Cost
What an HVAC AI receptionist costs
Ours starts at US$750 to build plus US$300 a month for answering, triage and safety escalation, and at US$3,500 plus US$500 a month once the agent books directly into your own scheduling system. Multi-location builds start at from us$6,000 plus from us$800 a month. What follows is the more useful half: which pricing models exist in this market, what actually drives a quote up, and the questions that make two quotes comparable.
Published
Our figures, in one table
| Starter | Professional | Multi-location | |
|---|---|---|---|
| To build | US$750 | US$3,500 | From US$6,000 |
| A month | US$300 | US$500 | From US$800 |
| Included minutes | 500 | 1,500 | Agreed per contract |
| Beyond the allowance | US$0.35 a minute | US$0.30 a minute | Agreed per contract |
| Books into your software | No | Yes | Yes |
No tier is unlimited. Every one carries an allowance of conversation minutes written into the contract along with the rate beyond it, because the underlying cost of voice is per minute and a tariff that claims otherwise is one that gets renegotiated during your first cold snap.
How this market prices
Four pricing models, and what to check in each
The shape of a quote matters more than its headline number, because the shapes behave very differently in a trade where February and July are not the same business.
| Model | How it works | Where it suits you | What to check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per minute | You pay for connected conversation time, usually against a monthly allowance. | Honest about the underlying cost, and cheap when calls are short. | A caller who rambles costs the same as one who books. Ask what happens in a seasonal spike and what the overage rate is, because that is the number that bites. |
| Per call | A flat charge each time the agent picks up, whatever happens next. | Easy to forecast when volume is steady, and easy to compare between vendors. | Wrong numbers, suppliers and hang-ups are all billable calls. Ask whether a ten-second call counts, because in this trade a lot of them are. |
| Flat monthly | One fee, sometimes with a fair-use limit somewhere in the contract. | Predictable, and the easiest to sign off internally. | Find the fair-use clause before you sign. A flat fee with no stated limit is either priced for your worst month or is going to be renegotiated during it. |
| Per seat | Priced by how many of your staff use the surrounding software. | Familiar if you already buy field service software this way. | It bears almost no relation to call volume, which is what actually drives cost. Usually a sign the product is a CRM with answering attached rather than the other way round. |
What moves the number
Five things that make one quote larger than another
- Integration, which is most of it
- Connecting to live availability in your scheduling or dispatch system is the single largest engineering item in any of these builds. An agent that cannot see your calendar can only take a message, which is why the price step in our own tiers sits exactly here rather than on a feature list.
- How many ways a call can go
- One trade, one location and one on-call number is a straightforward build. Three trades, four service areas, different rules per commercial contract and a dispatch board that routes by technician skill is a different piece of software, and it should cost differently.
- How much of your business is written down
- The cheapest engagements are with companies that already have their service area, pricing structure, maintenance plan terms and escalation rules recorded somewhere. The expensive ones are where all of that lives in one person's head and has to be extracted before anything can be built. This is the variable owners most often underestimate, and the one they can most easily reduce before asking for a quote.
- Call volume, but less than you would think
- Volume drives the monthly allowance rather than the build. Doubling your calls does not double the engineering; it moves you up a tier or into overage. This is why a per-call quote and a per-minute quote diverge so sharply at the top end.
- Languages
- A second language is not a translation of the script, it is a second set of triage rules tested against real calls in that language. Worth doing where the market justifies it and worth refusing where it does not.
Before you sign anything
Seven questions that make two quotes comparable
Ask every vendor the same seven, us included. Two quotes that answer these differently are not two prices for the same thing, which is the usual reason a cheaper one turns out not to be.
- 01What is the included allowance, in minutes or calls, and what is the rate beyond it?
- 02Does the price include booking into my scheduling system, or only capturing a request?
- 03Who writes the emergency and safety escalation rules, and are they in the contract?
- 04What happens when the agent cannot answer something? Name the escalation path.
- 05Is the build fee one-off, and do I own the configuration if I leave?
- 06What is the monthly cost in my busiest week, not my average one?
- 07Is there a minimum term, and what does cancelling actually involve?
Frequently asked questions
Frequently asked questions
- How much does an AI receptionist for an HVAC company cost?
- Ours starts at US$750 to build plus US$300 a month, which covers answering, triage, safety escalation and capturing the appointment request against an allowance of 500 conversation minutes. Booking directly into your own scheduling or field service system starts at US$3,500 plus US$500 a month with 1,500 minutes included. Multi-location and custom dispatch builds start at US$6,000 plus US$800 a month. Every figure is published on the pricing page and every engagement is quoted in writing after we map your call intake.
- Why is there a build fee at all if there is also a monthly fee?
- Because the two pay for different things. The monthly covers the platform and the conversation minutes, which cost roughly the same for every customer. The build fee covers the work that is specific to you: mapping how your calls arrive, writing the triage and escalation rules, loading your service area and pricing structure, and connecting to your systems. A vendor with no build fee is either doing none of that, or recovering it through a minimum term you have not read yet.
- What is the cheapest honest version of this?
- For many small companies it is not an AI receptionist at all. It is turning on conditional forwarding to a mobile during working hours and buying a human answering service for nights, which costs very little and solves the larger half of the problem. We would rather tell you that than sell you something you resent, and the free call analysis exists partly so that answer can be reached with evidence rather than by argument.
- Are there costs beyond the build fee and the monthly fee?
- Two, and both should be named before you commit rather than after. Conversation minutes beyond your allowance are charged at a published rate. Anything the build depends on that is bought from a third party, such as a phone number or an API tier your field service platform charges for, is yours directly in your own account, so you keep control of it and can leave without losing it.
- Does the price go up as my call volume grows?
- The monthly does, because minutes are the real cost. The build fee does not, because the engineering was already done. In practice growth moves you between tiers rather than producing a surprise, and if your volume is growing fast enough for that to matter it is worth agreeing the next tier in advance rather than discovering it on an invoice.