Answering service or receptionist for a trade? What it really costs

Every trade has the same problem: you can’t answer the phone while you’re doing the work, and the work is what pays. So at some point you wonder whether to pay someone to pick up. An answering service? A receptionist? Your other half, for nothing, until they’ve had enough?

This guide sets out what each really costs, using published price lists from named UK answering services and the National Living Wage from GOV.UK, all checked on 2 October 2026. Then it covers the part the price lists don’t: what a person taking messages can and can’t do for a trade.

What an answering service costs

Answering services price in different ways: per message, per minute, or per call. Some publish their prices; some only quote. Here are three, from their own websites.

Connect Communications

Connect prices on messages, not calls: it says it charges “when we complete a productive task for you, such as sending a message, transferring a call or processing a diary entry”, and lists unlimited calls answered on every plan. Its CLASSIC plans (simple message taking and call transfers):

Messages a month	Price a month (excluding VAT)
5	£14.99
15	£29.99
30	£54.99
50	£82.49
100	£153.99

Its PRO plans, where the team “can use FAQs to answer your callers’ questions”, start at £69.29 a month for 30 messages and £137.49 for 70. Connect says “All prices exclude VAT unless otherwise stated”, there’s no set-up fee, it’s a monthly rolling contract, and there’s a 30-day free trial.

CSnotepad

CSnotepad sells monthly allowances of “enquiry-handling minutes”, shared across calls and other channels such as WhatsApp, email and website forms:

Plan	Price a month	Minutes	What CSnotepad says that typically covers
Entry	£70	30	Around 10 to 15 enquiries
Standard	£145	100	Around 30 to 40 enquiries
Intermediate	£258	200	Around 70 to 80 enquiries

Every plan comes with live web chat and 30 extra minutes. Go over your allowance and the extra minutes are “billed at our standard pay-as-you-go rate”. It says there are no setup fees and no long-term contracts, and that calls can be answered 24 hours a day if required, while other channels are handled in office hours. The page doesn’t say whether the prices include VAT.

AllDayPA

AllDayPA doesn’t publish prices on its packages page. It offers telephone answering with “Pay per call/per minute, you choose”, and gives you a price through a quote form.

What that means for a trade

For a small firm with a handful of missed calls a week, a basic message-taking plan is tens of pounds a month. That’s cheap compared with a lost job. The cost climbs quickly once you’re busy: Connect’s 100-message plan is £153.99 plus VAT, and CSnotepad’s 30 to 40 enquiries a month sits in the £145 plan.

Before you sign up, count your missed calls for a week. Our guide to how many jobs you’re losing to missed calls shows you how. That tells you which plan you’d really be on.

What a receptionist costs

A person on your payroll is a different scale of cost.

• The wage. GOV.UK lists the National Living Wage at £12.71 an hour from April 2026, for workers aged 21 and over (it was £12.21 the year before). At 37.5 hours a week, that’s £476.63 a week, £24,784.50 a year, or about £2,065 a month in wages alone.
• On top of that: employer’s National Insurance and workplace pension contributions, which depend on your circumstances, so check them with your accountant.
• Holidays. GOV.UK says most people working a five-day week must get “at least 28 days’ paid annual leave a year”, the equivalent of 5.6 weeks. You’re paying for those weeks, and the phone still rings.
• Hours. 37.5 hours is a little over a fifth of the 168 hours in a week. Evenings, weekends, lunch breaks and sick days are still yours to cover.

AllDayPA’s own savings calculator uses a “loaded rate” of £20.80 an hour for an in-house person, which it says is based on minimum wage plus National Insurance, pension, holidays, property costs and recruitment. That’s an answering company’s figure, so treat it as theirs, but it shows how far the true cost sits above the hourly wage.

A good office person does far more than answer the phone, of course: invoices, ordering, the diary, chasing payments. If you’d use all of that, it can make sense. If you only want the phone answered, it’s a lot of money for a message pad.

What they can’t do

Whether it’s a service or a person on a script, the customer talks to someone who isn’t you. That’s better than ringing out. But think about what the caller actually wants: a price, a date, and confidence that you know what you’re doing.

A message-taker can’t give them any of that:

• They don’t know your prices. “How much to take down a conifer?” gets “I’ll ask him to call you back.”
• They can’t quote. The customer still has to wait for you, and may ring another firm while they wait.
• They don’t chase. Once the message is passed on, their job is done. Nobody follows up the customer who went quiet, or the quote you sent last Tuesday.
• They don’t count. You won’t know which messages turned into jobs, or what they were worth, unless you track it yourself.

Some plans go further: Connect’s PRO plans can answer questions from FAQs you provide, and some services transfer calls or book into an online diary. Each step up costs more, and pricing a job still needs you.

When each one makes sense

An answering service can be worth it if:

• You’re out of reach for long stretches, on a roof or in a loft all day.
• You run an emergency trade where callers need a person at any hour.
• Your callers mostly want a booking, not a price.

A receptionist or office person can be worth it if:

• You’d keep them busy all day with the office work, not just the phone.
• You have enough work that someone taking the admin off you frees you to earn more than they cost.

Neither is the answer if:

• Most of your missed calls are from people who want a price, and you’re the only one who can give it.
• Your real problem is quotes that go cold after you’ve sent them.

What the numbers say about where enquiries come from

Before you spend money on the phone, look at how your customers actually get in touch. It varies a lot by trade.

What we have seen

In the 60 days to 1 October 2026, 84 people got in touch with Wiltshire Junk Busters, a rubbish removal firm, and 64 of them rang. In the same 60 days, 29 people got in touch with A.P. Berrystone, a Swindon builder (a family firm: Adrian Berrystone is Tyler’s dad): 24 through his website form, 4 by phone and 1 another way. See the case studies.

For a firm like Junk Busters, the phone is nearly everything, so every missed call matters. For a builder like Berrystone, most enquiries arrive in writing, and an answering service would cover a small slice of them. The forms and messages need a fast reply just as much as the calls do. Our guide to following up a quote covers what happens after that first reply.

The other way: reply and chase, in your name

There’s a cheaper fix for the first problem that doesn’t put a stranger on your phone: a missed call text back. When you miss a call from a mobile, a text goes back in your name automatically, saying you’re on a job and asking what they need. The customer knows they’ve reached a real business, may text back the details, and you ring when you can. We explain it in missed call text back.

How we do it, and why it works

We don’t answer your phone. Calls ring you, as they always have. What we do is make sure every missed call from a mobile, every form and every message gets a reply, and nothing goes cold for want of a follow-up:

• Found: your Google listing set up and worked every week, a review asked for after every job, and a website built to be called.
• Answered: a missed call from a mobile gets a text back in your name. Every form and message gets a reply in your name, with your prices and your rules. Anyone who goes quiet is followed up, and every quote you send is chased to a yes or a no. That’s the part an answering service doesn’t do.
• Counted: after each enquiry, a text asks whether you won it and for how much. Once a month, one page: what came in, what you won, what it was worth.

You pay nothing until you’ve won £500 of work through us. Then it’s from £500 a month, any month the work you win through us comes to less than £500 is free, and there’s no contract, just 30 days’ notice. That’s from about a quarter of a receptionist’s wages.

The free check shows who Google lists for your trade in your town, where you sit, and whether your town is still free.