A small business phone answering service is bought on volume, not features

Advertised entry prices, checked

Sizing a plan for a small business

1. Count last month's inbound calls. Not your best month or your worst. Most small businesses substantially overestimate this number before they check it.
2. Decide what you want answered. Everything, or only the overflow when you do not pick up. Overflow-only cuts volume sharply and most providers support it through your existing phone system.
3. Match to an inclusion, or to none. Below roughly twenty calls a month a plan with no included minutes is usually cheapest. Above that, a bundle starts to earn its place.
4. Leave room to be wrong. Check the price of the tier above the one you pick. Growing into an overage rate you never priced is the common failure here.

Why low volume changes the answer

A provider selling fifty included minutes for two hundred and fifty dollars is offering five dollars a minute to anyone who uses only ten of them. The same plan is excellent value to a business that uses all fifty and would otherwise pay a per-minute rate. Nothing about the provider is different in those two cases; only the fit is.

This is why the pay-as-you-go plans matter so much at the small end. PATLive and Posh both publish plans with no included minutes, at forty nine and sixty five dollars a month, with per-minute rates of two ninety nine and two dollars thirty. For twenty calls at three minutes, that is a bill somewhere near two hundred dollars in total, and you have not paid for anything you did not use.

AnswerFirst publishes thirty dollars a month with rates from a dollar sixty, described as pay as you go with no minimum usage. On the same twenty calls that is cheaper again, and it is the shape of offer a small business should be pricing first.

Overflow rather than everything

The other lever available to a small business is not answering every call through the service. Most providers will take calls only when your own line is busy or unanswered, which is configured in your phone system rather than theirs.

That typically removes the calls you were always going to answer yourself, which are the majority for a business with somebody at a desk. What is left is the after-hours and the genuinely missed, which is the part that was costing you money.

It also changes which plan fits, usually downward. Buyers who price a full-service plan and then switch to overflow frequently find they have bought two tiers more than they needed.

What to confirm before signing

Confirm the hours the plan covers, in writing. Business hours is the default and evenings are the common upgrade, and a small business shopping for an answering service is usually shopping because of the evenings.

Confirm whether attempted transfers bill. At low volume this is a small number; it is also the number most likely to be different from what you assumed.

Confirm the commitment. Several providers at this end publish month-to-month terms with no minimum, which is worth having while you find out whether your volume estimate was right.

Common questions

How much does a small business phone answering service cost?

For a business taking twenty to forty calls a month, plans with no included minutes plus a per-minute rate usually land between roughly one hundred and three hundred dollars a month in total. The advertised plan price alone is a poor guide at this volume.

Should a small business answer every call through the service?

Usually not. Routing only unanswered or after-hours calls to the provider removes the calls you would have taken anyway, which lowers both the tier you need and the total bill, and it is configured in your own phone system.

Do I need a contract for a small business answering service?

Not with every provider. Several publish month-to-month terms with no minimum usage, which suits a business that is not yet sure of its volume. Confirm it in writing rather than relying on a marketing claim.

What happens if I go over my included minutes?

You are billed at the provider's overage rate, where one is published. Five of the nine providers in this record publish that rate; three publish a plan price and no rate at all, which makes the bill impossible to model in advance.

Cover by industry

• Answering services with evidenced cover of legal answering service
• Answering services with evidenced cover of answering services for small business