Zoom's AI receptionist, sold as Virtual Agent Receptionist, is one of the products UK clinics and salons meet early when they start shopping. It is an add-on that sits on top of Zoom's phone product rather than a standalone service, which shapes almost everything about how it compares to Remi.
Everything here about Zoom comes from their published pages and newsroom, checked on 24 August 2026. It is a snapshot. Vendors change rate cards and feature lists constantly, so check their current page before you commit to anything. Where Zoom does not publish a figure, we say so rather than estimating one.
The short answer
Zoom's virtual agent answers calls, understands what the caller wants, answers questions and routes them on. Remi is an AI front desk for clinics and salons: it answers the call or the WhatsApp message, reads real availability in your diary, books the appointment, takes a deposit if you want one, sends the reminder, applies your no-show fee and chases the unpaid invoice afterwards.
The single most important difference is not price. It is that on Zoom, booking needs a separate Zoom Scheduler licence, and a caller cannot cancel or reschedule during the call. Cancellations and reschedules are most of what a clinic front desk actually handles. A receptionist who can take a new booking but cannot move an existing one is doing a fraction of the job.
To be equally plain the other way: Zoom publishes SMS appointment reminders, and it is the only vendor in this category we found that does. That is a genuine, verified capability and they deserve credit for it.
What each one actually does
Capability first, because it decides more than the monthly figure does.
| Capability | Remi | Zoom Virtual Agent Receptionist (published, 24 Aug 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Answer and route calls | Yes | Yes |
| Warm transfer to a human | Yes | Yes |
| Book an appointment | Yes, included — Google Calendar, Acuity, Cliniko | Yes, but requires a separate Zoom Scheduler licence |
| Caller can cancel or reschedule on the call | Yes | No |
| Clinical practice systems (Cliniko, Nookal) | Yes | Not published |
| SMS appointment reminders | Yes | Yes — the only vendor in this category that publishes this |
| WhatsApp booking and messaging | Yes, native | Not published |
| Deposits taken at booking | Yes | Not published |
| No-show fees applied | Yes | Not published |
| Cancellation backfill and win-backs | Yes | Not published |
| Chasing unpaid invoices | Yes | Not published |
| Full business phone system | No | Yes, that is the underlying product |
| Setup | Done for you | Self-serve |
The booking gap, and why it matters
Two things about Zoom's booking need spelling out, because a feature tick in a comparison grid hides both.
First, the licence. Booking is not part of the receptionist product; it needs a Zoom Scheduler licence on top. That is a second line on the bill and a second thing to configure, and it means the price you compared is not the price of a receptionist that books.
Second, and more important: a caller cannot cancel or reschedule during the call. Think about what actually comes down a clinic phone line on a Monday morning. A handful of new bookings, and a steady stream of "can I move Thursday to next week", "something's come up, I need to cancel", "what time am I in on Friday". If those calls cannot be resolved by the AI, they land back on your reception desk as callbacks and voicemails, which is precisely the pile you were paying to get rid of.
It also costs you the recovery. When Remi takes a cancellation it can offer the freed slot to someone on the waiting list straight away, which turns a lost appointment into a filled one. A cancellation that arrives as a voicemail at 4pm rarely gets backfilled at all.
Remi books, moves and cancels appointments on the call, straight into Google Calendar, Acuity or Cliniko. Reading a real practitioner diary is what stops an AI promising a slot that is already gone.
What Zoom publishes on price, and what it does not
We are going to be careful here, because this is where comparison pages usually start inventing numbers.
Zoom publishes the virtual agent receptionist at €23 per month billed annually, with 100 included minutes. Zoom's newsroom quotes $29.99 per month, or $24.99 per month on an annual commitment. There is no published GBP price, and we are not going to convert euros or dollars into pounds and present the result as what you will pay. Exchange rates move, vendors set local prices independently, and a made-up pound figure is exactly the kind of thing that makes these pages untrustworthy.
More significant than the currency: Zoom does not publish an overage rate. You get 100 minutes. What the 101st minute costs is not on the page. That is the one number a clinic needs most, because 100 minutes is roughly 33 three-minute calls, which a small clinic gets through in about two days.
| Published figure | Remi | Zoom Virtual Agent Receptionist |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | £89 ex VAT (Lite), £149 (Standard) | €23/mo billed annually; newsroom: $29.99/mo or $24.99/mo annual |
| GBP price published | Yes | No |
| Included talk-minutes | 500 on Lite, 1,000 on Standard | 100 |
| Overage rate | 15p per minute on either tier | Not published |
| Booking included in that price | Yes | No — separate Zoom Scheduler licence |
| Contract | Monthly, cancel anytime | Lowest published rate requires annual billing |
What you can compare honestly is the shape of the two deals. Remi's entry tier includes five times the minutes, its Standard tier ten times, and both publish what the next minute costs. Zoom's entry price is far lower and its allowance runs out far sooner, and the cost of running past it is unknown until you ask them.
For reference, here is Remi's own curve at typical clinic volumes. Lite is £89 + 15p × (minutes − 500), Standard is £149 + 15p × (minutes − 1,000), and the two converge at about 900 minutes a month, which is where moving up stops costing anything. Assuming a three-minute average call and 22 working days a month:
| Scenario | Minutes/month | Remi tier | Remi |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sole trader, 8 calls a day | 440 | Lite | £89 |
| Small clinic, 20 calls a day | 1,320 | Standard | £197 |
| Solo GP practice, 50 calls a day | 3,300 | Standard | £494 |
| Four-partner practice, 200 calls a day | 13,200 | Standard | £1,979 |
We have deliberately not put a Zoom column next to that. Without a published overage rate, any total we produced would be a guess dressed up as a comparison. If you are speaking to Zoom, the question to ask is simply: what does minute 101 cost, in pounds, and is that rate on a page anywhere? Our wider breakdown of how the UK market prices this sits in what an AI receptionist costs in the UK.
Reminders, WhatsApp and the money after the appointment
Credit where it is due: Zoom's published SMS appointment reminders are a real capability and a rare one. Reminders are the single cheapest way to cut no-shows, and most vendors in this category do not offer them at all.
Where the two diverge is everything either side of the reminder. Remi handles WhatsApp natively, for booking, rescheduling and messaging, which matters because that is where a lot of UK clients now start the conversation. Zoom does not publish WhatsApp. Remi can take a deposit at the point of booking, apply your no-show fee when someone does not arrive, backfill the empty slot from your waiting list, win back clients who have drifted away and ask happy ones for a review.
And then invoices. Remi chases unpaid ones. No vendor in this category publishes that capability, Zoom included. For a clinic carrying a few thousand pounds of aged debt, that is often worth more than the whole subscription. It is also the clearest illustration of the difference between the two products: Zoom sells a better way to handle the call, and Remi is trying to complete the whole transaction. If you want the longer version of that argument, we set it out in AI receptionist vs answering service, and the surgery-specific constraints in AI receptionists for GP surgeries.
Where Zoom is the better choice
There are honest cases for buying theirs.
- You already run Zoom. This is the strongest one. If your phones, meetings and workplace tools are already Zoom, the receptionist is an add-on inside a platform you have bought, configured and trained staff on. One vendor, one bill, one admin console, one support contract. That is worth real money and no feature grid captures it.
- Your call volume genuinely fits in 100 minutes. A single-room practice taking a handful of short calls a week will pay far less with Zoom than Remi's £89 entry tier, and should.
- You want SMS reminders from a phone-system vendor. They publish them and their competitors mostly do not.
- You need a phone system, not a front desk. Remi does not replace your phone system. If extensions, call queues and IVR are the actual requirement, Zoom is that kind of product and we are not.
- Procurement and scale. Zoom is a large public company with the security documentation, SLAs and enterprise contracting some buyers are obliged to have.
How to choose
- Count your reschedules and cancellations. Pull a week of calls and see how many are changes to existing appointments rather than new ones. In most clinics it is the majority. Zoom's AI cannot resolve those on the call.
- Ask Zoom for the overage rate in pounds. If it is not published, get it in writing before you sign an annual commitment. 100 minutes is about two days of a small clinic's calls.
- Add the Scheduler licence to the quote. Compare a receptionist that books against a receptionist that books, not against one that does not.
- Check where your clients actually message you. If a good share of your bookings already arrive over WhatsApp, a voice-only product solves half the problem.
- Decide what you are buying. Better call handling, or a front desk that finishes the job: books, reminds, takes deposits, applies no-show fees, refills cancellations and chases invoices.
If you already live in Zoom and your volume is genuinely small, buy theirs. If your front desk is drowning in reschedules, no-shows and unpaid invoices, that is the case for Remi. You can see how it works for UK clinics on our clinics page.