Dialzara's $29 plan is the real floor of this category. It buys about 47 calls.
Dialzara is an American AI receptionist with the cheapest genuinely voice-inclusive plan in this comparison: $29 a month for 60 minutes, then $0.48 per minute. It matters that the minutes are real; the other $20-ish plan in this category includes no voice at all. Dialzara publishes every tier and every overage rate, which makes it one of only three companies here whose price list you can actually complete.
Who is Dialzara actually for, and who are we for?
Dialzara is for a business testing whether AI answering is worth anything at all, at the lowest real price available. We are for a business that has already decided the phone matters and needs it to be right.
Dialzara
A very small business or a solo operator taking a handful of calls a week, who wants to find out whether this technology works for them without committing meaningfully. Twenty-nine dollars and a 7-day trial is close to a free experiment, the ladder scales sensibly to $349, and the overage rate falls as you climb. They also bundle an SMS agent and a website chatbot as add-ons. For an experiment, this is the right price.
AnswerAI
A business past the experiment, where the phone has to refuse things, escalate things, and ask questions in a set order because of what the business is liable for. We build one agent against one business's own call log over about two weeks, wired into the software you already run, with your own dashboard over it. Nobody should buy that to find out whether AI answering works; buy Dialzara for that, then come back when the phone is carrying real weight.
Dialzara figures read from dialzara.com/pricing on August 9, 2026. Their full plan ladder is printed in the pricing section below.
| Dialzara | AnswerAI | |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | A configured agent on a shared product | Custom software written for one business, against your own call log. |
| Billing model | Included minutes, then per minute | One flat monthly fee. Unlimited calls, no meter, no overage line. |
| What the monthly covers | $29 covers 60 minutes; $349 covers 1,000 | Every call, every month; the fee is agreed in writing before anything is built. |
| When you go over | $0.48 falling to $0.35 per minute by tier | None. There is no meter to go over. |
| Add-ons | SMS agent $19/mo + $0.05 a message; chatbot free to 100 sessions | Nothing sold separately; what the phone needs is in the build |
| What you watch it on | The product's own console | Your own dashboard: every call logged, transcribed, searchable, and yours to listen back to. |
| Currency | US dollars | Canadian dollars |
Dialzara is worth crediting properly here: they are one of only three companies in our eleven-company scan that publish an entry price, every tier and an overage rate together. That is why the model below can be computed at all; most of this category cannot be.
How many calls does the cheapest plan in this category actually buy?
About 47, at our measured 76-second average. That is the real floor of AI receptionist pricing, not a headline but an actual number of answered calls, and for a lot of businesses it is roughly a week and a half of phone.
A model: Dialzara's published rates, our measured call length
Dialzara's own published plans (verified August 9, 2026) converted at an average call length of 76 seconds, or 1.27 minutes. That average is ours: 80 calls handled for Lammer Enterprises, one Calgary landscaping company, April 21 to August 6 2026. One business, one trade. Your own average is what matters; the division is shown so you can substitute it.
- Business Lite: $29 for 60 minutes≈ 47 calls60 ÷ 1.27 = 47.2 calls. $29 ÷ 47 = $0.62 per call, the most expensive per-call rate on their own ladder.
- Business Pro: $99 for 220 minutes≈ 173 calls220 ÷ 1.27 = 173.2 calls. $99 ÷ 173 = $0.57 per call.
- Business Elite: $349 for 1,000 minutes≈ 787 calls1,000 ÷ 1.27 = 787.4 calls. $349 ÷ 787 = $0.44 per call, their best rate, and still more than double Rosie's $0.19 at the same minute count.
- Call 48 on the entry plan$0.611.27 minutes × $0.48. Every call past the allowance costs about the same as a call inside it, which is unusually honest, and the reason this ladder is easy to reason about.
What the cheapest real voice plan in this category buys, in answered calls≈ 47 calls / month
Two things are worth saying here. The first is that $29 is a genuine floor and it is Dialzara's, not My AI Front Desk's; their $20 plan includes zero voice minutes, which we only found by reading the page rather than the scan. The second is that at 60 included minutes the plan is a trial more than a service: a business taking ten calls a week will exceed it in the first fortnight. That is not a criticism, it is what an entry tier is for.
Every rate above is Dialzara’s own published figure, read from their pricing page on August 9, 2026. Prices in this category move; check before you decide anything on them.
Where is Dialzara genuinely better than us?
The cost of finding out. Twenty-nine dollars with a 7-day trial is the cheapest honest way to test whether AI answering suits your business at all, and their price list is complete enough that you can work out the second month before you commit to the first.
Their price list is the most complete in this category and it deserves saying plainly. Four tiers, every included allowance, every overage rate and the add-on pricing all on one page; a buyer can finish the arithmetic without speaking to anyone, which is exactly why the model below can be built at all. Ours takes a conversation to reach, and for a buyer who wants to evaluate quietly first, that is a real obstacle we impose and they do not.
The low entry price is also a real service to the market. A lot of small businesses genuinely do not know whether an AI receptionist will work for their callers, their accents, their industry vocabulary. Twenty-nine dollars answers that question, and a business that has answered it arrives at any subsequent conversation, including one with us, knowing far more about what it wants.
Their overage design is unusually fair, too. The rate falls as the tiers rise, and at every tier a call past the allowance costs roughly what a call inside it costs. There is no cliff. Compared with a call-pool model where one extra call means a plan upgrade, that is a gentler structure, and compared with the four companies here who publish no overage at all it is simply better behaviour.
Where are we better than Dialzara?
We build for one business rather than configuring a shared product, and we do not meter minutes, so an agent being thorough does not cost you money.
The metering point is not abstract at this price. On a 60-minute plan, an agent that takes ninety seconds to capture a caller properly instead of forty seconds to get rid of them costs you more than twice as much. The economics push toward the shorter call, and the shorter call is often the worse one. We would rather the phone take as long as the caller needs.
The build difference is the one that matters once a business is past the experiment. An agent that prices a med-spa treatment and then declines to say whether the caller is a candidate is holding a regulatory line, not a preference. An agent that takes both parties' names before it hears any facts is protecting a law firm from disqualification. Those come out of a build against a specific business's obligations, not a configuration screen.
And we are Canadian: billing in CAD so the cost does not move with the exchange rate, and working from PIPEDA, PHIPA and Alberta's Health Information Act rather than translating from US requirements. For a Canadian clinic, that last part is not a nicety; it is the conversation.
How does the pricing model differ?
Dialzara sells small allowances of minutes with an honest, published overage behind them. AnswerAI is one flat monthly fee for unlimited calls, with no allowance, no overage line and no setup fee, agreed in writing before anything is built. Their model rewards a quiet month; ours is indifferent to which kind of month you have.
- Business Lite$2960 minutes$0.48 / min
- Business Pro$99220 minutes$0.45 / min
- Business Plus$199500 minutes$0.40 / min
- Business Elite$3491,000 minutes$0.35 / min
SMS agent $19/mo plus $0.05/message · website chatbot free to 100 sessions, then $0.15/session Read from Dialzara’s own pricing page on August 9, 2026.
Per-minute is the dominant model in this category, and Dialzara's version is the one we would point at as the fairest implementation of it: complete disclosure, a falling overage rate, and no cliff between plans. If per-minute is the model you want, this is a good one.
Our objection remains structural rather than specific. Metering minutes prices patience, and patience is most of what a receptionist does. But at $29 with a trial, the objection is close to academic; nobody is being harmed by finding out cheaply whether the technology works, and that is what this tier is genuinely for.
Twenty-nine dollars a month is the honest floor of this category, and it buys about forty-seven answered calls, which is the clearest way to see that the cheap end of AI answering is a trial, not a service.
If you have never run an AI receptionist and want to know whether it works on your callers, spend the $29 first. It is a better use of a month than talking to us.
Start free pilotSo who should pick which?
Pick on whether you are testing or committing. Testing points at Dialzara without hesitation; a phone that already carries real consequences points at a build.
Pick Dialzara if
- You have never tried an AI receptionist and want to find out cheaply
- Your call volume is genuinely small, a handful a week
- You want a complete price list you can check without a conversation
- You want SMS or a website chatbot bundled alongside the phone
- You are a US business and USD billing is simpler
- You want to be live today for less than the cost of a lunch
Pick AnswerAI if
- You are past the experiment and the phone has real consequences attached
- Your calls need to run long because capturing them properly takes time
- The phone has to refuse certain questions reliably, every time
- You are Canadian and want CAD billing and Canadian privacy law as the starting point
- You have hard cases you can name and a call log to build against
- You want the person who built the agent to be the person you call
Questions about Dialzara vs AnswerAI
Of the eleven companies we priced, Dialzara's $29 plan is the cheapest that actually includes voice minutes, 60 of them, verified August 9, 2026. My AI Front Desk advertises $20, but that plan includes zero voice minutes and bills voice from a credit balance, so it is not a like-for-like comparison. Smith.ai's free tier is cheaper still at 25 calls a month but is capped and then charges $3.00 a call.
About 47, converting their 60 included minutes at a 76-second average call, our own measured figure from 80 calls at one Calgary landscaping company. After that, calls cost roughly $0.61 each at their $0.48 per-minute overage. Your own average call length changes that number, and it is worth measuring before assuming an allowance will cover you.
Yes, all of them: $0.48, $0.45, $0.40 and $0.35 per minute across the four tiers, verified August 9, 2026. That makes it one of only three companies in our eleven-company scan that publish an entry price, every tier, and an overage rate together. Four of the eleven publish no overage rate at all.
For a lot of businesses, honestly, yes. Spending $29 to learn whether an AI receptionist handles your callers, your accents and your vocabulary is a cheap and sensible experiment, and a business that has run it arrives at a build conversation knowing what it actually needs. We would rather have that conversation with someone who has already tested the category than sell a build to someone who has not.
Test the category first, then build
Nobody should commission a custom phone agent to find out whether AI answering works. Find that out cheaply. When the phone matters enough that being right on every call is the point, our pilot is free: about fourteen days to a working line, no call limit, no meter.
Start free pilot