategic methodologies and expert insights to inform all of our content to guide you in making the best decisions for your business journey.
To find the best answering services for small businesses, we considered over 25 of the leading services in the space and narrowed it down to 15, which we then evaluated across five key categories and 27 different metrics. Our ratings consider factors such as transparent pricing, features, service quality and inclusions, and access to customer support and ratings. All ratings are determined solely by our editorial team.
Best Overall
AnswerConnect
Starting price
$350 (200 minutes), plus $2.50 per minute and $49.99 setup fee
Phone answering service
Live and virtual attendants available 24/7 in English or Spanish
Extra support channels
Web chat, email, knowledge base
On AnswerConnect's Website
$350 (200 minutes), plus $2.50 per minute and $49.99 setup fee
Live and virtual attendants available 24/7 in English or Spanish
Web chat, email, knowledge base
Editor's Take
AnswerConnect offers a 24/7/365 phone answering service and a live chat answering service in English and Spanish. Your virtual support team can take messages, reroute calls, book appointments, qualify leads, and answer general customer queries using provided scripts. All call flows are tailored to your business operations. Plus, you can personalize every customer experience thanks to AnswerConnect’s called ID technology.
AnswerConnect also stood out due to its exceptionally high reviews on Trustpilot (4.8 out of 5) and G2 (4.7). Existing users say it’s the best answering service regarding reliability, consistency, and overall agent professionalism. Unlike other answering service providers, AnswerConnect offers monthly plans based on an estimated number of minutes, which adds predictability to your budget.
Who should use it:
Small to mid-market service companies seeking comprehensive and predictable coverage.
Pros & Cons
- 24/7/365 coverage
- Phone answering & live chat answering services
- Appointment booking service
- Detailed call recordings
- Easy integration with popular CRMs
- Flexible pricing plans
- Occasional transcription errors
- Non-customizable reporting on call details and types
- Expensive
Best Value for Money
Specialty Answering Service
Starting price
$38 per month, plus $1.39 per minute and $50 setup fee
Phone answering service
Live agents available 24/7 in English or Spanish
Extra support channels
Web chat, email, knowledge base, social media
$38 per month, plus $1.39 per minute and $50 setup fee
Live agents available 24/7 in English or Spanish
Web chat, email, knowledge base, social media
Editor's Take
Specialty Answering Service (SAS) has been in business for 30 years. The company operates a US-based bilingual inbound call center in Philadelphia. Users can select among five support packages — general phone answering, 24/7 call center services, a dedicated call center with agents exclusively working on your account, lead-gen services, and virtual receptionist services.
Each service has the same pricing tier: for example, $139 for 100 minutes per month (plus a standard $50 setup fee). SAS doesn’t charge extra fees for handling calls during weekends or holidays. However, voicemails, interactive voice response (IVR) services, and call patching minutes are billed separately.
A 14-day free trial is available. Billing is month-to-month, meaning you can cancel anytime without any extra fees.
Who should use it:
Companies looking for flexible service levels at a competitive rate.
Pros & Cons
- Established, award-winning brand
- Free 14-day trial, no credit card required
- Month-to-month billing, no contract, cancel anytime
- US-based telemarketing and telesales services
- Dedicated virtual receptionist service
- No toll fees
- Lead generation services
- Geotagging features aren’t available
- IVR only supports basic canned messages
- Live chat and email service is 10/5
Best Bilingual Call Answering Service
VoiceNation
Starting price
From $70 per month
(20 minutes included)
Phone call answering service
Live agents available 24/7 in English or Spanish
Extra support channels
Live chat
On VoiceNation’s Website
From $70 per month
(20 minutes included)
Live agents available 24/7 in English or Spanish
Live chat
Editor's Take
VoiceNation phone support services include basic message taking, call patching, outbound call handling, and over-the-phone ordering. Unlike other answering service providers, VoiceNation doesn’t offer full call center services — such that include customer support, lead qualification, or phone marketing service. However, you can ask your agent to process orders or book appointments.
On the pro side, VoiceNation has a sleek mobile app where you can be notified about processed calls, review messages, listen to call recordings, and block calls you don’t want to accept (to save on minutes).
The company also offers specialized bilingual (English & Spanish) support for healthcare and legal services providers. VoiceNotion is HIPPA compliant.
Who should use it:
Small healthcare providers, legal firms, and real estate companies with bilingual customers.
Pros & Cons
- Competitively-priced plans
- Free 7-day trial
- Automatic screening for solicitations and robocalls
- Easy on-call scheduling for your team
- Convenient online management dashboard and mobile app
- Bilingual
- Training, competent, confidentiality-oriented bilingual agents
- Occasional accuracy issues with name transcriptions
- No virtual attendants available
- Per minute cost is on the higher end
Best Virtual Receptionist Service
PATLive
Starting price
from $205 per month, plus $1.82 per minute
Phone answering service
Live agents available 24/7 in English or Spanish
Extra support channels
None
from $205 per month, plus $1.82 per minute
Live agents available 24/7 in English or Spanish
None
Editor's Take
PATLive is a pure-play phone answering service. They don’t offer support for other channels but excel in phone communication. The team does more than pick up the phone and relay messages. A trained virtual receptionist can also book appointments, manage event registrations, pre-qualify leads, take orders, and patch callers to the correct person based on their availability. The team continuously provides training to all hires and has cultivated a productive work culture. Employees rated PATLive at 4.6 on Glassdoor and customers gave them an A+ on Better Business Bureau.
Integrations with other business products are another standout feature. You can sync the service with popular calendar apps, such as Calendly and AppointmentPlus, so that the receptionist adds calls straight to your agenda. You can also provide PATLive staff with access to your CRM apps like Zoho or Salesforce to facilitate lead management. PATLive also has integrations with popular e-commerce platforms (BigCommerce, Shopify, Etsy and Magento), legal (Clio and Zolo Suite), and property management software (TrueRent and AppFolio).
Pricing-wise, this answering service isn’t the cheapest, but its pricing reflects the quality of service, according to numerous users on Trustpilot.
Who should use it:
Anyone looking for an A-level virtual receptionist.
Pros & Cons
- Transparent, low-cost plans
- Free 14-day trial
- Prevetted, trained, polite virtual receptionists
- Onboarding, customized to each client
- Good performance for lead generation campaigns
- Support event registrations
- User-friendly online and mobile account dashboards
- No live chat or email answering services
- No IVR service available
- More expensive than other similar services
Best for Remote Companies
Davinci Virtual
Starting price
$129 per month
(for 50 live answer minutes)
Phone answering service
Live agents available 24/7 in English or Spanish
Extra support channels
Live chat
$129 per month
(for 50 live answer minutes)
Live agents available 24/7 in English or Spanish
Live chat
Editor's Take
Davinci is best known for its virtual office services, which hook you up with a business address in major global hubs, mail forwarding services, on-demand meeting rooms, and workspace for rent.
However, the company also offers convenient live phone answering services. Customers receive a free local, toll-free number and all the standard back-end support: Call screening and forwarding, voicemail setup and management, advanced call routing, and even faxing services.
On a more expensive Premium Plan, you also benefit from outbound call support, such as lead generation campaigns, client confirmations or follow-ups, phone sales, appointment scheduling, or market research. Likewise, your virtual receptionist can be tasked with simple admin tasks like order processing, appointment management, meeting planning, travel coordination, or calendar management.
Davinci teams take time to settle into the required call flow and master your scripts. But when they do, the service levels are consistently high.
Who should use it:
Fully remote companies or branches in other countries.
Pros & Cons
- Customizable call flows
- Unlimited long-distance calling
- Auto receptionist service with customizable greetings, gingles, and customer messages
- Conference phone calls handling
- Extra virtual office services (priced separately)
- Extra admin support
- The mobile app is a bit outdated
- Doesn’t offer many integrations with other business apps
- Live chat support is quite expensive
Best for custom scripting
MAP Communications
Starting price
$47 per month, plus $1.37 per minute
Phone answering service
Live and virtual attendants available 24/7 in English or Spanish.
Extra support channels
Help desk.
$47 per month, plus $1.37 per minute
Live and virtual attendants available 24/7 in English or Spanish.
Help desk.
Editor's Take
MAP Communications is an employee-owned company headquartered in Chesapeake, VA. This means the company’s staff (including call center agents) have a stake in the company and receive financial incentives based on the business performance. Such culture creates a greater sense of ownership and productivity among the personnel, positively reflecting their service levels. MAP Communications has an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau.
The company offers three types of customer support services: general answering, call center, and virtual receptionist. The answering service can be designated as a primary or backup line of communication 24/7. The company’s agents are well-trained to work with custom call scripts and carefully follow all the provided requirements, policies, procedures, and language preferences.
Call center services offer more advanced support, including customer issue troubleshooting, tech support, product recalls handling, disaster recovery services, order management, and more. In other words, MAP Communications teams can handle any customer scenario your business faces.
Who should use it:
Rapidly growing companies looking for a long-term partner.
Pros & Cons
- Trained, bilingual operators
- Full setup within 48 hours
- Voicemail and IVR services included with all plans
- Scalable, cloud-based call center solutions
- Lead qualifications and management services
- E-commerce business support services
- Extra fees charged during holidays
- Occasional issues with billing
- No live chat support
Best for global support
Moneypenny
Starting price
$129 per month
(up to 30 minutes)
Phone answering service
Live and virtual attendants available 24/7 in over 100 languages.
Extra support channels
Help desk, live chat, chatbot, email, social media.
On Moneypenny's Website
$129 per month
(up to 30 minutes)
Live and virtual attendants available 24/7 in over 100 languages.
Help desk, live chat, chatbot, email, social media.
Editor's Take
Moneypenny is a UK-based phone answering services provider with a branch in the US and an international presence. Moneypenny is also the parent company of VoiceNation, but the two brands operate independently.
The company claims to have handled over 20 million calls and chats on behalf of its clients, who range from one-person teams to multinational enterprises and government agencies. For each customer group, Moneypenny has a bespoke solution.
Small businesses usually use the phone answering service, which includes scripted and free-flow conversations. On the backend, Moneypenny integrates with your corporate business systems so that the receptionist always knows the company background, staff availability, and messaging preferences. Unlike other answering services, Moneypenny can also transfer calls to Microsoft Teams or send a transcription message in an email or text.
Larger companies usually use Moneypenny’s outbound calling service or dedicated customer support team service. Both can handle more complex call flows and business processes, e.g., for lead generation or market research, plus offer multi-layered service across multiple channels.
Who should use it:
Customer-centric startups looking for lean support services.
Pros & Cons
- Bespoke call handling for various industries
- Seamless integration with standard operating workflows
- Trained virtual receptionists and customer support agents
- Dedicated regional, national, or freephone numbers available
- High-quality live chat support
- Call forwarding to Microsoft Teams
- Level 4 PCI compliance for secure data processing
- Minimum contract length of 3 months
- One month notice required for service cancelation
- Standard answering hours are 8:30 am to 6 pm. 24/7 support costs extra
Methodology
To determine the best answering services for small businesses, Forbes Advisor researched providers in the space and narrowed it down to the 15 top providers. These providers were then analyzed across five primary categories for a total of 27 different metrics. The criteria were then weighted to favor features that matter most to small businesses. The best answering services had the best overall scores based on our methodology.
Here are the metrics we used to evaluate the top answering services.
Pricing
For pricing, we considered the cost per month for each paid plan, the number of minutes included in the monthly fee, if there are any setup fees and the ability of free trials or a money-back guarantee. Pricing accounts for 20% of our total score.
Key Features
We analyzed each answering service based on key features such as the inclusion of live human attendants, virtual attendants, the availability of canned responses, custom scripts, geotargeting, calling functionalities, web chat, call transfers and routing. These key features make up 30% of our score.
Unique Features
In addition to the key features, we also devoted 20% of our score to whether or not the services included unique features that could make a difference for certain businesses and use cases, such as email functionality, user knowledge base, call recording, third-party integrations, customer satisfaction surveys, legal agents, and healthcare agents.
Ratings and Reviews
We analyzed third-party customer reviews to determine if user experience matches marketing promises. We considered each provider’s average rating as well as how many reviews each had and weighed them at 20%.
Expert Score
Finally, we included our expert opinion based on first-hand experience using answering services. This category also considered factors such as ease of use and value for price based on the quality of the available features. This accounts for 10% of the total score.
How To Choose an Answering Service
First, evaluate your needs against the offered service models. A small service business may just need a virtual receptionist for office hours to pass on messages and re-route calls. A larger product company may need a dedicated call center with bilingual operators and 24/7/365 coverage to handle complex customer support cases.
Create an itemized list of tasks you’d like to outsource. Identify a provider that covers the majority of them. When making the comparison, pay attention to the price structures. Some answering services charge a one-time setup fee on top of a monthly plan. Others bundle this fee into the initial pricing.
Most answering service providers bill by the processed minute. Some, however, offer separate per-minute prices for inbound and outbound calls. Call patching and voice message minutes are sometimes billed separately too. Therefore, it’s always worth asking for a precise quote, e.g., offering a sample price of 100/minutes per month.
Remember that companies that provide the cheapest answering services probably aren’t investing in attracting, training, and retaining talented people. The “you get what you pay for” maxim will likely hold here, so pinching pennies might be unwise.
Ideally, you want to check out several options before committing to one, which should be possible with the companies that offer free trials.
Also, ensure you test each answering service by making calls yourself so that you can evaluate them by how quickly the calls are answered, how polite and friendly the live operators are and how good the company is at following your specific instructions.
Featured Partners
Advertisem*nt
1
VoiceNation
Starting price
20 minutes from $63 per month
Phone call answering service
Live bilingual agents available 24/7 in English and Spanish
Extra support channels
Appointment scheduling, lead qualification and outbound calling
2
Moneypenny
Starting price
30 minutes for $129 per month
Phone answering service
Live and virtual attendants available 24/7 in English or Spanish
Extra support channels
Live chat, Microsoft Teams, appointment scheduling, lead qualification and outbound calling
3
AnswerConnect
Starting price
200 mins at $350 per month
Phone answering service
Professional, customizable live answering. Real people, 24/7.
Extra support channels
Bilingual service, appointment scheduling, live chat
Benefits of Answering Services
Listed below are some key benefits of using answering services.
Saves Time
A ringing phone can become a nuisance for growing businesses. Leaving it unanswered means a potential opportunity is lost. Picking it up round the clock is unfeasible. Answering services ensure that all calls get sorted fast and professionally. Using a service is almost always more affordable than hiring and training full-time employees.
Cost-effective
Answering services are competitively priced, especially as you only pay for minutes used.
Hiring full-time employees to handle calls and live chat messages 24/7 is more expensive. You need to account for the cost of the hiring process, the onboarding process, salary, benefits, employment taxes, etc.
Improved Customer Service
An answering service provides 24/7/365 coverage, so potential and existing customers can always contact your company. A reputable answering service also has well-trained agents who can resolve customer queries, process orders, book appointments, or pre-qualify warm leads.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What does an answering service do?
Answering services process calls on behalf of their customers. Most provide 24/7 phone support: take messages, transfer calls, schedule appointments and perform other admin tasks. Providers follow customizable scripts to ensure consistency in communication and offer bilingual support. Some answering service providers also answer live chat messages or help desk tickets.
What is the average cost of an answering service?
Prices vary, but you can expect to pay a fixed monthly fee plus $1 to $2.50 per minute. Alternatively, you might pay a set monthly bill for a specific call time and an additional $1 to $2.50 per minute if you exceed the monthly plan.
Do people still use answering services?
Automation can’t replace humans just yet. No one wants to be stuck interacting with a canned responder or a voice bot. People want to know they can talk to a real person if needed.
Is an answering service the same as a call center?
The answer is they are not the same., although they may be similar A call center may only provide call answering services, but many call centers offer many different phone-related services, such as those related to sales and services.
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