What it costs.
£1,500 to set up, then £349, £649 or £1,200 a month depending on how much of your front office you want us to run. The whole model is below, including the terms and the bit where we tell you who should buy something cheaper.
The numbers
Most agencies make you sit through a call to find out whether they are in your budget. Here is the model instead. What we cannot put on a page is which parts you need, so the call is about scope, not about whether you can afford to ask.
| What you are buying | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Setup, phone only | £1,500 one-off | Your number, the call flow, the knowledge base of your business, calendar integration, test calls, go-live, and your client portal |
| Setup with a website | £1,500 plus £2,000, £3,000 or £5,000 | The site ladder is a simple single page, a richer single page, or a site built from scratch with the assistant in it. Priced as onboarding, never as a subscription |
| Tier 1, the phone line | £349/mo | Inbound answering, booking, FAQs from your knowledge base, call log with transcripts, monthly outcomes report, 500 call minutes fair use |
| Tier 2, the front office | £649/mo | Tier 1 plus the assistant on your own website, missed-call text-back, and one outbound campaign such as renewals, reminders or follow-ups. 1,500 call minutes fair use |
| Tier 3, front office plus retainer | from £1,200/mo | Tier 2 plus a monthly build allowance for tools made for you: document processing, invoice handling, a custom CRM, whatever the month calls for |
| Hosting and site editor | £79/mo | Only if we built your site, and waived on Tier 2 and Tier 3. Plain-English editor with submit-to-live, so you change your own copy without ringing anyone |
| Bespoke builds | from £1,500, half upfront | Anything outside the lines above, scoped and quoted per project before work starts |
Overage beyond the included minutes is 30p a minute. Almost nobody reaches it; the line exists so one unusually busy month cannot quietly become a different business model.
Terms, in one paragraph
Setup is invoiced in full on signature, or half on signature and half at go-live for site builds. The monthly starts at go-live, by direct debit, so you are never paying for a month it was not answering. Three months minimum, then it rolls month to month. Annual prepay is two months free.
Which tier is yours
- Tier 1 if the problem is the phone. Calls going to voicemail, bookings you find out about late, the same five questions every day.
- Tier 2 if enquiries arrive by more than one route, and some of the work is calls going out as well as coming in: reminders, renewals, following up the quotes that went quiet.
- Tier 3 if the front desk is the start rather than the point, and there is paperwork behind it worth automating every month. This is the tier where you get an automation build allowance rather than a quote each time.
Most businesses start at Tier 1 and move up once they have seen a month of it working. Nothing about that is a re-setup, and outbound calling is available at every tier as a bespoke build if you want it before Tier 2.
Why we are not the cheapest
There are apps that do a version of this for £49 a month, and for some businesses they are the right answer. The difference is who does the work. With those, you connect your diary, write the scripts, and check the transcripts yourself. With us, we wire it into your booking system, tune it every month, and send you a report of what it actually booked. If configuring it yourself sounds fine, buy the app. We would rather say that here than find out on the call.
The other honest comparison is with what you are paying now, whether that is an answering service, a part-time receptionist, or the jobs that quietly go to whoever answered. The missed-call calculator prices the last one using your numbers, and the answering-service comparison covers the first.
Questions we hear a lot
How much does an AI receptionist cost?
Ours is £1,500 to set up, then £349 a month for the phone line on its own. £649 a month adds the assistant to your own website, missed-call text-back and an outbound campaign, and from £1,200 a month adds a monthly allowance for custom tools built for you. Websites are priced on top. Those are real numbers, not a starting point for a negotiation.
Why is there a setup fee?
Because the setup is the work. Someone has to design the call flow, build the knowledge base of your services, prices and house rules, wire up your calendar, run the test calls, and sit with you until it answers the way you would. That is a job, and it is what makes the difference between a managed front desk and an app you have to configure yourself.
Is there a contract?
Three months minimum, then it rolls month to month. Setup is invoiced in full on signature, and for site builds it is half on signature and half at go-live. The monthly starts at go-live, not before, so you never pay for a month it was not answering.
Do you do a free trial?
No. A free trial of a managed service is unpaid setup work, and it tends to produce a version of the product nobody has properly configured. What we do instead is let you try it before you buy anything: the front desk answers our own phone on 020 4652 3999, and the live demo builds a version of it for your business from your website address.
What happens if I go over the included minutes?
Tier 1 includes 500 call minutes a month and Tier 2 includes 1,500. Overage is 30p a minute beyond that and almost nobody reaches it. The limit exists so that one unusually high-volume client cannot quietly eat the margin, not as a way to grow the invoice.
Is it cheaper to pay annually?
Yes. Annual prepay is two months free.
How much is a website?
£2,000 for a simple single page, £3,000 for a richer single page, £5,000 for a site built from scratch with the AI assistant in it, and it is priced as part of onboarding rather than as a subscription. Hosting and the plain-English site editor are £79 a month afterwards, waived on Tier 2 and Tier 3, and we can also put the assistant on the site you already have instead.
Can I move between tiers?
Yes, up or down, and moving up is not a re-setup: the knowledge base, the number and the call flow are already yours. Most clients start at Tier 1, see a month of what it actually booked, and decide from there rather than from a sales call.
What if I need something that is not on this list?
That is a bespoke build: fixed price from £1,500, half upfront, scoped per project. Outbound calling campaigns, document and invoice handling, custom internal tools. We quote a number before any work starts.
See it working before you decide.
Try the receptionist live on our interactive demo, paste your own website in and watch it become yours, or talk it through with a human first.
Prefer email? hello@maponos.co.uk