Three labels, used interchangeably, covering at least five different products. If you have been comparing "virtual receptionists" and finding that the prices make no sense against each other, this is why.
Here is what each term actually means, and the one question that cuts through all of it.
"Virtual" describes location, not what answers the phone
A virtual receptionist answers your calls from somewhere that is not your premises. That is the entire definition. It says nothing about who or what is doing the answering, which is why the term stretches across such different products:
- a remote human working for an outsourced team, shared across many businesses
- a remote human working directly for you, usually part-time
- software that answers automatically
- a hybrid, where software answers first and escalates to a person
All four get sold as "virtual receptionists". They differ by an order of magnitude in cost.
An AI receptionist is the third of those, named after the mechanism rather than the location. An answering service is generally the narrowest product. It answers, takes a message, passes it on.
None of these labels is policed by anyone. Vendors pick whichever is ranking well.
The one question that actually sorts them
Forget the label. Ask this:
Can it put an appointment in my diary, or does someone still have to ring the customer back?
Everything important follows from the answer. Message-taking delays the work. You have swapped a missed call for a callback task, and the customer has probably rung someone else in the meantime. Booking completes it.
This is also where the pricing tiers hide their teeth. Several providers do not include booking on their entry plan: IONOS does not include it on its £39 tier, and Hey Jodie's £49 tier can neither book appointments nor transfer calls. Both start at £99. The cheap tier is cheap because it is the narrow product wearing the broader product's name.
What each costs in the UK
Prices below are as published on the providers' own pages, read on 24 August 2026. Treat them as a snapshot.
Human (remote person, outsourced team). Published UK rates work out at roughly £0.30 to £1.20 a minute. Most providers publish "from" figures rather than a rate card. Moneypenny from £55 a month with 24/7 an extra £35, Answer.co.uk from £99 a month. AnswerConnect is one of the few that publishes properly: £395 for 350 minutes, £1,135 for 1,050 minutes, £1.75 a minute beyond.
AI. More transparent, because software companies publish. RingCentral AIR at £32 a month with 100 included minutes then £0.40/min; IONOS at £39/£69/£99 ex VAT billed per call; Hey Jodie at £49/£99/£199 ex VAT with unlimited minutes up to a fair-use threshold of 1,000 calls a month.
The catch in both columns is volume. A human service gets more expensive linearly as your calls grow, because it is buying someone's time. An AI service usually has a low headline and a small allowance, so it also gets more expensive, just more suddenly. A practice doing 20 calls a day at three minutes is using about 1,320 minutes a month, which turns a £32 headline into roughly £520.
We wrote the full arithmetic up in what a telephone answering service costs in the UK.
Which suits which business
A remote human is better when your calls are unusual, sensitive, or need judgement: complaints, distressed callers, complicated negotiations. Also when volume is genuinely low, because you are paying for time and you barely use any.
AI is better when your calls are repetitive and your problem is coverage: the phone rings while you are with a customer, or after hours, or all at once at 9am. Software answers every call simultaneously and does not need a rota. It is also flat-rate in a way people are not: the cost does not double when your volume does.
Neither is better when you have not worked out what a missed call is worth to you. That number decides the whole question, and most businesses have never calculated it.
The honest limitations of each
A remote human team is shared. Your caller may be the fourth business that person has answered for in ten minutes, and they will not know your services the way you do unless you invest in briefing them.
AI does not handle the genuinely unusual well. It should hand over to a person when it cannot help, and you should test that handover before relying on it: ring your own trial number and behave awkwardly.
Hybrids sit in between and are priced accordingly. They are also the hardest to compare, because the published price usually covers the AI layer and the human escalation is where the cost lives.
Where Remi sits
Remi is an AI receptionist (software, not a person) and we say so plainly rather than letting "virtual" blur it. It answers calls and WhatsApp, books straight into Google Calendar, Acuity or Cliniko, sends reminders, takes deposits and chases unpaid invoices. £149 a month ex VAT with 1,000 talk-minutes included, then 15p a minute; a smaller tier from £19, and £89 for 500 minutes. 1-week free trial, no setup fee.
Booking and transfer are included rather than tiered, which is the specific thing we would want you to check on anyone else's pricing page too.
If your calls need a person, buy a person. We wrote about where each genuinely wins instead of pretending otherwise.
Related reading: what an AI receptionist costs in the UK, AI receptionist pricing per minute, and what a receptionist really costs to employ.