Top 7 phone answering services in 2026

The right virtual answering service can make all the difference for your business. This type of tool acts as an extension of your team — it enhances operational efficiency, supports sales, and consistently boosts customer satisfaction.

Hunting for the best phone answering service can be overwhelming, but I’ve tested, compared, and ranked the leading options. For this list, I focused on features businesses actually need, ensuring each option could handle real-world call routing, booking, and typical customer requests. 

Key ranking criteria included natural-sounding AI, live receptionist options, support for multiple languages, advanced scheduling or message routing, and integration capabilities. I evaluated each tool for its ease of use, customization, and overall value.

	Jotform AI Phone Answering System	Goodcall	Rosie	Posh	Map Communications	ReceptionHQ	Specialty Answering Service
Best for	Overall value and deep AI automation	Small teams and growing startups	Natural-sounding AI voice and simple setup	Small businesses needing live receptionist coverage	Custom scripting and industry-specific live answering	Flexible message taking and basic call routing	Highly regulated industries and compliance
Key features	Customizable AI voice tailored to your brand; integrates with Jotform for form-driven call flows	AI-powered receptionist with deep integrations, full control over logic, and HIPAA compliance	Purely AI; unlimited minutes on all plans, fast setup, spam blocking, and text/email summaries	24-7 live coverage from US-based live virtual receptionists, robust industry support (legal, home services, etc.)	US-based live receptionists, per-minute pricing, Zapier/CRM/calendar integrations, and analytics	Flexible live answering, pay-per-call options, no lock-in, 24-7 US-based agents, and customized greetings	Deep software integration, analytics, shared/dedicated models, and highly trained agents
Cost	Free plan available;Bronze: $39/mo or $36/mo (annual)	Starter plan: $75/agent/mo or $66/agent/mo (annual)	Professional plan: $49/mo	Chic plan: $65/mo + $2.25/min	Pay As You Go: $49/mo + $1.39/min	MessageExpress: $25/mo	Economy: $44/mo + $1.54/min

What is a phone answering service?

A phone answering service is a third-party solution that handles incoming calls on a business’s behalf. It may use live receptionists, AI agents, or a combination of both.

The purpose of an answering service is to greet callers, route inquiries, take messages, schedule appointments, and ensure no call goes unanswered, even outside normal business hours. 

Benefits of using a phone answering service

For small and midsize businesses that want to present a polished image, a phone answering service is key. By ensuring every call is answered promptly and professionally, these services provide the following advantages:

• No missed calls: With 24-7 answering, your business captures every lead and inquiry, even outside office hours. This prevents lost sales and frustrated customers.
• Improved customer service and brand credibility: A live receptionist or natural AI voice makes your business appear established and trustworthy. Professional agents handle calls according to your brand’s script, and they offer friendly, consistent interactions.
• Cost savings: Virtual answering eliminates the expense of hiring full-time receptionists and ensures you always have coverage.
• Reduced interruptions: Let your team focus on their core tasks by outsourcing call handling, improving productivity and workflow.
• 24-7 appointment scheduling: Some phone answering services provide seamless integration with calendars so customers can book appointments at any time.
• Centralized call routing: Calls are intelligently routed to the right department or individual for efficient resolution and a smoother customer experience.
• Flexible message delivery: You choose how messages are received (in real time via text, email, or dashboard alerts), so nothing slips through the cracks.
• Scalable and flexible plans: You easily adjust service levels based on business demands, peak seasons, or growth, without the hassle of hiring more staff.
• Disaster recovery and reliability: Many phone answering services provide uninterrupted support, even during emergencies or technical outages.

These benefits highlight why selecting the best call answering service is critical for businesses looking to maximize efficiency, boost customer satisfaction, and capture every lead.

Key features to look for in a phone answering service

Phone support is an important type of customer service, but not all answering services are equal. Here’s what to look for:

• Live operator fallback and escalation settings
• Multilingual support for broader accessibility
• Natural language recognition for human-like interactions
• Custom scripts and voice settings to match your brand’s tone
• Appointment scheduling and reminders integrated with your calendar
• Additional integration capabilities (like CRM, help desk, or communication platforms)

When choosing the best answering service for small-business operations, the most critical capabilities depend on your business’s unique needs. Stand-out features include live virtual receptionist handoff, advanced AI, and seamless integration with the tools you already use.

How to choose the right answering service for your business

My hands-on approach for evaluating phone answering services placed real business needs at the forefront. For each platform, I designed test scenarios that reflect genuine day-to-day use cases for small businesses: inbound call management, appointment scheduling, and lead qualification. I focused on how these tools streamline workflows, automate routine support, and connect with an existing technology stack.

Key areas I considered during testing were

• Call quality and natural voice: I assessed how natural and professional the operator (whether live or AI) sounded, examining clarity, tone, and effectiveness of both spoken and written responses.
• Responsiveness and speed: I rated each service on how quickly it answered calls and how promptly it sent messages, confirmations, or follow-ups.
• Adaptability to natural language: I tested whether the agents could understand and respond appropriately to varied caller requests, including informal language and complex scenarios.
• Customization and workflow automation: I assessed each tool’s capacity to customize greetings, scripts, call routing, and automation rules based on specific business needs.
• Integration with business software: I verified how easily each platform connected with common tools like Google Calendar, CRM platforms, team communication apps, and scheduling tools.
• Consistency across platforms: I measured performance on both voice and text channels for clarity, reliability, and brand consistency, including how each tool handled appointments and lead capture.
• Scalability and reporting: I looked at how well each service handled multiple calls at once, provided analytics and reports, and scaled to match peak business times.

This rigorous, feature-driven process helped me determine which phone answering services deliver on customer experience, automation, and integration for businesses of all sizes.

1. Jotform AI Phone Answering System

The Jotform AI Phone Answering System is a seamless, AI-powered phone answering service with deeply customizable workflows and appointment scheduling. This cutting-edge solution combines advanced conversational AI with end-to-end call management. It empowers businesses by automating their inbound calling operations with AI agents custom-trained to capture leads while maintaining consistency with brand voice and escalation policies.

Jotform’s AI Phone Answering System manages and routes calls 24-7, schedules appointments, and sends follow-up emails or SMS. There’s also convenient integration with Calendly, Shopify, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Salesforce, Google Calendar, Outlook, Slack, and more.

Setup was a breeze for me. I was able to customize my AI agent’s persona, including the voice, tone, and even response length. As I dove further into setting my training guidelines, I appreciated the deep customization: Jotform let me train my AI agent on a custom knowledge base, where I could add text, upload my own files, provide questions and answers, or link my agent to a website to pull information from.

Jotform’s virtual receptionist capabilities are flexible, and publishing is straightforward, with a dedicated phone number you can choose by country and area code.

Numerous industries can benefit from the Jotform AI Phone Answering System, including

• Small businesses
• Hotels 
• Restaurants
• HR/recruitment

You can create your own Jotform phone answering AI Agents by following the steps below:

1. Build and train your AI Agent: Create and customize your AI Agent by teaching it FAQs, product details, and company policies. Set its tone, voice, and escalation rules to ensure it aligns with your brand.  

2. Select the Phone Agent option: Head to the Publish screen, select the Phone Agent option, and click Buy to proceed with enabling your AI to manage calls efficiently.

3. Get your dedicated phone number: Purchase a unique phone number by selecting the country and area code that best suits your business. A dedicated number ensures professional and reliable communication.

4. Review and activate: Review your chosen phone number and complete the purchase. Once finalized, your AI Phone Agent is ready to manage calls, schedule appointments, and deliver top-notch customer service.

Best for: Overall value and deep AI automation

Developer: Jotform

Key features: 

• Customizable AI voice tailored to your brand
• Integrates with Jotform for form-driven call flows

Pros:

• Dedicated phone numbers with flexible regional selection
• Integrated appointment scheduling and multi-channel follow-ups
• Robust support across industries, including SMBs, restaurants, hotels, and recruiters
• Custom training and advanced AI that learns and adapts to your business needs

Cons:

• Initial setup requires investment in AI training for best results
• Mostly digital and AI-driven; businesses requiring in-person operators might find it less suitable
• Pricing scales with volume and features, requiring careful plan selection

Plans/Pricing:

• Free plan available
• Bronze: $39 per month or $36 per month (annual)

G2 rating: 4.7/5

2. Goodcall

Goodcall is a no-code AI-powered phone assistant that ensures 24-7 coverage by answering calls promptly, capturing leads, and integrating smoothly with CRM systems. Every Goodcall agent gets a unique number with a local area code of your choice. You also have the option of connecting conditional call forwarding with a current number.

Goodcall’s customizable AI agents support multilingual conversations, so you can serve international callers without hiring multilingual receptionists. Unfortunately, the AI voices I was given in my demo sounded obviously robotic, which could lead to a potentially frustrating caller experience.

If you’re looking to automate appointment booking and lead capture in addition to call handling, CRM integrations are straightforward. Goodcall’s call analytics and reporting also provide actionable insights for improving customer engagement.

Goodcall stood out to me because of its pricing model, which is based on unique callers instead of call duration. This can make costs more predictable for startups and small businesses managing lower call volumes. However, the Starter plan limits logic flows and might require upgrades for more complex workflows.

Best for: Small teams and growing startups

Developer: Goodcall

Key features: 

• HIPAA compliance
• Granular control over logic
• AI-powered receptionist with deep integrations

Pros:

• Unlimited call minutes
• Multilingual capabilities, dynamic logic, and detailed call analytics
• Automated scheduling, lead capture, and data sync with popular CRMs

Cons:

• Starter plan has limited features
• AI receptionist voice sounds robotic
• Unique customer limits can quickly push you into higher price plans

Plans/Pricing:

• Starter plan: $75 per agent per month or $66 per agent per month (annual)

G2 rating: 3.5/5

3. Rosie

For a purely AI call answering service, Rosie stood out to me thanks to the natural-sounding voice. Options for background noises (like an office or a café) make it even more convincing. 

After a quick and easy setup process, I tested it out and built different scenarios and call flows. Call recordings and thorough call summaries were sent straight to my email. You can also view call transcripts from the user-friendly dashboard, where you can archive them or “star” them for future reference.

Rosie is trained on your Google Business Profile and business website, so it stays updated with your core services, business hours, and more. To further customize and equip the agent with all the info it needs, users can add frequently asked questions about their business and upload files for deeper training. 

Sophisticated spam filters and blocklists let you filter out unwanted calls. Rosie can even automatically detect and end sales calls. Additional premium features include appointment scheduling, call transferring, and the ability to text callers a link. This makes Rosie a strong AI answering service for businesses that value natural interaction and efficient communication workflows. 

Best for: Natural-sounding AI voice and simple setup

Developer: Rosie

Key features: 

• Fast setup
• Spam blocking
• Text/email summaries
• Unlimited minutes on all plans

Pros:

• Lifelike AI voice with customizable background sounds
• Continuous AI training from business data and uploaded FAQs/docs
• Comprehensive call management with recordings, transcripts, and spam filtering

Cons:

• Limited public reviews
• Some advanced scheduling features require premium plans
• Limited third-party integrations compared to top-tier services

Plans/Pricing:

• Professional plan: $49 per month

G2 rating: N/A

4. Posh

Posh provides professional live virtual receptionists for small businesses seeking a personal touch. I found its mobile app and web portal flexible and easy to use, enabling real-time call management from anywhere. 

Each Posh account includes voicemail with transcription capabilities. Users can text or call any number from the Posh app to keep their personal cell number private. It doesn’t allow call recordings, but messages can be logged via text, email, or through the app.

Users report high satisfaction with Posh’s professionalism and responsiveness. The service removes the burden of hiring and training live staff while ensuring business calls are never missed. It also supports overflow call handling, after-hours coverage, and outbound call support.

The main limitations come from the lack of built-in call recording and occasional inconsistency in following complex call routing instructions. Additionally, Posh’s pricing model includes per-minute fees that increase costs depending on call volume.

Best for: Small businesses needing live receptionist coverage

Developer: Posh Virtual Receptionists

Key features: 

• 24-7 live coverage
• US-based live virtual receptionists
• Robust multi-industry support (legal, home services, etc.)

Pros:

• 24-7 live virtual receptionist with personalized call handling and routing
• Mobile and web app for instant call and message management
• Bilingual service (English and Spanish available)

Cons:

• No native call recording features
• Complex billing and per-minute charges
• Difficulty with following detailed call instructions

Plans/Pricing: 

• Chic plan: $65 per month plus $2.25 per minute

G2 rating: 2/5

5. Map Communications

Founded in 1990, Map Communications offers live US-based receptionists trained for industry-specific call handling in sectors like legal, healthcare, and property management. 

I appreciated the ability to provide detailed scripts for how I wanted calls answered, messages taken, and appointments scheduled. The receptionists closely follow custom greetings and escalation protocols, treating callers with professionalism that rivals an in-house team.

Map Communications also offers a local or toll-free number forwarding solution with automatic rollover. Real-time message delivery is available through the secure online dashboard, with texts or emails ensuring prompt response.

While it can be cost-effective for overnight coverage, pricing is pay-as-you-go and can snowball if call volumes grow. Additionally, the onboarding process can take longer compared to AI-first competitors.

Best for: Custom scripting and industry-specific live answering

Developer: Map Communications

Key features: 

• Per-minute pricing
• US-based live receptionists
• Zapier/CRM/calendar integrations and analytics

Pros:

• 100 percent US-based live receptionists
• Highly customized call scripts tailored to your industry
• Secure message logging and instant delivery via preferred channels

Cons:

• Pay-as-you-go pricing may rise with increased call load
• Longer onboarding process compared to automated services
• Basic UI without advanced AI or automation features

Plans/Pricing: 

• Pay As You Go: $49 per month plus $1.39 per minute

G2 rating: N/A

6. ReceptionHQ

ReceptionHQ features US-based live receptionists with English and Spanish options available. I found it to be a simple, reliable message-taking tool for small businesses. 

The user-friendly web dashboard for real-time message management includes live call transfers, instant message delivery, and call detail capture. It provides 24-7 coverage with live agents who engage callers professionally and take messages or transfer calls.

Since the base-level live answering service focuses on basic message capture and call forwarding, it’s suited for businesses that want to outsource receptionist duties without ultra-nuanced call automation/routing.

ReceptionHQ’s flexible payment plans mean it can grow with your business. Tiers and features include MessageExpress for basic message taking, ReceptionistPlus for message and call transfers, MyAssistant for virtual assistance and lead capturing, and MyDiary for access to more robust calendar integration and appointment scheduling tools.

Best for: Flexible message taking and basic call routing

Developer: ReceptionHQ

Key features: 

• Pay-per-call options
• Customized greetings
• Flexible live answering
• 24-7 US-based agents

Pros:

• Cost-effective plans with 24-7 live receptionist access
• Easy-to-manage web and mobile portals for message viewing
• Highly responsive customer service
• Bilingual service (English and Spanish available)

Cons:

• Limited public reviews
• No AI or appointment booking features
• Limited scripting customization and call automation

Plans/Pricing:

• MessageExpress: $25 per month

G2 rating: N/A

7. Specialty Answering Service

With seamless CRM integrations and a user-friendly web portal for tracking calls and messages, I found Specialty Answering Service to be an ideal HIPAA-compliant answering service for healthcare, legal, and other niche industries. 

There are options for live agents or AI agents like “Joy.” Both are trained rigorously for professionalism and precise script adherence. In addition to managing calls from the web portal, users receive emails with detailed call reports and callback numbers.

Although the pricing model involves per-minute charges that could add up quickly for smaller businesses, the answering service’s specialization and compliance features work well for companies with strict call handling needs.

With fast onboarding and the ability to handle high call volumes reliably, this tool is a good choice if you need call handling that meets regulatory requirements like HIPAA.

Best for: Highly regulated industries and compliance

Developer: Specialty Answering Service

Key features: 

• In-depth analytics
• Highly trained agents
• Deep software integration
• Shared/dedicated models 

Pros:

• HIPAA-compliant options for healthcare clients
• Extensive industry-specific templates and scripts
• Responsive customer support and quick onboarding

Cons:

• Limited public reviews
• Costly per-minute billing not ideal for high usage
• Extra fees for custom scripting beyond templates

Plans/Pricing:

• Economy: $44 per month plus $1.54 per minute

G2 rating: N/A

Foster 24-7 communication with Jotform

Every business needs to deliver fast, professional responses to every call it receives. Jotform’s AI Phone Answering System stands out as the best phone answering service, combining intelligent automation with robust integrations and industry-leading flexibility. 

Whether you need help with an AI scheduling assistant, want to offer seamless customer communication tools, or are curious about exploring a new approach to conversational marketing, Jotform is here for you. Empower your business with an AI phone answering system that handles every call, at any time on any day. Automate responses, direct callers to the right place, and capture valuable insights, all without the need for manual assistance.

Ready to transform your own incoming calls? Try Jotform AI Phone Agents and discover why so many small businesses, restaurants, hotels, and recruiters choose an AI phone answering system to stay ahead.