The best Rosie alternatives, compared by who each one suits and how it charges. Rosie is an AI answering service for small businesses on plans tiered by minutes. The tools below answer the phone on plans by the minute, the call or the agent, or on one flat plan, and one of them answers every other channel as well.
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Rosie is an AI answering service built for small businesses. On its own site it describes a short setup: it learns your business from your Google Business Profile or your website, you confirm what it found, and you forward your calls to it while keeping the number you already have. It answers around the clock, in English and Spanish on every call, handles several calls at once, takes messages to the scenarios you set, and saves a recording and a transcript of every call to your calls inbox, with a notification by email or text. Website chat is included on every plan, and it publishes iOS and Android apps and a Zapier connection.
It is sold on three monthly plans, each with an allowance of minutes. At the time of writing, its published plans start at $49 a month. The entry plan sends appointment links by text. Booking directly on your calendar, warm and live transfers, and texting callers during the call are listed from the Scale plan upwards, and waterfall transfers, custom training documents and white-glove onboarding sit on the Growth plan. Website texting is a paid add-on. There is a 7-day free trial, and paying annually is offered with two months free.
That is a clear offer for a business whose problem is the phone. People look for Rosie alternatives for the reasons they look at any answering service. The plan is sized in minutes, so the busiest month decides the tier. The feature they want most, usually the booking, sits a tier up. The enquiries that never ring, the emails, the website chats and the Instagram messages, need somewhere to go as well. Or they want a person on the line some of the time, or never. None of those makes Rosie wrong. They make it one shape of product among several.
The list below is ranked for that buyer: a small business that wants its phone answered well, with as little setup as it can manage, on a price it can predict. It starts with Bold Agent Kit, which we make, and then covers four AI receptionists that meet the same need in different ways: plans by the minute, a bundle of minutes, texts and chats, a price per agent with no minute count, and a price per call with live people available behind the AI. Each entry says who it suits, how it charges and when it is the better choice.
Four reasons come up, and each follows from how Rosie is built and priced, as its own site describes it. None of them is a fault. Each is a question of fit.
Every Rosie plan comes with a monthly allowance of minutes, and moving between tiers changes the features as well as the allowance. A business with a seasonal phone, or one that is growing, has to choose a tier with its busiest month in mind and carry it through the quiet ones. Some owners would rather pay in a different unit: per call, per agent with no minute count, or one flat software price with the carrier and the AI billed at cost.
On Rosie's entry plan the agent sends an appointment link by text. Booking directly on your calendar is listed from the Scale plan, along with warm and live transfers and texting callers during the call. For many owners the appointment in the diary is the whole reason to answer the phone, so they compare what each alternative includes at the price they actually want to pay.
Rosie is built around the call, with website chat included and website texting as an add-on. Customers also email, text the business number, and message on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. A business that wants all of those answered from the same knowledge base, with one record per customer, looks for a tool that treats the phone as one channel among several.
Some owners want a human receptionist on the line when the AI cannot help, which calls for a staffed service. Others want the opposite: to build and adjust the agent themselves, on their own number and their own AI key, and to own every piece of the setup. Rosie sits between the two, and the alternatives below cover both ends.
Three questions sort the options quickly. Answer them for your own business before you look at a single price.
Minutes, calls, unique callers, agents or a flat account price. Look at last month's calls: how many there were, how long they lasted, and how many were spam or a wrong number. A per-minute plan suits short calls, a per-call plan suits long ones, and a flat price suits a phone that is busy some months and quiet in others. Check what happens at the edge of an allowance, because that is where two plans that look alike stop being alike.
A message taken, a link texted, an appointment written into the calendar, or a call put through to a person. Decide which of those you need on every call and which only now and then, then check which plan includes it. If live transfers are essential, rule out anything that does not offer them. If the booking matters most, rule out anything that only sends a link at the price you want to pay.
Count where last month's enquiries arrived: the phone, the website, texts, email, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp. If the phone was nearly all of it, a focused answering service is enough. If it was half, look for one agent that answers every channel from the same knowledge base and keeps one record per person, so the caller who later sends a DM is not treated as a stranger.
Bold Agent Kit is first because we make it. The other four are ordered by how closely each matches what a typical Rosie buyer is shopping for: a small business that wants its phone answered by AI on a monthly plan, with booking and as little setup as possible. The closest in shape to Rosie comes first and the most different comes last.
We make Bold Agent Kit, which is why it is first on this list. Every other entry is described from its own website, including when it is the better choice.
Bold Agent Kit is one AI agent that answers your phone and everything else. On a number in your own Twilio account it picks up in real time, with separate switches for answering and dialling, and speaks in a voice you chose from Google, Amazon Polly or ElevenLabs, or one you cloned on your own ElevenLabs or Fish Audio key. It answers from the knowledge base you gave it, with your hours, prices and services as data points, documents and Q&A pairs. When a caller wants an appointment it offers real open slots from your connected calendar and writes in the one they pick before the call ends. It cannot book a time that was not free.
The same agent answers texts on the same number, email from any mailbox you connect, a chat widget on your website, and DMs on Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and eight other platforms, all from one knowledge base. Every call arrives in one inbox with its recording and transcript, beside the texts and chats, on one record per person. It can also run follow-up campaigns across email, text and calls, which stop on a reply, a booking or an opt-out on any channel. It is $25 a month or $200 a year for the account, with unlimited agents and no per-minute, per-call, per-message, per-lead or per-seat charge from us.
Choose it when the phone is one of several places your customers reach you, or when you want a price that does not move with a busy month. The trade-offs are plain. It cannot put a live call through to a person, and there are no human receptionists behind it: when a caller needs you, it takes their details and the transcript lands in your inbox. And it asks more of you at setup than forwarding a number does: your own Twilio account, your own AI key from one of sixteen providers, and a knowledge base you load.
Dialzara is an AI receptionist for small businesses that answers calls around the clock. Its site describes a setup of a few steps, choosing a voice, uploading your knowledge and switching on call forwarding, and says it works with your existing phone number. Its plans list appointment booking, lead qualification, call routing, voicemail transcription, calendar and CRM connections, English and Spanish, and a custom AI voice, and it sends a summary of each call by email. You set the transfer numbers and the conditions for using them, with several extensions for different kinds of call.
Its pricing is the closest in shape to Rosie's: monthly plans, each with an allowance of receptionist minutes and a per-minute rate once the allowance is used. At the time of writing, its published plans start at $29 a month, and every plan lists a 7-day free trial. Beyond the receptionist it sells a two-way SMS agent, which its pricing page says is free with any inbound voice plan, a website chatbot, and outbound voice agents for follow-ups, reminders and reactivation, each priced on its own terms.
Choose Dialzara if you like the way Rosie works, forwarding the number and letting the AI answer, and want to compare another minute-based plan with booking and call routing listed from the first tier. It is a phone-first product with other channels sold alongside, so check the SMS, chat and outbound pricing if you expect to use them, and count your minutes honestly against each tier.
My AI Front Desk, which presents itself as Frontdesk on its site, describes an AI front office platform for small and medium businesses that answers, qualifies, books and follows up with customers across voice calls, text messages, email, web chat and WhatsApp. Its AI receptionist books the appointment and writes the details back to a CRM, and when a case needs a person it warm-transfers the call or sends a real-time alert with the transcript. Its plans include an AI-native CRM, sequence automations and a ticketing system, and its pricing page lists more than 20 languages.
It publishes a free plan, which its site describes as limited monthly usage with no credit card required, and a paid Business-in-a-Box plan. At the time of writing, that plan is published at $99 a month, or $79 a month billed annually, with a monthly allowance of voice minutes, chatbot conversations and SMS messages, a 7-day free trial, and credits for use beyond the allowance. It connects to other tools through Zapier, names integrations with property management and practice systems such as AppFolio, Buildium, SimplePractice and Jane App, and offers a white-label reseller programme and API access at its enterprise tier.
Choose it if you want more than the phone in one bundle, with texts, chat and WhatsApp alongside the calls, and would like to start on a free plan before you pay anything. Check the allowances against your volume, because voice, SMS and chat each draw on their own allocation, and use beyond them is billed in credits.
Goodcall builds AI phone agents for businesses, and its site says you can launch a custom agent in a few minutes without an engineering team. You connect your knowledge sources, business tools and databases, and fine-tune the agent's behaviour, logic and workflows in its interface. It syncs with your calendar and CRM for booking, names Google Calendar, Google Sheets, Zapier and GoHighLevel among its connections, and captures leads by SMS and email. When the agent cannot answer, it can transfer the call to your business line, or offer a message or a callback instead.
Its pricing counts something other than minutes. Each plan is priced per agent, with unlimited minutes and tokens, and includes an allowance of unique customers a month, with a charge for each one beyond it. At the time of writing, its published plans start at $79 a month per agent, with a discount for annual billing. Higher tiers add logic flows, team members and directory contacts, and keep call and customer details for longer.
Choose Goodcall if long calls are what make minute-based plans awkward for you, because its bill follows the number of distinct callers rather than the length of the conversation. A business with several locations or lines should count agents as well as callers, since the price is set per agent.
Smith.ai sells receptionists three ways: an AI-first receptionist, live North America-based receptionists, and a hybrid in which the AI handles routine calls and people take the complex ones. Its site describes consultations booked live on the call, lead screening and intake, call recording and transcription, warm transfers to your team, and fluency in English and Spanish. It names native connections with legal software such as Clio, Filevine, MyCase and Smokeball, says it connects to thousands of other systems, and lists home services, medical and wellness, real estate and financial services among the industries it serves alongside legal.
It charges by the call rather than the minute, month to month. Its AI Receptionist lists a free plan with 25 calls a month and a per-call rate after that, and paid plans with a lower rate per call as the volume rises. Its live receptionist plans are priced per call on their own tiers, with a discount for a 12-month commitment. Spam calls it identifies are not counted against the allowance.
Choose Smith.ai if you want a person on the line some of the time, or all of it, which none of the AI-only tools on this list provide, or if your calls run long enough that paying per call suits you better than paying per minute. Law firms in particular will find their practice-management software among its named connections. Expect the bill to follow your call volume.
The same five in one table: who each suits, where it answers and how it charges. For reference, Rosie itself charges by monthly plans with an allowance of minutes, and at the time of writing its published plans start at $49 a month.
| Tool | Best for | Channels | How it charges |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bold Agent Kit | one AI agent on the phone and every other channel | Calls, texts, email, website chat and 11 DM platforms | $25 a month or $200 a year for the account, with a 7-day free trial; carrier and AI usage billed to you at cost |
| Dialzara | minute-based AI answering on your existing number | Calls, plus an SMS agent, website chat and outbound calling | Monthly plans by receptionist minutes, with a per-minute rate beyond the allowance; at the time of writing, its published plans start at $29 a month |
| My AI Front Desk | a bundle of voice minutes, texts and chats with a free way in | Calls, SMS, email, website chat and WhatsApp | A free plan, then a monthly plan with allowances for voice, SMS and chat and credits beyond them; at the time of writing, its published paid plan starts at $99 a month, or $79 a month billed annually |
| Goodcall | a price per agent with no minute count | Calls, with SMS and email for lead capture | Per agent per month, with unlimited minutes and an allowance of unique callers; at the time of writing, its published plans start at $79 a month per agent |
| Smith.ai | live receptionists behind the AI when a call needs a person | Calls, answered by AI, live or hybrid receptionists | Per call, month to month; its AI Receptionist lists a free plan with 25 calls a month, and its live and hybrid receptionist plans are priced per call on their own tiers |
A fair price comparison needs your own numbers: how many calls came in last month, how long they lasted, and how many callers were new. Run those through each pricing page. Bold Agent Kit is $25 a month for the account; your carrier bills the number and the call minutes, and your AI and voice providers bill their usage, all directly to you and at cost.
We checked each tool’s public website on 11 September 2026 for this page. Plans and features change, so check each vendor’s own site for the current detail. Product names are trademarks of their owners, and Bold Agent Kit is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.
If the phone is the whole job and you like how Rosie works, forwarding the number and letting it answer, compare Dialzara on the same minute-based terms, or Goodcall if long calls are what push a minute count up. If you want texts, chat and WhatsApp in the same bundle and a free trial to start, look at My AI Front Desk. If a person on the line matters, some of the time or all of it, Smith.ai is the one on this list with live receptionists, and the question is whether per-call pricing suits your volume.
If your customers reach you in more places than the phone, and you want one agent to answer all of them, book the appointment on the call and follow up afterwards, for a price that does not change with a busy month, Bold Agent Kit is built for that: $25 a month for unlimited agents, on your own number and your own AI key. It does not transfer calls, and it takes an afternoon to set up rather than a forwarding code. Try it for seven days, ring it yourself, and keep your current service running until the new agent has earned the number.
Each agent uses a model on your own API key, in the same way it sends from your own mailbox and your own phone number. Sixteen providers are supported: OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, xAI and Mistral; DeepSeek, GLM, Kimi, Qwen and MiniMax; Groq, Together, Fireworks and OpenRouter; and Ollama or any other OpenAI-compatible endpoint you host yourself.
Bring your own credentials and you own the whole stack: your model provider, your mailboxes, your carrier, your CRM. We charge for the software and nothing else — no token markup, no metering, no credit packs — so your provider bills you direct at their rates, usually a few dollars a month per agent.
OpenAI
Anthropic
Gemini
xAI
Mistral
DeepSeek
GLM
Kimi
Qwen
MiniMax
Groq
Together
Fireworks
OpenRouter
Ollama
Any OpenAI APINo seat tiers, no credit packs, no per-agent or per-channel pricing, and nothing held back behind an enterprise call.
| Agents | |
|---|---|
| How many | Unlimited — one per business, brand or job |
| Shared brain | The same identity, instructions and knowledge on every channel |
| Knowledge base | Documents, Q&A pairs, data points and pages of your own site |
| Isolation | One agent's content is never used to reply for another |
| Client seats | Invite a client into one agent, with their own login |
| Channels | |
| As many mailboxes per agent as you connect, rotated by campaigns | |
| Text messages | Nine providers — Twilio, Telnyx, SimpleTexting, Plivo, Vonage, Sinch, Bandwidth, MessageBird, ClickSend |
| Phone calls | Answering and dialling, with recordings and transcripts |
| Transcription | Google, or Deepgram nova-3 on your own key |
| Voices | Google, Amazon Polly and ElevenLabs, or your own ElevenLabs / Fish Audio account |
| Voice cloning | Record a voice in the browser and clone it on your ElevenLabs or Fish Audio key |
| Website chat | A widget on your site with your colour, image and greeting |
| Social DMs | Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, LINE, Viber, Slack, Discord, Bluesky, Reddit, X |
| Inbox | |
| One list | Every channel's conversations together, newest first, tagged by channel |
| Filters | By channel, by mailbox or number, or by agent |
| Takeover | Reply yourself and the agent stands down on that thread |
| Hand back | Return the thread to the agent when you are done |
| Campaigns | |
| Multichannel sequences | Email, text and call steps in one campaign, each with its own timing |
| Send conditions | Send a step only if they opened, did not open, clicked or did not click |
| Schedule | The days, hours and time zone anything may be sent |
| Stop rules | A reply, a booking or an opt-out on any channel ends the sequence |
| Pacing | Per-mailbox and per-number hourly limits, pausable and resumable |
| Review before start | The full plan is shown; a campaign sends nothing until you start it |
| Templates | Email, text and call scripts, saved once and reused |
| Analytics | |
| Funnel | Reached, replied, visited, converted, plus value won and time to convert |
| By channel | Where each person started, and the channel they converted on |
| Pages | Which pages known people read, and how many of them converted |
| Journeys | One row per person: every message, visit, call and booking in order |
| Goals | A page rule or a manual "won", each with a dollar value |
| Triggers | A known person returns to a page — notify you, or send a follow-up |
| Open and click tracking | Recorded per campaign and added to that person's history |
| Integrations | |
| Calendars | Google, Microsoft 365, Calendly, Cal.com, Acuity, Zoho, Square, HubSpot Meetings |
| CRMs and commerce | HubSpot, GoHighLevel, Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan, Jobber, Stripe, Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, Squarespace |
| Booking | Real open slots offered, and only an offered slot can be booked |
| CRM import | Import a segment of customers into a contact list |
| Deliverability and compliance | |
| Mailbox warm-up | Ramped sending across the network, with spam rescue and replies |
| Health score | SPF, DKIM, DMARC, bounce rate and inbox placement, with reasons |
| Auto-rest | A failing address is removed from rotation automatically |
| Unsubscribes | One click, honoured automatically, including on queued mail |
| Reply limits | One reply per thread, per-sender daily and per-channel hourly caps |
| Filtering | Bounces, out-of-office and no-reply addresses ignored |
| List building | |
| Contact extraction | Emails, phone numbers and social profiles, on any site. Unlimited. |
| Deep scan | Follows the pages of a domain most likely to carry contact details |
| Domain queue | Load a CSV of sites and work through them one at a time |
| Contacts and lists | Unlimited, by email or phone, with CSV import and export |
| AI | |
| Your own key | Sixteen providers, including any OpenAI-compatible endpoint you host |
| What we charge for AI | Nothing — no markup, no metering, no credit packs |
| On calls | Uses your provider's fastest model automatically |
| Account | |
| Platforms | Chrome side panel and web dashboard on one login |
| Members' forum | Six boards, visible only once you are signed in |
| Referral program | $50 a year per referral ($5 a month), recurring for the life of the account |
| Support | support@boldagents.co |
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It depends on the business. For a small business that wants the phone answered on a minute-based plan like Rosie's, Dialzara is the closest in shape. For one with long calls, Goodcall counts unique callers rather than minutes. For one that wants texts, chat and WhatsApp bundled in, with a free trial to start, My AI Front Desk. For one that needs live people on some calls, Smith.ai. And for one whose customers call, text, email, chat and send DMs, and which wants one flat price, Bold Agent Kit, which we make, at $25 a month for unlimited agents.
Usually for one of four reasons, all of them about fit rather than fault. Its plans are sized by a monthly allowance of minutes, and some owners would rather pay per call, per agent or a flat price. Direct calendar booking and call transfers are listed from its Scale plan, so the entry plan sends appointment links instead. It is built around the phone, while many businesses also get enquiries by email, text and DM. And some owners want either live receptionists behind the AI, or full control of their own number and AI key.
Rosie is an AI answering service for the phone, with website chat and a texting add-on, on plans tiered by minutes, set up by forwarding your existing number. Bold Agent Kit is one AI agent that answers calls on your own Twilio number, books on the call, and works texts, email, website chat and eleven DM platforms from the same knowledge base, for $25 a month on your own AI key. Rosie offers warm and live transfers on its higher tiers; Bold Agent Kit does not transfer calls. The full side-by-side is on our Bold Agent Kit vs Rosie comparison page.
One tool on this list publishes a free plan at the time of writing: Smith.ai's AI Receptionist lists a free plan with 25 calls a month and a per-call rate after that. My AI Front Desk lists a 7-day free trial with no credit card required, and Rosie, Dialzara and Bold Agent Kit each offer a 7-day free trial too. With Bold Agent Kit, your carrier still bills the number and your AI provider bills its usage during the trial, both at cost. Check each pricing page for the current limits before you rely on a free tier.
Run them side by side first. Build the agent from what Rosie was given: your hours, prices and services as data points, your FAQs as Q&A pairs, and your policies as documents. Connect a Twilio number, your calendar and, if you use one, your CRM, then switch answering on and ring it yourself until the answers are right. Import your customer list from a CSV, or pull a segment from HubSpot or GoHighLevel. Then point your callers at the new number, add the mailbox, the chat widget and the DMs, and cancel the old service only once the new agent has earned it.
Among the picks here, Dialzara lets you set transfer numbers and the conditions for using them, Goodcall can put the call through to your business line, My AI Front Desk describes warm transfers, and Smith.ai offers warm transfers and live receptionists on its staffed and hybrid plans. Rosie itself lists warm, live and waterfall transfers from its Scale plan upwards. Bold Agent Kit cannot transfer a live call and has no human agents; it takes the caller's details and puts the recording and transcript in your inbox, and your instructions name which calls get that treatment.
Most of them list it. Dialzara books to your calendar from its first plan, Goodcall syncs with your calendar and CRM, My AI Front Desk books and writes the details back to a CRM, and Smith.ai books consultations live on the call. On Rosie, direct calendar booking is listed from the Scale plan, with appointment links by text below it. Bold Agent Kit connects to Google Calendar, Microsoft 365, Calendly, Cal.com, Acuity Scheduling, Zoho Bookings, Square Appointments or HubSpot Meetings, offers real open slots and writes in the one the caller picks. It cannot book a time that was not free.
It depends on the tool. Rosie and Dialzara both describe forwarding calls from the number you already have. Goodcall describes its own local numbers across many area codes. Bold Agent Kit answers on a number in your own Twilio account, so the number is yours whatever you decide later, and your carrier bills it at its own rates. Texts can run on that same number, or on one of eight other SMS carriers if you keep texts elsewhere. Unlimited agents are included, so a business with two locations can run one receptionist per number, each with its own hours and calendar.
The best alternatives to the other tools people shortlist for the same jobs.
Start the 7-day free trial, load your hours and prices, connect a number and a calendar, and ring it yourself. Keep your current answering service running until the new agent has earned the number.
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