Guide
Answering service pricing in the UK
Updated
The cheapest provider at twenty calls a month is rarely the cheapest at two hundred, and the pricing pages are designed so you cannot see that at a glance.
Talk to a specialist Ten UK answering services, how each one actually charges, what the published entry price buys, and which two will not quote until you call.
Answering service pricing comparison: five charging models
- Subscription plus per call
- Answer4u publishes £19.99 a month plus £1.75 a call, with email messages at £0.11 and SMS at £0.17 on top, and ReceptionHQ's MessageExpress pay as you go is £15 a month plus VAT and £1.10 a call. Cheapest by a distance at low volume: at ten calls a month Answer4u comes to £37.49 before message fees and ReceptionHQ to £26, with VAT on the subscription. It scales linearly, so at a hundred calls Answer4u is £194.99 before messages. Every per call plan we read is set out in pay per call answering service prices.
- Plan with an included allowance
- Pocket Receptionist publishes £75 a month for 30 calls, £145 for 60, £230 for 100 and £635 for 300, with anything beyond the allowance at £2.99. Predictable, and only good value if you actually use the allowance: at ten calls a month you are paying £7.50 a call.
- Bundles with an excess rate
- ReceptionHQ's MessageExpress bundles work this way: from £25 a month for 25 calls to £410 for 500, with excess calls at £1.10, plus VAT. Answer4u sells bundles too, from Receptionist 25 at £43.75 a month for 25 calls, which is exactly 25 calls at its £1.75 pay as you go rate, and its page states no rate for a call beyond the bundle, so ask what one costs rather than assuming a bundle is cheaper.
- Charged by the minute or the second
- Office Answers publishes a £25 subscription plus 85p a minute of receptionist time, with a £25 set-up fee, all plus VAT: a two-minute call costs £1.70 in receptionist time, so ten two-minute calls a month come to £42 before VAT. Face For Business charges by the second on its Taster plan from £49 a month and its Inclusive Minutes plan from £115, without rounding up to the minute, but publishes no per-second rate. Moneypenny sells plans of inclusive minutes and, if you choose, charges per minute once they run out. Billing by time favours short calls, so it suits a business whose callers mostly want a message taken.
- Quoted on your usage
- CallCare publishes nothing, and Moneypenny publishes no receptionist price, only from £55 a month for weekday message taking (read 23 October 2026). CallCare is at least explicit about the variables: call volume, active users, service type and hours of coverage. Message Direct and JAM sit in between, publishing a starting price of £19.20 and £35 a month respectively and quoting the rest.
Every figure here was read on the provider's own page on 23 October 2026 and is reproduced, not estimated. Arithmetic in this guide is our own multiplication of those published rates, shown so you can check it, and it excludes VAT treatment, which most providers do not state.
Answering service fees outside the headline price
- Message delivery. Answer4u publishes £0.11 per email message and £0.17 per SMS message, so every alert you ask for is charged, and Office Answers charges 10p a text while sending messages by email free.
- The phone number. ReceptionHQ prices call diversion, voicemail to email and IVR menus at £10 a month each and additional local, London or 0800 numbers at £5 a month, all plus VAT. If you need a number as well as an answering service, price the pair rather than the plan.
- Set-up. Office Answers publishes a £25 set-up fee beside its £25 subscription, while Face For Business states it charges no setup or onboarding fees.
- Excess calls. £2.99 a call above a Pocket Receptionist allowance and £1.10 above a ReceptionHQ MessageExpress bundle; Answer4u's page states no rate beyond its bundles. A marketing campaign that triples your calls for a month is where a plan gets expensive.
- Call transfers. JAM states specifically that it does not charge a connection fee when you accept a transferred call, which implies the practice exists elsewhere. Ask.
What counts as a call
This is the single most important question on the whole purchase and almost nobody publishes an answer to it. Does a wrong number count? A cold sales call? A caller who hangs up after ten seconds? A call that lasts four minutes because your customer wanted to explain a fault?
On a per-call model these questions decide your bill, and on an allowance model they decide whether you blow through the allowance. Get the definition in writing before you sign, and ask specifically how sales and nuisance calls are treated.
Work out your own number first
- Count the calls you actually miss, not the calls you receive. Your phone system or mobile will tell you, and the number is usually smaller than the fear.
- Decide the hours you want covered. Nights and weekends are where the price is, and several of these providers sell out of hours only.
- Multiply your missed call count against two models: subscription plus per call, and the cheapest allowance plan that covers you. The crossover is usually somewhere between twenty and forty calls a month.
- Ask each shortlisted provider what happens in the month you double, because the answer decides whether the cheap model stays cheap.