UK. Telephone answering and virtual receptionists
Which is the best answering service for your business?
The hard part of buying this is not the price, it is that no two providers charge the same way. One sells a monthly subscription plus a fee per call, one sells bundles with an excess rate, one sells a plan with an included allowance, one offers per-minute billing by the second, and two will not quote until you have spoken to someone. Comparing headline prices across those models tells you almost nothing. This table records what each provider states on its own page, with the date we read it.
| Option | provider's own page, checked 15 Aug 2026 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ReceptionHQ Short calls, and anyone who wants to be billed by the second | The only provider here offering both per-call and per-minute plans, with per-minute plans stated as billed by the second rather than rounded up. Four service levels are priced separately | MessageExpress from £15 a month plus VAT for message taking, MyReceptionist from £16 with call transfers, MyAssistant from £30 for lead capture and CRM updates, MyDiary from £30 for appointment scheduling. Call diversion, voicemail to email and IVR are £10 a month each, extra numbers £5. Call centre services are pricing on application | 24/7 stated as included as standard on any live answering plan, with the page stating there is no after-hours surcharge for evenings, weekends or bank holidays | By plan: message taking, call transfers, FAQ answering, lead submission into your CRM, order taking, payment processing and appointment scheduling | States UK receptionists answer the majority of calls for UK clients during standard office hours of 9:00am to 5:30pm Monday to Friday, with overflow to its teams in Australia and the US after hours and during unforeseen peaks. That is the most candid statement about overflow on this page and it is worth reading before you compare it with the in-house providers | 7 day free trial with no card and instant activation. States no lock-in contract, month to month, no cancellation fees. Prices are plus VAT |
| Message Direct Out of hours and emergency call-out cover | Monthly plans, described as fair pricing based on service levels delivered. The page does not publish a per-call or per-minute rate | Plans from £19.20 a month, also expressed as from £0.64 a day, with no per-call rate published alongside it | 24/7, 365 days a year. Sold for full-time use, out of hours only, or overflow when needed | Message taking described as the core service, plus a 24/7 virtual receptionist with call transfers and order taking, appointment booking into online diaries, overflow handling, and emergency response and call-outs | States 100 per cent in-house from its own offices in Bournemouth | 14 day free trial. States you can upgrade, downgrade or pause your plan at any time, and that there are no long contracts |
| Answer4u Low call volumes where you only want to pay per call | Pay as you go: a monthly subscription plus a fee for every call, with email and SMS message alerts charged on top. Call bundles are the alternative, with excess calls charged at the per-call rate | £19.99 monthly subscription plus £1.75 per call. Email messages £0.11 each, SMS £0.17 per receiving number. Bundles start at Receptionist 25, whose monthly charge the page shows as £43.75 for 25 included calls, with excess calls at £1.75 | 24/7, 365 days a year, with a dedicated 24 hour call-out service sold separately | Message taking with caller details and reason for call, stored in an online client portal and sent by email or text. Also sells diary management, email handling, help desk support and a full outsourced call centre | States a UK-based team in Nottingham, and that agents complete a six-month training programme. Those are the provider's own claims about its own operation | 30 day free trial offered, and the page states no contractual obligation on pay as you go. States the service integrates with any CRM platform |
| JAM Bespoke packages built around a specific call mix | Quoted per business against the services you pick, with a published starting price rather than a rate card | Prices starting at £35 a month. A virtual phone number and system is sold separately at a stated £5 to £10 a month | 24/7 support stated, including order taking 24 hours a day, 7 days a week | Message taking described as the core, plus call transfers, lead qualification, order taking, FAQ answering, diary management and overflow handling during peak hours or staff shortages | States UK based receptionists, and 46 years of virtual reception | Sold as a bespoke package by quote. States it does not charge connection fees when a transferred call is accepted, which is an unusual and checkable commitment |
| AnswerConnect Buyers who want live chat and calls from one provider | Plans, but the detail is gated: the plans page asks for your name, email and phone number before it shows the range, and also offers the plans as a PDF | A site-wide banner states 2026, get started for only £45 a month. No further figure is visible without submitting the form, so that is the only price we can source | 24/7, with out of hours answering sold as a distinct service covering weekends and holidays | Live call answering by a virtual receptionist, appointment scheduling, out of hours cover and live chat support for website visitors | Sold as a UK service with a UK freephone number and a UK contact address. The pages we read do not state where the agents themselves are based | A customer portal and mobile app are described, along with integrations. No contract term is published on the pages we read |
| Pocket Receptionist Predictable monthly cost at a known call volume | Per call, inside a plan: each tier includes a number of calls and anything beyond the allowance is £2.99 a call. The page states there are no per-minute meters and no plan-locked minutes | Starter £75 a month for 30 calls, Growth £145 for 60, Pro £230 for 100, Enterprise £635 for 300, all with excess calls at £2.99 | Extended hours coverage stated as 08:00 to 20:00 on every plan, which is the clearest published hours statement here and is not 24/7 | Answering and qualifying forwarded calls, call transfers to mobile and landline, and booking directly into calendars | States UK-based receptionists answering during and after business hours, GDPR compliant with UK-only storage and role-based access | 7 day free trial, month to month terms with the ability to step up or down between tiers. Integrations named as Google, Outlook and Calendly for calendars and Zoho, HubSpot and Salesforce for CRM bookings |
| Moneypenny Larger businesses wanting a named team on the account | Quoted. There is no rate card on the site: every route ends at a form described as get pricing and an overview of our free trial | Not published | A 24/7 answering service is sold as a distinct offer alongside the main service | Telephone answering, outsourced switchboard, appointment booking, lead management, managed live chat, multichannel customer service and social media management. An AI receptionist is sold as a separate product | States UK-based people, with its own AI technology described as supporting rather than replacing them, and bespoke customer teams for larger accounts | A free trial is referenced on the quote form. No contract term, notice period or integration list is published on the pages we read |
| CallCare Higher volumes, overflow and 24/7 emergency lines | Quoted, and the site is explicit about the variables: call volume, how many active users you need, service type and hours of call coverage, described as usage prices so you only pay for what you need | Not published | 24/7, 365 days, including overnight, weekends and holidays | Inbound and outbound calls, customer service enquiries, appointment scheduling, lead capture, complaint resolution, emergency response and overflow support. You can use a shared operator pool or a smaller dedicated team | States it operates 100 per cent in-house from UK-based offices | No contract term published. States ISO 27001 certification scoped for its Manchester flagship operation, the only certification claim on this page |
How we chose these, and how they are ordered
Every provider here answers business calls with human agents in the UK, sells to small and medium businesses rather than only to enterprises, and had a page we could read on 15 August 2026. Answering services that are purely automated or AI-first are out of scope: several of these providers now sell an AI receptionist alongside the human one, and where they do we say so, but the comparison is about services staffed by people.
The order is by published entry price, cheapest first, with the two providers that publish nothing at the end. That is an order chosen because price transparency is the thing a buyer can check before making contact, not because cheapest is best. It is worth reading the charging basis column before the price column: a £19.99 subscription that then charges £1.75 a call comes to £72.49 at thirty calls before message fees, against £75 for a plan with thirty calls included, and the same two models land in wildly different places at ten calls or at a hundred.
Three providers are missing and all three are worth naming. AllDayPA, one of the largest UK providers, serves its site as a splash page that our checks cannot get past, so we could not read a price or a service description at source. Face For Business sits behind a bot challenge that returns a captcha rather than a page. Best Reception publishes plans from £69 a month and reads perfectly well in a browser, but its server answers our automated link checker with a redirect at every path, and we only publish a row whose source we can re-verify automatically month after month. None of those absences is a judgement on the provider. Office Answers is absent for a different reason worth recording: officeanswers.co.uk now resolves to a domain parking and sale page rather than a business.
What this table does not tell you: what the service sounds like. There are no ratings, scores or review counts here, because the quality of an answering service is almost entirely about the individual people on your account and the script you write with them, and no comparison table can measure that. Nearly every provider here offers a free trial precisely because that is the only real test. Use the table to work out which charging model fits your call pattern, then spend the trial listening. We take no commission from any provider on this page and carry no paid placements.
- ReceptionHQ receptionhq.co.uk pricing
- Message Direct message-direct.co.uk telephone answering
- Answer4u answer-4u.com virtual receptionist
- JAM jam.co.uk virtual receptionist service
- AnswerConnect answerconnect.co.uk plans
- Pocket Receptionist pocketreceptionist.co.uk pricing
- Moneypenny moneypenny.com UK virtual receptionist
- CallCare callcare247.com
Answering Service Compare is an independent site operated by Ellul Solutions Ltd. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to any answering service or provider named here, and nothing on it is legal or contractual advice. We take no commission from any provider in this comparison and carry no paid placements. Prices, hours and terms change without notice: every figure carries the date we read it on the provider's own page, and the details that decide your bill, notably what counts as a chargeable call, are set by the contract rather than the website.
How UK telephone answering services charge, and what the published entry price actually buys
Last updated
Answering services are quoted in at least five incompatible units, which is why comparing them on headline price alone produces the wrong answer. This table reduces eight UK providers to the charging basis and the entry price, so you can work out which model fits your own call pattern before anyone quotes you.
Every figure is copied from the provider's own page on 15 August 2026 and reproduced, not estimated or averaged. Where a provider publishes no price we record that rather than guessing, because quote-only is a real answer and two of the eight give it. Where a price sits behind a form, as with AnswerConnect, we record only the figure visible without submitting one. Charging basis and VAT treatment are taken from the provider's own wording, and most of these pages do not state VAT at all. AllDayPA and Face For Business are absent because neither site would serve us a readable page; Best Reception is absent because its server refuses our automated re-checks even though the site reads fine in a browser; Office Answers is absent because officeanswers.co.uk now resolves to a domain sale page. No provider pays us and no placement on this site is paid.
| Provider | Charging basis | Published entry price | Hours stated |
|---|---|---|---|
| ReceptionHQ | Per call or per minute, per-minute billed by the second; four service levels priced separately | MessageExpress from £15 a month plus VAT; MyReceptionist from £16; MyAssistant and MyDiary from £30 | 24/7 included as standard, no after-hours surcharge |
| Message Direct | Monthly plan, priced on service levels; no per-call rate published | From £19.20 a month, also given as from £0.64 a day | 24/7, 365 days |
| Answer4u | Subscription plus a fee per call, or call bundles with an excess rate | £19.99 a month plus £1.75 per call; email messages £0.11, SMS £0.17 | 24/7, 365 days |
| JAM | Bespoke package by quote, with a published starting price | From £35 a month; virtual phone system a stated £5 to £10 a month extra | 24/7 |
| AnswerConnect | Plans, with the detail released only after you submit a form | Banner states from £45 a month; nothing further visible without the form | 24/7, with out of hours sold separately |
| Pocket Receptionist | Plan with an included number of calls, then £2.99 per extra call | £75 a month for 30 calls, up to £635 for 300 | 08:00 to 20:00 on every plan |
| Moneypenny | Quoted; no rate card published | Not published | 24/7 answering sold as a distinct service |
| CallCare | Quoted on call volume, users, service type and hours | Not published | 24/7, 365 days |
- Only one of eight UK telephone answering providers compared offers per-minute pricing: ReceptionHQ, which states its per-minute plans are billed by the second rather than rounded up. The rest price per call, per included allowance or per bespoke quote (checked 15 August 2026).
- Published entry prices run from £15 a month plus VAT (ReceptionHQ MessageExpress) to £75 a month for 30 included calls (Pocket Receptionist), and two providers, Moneypenny and CallCare, publish no price at all.
- The two published per-call excess rates are £1.75 a call on Answer4u's pay as you go and £2.99 a call for anything beyond a Pocket Receptionist plan allowance.
- Answer4u is the only provider here that publishes a separate charge for the message itself: £0.11 per email message and £0.17 per SMS receiving number, on top of the per-call fee.
- Seven of the eight providers state 24/7 or 365 day cover in some form; Pocket Receptionist publishes extended hours of 08:00 to 20:00 on every plan instead, and ReceptionHQ states 24/7 is included with no after-hours surcharge.
Cite this page
“How UK telephone answering services charge, and what the published entry price actually buys”, Answering Service Compare, https://answeringservicecompare.com/ (updated 2026-08-15). Every figure is copied from the provider's own page on 15 August 2026 and reproduced, not estimated or averaged. Where a provider publishes no price we record that rather than guessing, because quote-only is a real answer and two of the eight give it. Where a price sits behind a form, as with AnswerConnect, we record only the figure visible without submitting one. Charging basis and VAT treatment are taken from the provider's own wording, and most of these pages do not state VAT at all. AllDayPA and Face For Business are absent because neither site would serve us a readable page; Best Reception is absent because its server refuses our automated re-checks even though the site reads fine in a browser; Office Answers is absent because officeanswers.co.uk now resolves to a domain sale page. No provider pays us and no placement on this site is paid.
Want quotes from providers who fit your call pattern?
Tell us roughly how many calls you miss and what hours you need covered, and we will introduce you to UK answering services that work with businesses like yours.
The detail
Sourced, dated, kept current.
The questions we get
How much does a telephone answering service cost in the UK?
Published entry prices we could read on providers' own pages on 15 August 2026 ran from £15 a month plus VAT (ReceptionHQ MessageExpress, message taking) to £75 a month for 30 included calls (Pocket Receptionist). In between: Message Direct from £19.20 a month, Answer4u at £19.99 a month plus £1.75 per call, JAM from £35 a month, and AnswerConnect's banner stating from £45 a month. Moneypenny and CallCare publish no price and quote instead.
Are UK answering services charged per call or per minute?
Mostly per call or per plan, and only one of the eight providers we compared offers per-minute billing. ReceptionHQ publishes both per-call and per-minute plans and states its per-minute plans are billed by the second rather than rounded up. Answer4u charges a monthly subscription plus £1.75 per call. Pocket Receptionist sells plans with an included number of calls and charges £2.99 beyond the allowance, stating explicitly that there are no per-minute meters. Message Direct, JAM, AnswerConnect, Moneypenny and CallCare sell monthly plans or bespoke quotes instead.
Which UK answering services use UK-based agents?
Seven of the eight state it on the pages we read, but not all in the same way. Message Direct states 100 per cent in-house from its offices in Bournemouth, CallCare states 100 per cent in-house from UK-based offices, and Answer4u states a UK-based team in Nottingham. JAM, Pocket Receptionist and Moneypenny state UK based receptionists. ReceptionHQ states UK receptionists answer the majority of UK calls during standard office hours of 9:00am to 5:30pm Monday to Friday, with overflow to its teams in Australia and the US after hours and during peaks. AnswerConnect's UK site does not state where its agents are based on the pages we read.
Do answering services cover nights and weekends?
Most do. Message Direct, Answer4u, JAM, AnswerConnect, Moneypenny and CallCare all state 24/7 or 365 day cover, and several sell out of hours only as a distinct product, which is often the cheapest way to buy. ReceptionHQ states 24/7 is included as standard on any live answering plan with no after-hours surcharge for evenings, weekends or bank holidays. Pocket Receptionist publishes extended hours of 08:00 to 20:00 on every plan rather than 24 hour cover.
Can an answering service book appointments into my diary?
Several state that they do, and it is usually a higher tier. Pocket Receptionist names Google, Outlook and Calendly for calendar bookings and Zoho, HubSpot and Salesforce for CRM bookings. ReceptionHQ sells appointment scheduling as a separate plan, MyDiary from £30 a month plus VAT, and lead capture with CRM updates as MyAssistant at the same starting price. Message Direct states its team can work with almost any online diary. Answer4u sells diary management as a distinct service and states it can integrate with any CRM platform. Test this in the trial with your own diary rather than taking it on trust.
How long am I tied in?
At the small business end, generally not long, but few providers publish it. ReceptionHQ states no lock-in contract, month to month, with no cancellation fees. Message Direct states you can upgrade, downgrade or pause your plan at any time and that there are no long contracts. Pocket Receptionist states month to month terms with the ability to step between tiers. Answer4u states there is no contractual obligation on its pay as you go service. JAM, AnswerConnect, Moneypenny and CallCare publish no contract term on the pages we read, so ask for the notice period in writing before you sign.
Why are AllDayPA and Face For Business not compared here?
Both are well known UK answering providers and neither site would serve us a readable page on 15 August 2026: AllDayPA answers with a splash page our checks cannot get past, and Face For Business sits behind a bot challenge that returns a captcha instead of content. We do not publish a row we cannot source, and their absence is a limitation of this page rather than a judgement on either company. Office Answers is absent for a different reason: officeanswers.co.uk now resolves to a domain parking and sale page.
Compare the charging model, not the headline
Eight UK answering services, how each one actually charges, what the published entry price buys, and which two will not quote until you call.