Check three things: whether the assistant sends texts or makes calls (that is where TCPA consent applies), whether the vendor will port your number or only take forwarded calls, and which plan fits your monthly minutes. At 40 calls a month most small firms pay $29 to $150; at 600, $130 to $525.
Every figure below comes from vendor pricing pages read in October 2026, so confirm the live price before you pay. The gaps between plans look small on paper, but they shift sharply once you measure minutes instead of guessing them. Most owners discover their real average call is longer than they assumed, and a plan sold by the minute then costs more than the headline suggests.
What the consent question covers when the assistant only answers
TCPA, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, is the law on automated calls and texts. The FCC ruled in February 2024 (declaratory ruling FCC 24-17) that voices generated by AI count as an "artificial or prerecorded voice", so a call using one needs the called person's prior express consent. The ruling is about calls you place. A customer who dials your number and talks to an AI is not receiving an unsolicited call from you.
That is why a plain inbound set-up is the lowest-risk way to start. The questions that matter are the ones about what happens after the call, and the next section sorts them. This is practical orientation rather than legal advice: if your messages touch marketing, financial products or health, ask a qualified adviser to read your flow once.
Where TCPA starts: callbacks, texted links and follow-ups
Run through each thing the assistant might do and mark it inbound-only or outbound.
- Answers and takes a message: inbound, nothing sent to the caller. Lowest exposure.
- Texts the caller a booking link right after the call: an outbound text. A caller who asks "can you text me that?" has given you a reason to send exactly that one message. Keep it to what they asked for and say so in the text.
- Calls the person back from a missed-call list: an outbound call, possibly with an AI voice. It needs prior express consent, and marketing content needs prior express written consent.
- Sends a follow-up a week later: outbound and no longer tied to the original request. Treat it as marketing unless you can show it is purely a service message.
- Dials a purchased or scraped list: do not do this with an AI voice. Consent has to come from the person, not the list.
Two practical safeguards follow. First, switch off any outbound or follow-up feature in the vendor dashboard until you have written consent wording. Second, make sure the vendor honours "STOP" on texts and logs when it happened. Calling hours also matter for marketing calls: the TCPA rules limit them to between 8am and 9pm at the recipient's local time, and the assistant will not necessarily know that unless you set it.
A sample consent line for a web form
A form that feeds an AI follow-up should state what will be sent, by which channel and how to stop it. An illustrative version for a mortgage broker's enquiry form:
[ ] Yes, text or call me at the number above about my enquiry, including with an automated or AI-generated voice. Consent is not a condition of any purchase. Reply STOP to opt out.Your adviser may want the wording changed, but a clear unticked box, a named channel and an opt-out line are the bones of it. A pre-ticked box is the usual way this goes wrong.
Recording consent is a separate rule
Most assistants record calls and keep a transcript, and recordings are a standard feature. Recording is governed by wiretap and recording laws, not TCPA, and the rules differ between jurisdictions: some need only one party to agree, others need everyone on the call. If you have callers in more than one state, the cautious approach is an opening line that tells every caller the call is recorded.
Thanks for calling [business name]. I'm an automated assistant and this call is recorded so we can pass your message on accurately. How can I help?That sentence also covers the separate point that people should know they are speaking with an AI. Put it in the greeting from day one, not after complaints. The scripting side is covered in writing call scripts and escalation rules.
Porting a number versus forwarding calls
You have two ways to get calls to the assistant. Forwarding leaves your number with your current carrier and sends calls on to a number the vendor gives you. Porting transfers the number itself to the vendor's phone provider.
What the vendor pages say, as read in October 2026: Goodcall describes keeping your existing number through forwarding and says nothing on porting. Dialzara lists local and toll-free numbers and says nothing on porting. My AI Front Desk's page does not say whether you can port. Rosie's page asks "Can I keep my phone number?" but I could not read the answer. In every case, email the vendor and ask for the answer in writing.
The FCC's consumer guide gives the rules of the road if you do port: your old company generally cannot refuse to release the number, simple ports are usually done within one business day, and you should not cancel the old line before the new service is arranged. Companies may charge a porting fee, so ask whether it can be waived. A landline number moving to a mobile or internet provider can take a few days.
Questions to send before you port
Subject: Number porting and forwarding before we sign up
Hello,
We are considering the [plan name] plan. Please confirm in writing:
1. Can we port our existing number to you, or only forward calls?
2. If porting: any fee, typical completion time, and what happens to calls during the move?
3. If forwarding: can calls forward only when we are busy or do not answer?
4. If we leave, will you release the number back to us, and how fast?
5. Are texts to callers sent from the same number?
Thank you, [your name]Question 3 matters most for owners who want a backstop. Conditional forwarding (busy or no answer) lets a person answer first and sends only overflow to the AI, which cuts minutes on usage-based plans.
Three call volumes to price against
Plans are sold three ways: by minutes (Rosie, Dialzara, My AI Front Desk), by unique customers (Goodcall) and by call (Smith.ai). To compare them I use one assumption, labelled illustrative: an average call of 2.5 minutes. Replace it with your own figure from the phone log.
- Low: 40 calls a month, about 100 minutes. A solo adviser or a two-person consultancy.
- Medium: 150 calls, about 375 minutes. A small HR consultancy or a mortgage broker with a part-time assistant.
- High: 600 calls, about 1,500 minutes. A B2B software reseller with a support line, or a busy broker.
List prices side by side
| Vendor | Plans (USD a month) | How it counts |
|---|---|---|
| Rosie | $49 (250 min), $149 (1,000 min), $299 (2,000 min) | Minutes; overage rate not stated on the page; 7-day trial |
| Goodcall | $79 (100 customers), $129 (500), $299 (2,000) | Unique customers, about 1.5 calls each; extras 79 cents, 26 cents, 15 cents per customer; no per-minute charge |
| Dialzara | $29 (60 min), $99 (220), $199 (500), $349 (1,000) | Minutes; overage 48, 45, 40 and 35 cents a minute |
| My AI Front Desk | $99 (200 min), or $79 billed annually | Minutes; overage about 25 cents a minute, with a small monthly credit pool |
| Smith.ai | AI receptionist: 25 calls free, then $150 for 75. Human plans: $300 (30 calls), $810 (90), $2,100 (300) | Per call; human overage $11.50, $10.50 and $8.50 |
Smith.ai's page does not make clear which of its tabs each human-plan price belongs to, so confirm before comparing it with the AI-only vendors. The trial on Rosie, Dialzara and My AI Front Desk is a seven-day offer that the pages do not tie to a plan.
What each vendor costs at 40, 150 and 600 calls
These sums apply the list prices to the assumptions above. They are illustrative and leave out texting add-ons, which come later.
| Vendor | Low (100 min) | Medium (375 min) | High (1,500 min) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rosie | $49 | $149 (above the 250-minute tier) | $299 (2,000-minute tier) |
| Goodcall | $79 | $79 to $129 (about 100 customers, right at the Starter cap) | $129 (about 400 customers) |
| Dialzara | $48.20 ($29 plus 40 extra minutes at 48 cents) | $168.75 ($99 plus 155 minutes at 45 cents) | $524 ($349 plus 500 minutes at 35 cents) |
| My AI Front Desk | $99 (inside 200 minutes) | $142.75 ($99 plus 175 minutes at 25 cents) | $424 ($99 plus 1,300 minutes) |
| Smith.ai AI plan | $150 (the 75-call plan) | Above the 75-call plan; ask for the next tier | Ask for a quote |
| Smith.ai human plan | $415 ($300 plus 10 calls at $11.50) | $1,440 ($810 plus 60 calls at $10.50) | $4,650 ($2,100 plus 300 calls at $8.50) |
Three patterns come out of it. At low volume the cheapest plans cost under $50 but are metered tightly, and a single long call eats the allowance. At medium volume the per-customer model is cheapest because it does not meter minutes. At high volume Rosie's 2,000-minute tier and Goodcall's $129 plan look far cheaper than the pay-per-minute route, so check whether either caps anything you need. Goodcall's page lists test-run limits, but those relate to building and testing the agent, not to callers.
A worked choice for a mortgage broker at 150 calls
Take a mortgage broker with two advisers and a part-time administrator. The phone log shows 150 calls a month: 60 are existing clients asking for a document or a callback, and 90 are new enquiries. Average length is 2 minutes for the first group and 3.5 for the second, so 120 plus 315 gives 435 minutes, higher than the 375 assumed.
At 435 minutes, Dialzara's Pro tier plus 215 minutes of overage is $99 plus $96.75, about $196. My AI Front Desk is $99 plus 235 minutes at 25 cents, about $158. Rosie's $149 tier covers it with room to spare. Goodcall's Starter, with perhaps 100 customers, is about $79, though Goodcall counts unique customers, so a caller who rings twice still counts once. The broker also wants a text link to a document upload page, which means the SMS charges and consent rules above apply.
Result: Rosie at $149 is the steadiest choice because the minute allowance is ample and the bill will not swing. Goodcall is cheaper if it passes the broker's real-call test. This is a method, not a verdict, which is why the test plan below puts your own calls through each trial.
A second sum: an HR consultancy at 40 calls
An HR consultancy with three consultants gets 40 calls a month, and most are 90-second messages: "please ring me back about a contract". Real minutes come to about 60 once you add the odd 5-minute enquiry. That is exactly the Dialzara Lite allowance of 60 minutes at $29, which sounds ideal. The catch is the margin: one extra 10-minute call and overage starts. Rosie's $49 tier gives 250 minutes, so the same firm pays $20 more for four times the headroom.
Which is right depends on how predictable the month is. A firm that runs a recruitment push in spring will blow through 60 minutes; a firm with a steady client base will not. Put the 12 most recent months of call counts in a sheet, take the busiest, and price that month. The extra $20 is cheaper than a surprise $60 overage, and it removes the temptation to switch the assistant off when it nears the cap. A cap that makes you turn the service off defeats the reason for buying it.
The same exercise shows why a per-customer plan like Goodcall's behaves differently: a consultancy whose callers are mostly the same twenty clients ringing repeatedly pays for twenty customers, not 40 calls, so the Starter tier has far more room than it appears to have. Ask the vendor exactly how it defines a unique customer and over what period, because that definition sets the bill.
Add-ons that change the bill
- Texting. Rosie's website texting add-on is $50 a month with 25 conversations, then $1 per extra one. Dialzara's SMS add-on is $19 a month plus 5 cents per AI message. At 40 texted callers a month that is $50 for Rosie and about $21 for Dialzara if each exchange is a message or two.
- Annual billing. Rosie says two months free if you pay annually. My AI Front Desk drops to $79 a month on its listed plan.
- Human escalation. Smith.ai's human plans include free transfer destinations (1, 2 and 10 across its tiers); extra destinations are worth asking about if a call needs routing to several people.
- Integrations. Calendar and CRM connections sometimes sit on a higher tier. Ask which tier your calendar needs.
A seven-day test plan that fits the free trials
The trials are short, so plan them before you start the clock. Make 20 calls across three vendors, not 20 each. Use the same script for each so results compare.
- Day 1: set the greeting with the recording and AI disclosure.
- Days 1 to 3: ten calls from a mobile and a landline, including one in a noisy car.
- Days 3 to 5: five tricky calls: a caller who gives a surname with an unusual spelling, one who interrupts, one who asks for something outside scope, one who asks for a person immediately, and one who gives a wrong number.
- Day 6: read every transcript and check the message the owner receives matches what was said.
- Day 7: count minutes used and compute the overage.
Score each call out of 10 for accuracy of the captured details, tone and correct hand-off. A vendor averaging below 8 does not go live. The 90-day return method picks up from there.
Where plans go wrong for the buyer
An imagined B2B software reseller bought the cheapest metered plan because the first week's calls were mostly short missed-call messages. Month two brought a product launch and a flood of six-minute support calls, and overage billed at 48 cents a minute pushed the bill well above the tier above. The fix was moving up a tier and setting a hand-off rule for anything about a live outage. The lesson is to price the busy week, not the average one.
A second failure: a financial adviser turned on follow-up texts to improve conversion without a consent line, then found a client had replied STOP and kept receiving messages because the vendor's opt-out only applied to one channel. The fix was to test STOP before launch, from your own phone, and read the log. A third: forwarding set to "always", which sent every call to the assistant including friends ringing the owner's own line. Conditional forwarding fixed it.
Which vendor fits which owner
- Solo owner under 50 calls: Dialzara's $29 or Rosie's $49, accepting that a longer-than-expected month adds overage on Dialzara.
- Steady mid-size flow: Goodcall for predictability if its callers are mostly distinct people, otherwise Rosie's $149.
- High volume with simple calls: Rosie's $299 tier or Goodcall's $129 and $299 tiers.
- Calls that need a person on most of them: a human plan such as Smith.ai's, priced per call, with an AI layer for the overflow.
Whichever you pick, the broader comparison of human against AI answering is in AI receptionist or answering service, and the base cost picture is in what an AI receptionist costs a small business. If your set-up has several moving parts, setting up without losing callers walks through the order of operations.
Signing checklist
- Average call length measured from your phone log, not guessed.
- Plan chosen from minutes in your busiest month, with the overage rate written down.
- Outbound calls and follow-up texts switched off, or covered by a consent line your adviser has read.
- AI-and-recording line in the greeting.
- Porting or forwarding answer received in writing, with the cancellation route.
- STOP tested from your own phone.
- One named person who reads transcripts weekly for the first month.
If you would rather map this with someone, that is what my AI implementation consultation covers, and you can start from the contact page.
Questions owners ask before signing
Does an AI receptionist that only answers inbound calls fall under TCPA?
The consent rules bite mainly on calls and texts you send out. A purely inbound answering setup is lower risk on that point. Risk appears when the assistant texts a link, calls back or follows up. Ask the vendor how it sends messages, and ask a qualified adviser about your own flows.
Can I keep my existing business number?
Usually yes, by forwarding calls or porting the number. Forwarding is the safer first step because your carrier keeps the number. Porting moves it to the vendor, so confirm in writing that they support it and what it costs before you start.
Which plan suits a business with about 150 calls a month?
At roughly 375 minutes a month, flat tiers of about 500 to 1,000 minutes or a per-customer plan fit best, but the cheapest option depends on average call length. Work out your minutes first, then compare against the table in this tutorial.
Is a free tier or trial enough to test properly?
A free allowance of 25 calls or a seven-day trial is enough to run a structured test of twenty or so calls. It is not enough to judge a busy month, so plan the test calls in advance and score each one.
Further reads
- AI Receptionist for Small Business in Canada: French and Data Checklist — Language and data checks if callers span borders.
- What to Do When an AI Receptionist Gets a Booking Wrong — What to do when a booking goes wrong.
- AI Receptionist for Restaurants: Yelp Host, Slang, Popmenu, Maple — A sector view with different call patterns.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: vendor pricing pages for Rosie, Goodcall, Dialzara, My AI Front Desk and Smith.ai (October 2026); FCC declaratory ruling FCC 24-17 on AI voices and the TCPA; FCC consumer guide on porting numbers.