You’re alone behind the counter on a Saturday in Bedford, mid-sale, when the phone starts ringing. An AI receptionist is software that picks up that call in a synthesized voice, books the appointment or takes a message, and texts you the details before the customer in front of you has finished paying. The tools run anywhere from $20 a month to several hundred, depending on how much of the human touch you want to keep. For plenty of small Halifax businesses missing calls during their busiest hours, it’s worth a real look. For others, it will feel exactly like talking to a machine, because it is one.

What an AI Receptionist Actually Does

Two different products get sold under this name. The cheap ones are true AI: a computer answers the phone, speaks in a synthesized voice, and follows a script you build ahead of time. Dialzara, an AI phone system that answers calls, books appointments and texts callers back, works this way. So does My AI Front Desk, a similar tool that also runs web chat and text messages. The pricier options are still called virtual receptionists, but an actual person picks up, usually somewhere else in North America. Ruby, a human-staffed answering service, is the best-known example. Knowing which kind you’re buying matters, because the gap in price between them is not small.

What an AI Receptionist Actually Costs

Dialzara’s pricing, checked today, runs in four tiers: Business Lite at $29 a month for 60 minutes of calls, Business Pro at $99 for 220 minutes, Business Plus at $199 for 500 minutes, and Business Elite at $349 for 1,000 minutes. Go past your minutes and you pay $0.35 to $0.48 more per minute, depending on the plan. Every tier comes with a 7 day free trial, so you can hear it in action before you pay anything.

Is There a Free Option?

Not quite, but close. My AI Front Desk’s Basic plan is $20 a month and doesn’t answer the phone at all. It only handles web chat, text messages and email drafts. To get an AI voice actually picking up calls, you need the Business-in-a-Box plan at $99 a month, or $79 if you pay for the year up front, which bundles 200 voice minutes with the chat and scheduling tools.

What About a Real Person Answering?

If a synthesized voice bothers you or your customers, a human-staffed service costs more. Ruby’s plans start at $250 a month for 50 minutes and climb to $1,725 a month for 500 minutes, with every tier staffed by trained receptionists rather than software. Ruby and Dialzara are both US companies pricing in US dollars, so factor in the exchange rate when you’re budgeting, not just the sticker price.

Where These Tools Still Fall Short

None of this is a drop-in replacement for someone who actually knows your business. The tools handle a caller asking for your hours or booking a standard appointment reasonably well. They handle an upset customer, or a question outside the script, badly. Someone on your team still needs to check the call log every so often and fix the odd double-booking. If the AI gives a caller the wrong information, that’s still your problem to sort out, not the vendor’s.

How to Try One Without Committing

1. Pick one AI-only tool with a free trial, like Dialzara’s seven days, instead of signing an annual contract on day one.
2. Forward only your overflow calls, the ones that ring through after you don’t answer in three or four rings, for the first two weeks. Leave your main line alone until you trust it.
3. Write a short script covering your hours, service area, and your three most common questions before you turn it on.
4. Call your own number from a different phone so you hear what a customer hears before a real one does.
5. Run it for one full billing cycle and track how many calls it actually handled versus how many it fumbled.
6. Weigh what you paid against what a missed call is actually costing you.
7. Downgrade or cancel if it isn’t working. Most of these plans run month to month, not locked into a year.

If you want a second opinion before signing up for anything, Halifax Partnership, the region’s economic development agency, offers free one-on-one business advising, a reasonable place to start.

What This Costs Compared to Hiring Someone

Job Bank, the federal government’s labour market data site, puts the median hourly wage for a receptionist in Nova Scotia at $20.50 as of its most recent update in November 2025, ranging from $16.75 to $25.50. Do the math on a standard 40 hour week and that’s roughly $42,600 a year in wages alone, before vacation pay, CPP, EI and WCB premiums, the same costs covered in an earlier post on what to sort out before your first hire. None of the AI tools above come close to that, even at their priciest tier. Ruby lands in between: figure $3,000 to $20,700 a year depending on your call volume, well under a full-time hire but nowhere near as cheap as the AI-only tools.

If a missed call costs you just one $150 job a week, that’s roughly $7,800 a year walking out the door. Run your own number, not this one, before you decide whether any of this is worth paying for.

Should You Bother?

There’s no single answer here. If you’re a one-person trade business already missing calls while you’re up a ladder or under a sink, a $29-a-month AI tool can pay for itself fast, even if it fumbles a call now and then. If your business runs on complicated bookings or customers who need real judgment on the phone, the cheap tools will frustrate people, and the human-staffed options start costing close to what a part-time employee would. Test one for a month before deciding either way.

More posts like this live on the Halifax Business Blog.

Slightly off topic, but it’s what I do for a living: swapping how your business handles incoming calls and bookings doesn’t usually change your coverage on its own. It’s still a fair moment to pull the policy out and check it still matches how work actually comes in the door these days.

About the author. Rayanur Rahman writes about running and growing a business in Halifax. He is a commercial insurance broker with Western Financial Group in Bedford, Nova Scotia, and works with businesses of every kind across the Halifax Regional Municipality. Reach him at 902-321-1712 or book a 30 minute call.

Sources: Dialzara pricing. My AI Front Desk pricing. Ruby pricing. Job Bank, Receptionist wages in Nova Scotia. Photo by Amina Filkins on Pexels. Photo by Ono Kosuki on Pexels. Photo by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels. Prices and program details checked September 2026 and can change. General information only.