AI receptionist for trades

AI receptionist for trades: what Rosie, Goodcall, AgentZap, and Michelle actually cost

Published June 2026 · Pricing sourced from live sites, June 2026

An HVAC owner asked a reasonable question: What does an AI receptionist actually cost for a business like mine? She had looked at three or four sites, seen prices ranging from $29 to $299, and still could not figure out what she would actually pay at the end of the month. That confusion is real. The pricing pages in this category are not always honest about the full number.

This article gives you the real cost math for the four options that come up most often for trades businesses: Rosie, AgentZap, My AI Front Desk, and Michelle. We steel-man each one before we make any comparison. None of these are bad products. The question is which fits your business.

One thing to understand before you read the table: these products are not the same kind of thing. Rosie, AgentZap, and My AI Front Desk are answering bots. They take a message and leave it sitting there. You do the rest. Michelle is the front desk of a full crew. When she captures the call, the information gets handed off. The scheduler books the job. The quotes employee prices it. The bookkeeper invoices it. AR chases it. Aftercare follows up. The price difference reflects that. Comparing them on monthly cost alone is like comparing a message-taking service to an office manager with a full staff behind her.

How much does an AI receptionist cost?

The short answer for answering bots: $49 to $150 per month, depending on the product and how you use it. But that range obscures the most important variable: whether the price is flat or usage-based. A flat-rate product at $79/month costs $79. A per-minute product at $109/month costs whatever your call volume produces. For a busy HVAC company in July, those are very different numbers.

Here is the comparison, as of June 2026:

The real difference: a message versus a handled job

Every competitor in this comparison does the same thing with a captured call: they store it. The message sits in a dashboard until you log in and do something with it. That is fine. It is better than missing the call. But the work is still yours.

Michelle works differently. When she captures the call from an HVAC owner's after-hours line, that information does not sit idle. The scheduler sees the job and books it. The quotes employee sizes it. The bookkeeper sets up the invoice. AR tracks whether it gets paid. Aftercare follows up after the job closes. Michelle is not cheaper than the bots. She is a different kind of thing entirely.

The honest comparison is not "$149 versus $399." It is "a message that waits for you" versus "a captured job that gets worked by a crew." If you have staff to handle the back office, a $149 answering bot may be all you need. If you want the back office handled too, that is what the $399 Operate tier is.

AI receptionist for HVAC: the honest breakdown

If you run an HVAC company, here is what matters: you get inbound calls at all hours, especially in July and January. You need every call answered, the job captured, and the right urgency flagged. You do not want an AI committing a three-hour appointment window on a day your crew is already booked solid.

All four products handle after-hours calls, capture caller information, and send you a summary. The differences are in pricing model, what happens after the call, and autonomy.

Rosie

Rosie is the most established trades-focused AI receptionist in the category. Their site reports 1,900+ businesses and named HVAC and plumbing use cases. If you are looking for the longest-track-record option in the trade contractor space, Rosie is the answer.

The thing to know about pricing: the $49/month plan takes messages. That is it. It does not book appointments. If you want appointment booking, which most HVAC businesses do, you need the Scale plan at $149/month. That is still reasonable, but it is not the $49 you see on the homepage. The real entry price for a functional HVAC product is $149/month. Rosie is honest about this in the plan details; it is just buried under the lead price.

Rosie is autonomous by default. When a caller requests an appointment, Rosie books it. You can configure the available windows. But the AI acts without waiting for you to review. For many businesses, that is fine. For a trades business where the job scope affects what slot is appropriate, that autonomy can cause scheduling problems.

AgentZap

AgentZap covers the widest range of trades in its marketing: HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, landscaping, auto repair, and 60+ more. Their site reports 2,500+ customers and a 4.9/5 G2 rating as of June 2026. The G2 score is independently hosted, which is worth noting when comparing review sources.

The pricing model has two traps. First: there is a $399 one-time setup fee that sits outside the monthly number. If you are comparing against other products on a monthly basis, you need to amortize that fee. Over a year it adds $33/month to the effective cost. Second: the $109/month Starter plan includes 150 minutes. At a typical call length of three minutes, that is 50 calls. A busy HVAC operation in peak season can blow through that in two weeks. Beyond 150 minutes, the cost is $0.85/minute. At 200 minutes over the included amount, that is $170 in overages, pushing the monthly total to $279.

The math in a real busy month: $109 + $33 amortized setup + ~$179 in overage = $321. That is not a bad product. It is just not $109.

My AI Front Desk

My AI Front Desk is the most aggressively priced full-featured option at $79/month. They also offer a permanent free tier at 20 minutes per month, enough to test the product but not enough to run a business on.

Their positioning is broadest: they describe themselves as an "agentic CRM that fills itself." That framing is accurate but it is not the language an HVAC owner uses when they need someone to answer a 10pm emergency call. The product lists HVAC in its industry pages but the primary marketing muscle goes to real estate, dental, and property management. You will get the same underlying technology either way; the question is whether the intake prompts and scenarios are tuned for how your calls actually run.

The product outcome metrics they publish are notable: one trades company ("Trade Recalls") reported $30,000+ generated in five days. That is a real number from a real company. We are not in a position to verify it independently, but it is the most direct trades-outcome claim in the category.

Goodcall

Goodcall markets itself on the "Born at Google" heritage and a per-unique-caller model ($59/month for 100 unique callers). The caller-count model is cleaner than per-minute in one sense: you know your cost for any given month without watching a clock. The limit is 100 unique callers. A trades business with a large service area and repeat customers can hit that ceiling on the entry plan quickly. The next tier is $99/month for 250 callers.

Goodcall is not trades-specific in its positioning. Their named verticals are schools, salons, and local service businesses broadly. They will serve a plumbing company. But the product is not built around the specific vocabulary and scenarios of trades work.

The approval-first question

Every competitor in this comparison is autonomous by default. When a caller asks to book, the AI books. That is the design choice. It removes friction and books more appointments automatically.

For some businesses that is the right call. For a trades business where job scope affects scheduling, where dispatch decisions involve crew location and truck inventory, where one wrong commitment creates a customer service problem, autonomy has a cost too.

Michelle is built differently. She captures the call, asks the intake questions, and drafts the summary. Nothing is confirmed to the caller until the owner reviews and approves. You read what she captured. You decide whether to book. She sends the confirmation. No appointment is committed without your sign-off.

Then the crew goes to work. The scheduler books the slot. The quotes employee prices the job. The bookkeeper sets up the invoice. AR tracks the payment. Aftercare follows up after the work is done. The $399/month Operate tier is the front desk and the back office together.

This is not right for every business. If your goal is maximum automated bookings without owner involvement, and you have staff to handle the back office, Michelle is not the right fit. Rosie or AgentZap will book more jobs hands-off at a lower monthly number. If you want to stay in the loop on every commitment your business makes and have a crew handle the work behind it, the Operate tier is the only design that gives you both.

AI receptionist for plumbing businesses

Plumbing calls have a specific problem: urgency. A burst pipe at midnight is not the same as a non-urgent drain cleaning inquiry. An AI that treats both the same and books a slot autonomously is not reading the situation correctly.

The right AI receptionist for a plumbing business captures the urgency signal and routes it appropriately. Rosie can flag emergencies in its configuration. AgentZap can too. Michelle flags them and holds for your explicit go-ahead before any commitment is made. Then the crew picks it up from there.

For a plumber who wants to wake up to a summary of last night's calls, make dispatch decisions with full context, and have the scheduling and invoicing handled without hiring staff, the Operate tier is built for that. For a plumber who trusts automated booking and wants zero morning review time, Rosie at $149/month is the category standard.

AI receptionist for electrical, roofing, and general contractors

The same framework applies across trades. Electricians, roofers, and general contractors share a common call pattern: the caller describes a problem they often cannot accurately diagnose themselves, which makes it difficult for any AI to correctly commit a job scope or time window without the owner's input.

"I need my panel rewired" might be a $600 job or a $6,000 job depending on what the electrician finds. An AI that books a four-hour appointment slot for the former or a two-hour slot for the latter has created a problem before the job started.

This is the structural case for approval-first in trades work. It is not about distrust of AI. It is about the reality that the owner is the only one who can make an informed commitment on job scope.

Rosie alternative: what to look for

If you searched for a Rosie alternative, here is the honest frame. Rosie is not a bad product. Their site reports 1,900+ businesses and bootstrapped growth. The category traction is real: this is the most-cited trades-focused AI receptionist we track.

A Rosie alternative makes sense if:

• You want flat pricing without a per-minute ceiling risk (Rosie's $149 plan includes 1,000 minutes; that is a meaningful buffer, but peak-season HVAC can approach it)
• You want an approval-first model where nothing is committed autonomously
• You want a full crew behind the front desk: scheduling, quotes, bookkeeping, AR, aftercare handled without adding headcount
• You want the live call demo before you commit to anything (call Michelle right now: (507) 778-5554)

If you want the widest third-party review footprint and the longest track record in the trades-specific segment, Rosie is the honest answer. Michelle is newer. The comparison article you are reading is part of how we earn trust that they have already built.

The real-cost summary

If you take a single thing from this article, take this: the headline price is not the price you pay, and the price is not the only thing to compare.

• Rosie at $49/month is message-taking only. The functional product for trades is $149/month (per their site, June 2026).
• AgentZap at $109/month is $109 before the $399 setup fee and $0.85/minute overages. A busy month is $200–$320 (per their site, June 2026).
• My AI Front Desk at $79/month is what it says. The real question is whether the product is tuned for trades calls or for the real estate and dental workflows it leads with.
• Goodcall at $59/month is 100 unique callers. If you exceed that, it is $99/month. Their "Born at Google" positioning is a credibility signal, not a trades focus.
• Michelle at $399/month (Operate tier) is the front desk and the back office: scheduler, quotes, bookkeeper, AR, aftercare. No per-minute fees. No setup fee. Approval-first on every call. Built for HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, and contractor businesses. The message does not sit in a dashboard; the crew handles it.

None of these are wrong choices. They are different products for different operating styles. The most important variable is not price. It is whether you want the AI to take a message or to run the job from intake to invoice. That is a business philosophy question, not a technology question.

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