AI answering service that takes every call your team can't.

A voice agent that picks up when your team can't. It answers from your hours and policies, takes messages, and pages your on-call person for urgent calls.

Yes. The AI receptionist for small business page shows the agent set up for a business of one or two people: it quotes your price list, books open slots and rings you only for the calls you pick.

Yes, by the rules you write. The agent asks why each person is calling and checks the answer against your urgent list. Urgent calls page your on-call person and transfer. Everyone else gets an answer from your information or leaves a message with a callback number, so your phone stays quiet for the routine ones.

That depends on your call volume. Per-minute pricing usually suits a line with few or short calls, and a flat plan can win on a very busy one. Work out your monthly minutes, then add LLM usage and telephony. This agent is $0.03 per minute plus those, so a quiet night costs little. See pricing.

Not for a working phone line. Cartesia's free plan includes $1 of agent calls a month, which is enough to build the agent and test it on calls. Once real callers reach it, you pay for call minutes at $0.03 per minute, plus LLM usage and telephony. See pricing.

Clone the sample agent on this page, then replace its hours and policies with yours and write the list of calls that should page someone. Connect the place messages should land, such as a helpdesk or shared inbox, and set your on-call number. Forward your line to the agent, or bring your own Twilio account or SIP trunk, and place test calls before going live.

Choose on what it does with your calls. Check that it answers only from information you approve, saves each message in your own system, pages or transfers urgent calls by rules you set, and records and transcribes every call. Then compare the price per minute with LLM usage and telephony counted. This agent is $0.03 per minute plus those.

No. Voicemail only records the caller, while the agent asks follow-up questions, answers from approved information, and pages or transfers to a person.

Yes. Point your number at the agent and it answers 24/7, taking messages when the office is closed and paging someone for urgent calls.

You point your number at the agent and give it your hours, policies and urgent rules. It answers from that information, asks for a callback number and the reason, and saves the message wherever you choose, such as a helpdesk, a CRM or a shared inbox. It tells the caller the message is saved only after that system confirms it.

Yes. It pages or transfers to your on-call person when a call matches the criteria you set, and tells callers with a fire, gas leak or injury to call 911.

A live answering service has operators who take messages from a script you write, and one operator covers many businesses. The agent works from the same script, also answers from your approved information, and saves each message in your system. Every call is recorded and transcribed, so you can read how each one went.

The bill follows the calls that reach the agent. It's $0.03 per minute of call time, so a thirty-second hours question costs less than a long emergency call. LLM usage is billed separately, and a Cartesia phone number adds $0.014 per minute, or nothing if you bring your own Twilio account or SIP trunk. The free plan includes $1 of agent calls a month to test with before you pay. See pricing.