AI Answering ServiceAn AI answering service built once on your own phone number
For clinics, law firms, agencies and real estate offices that pay a monthly answering service, or lose calls and form leads after hours: an AI answering service for small business picks up on your own number day and night, takes the message or books the appointment, and texts back the calls it misses.
A monthly answering service bills you every month for as long as it answers. This is a one-time build in your own phone, model and calendar accounts, and you keep it. Phone answering alone is a fixed $2,500. Phone, website chat and forms in English and Spanish, with missed-call text back, is the AI Receptionist Build at a fixed $5,000. The AI Care plan is optional: $297 a month for hosting, tuning and a call-log review. To compare, set the build plus twelve months of care against twelve months of your current answering invoices.
Fixed prices
All fixed-price offers- $2,500AI Feature or Agent BuildOne LLM feature or agent wired into your app or tools, with an eval set that shows how well it works.See scope and start
- $1,200API IntegrationTwo systems connected through their APIs, with retries, logs, failure alerts and tests.See scope and start
Something else? Describe your project
Plans
Two builds and a care plan, each at a fixed price
Tier 1
One channel
$2,500fixed
10 business days after the spec is agreed and access arrives.
For a business that wants one front door answered first.
- One channel: the phone line, website chat or web forms
- Answers, asks your intake questions, and books or hands off to a person
- Every lead logged
- An eval set of up to 50 cases, scored before handover
Tier 2
AI Receptionist Build
$5,000fixed
15 business days after access arrives, from a one-page spec you approve first.
For a clinic, law firm or office that wants every call, chat and form answered, booked and logged.
- Phone, website chat and web forms answered 24/7, on your own Twilio number and model account
- English and Spanish
- Booking into one calendar, with a confirmation by text or email
- Missed-call text back from a registered number, with STOP opt-out
- Urgent calls transferred or flagged, and every conversation logged to one CRM or inbox with a summary and transcript
- An eval set of up to 50 cases scored before handover, then 30 days of tuning after launch
After launch
AI Care plan
$297a month
For a receptionist Simon built, on either tier. Cancel any time.
For keeping it accurate as your hours, prices and questions change.
- Hosting and monitoring on your own cloud account
- Prompt and knowledge tuning
- A monthly call-log review, with a short report of missed questions and the fixes made
Cloud, phone and model usage are billed to your own accounts. Each build connects one calendar and one CRM or inbox, named in the spec; more are quoted in writing. Texting starts once your number is registered. Missed-call text back on its own is the API Integration, $1,200. Not included: outbound AI calls, recording without a consent step, a guaranteed accuracy score, and HIPAA work without a business associate agreement from every vendor.
Answering service or your own build
What changes when the answering runs on your own accounts
01
A fixed build, not a plan sized by calls
Human answering services sell monthly plans sized by use: Ruby’s plans differ by the receptionist minutes included each month. Smith.ai’s differ by the calls included, with a set charge for each call over the plan (their pricing pages, checked November 10, 2026). This build is a fixed price. After it, Twilio bills call minutes and your model provider bills its usage, both to your own accounts.
AI Feature or Agent Build02
Your number, your script, your records
The phone number sits in your own Twilio account: your existing number is forwarded to it or ported in, and the spec says which. The prompts, the intake questions and every transcript stay with you, and each call lands in your CRM or inbox with a short summary.
03
Takes the message, or books it
As an AI phone answering service it answers only from what you approve: your hours, services, published prices and policies. It asks the intake questions your front desk asks, then books an open time on your calendar or takes a message for the right person.
AI receptionist: intake and booking04
Texts back missed calls
A call it cannot take gets a text with a booking link from the number in your Twilio account (your own number if it is ported in, the Twilio number if it is forwarded), from a registered number with STOP opt-out handled. Texting goes live once the carriers approve the number’s registration.
API IntegrationSpeed to lead and missed-call text back05
When to keep the human service
A human answering service puts a person on the line for every call. If most of your calls need a person’s judgment, or callers expect one, keep the human service. An AI answering service fits when most calls are the same questions, bookings and messages, and urgent ones reach whoever is on call after a hand-off. It can mishear a noisy line or an unusual question, and it hands off when it is unsure, so expect some calls to end in a message rather than an answer.
06
Serving Miami, Tampa and the US
Simon works from Miami and builds for businesses across Florida and the rest of the US, by email and shared documents.
App369 in MiamiApp369 in Tampa
Parts already in production
The answering parts already run in Workspace369
Workspace369 is App369’s own client-work platform, live on the App Store. It does not run an AI phone agent, and it is not client work. It does run the pieces an answering service needs: business numbers, messages and booking.
Business numbers on Twilio
Numbers in a Twilio account, with incoming calls and texts routed to the right person.
Messages in one inbox
Two-way SMS with STOP opt-outs, kept with the contact in a shared inbox, so no message sits on one person’s phone.
Booking from availability
Booking pages that offer open times from a connected Google Calendar and create the event.
- Twilio
- Claude API
- Gemini API
- Google Calendar API
- Webhooks
- Node.js
- TypeScript
FAQ
Questions before you start
How much does an AI answering service cost?
The build is a fixed price: $2,500 for one channel (the phone line, website chat or web forms), delivered 10 business days after the spec is agreed and access arrives, or $5,000 for the AI Receptionist Build, which covers all three in English and Spanish with missed-call text back, delivered 15 business days after access arrives, plus 30 days of tuning. The AI Care plan is $297 a month for hosting, tuning and a monthly call-log review; cancel any time. Call minutes and model usage are billed by Twilio and your model provider to your own accounts.
Is an AI answering service the same as an AI receptionist?
It is the same build. People say answering service when they mean the calls a business cannot take: after hours, at lunch, when every line is busy. They say receptionist when they mean the front desk: intake questions and booking. The AI receptionist page covers the intake and booking side in detail.
Can I keep my business phone number?
Yes. Your existing number is forwarded to a Twilio number in your own account, or ported into it. Forwarding is quicker to undo; porting moves the number itself. The spec names which one before the build starts.
Should I cancel my human answering service?
Not until the new one has run on a test number and you have called it yourself. You can also keep both: the human service for calls that need judgment, the AI for the routine ones. If most of your calls need a person, keep the human service.
What happens with an urgent call at night?
The spec lists what counts as urgent for your business and who is on call. When a call matches, it transfers the call or texts that person, and the caller can ask for a person at any time. It can misjudge a call, so the eval set includes test calls for your urgent cases, and you check them yourself before launch.
Does it tell callers it is an AI?
Yes. Simon builds it to say it is an AI assistant for your business at the start of the call, and to pass the caller to a person whenever they ask.
Can it call leads back?
Only with consent. The FCC ruled in February 2024 that the TCPA’s restrictions on “artificial or prerecorded voice” encompass current AI technologies that generate human voices, so those calls require the prior express consent of the called party. By default the answering service takes calls and texts back; it does not place AI voice calls. This is not legal advice.
Can it record calls?
Florida Statutes § 934.03(2)(d) makes recording lawful when all of the parties to the communication have given prior consent, and other states have their own rules. By default it asks before it records on every call, and works without recording when the caller says no. Whether that is enough for your business is for you and your counsel to decide. This is not legal advice.
Can a clinic or law firm use it?
Yes, with the client’s own checks first. A clinic needs a business associate agreement with each vendor that would touch patient details, and a law firm decides with its own counsel what callers may be asked before a conflict check. The spec lists every vendor that would see caller details, and nothing goes live until you sign off.
Do I need a call first?
No. The spec and the build happen in writing by email. If you want to talk it through, consultations are paid: $100 per 15 minutes, paid upfront.
Who does the work?
Simon Dziak does every part of the work: the spec, the build, the test calls and the handover.
Not a fixed-price job?
Describe it and get a written quote
Send what you need built or fixed. You get a written scope, a fixed price and a timeline; Simon replies by email, usually within one business day.
Prefer a call? Consultations are $100 per 15 minutes, paid upfront.