Why Per-Minute Billing Hurts
Your best month becomes your worst bill
Per-minute and per-call pricing punishes exactly the months business is good. The season your phone rings most is the season your answering bill spikes, which is precisely backwards.
You pay for calls that never become customers
Spam, hang-ups, hold time, and rounded-up minutes all land on the invoice. Reviews across the category are full of it, and one major service settled a class action over billing for hold time and rounding.
You can't budget for it
When the bill moves every month, you cannot plan around it. A flat rate turns your reception into a fixed line item you can forecast, like rent or software.
What You're Not Charged For
The whole point of flat-rate is that these line items simply do not exist on your bill.
Per-minute meters
You are not billed by the minute, so a long, high-value call never costs more than a short one.
Per-call fees
A busy day does not raise your bill. The rate is the same whether the phone rings 20 times or 200.
Spam and wrong numbers
Robocalls and misdials get filtered and never eat a metered minute, because there is no meter.
Hold and ring time
Time on hold or ringing is not on a clock that you pay for. There is no clock.
Rounding games
No rounding a 31-second call up to a full minute, and no half-minute increments quietly padding the invoice.
Add-on surcharges
Booking, texts, and transfers are part of the receptionist, not per-action fees stacked on top of a base rate.
Predictable by design
Everyday Software builds a custom AI receptionist trained on your services, hours, and booking rules, and charges one flat monthly rate for it. It answers every call 24/7, books on your real calendar, and warm-transfers the calls that need a human, for the same price on a record month as a slow one.
See how it compares in our honest AI receptionist comparison, why owners leave per-call and per-minute plans on the complaints guide, or run your numbers with the cost calculator.
Flat-Rate AI Receptionist: FAQ
One price. Every call answered.
Hear a flat-rate AI receptionist trained on your own website, and get a straight quote with no per-minute surprises.