Virtual
receptionist.
A virtual receptionist answers your business phone without sitting at your front desk. It can be a remote person at an answering company, or an AI. Voxgard is an AI virtual receptionist: it picks up in about 0.3 seconds, every hour of the week, in 32 languages. It answers questions from your services, hours and prices, books appointments into Google Calendar, texts confirmations from your number, and transfers to your team when a caller asks for a person. Every call is recorded, transcribed and summarized. It costs from $249 a month with 300 minutes. For scale: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median receptionist wage at $38,010 a year (May 2025), and one full-time person covers about 40 of the week’s 168 hours. The first five days on your real calls are free, no credit card.
Updated September 2026Three ways to cover
the front desk phone.
Pay figures are the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics median; Ruby’s come from its website on 14 September 2026. Your local wage and your call volume will move them.
| Option | Cost | Hours covered | Calls at once | Languages | Greets walk-ins |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| In-house receptionist | Median pay $38,010 a year, about $3,170 a month, before taxes and benefits (BLS, May 2025) | The hours they work, about 40 of 168 a week for one full-time person | One | The languages they speak | Yes |
| Live virtual receptionist Ruby | From $250 a month for 50 minutes; $720 for 200 minutes (pricing) | 24/7, including after-hours, weekends and holidays | Not listed | Spanish and bilingual available | No |
| AI virtual receptionist Voxgard | From $249 a month for 300 minutes, then $0.55 a minute | 24/7 | 1 on Basic, 3 on Standard, unlimited on Enterprise | 32, detected from the first phrase | No |
What it does
at the desk.
Everything a receptionist does on the phone that can be written down as a rule.
Greets with your name
Picks up in about 0.3 seconds with your business’s name, in the voice and tone you chose.
Answers the usual questions
Hours, location, services and prices, from what you loaded. It says so when a question falls outside it.
Books and reschedules
Into Google Calendar after a free/busy check, with a text confirmation to the caller.
Takes the details
Will not end the call until every field you listed, such as name, phone and service, is collected and confirmed.
Puts calls through
Rings your staff in priority order with a one-line summary, and skips a phone that goes to voicemail.
Leaves the notes
A recording, a transcript and a plain-English summary of every call in the dashboard.
What it
cannot do.
A virtual receptionist lives on the phone line. Some of the job does not.
Greet a visitor
Nobody is at the desk. If people walk in, someone on your team still meets them.
Sign for a delivery
Packages, keys, paperwork and anything physical stay with your staff.
Judge the unusual call
It follows your script and hands off when a call goes beyond it, rather than improvising.
How a call
sounds.
An example of the flow, shortened. Call the live line to hear the real thing.
VoxgardThanks for calling Studio Nine, this is the front desk. How can I help?
CallerHi, I have a color appointment Thursday at four, but something came up.
VoxgardNo problem. I can see Thursday at four with Dana. Would Friday at the same time, or Saturday at eleven, work instead?
CallerSaturday at eleven.
VoxgardDone: Saturday at eleven with Dana. I’ve sent you a text with the new time. Anything else?
CallerThat’s it, thanks.
What it
costs.
The same plans whether the operator covers every call or only the ones your desk misses.
Basic · $249/month
300 call minutes included, then $0.55 a minute. One assistant, one call at a time. Recordings, transcripts, summaries, two-way SMS and MMS.
Standard · $549/month
1,000 call minutes included, then $0.35 a minute. Up to three assistants and three simultaneous calls, CRM integration, automated SMS follow-ups.
Enterprise · from $1,500
A custom minute pool, unlimited concurrency, custom integrations and a dedicated account manager.
SMS $0.05 and MMS $0.15 per message, never from your minutes. Month to month, 15% off yearly, and every plan starts with a free five-day pilot, no card. Full pricing and billing examples.
Virtual receptionist
questions.
A virtual receptionist answers your business phone without sitting at your front desk. It can be a person working remotely for an answering company, or an AI. Voxgard is an AI virtual receptionist: it answers in about 0.3 seconds, 24/7, in 32 languages, books appointments and texts confirmations.
An AI virtual receptionist from Voxgard starts at $249 a month with 300 minutes. Live virtual receptionist plans from Ruby start at $250 a month for 50 minutes, per its pricing page on 14 September 2026. An in-house receptionist earned a median of $38,010 a year in May 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, before taxes and benefits.
On the phone, for routine calls, often yes: questions, bookings, rescheduling, directions and callback details. It cannot greet a visitor, sign for a delivery or handle a call that needs human judgement beyond your script; for those it hands the call to your staff.
It speaks with a natural voice, lets callers interrupt, and does not leave dead air. If a caller asks for a person, it connects them to your team in the order you set.
Bookings go straight into Google Calendar after a free/busy check. On Standard it syncs with HubSpot, GoHighLevel, Salesforce, Zoho CRM and Pipedrive, and a webhook sends call data to Zapier, Make or n8n.
Yes. Every plan starts with a free five-day pilot on your real calls, no credit card. How the pilot works.
A front desk that
never steps away.
Five days on your real calls, free, no card. Our engineers set it up on your script.