How AI Receptionist Pricing Actually Works

Why Two Quotes for the Same Thing Are Impossible to Compare

You ask three vendors what it costs. One says thirty cents a minute. One says two dollars a call. One says a flat monthly figure with an allowance you do not fully understand. None of them is being evasive. They genuinely are not selling you the same shape of thing.

The number that matters is not on any of those quotes. It is what you would have paid last month, under each model, given the calls your practice actually received. That is a calculation you can do in about twenty minutes, and it is the only one that settles the question.

This article is about how the models behave, what gets counted that you did not expect, and how to run your own numbers. If you are earlier in the process and still choosing between vendors on capability, start with the buyer’s guide.

The Models You Will Be Quoted

Per minute. You pay for connected time. This is the traditional answering-service model carried over to AI.

Per call. A fixed price per conversation regardless of length.

Per booked appointment. You pay only when something lands on the schedule. Attractive on the surface, and the definition of “booked” is where all the detail lives.

Flat monthly with an allowance. A fixed fee covering a stated volume, with something happening above it.

Custom. Usually means multi-location, high volume, or both.

Each one is defensible. Each one wins on a different practice. Which is exactly why a headline rate tells you nothing on its own.

The Incentive Problem Nobody Mentions

Here is the thing worth understanding before you look at a single rate card.

Per-minute billing charges you most for the calls you most want.

Think about what a short call actually is. A wrong number. Someone asking whether you are open on Saturday. A patient confirming a time they already knew. Those calls are cheap.

Now think about a long call. A nervous new patient asking about a crown, wanting to know about payment plans, checking whether you take their insurance, and eventually booking. That call is your most valuable outcome of the day and it is also your most expensive line item.

There is a second half to this. Under per-minute billing, brevity costs the vendor money. Nobody is deliberately padding calls, but a pricing model that rewards length is not aligned with a front desk that wants callers helped quickly. Ask yourself which behaviour each model quietly encourages, because over a year that matters more than a few cents of rate.

None of this makes per-minute wrong. If your call mix is genuinely short and low volume, it can be the cheapest option you will find. It just means the model deserves a harder look than the rate does.

What Actually Gets Counted

This is where quotes stop being comparable, and it is all answerable with direct questions.

Model	Ask specifically
Per minute	Is hold time billed? Is transfer time billed after the handoff? What is the rounding increment, per second or rounded up to the next minute? Is there a minimum charge per call?
Per call	What counts as a call? Wrong numbers? Hang-ups after two seconds? A patient who rings back twice in ten minutes, is that one or three?
Per booked appointment	Do you charge if it cancels? If it no-shows? If the patient rebooks, is that a second charge? What if the booking turns out to be a duplicate record?
Flat with allowance	What is the allowance measured in, minutes or calls? What is the overage rate, and is it published? Does the allowance reset monthly or roll over?
Custom	What drives the number, and what happens when we add a location or our volume grows 20%?

Rounding is the one that surprises people most. Billing rounded up to the next full minute turns a stack of ninety-second calls into a stack of two-minute calls, which is a third more than you calculated.

The Costs That Are Not in the Headline

Ask about every one of these before you compare anything.

Setup or onboarding. One-time, and it is real work: configuration, integration, testing. A vendor charging nothing here is either absorbing it or not doing much of it.
Integration. Whether connecting to your practice management system is included or a line item.
Minimum term. A twelve-month commitment at a lower rate can cost more than month-to-month at a higher one if it turns out not to fit.
Overage. The rate above your allowance, which is often unpublished and always worth having in writing.
Per location. How a second site is priced, and whether volume pools across sites or is capped per site.
Languages. Whether additional languages carry a surcharge.
Recordings and transcripts. Retention period, and whether export costs anything. This one matters at the end of a relationship, not the start.
Number porting. Ask, but do not let it become leverage. Under FCC rules, once you request service from a new provider your old one cannot refuse to port your number, even if you owe an outstanding balance or a termination fee, and simple ports are required to be processed in one business day.

Run Your Own Numbers

Twenty minutes with your phone system’s call log and a spreadsheet. This is the whole exercise.

Pull last month and count four things:

Total inbound calls.
Total connected minutes, or average call length if that is easier.
How many arrived outside opening hours.
How many you actually want a system to handle, as opposed to calls that will always go to a person.

Then multiply. Take the fourth number and run it through each quote. Per minute, use your real average length and add the rounding treatment they told you about. Per call, use the count under their definition of a billable call, not yours. Flat, check whether your volume sits inside the allowance and what the overage does if you have a heavy month.

Then do it again for your busiest month of last year, not your average one. Pricing models diverge hardest at the extremes, and a model that is fine in February can be painful in January.

You will usually find the models are not close. One of them will be obviously wrong for your distribution, and that tells you more than any feature comparison.

Five Scenarios Where the Models Diverge

Run yours against these. The point is that no model wins in general, only in particular.

1. High volume, short calls. A busy general practice fielding many quick confirmations and hours questions. Per-call billing punishes you here. Per-minute may be genuinely cheap. Flat depends entirely on whether the allowance is counted in calls or minutes.

2. Low volume, long calls. A specialist or implant practice where each caller has questions. Per-minute is the expensive option. Per-call looks good. Flat is usually comfortable.

3. Heavy after-hours. Most calls arriving evenings and weekends. Check for after-hours surcharges specifically, because the traditional answering-service model often prices nights differently, and this is exactly the volume you are buying coverage for.

4. Multi-location. Three sites with uneven volume. The question is whether the allowance pools across the group or is capped per site. Pooled almost always wins, because your quiet site subsidises your busy one.

5. Seasonal spike. January, or the week after a marketing push. Model the spike month, not the average. This is where an unpublished overage rate becomes expensive.

What to Get in Writing

That last line is the single most useful question on this list. It converts an abstract rate into a number, and it exposes any model that is priced to look cheap at your average and expensive at your peak.

Comparing the Quotes

Score each quote on this, not on the headline rate.

What you are comparing	Why it matters
Cost at your actual last-month volume	The only genuinely comparable number
Cost at 150% volume	Where models separate
Cost at your busiest month last year	Reality, not average
One-time costs, amortised over twelve months	A low monthly with a large setup is not cheap
Overage exposure	Published rate, or unpublished risk
Exit cost	Term remaining, plus getting your data out
What is included versus billed separately	Integration, languages, transcripts
Alignment	Does the model reward the vendor for behaviour you want

Where GetHelpdesk Sits

Stated plainly, because an article arguing for transparency should demonstrate it.

$399 per month, flat. That covers 15 hours of AI call coverage, roughly 500 to 600 calls a month, with booking directly into Open Dental, Dentrix, Eaglesoft and iDentalSoft, multi-language support, emergency triage, call transcripts and practice-specific configuration.

A one-time $500 setup fee, covering configuration, PMS integration and onboarding.

Month to month. No long-term contract.

No per-minute charges and no after-hours surcharge, which is the deliberate choice this article has been describing. It means a twelve-minute new-patient conversation at 9pm costs the same as a thirty-second wrong number at 2pm.

Custom pricing above that volume and for multi-location groups, priced on total call volume and number of sites.

Whether that is the right shape for you depends on your call distribution, which is why the spreadsheet exercise comes before the quotes and not after. If your volume is low and your calls are short, a per-minute service may genuinely cost you less, and you should find that out from your own numbers rather than from us.

What a Good Setup Does Not Do

It does not quote you without asking about your volume. A rate given before anyone has asked how many calls you take is a rate for someone else’s practice.
It does not hide the overage rate. If it is not a number in writing, treat it as unbounded.
It does not bundle setup into an unclear monthly. One-time costs should be visible as one-time costs.
It does not require a year to get a fair price. A shorter first term is a reasonable ask.
It does not bill you for hold time and call it service.
It does not make you ask twice for the rate card.
It does not treat your data as an exit fee. Transcripts and recordings should come back in a readable format.

FAQs

What should an AI receptionist cost for a dental practice? There is no honest single answer, because the models price different things. What there is: your call volume, your average call length, and your after-hours share. Run those three numbers through each quote and the comparison resolves itself. Anyone who gives you a figure before asking those questions is quoting someone else’s practice.

Is flat-rate better than per-minute? For most practices with meaningful call volume, yes, because it makes the bill predictable and it removes the penalty on long, valuable calls. For a low-volume practice with short calls, per-minute can be cheaper. The model that suits you falls out of your own call log.

Why do vendors not publish pricing? Usually because the number varies with volume, and sometimes because it is negotiated per deal. Neither is sinister on its own, but it does put the work of comparison onto you. Ask for the rate card in writing early, and treat reluctance as information.

What is a fair setup fee? It depends what it buys. Configuration, PMS integration and testing is real work and takes real time. What matters is that it is stated as a one-time cost, separate from the monthly, so you can amortise it properly when comparing.

How do I compare a per-call quote with a flat monthly? Convert both into what last month would have cost. That is the whole method. Then repeat it for your busiest month, because that is where they diverge.

Should we worry about being locked in? Term length and data export matter more than the monthly rate. Your phone number is not a lock-in risk, because a provider cannot refuse to port it even over an unpaid balance.

Does pricing change for multiple locations? Almost always, and the question to ask is whether your allowance pools across the group or is capped per site. Pooled pricing lets a quiet location subsidise a busy one, which is usually the difference that matters.

Where to Start

Open your phone system’s call log before you open any vendor’s pricing page. Total calls, total minutes, after-hours share, busiest month. Four numbers, twenty minutes.

Then ask each vendor the one question that makes quotes comparable: what would last month have cost us, and what would our busiest month have cost us?

Our own numbers are on the pricing page, published rather than quoted, and the buyer’s guide covers the non-price side of the decision, including the tests to run and the contract terms to demand.

Sources

GetHelpdesk.AI pricing, current plan, allowance, setup fee and terms
Porting: Keeping Your Phone Number When You Change Providers, Federal Communications Commission

This article describes buying practice, not legal or financial advice. Vendor pricing changes, so confirm any rate in writing before you sign.

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