Virtual receptionist for small business — front-desk presence at the price of an extra software subscription.
A 24/7 AI receptionist on your website that greets every visitor by name, qualifies the lead, books straight into your calendar, and confirms the appointment back to the customer. The "we have a receptionist" experience for businesses that don’t have $40K/yr to hire one. $197/mo flat. Live in 10 minutes.
Watch Ovox close customers on your site.
Drop your details. Your AI sales agent is ready in 30 seconds.
See your AI receptionist live on your own site in 30 seconds — paste your URL above.
Why most small businesses don’t have a receptionist
A real front desk is a $40K/yr line item. Most small businesses can’t justify it — so they don’t have one.
The math kills the dream. A part-time receptionist at $20/hr fully loaded runs $40K/yr for daytime hours and still leaves the phone unanswered nights and weekends. So you end up answering yourself from the job site — which works until the day you can’t. Ovox is the structural fix: a 24/7 receptionist for less than a phone bill.
You answer your own phone from the truck.
Mid-job at a client site, the phone rings. You step away for 4 minutes to qualify a new prospect, lose your train of thought on the install, take 20 minutes to recover. Effective hourly cost of that "free" receptionist work: $120/hour, billed at $0. The lead might be worth $600 — or might be a tire-kicker you can’t tell apart in 4 minutes.
The receptionist quote you didn’t pursue.
You priced a part-time receptionist last year — $1,700/mo all-in for 20 hours a week, covering 9 AM to 1 PM Monday through Friday. That’s 20 of the 168 weekly hours, and it doesn’t answer a single after-hours call. You filed the quote away. The phone kept ringing into voicemail.
The bigger competitor sounds bigger.
A prospect calls two contractors. Yours: rings to your cell, you fumble for paper to write down the address. Theirs: warm "thanks for calling, may I have your name and the address of the service location?" — sounds like a 20-person operation. Same product. They look bigger. They get the job.
The small-business front-desk gap
Why 89% of small businesses don’t have a dedicated front desk — and why their competitors who do, win.
fully-loaded cost of one part-time receptionist (20 hrs/wk @ $20/hr + benefits + payroll tax).
For 20 of the 168 weekly hours. Nothing after 1 PM, nothing weekends.
of small-business owners say "I am the receptionist" on a BrightLocal survey.
Source: BrightLocal SMB operations survey 2023.
of buyers say a business that sounds organized on first contact is more credible than one that doesn’t — regardless of size.
Source: Salesforce State of the Connected Customer 2023.
is the annual cost of Ovox. ~5.9% of a part-time receptionist. ~1.4% of a full-time one.
$197/mo × 12 — no overtime, no PTO, no payroll tax, no benefits.
Sources: BrightLocal SMB operations survey 2023 · Salesforce State of the Connected Customer 2023 · US BLS Occupational Employment Statistics (receptionist median wage 2024).
The receptionist math
What would having a 24/7 front-desk receptionist actually be worth to your business?
Honest defaults below — tweak to your numbers. The math usually breaks even at one booked appointment per week.
Tell us your numbers
Honest defaults below — tweak to match your business.
Your Google Analytics or Search Console number, monthly.
Industry average for service businesses is 3–5%.
Service-business average. LTV multiplier turns this into annual value.
You're losing roughly
$8,424
every month, to leads that arrive while no one's there to catch them.
With Ovox you recover
$3,276/mo
That's $39,312 a year — for $197/mo.
That's a 16× return on a $197 monthly subscription.
Conservative defaults, sourced from public industry research.
Your real numbers may run higher.
Built for owner-operated and family-run businesses
A virtual receptionist matters most in these industries.
These six are the categories where "the owner answers the phone" is the bottleneck stopping the business from growing past a single operator.
Solo Attorneys
See vertical page
Court days, depositions, intake — can’t cover all three from a single phone.
Solo Plumbers
See vertical page
Crawlspace + phone don’t mix. Receptionist captures the leads you can’t answer.
Med Spa Owners
See vertical page
Mid-treatment is when prospects call. Receptionist takes the consult booking.
Cleaning Companies
Use case
Owner-operator with crews on jobs. Receptionist runs the schedule.
Family Dental Practices
See vertical page
One front-desk staffer can’t cover phone + insurance + walk-ins simultaneously.
Coaches & Consultants
Use case
Discovery calls can’t be missed mid-client-session.
Two paths forward
Same calendar. Same Google traffic.Two completely different next 12 months.
With owner answering phones
You stop mid-job to answer "what time are you open?" — 4 minutes, every time.
A prospect calling your cell hears road noise + fumbling for a pen. Doesn’t feel like a "real business".
Late-night / weekend calls go to your personal voicemail, which you ignore till morning.
A part-time receptionist (the only way to "afford" one) covers 20 of 168 weekly hours.
Hiring a full-time receptionist for $40K+/yr requires you to be a much bigger business first.
With Ovox receptionist
Receptionist handles routine FAQ from your published policies. Owner is not interrupted.
Receptionist sounds like a real front desk. The prospect feels like they’re calling a 20-person operation.
Real conversation, qualification, booking — at 9 PM or 3 AM, same quality.
Full 168-hour coverage at less than the part-time hire’s cost.
$197/mo. The math works on day one. Scale into a bigger business with the receptionist already in place.
How it works
From your website to booked customers in 10 minutes.
No agency, no onboarding calls, no 6-week rollout. You set it up yourself — or, if you'd rather, we set it up with you on a screen-share.
Point Ovox at your website
Paste your URL. Ovox reads your services, pricing, hours, FAQs and tone of voice — the way a new hire would, on their first morning.
Under 30 seconds.
Tell it what to capture
Pick the intake fields your business actually needs — budget, urgency, insurance, project type, anything. Connect your calendar so it books straight into your schedule.
Under 3 minutes.
Embed and go live
One line on your website. Ovox is live as a chat and voice agent, ready to greet, qualify, and book every visitor — around the clock.
Under 10 minutes.
Already running Dentrix, ServiceTitan, Clio, Booksy, or Jobber? Ovox sits on top. Zero migration, zero switching cost — clean leads land in your existing workflow.
Receptionist-specific capabilities
Six things every front-desk receptionist should do — done 24/7 for $197/mo.
Configured the way a sharp front-desk hire would be configured — vertical-coded scripts, calendar discipline, lead-card outputs.
Warm greeting in your business voice
"Thanks for calling [Your Business], this is [Receptionist Name]. How can I help you today?" — in your branding, with your tone of voice, every single call.
Calendar-first booking flow
The receptionist’s primary KPI is "did the appointment get booked", not "did the call get answered". Default behavior: lead a customer to a booked slot in your calendar — confirmation email included.
Visitor-name capture (chat) + caller-ID respect (voice)
The receptionist greets returning customers by name when context is available. Looks like a front-desk staffer who remembers people.
Office-hours awareness with after-hours grace
During business hours, mentions your team is "available right now to call back". After hours, says "we’ll be back at 8 AM — meanwhile let me get you on the calendar".
Owner-friendly lead delivery
Action-only card with name, contact, what they need, urgency, one-tap call — straight to your inbox. Listen back to the conversation only when you want to.
Looks bigger than you actually are
The structural goal of a virtual receptionist is to make a small business read as a serious operation. Ovox is designed around that experience.
Inside the price
Everything Ovox does for your business.
One subscription covers the conversation, the capture, the booking, the integration, and the notification. No add-ons. No per-seat upcharges. No "premium tier".
A 24/7 chat agent that knows your business
Trained on your website in 30 seconds. Speaks your services, your pricing, your hours, your tone — not a generic bot.
In-browser voice calls, same agent
When a visitor wants to talk instead of type, they click to call — right inside the widget. The voice agent qualifies and books just like the chat does.
Configurable intake fields
You decide what every conversation captures — budget, urgency, insurance, project type, anything. Ovox returns exactly that. No transcripts to read.
Direct calendar booking
Confirmed appointments land in Google Calendar or Calendly with the right duration and conflict-checking. Customers leave with a real time slot, not a callback promise.
One-screen lead emails
Name, phone, what they want, when they want it — one tap to call. The action card every sales rep wishes their CRM sent.
Vertical-tuned sales playbooks
14 service-industry playbooks shipped out of the box — dental, legal, HVAC, real estate, med spa, and more. Configurable per practice.
Everything above is $197 a month. One flat price. See the full plan →
Pricing
One plan. $197 a month.
Everything included. No tiers, no annual contracts, no per-call meter.
One flat price for everything Ovox does on your website.
Cancel anytime · No contracts · 30-day money back
- A 24/7 AI sales agent that knows your business cold. Trained on your website in 30 seconds. Speaks your services. Sounds like one of your team — chat or voice, the customer's choice.
- Captures the customer details that close the deal. You decide what every conversation must extract — budget, urgency, insurance, project type, anything. Ovox brings back exactly that. No more, no less.
- Books straight into your calendar. Conflict-checked. Customers leave with an appointment. You wake up to a full week.
- One-screen lead emails. Not transcripts. Name, what they want, when they want it, one tap to call. The action card every sales rep wishes their CRM sent.
- Sits on top of the tools you already run. Dentrix, ServiceTitan, Clio, Booksy, Jobber. Ovox feeds them — never replaces them. Zero migration. Zero switching cost.
- Live on your site in 10 minutes — or we set it up for you. No 6-week rollout. No agency. No “come back next quarter.”
30-day money back — no questions asked.
Don't love it? Reply to any email and we refund you in full. We don't even ask why.
$197/mo · 30-day refund · Cancel anytime
We took every reason to say no off the table.
You don't have to trust us. We trust you.
30 days
Money back. No questions asked.
Try Ovox for a full month. If it doesn't pay for itself, email us and we refund you in full — no forms, no hoops, no hard feelings.
10 minutes
Live, or we do it for you.
If you can't get Ovox live on your site in 10 minutes, share your login — we hop on a Zoom and do it for you, free. That's a promise.
Anytime
Cancel from your dashboard. No contracts.
No annual lock-in. No buyout clauses. No “talk to a rep to cancel.” One button in your dashboard ends it — the way it should be.
The risk of trying Ovox is smaller than the risk of not trying it. That's the point.
Virtual receptionist FAQ
Questions small-business owners ask before they hire an AI receptionist.
Why do you call this a "virtual receptionist" instead of a "chatbot" or "answering service"?
The job title sets the expectation. A chatbot waits for questions and serves canned answers. An answering service takes a message. A receptionist greets your visitors warmly, qualifies them, and books them into the schedule — and Ovox is configured to do exactly that. The "virtual" part is the AI-native delivery; the "receptionist" part is the actual job description.
How is this different from Ruby Receptionists or Smith.ai?
Ruby and Smith.ai are live human virtual receptionist services. They’re excellent if you need a warm human voice on every call and you’re willing to pay $235–$292.50/mo for 30–50 receptionist-minutes (plus per-minute overages). Ovox is the AI-native equivalent: $197/mo flat, no per-call or per-minute meter, genuinely 24/7. Different product, different pricing model. See the full comparison hub.
Will it actually sound like a real receptionist?
Try the demo on your own site. The Ovox you see is the Ovox your customers will hear — your business name, your tone, your services pre-loaded. If it doesn’t feel like a sharp front-desk hire who happens to never sleep, don’t pay a dollar.
Can it transfer to me when it makes sense to?
Yes. You configure when transfers happen (e.g. "transfer high-value prospects during business hours" or "transfer if customer specifically asks for a human"). Default for after-hours: collect the intake, book if possible, send the lead card so you can call back when convenient.
What about scheduling complexity — different services have different durations?
Configurable per service. The receptionist knows that a "consultation" is 30 minutes, a "follow-up" is 15, a "new patient intake" is 45. Books straight into your Google Calendar / Calendly with the correct duration and any prep time you set.
How does it work on weekends and holidays?
Same as Tuesday at 10 AM. No "after-hours tier", no "holiday upcharge", no degraded service. Genuinely 24/7 / 365.
How fast can I go live?
10 minutes for most businesses. Paste your URL, confirm intake fields, drop the embed code. Or share dashboard access and we install it free on a screenshare.
How does cancellation work?
One-click cancel. Plus a 30-day no-questions-asked refund — if it doesn’t pay for itself in the first month, reply to any email and we send the full $197 back.
Still on the fence? Email us directly — we read every message.
Hire your receptionist tonight
Your competitor’s site already has someone answering at 8 PM. Yours doesn’t.
Tonight’s 9 PM prospect is comparing you head-to-head. Make sure your business sounds like a business — install your AI receptionist now.
$197/mo · 30-day refund · Cancel anytime