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AI receptionist for HVAC companies

On the first 95 degree day your phone takes a week of calls in an afternoon, and every tech is on a roof. This page prices the services that answer for you, from $29 a month as an add-on to software you already pay for, up to $299 a month for unlimited flat-rate answering with ServiceTitan wired in.

Prices read from each vendor's own pricing page in July 2026. All of them sit in one table on the pricing index.

What calls does an HVAC company actually miss?

Your call pattern is not flat, and that single fact should drive the whole decision. Miss the wrong week and you miss a season.

• The heat wave spike. Three days a year your call volume triples. Those are also the days every competitor is booked, so the caller who reaches you books at your price, and the one who does not reaches somebody else.
• The 6am no-cool call. A family that woke up sweating starts dialling before your office opens. First contractor to answer takes the diagnostic fee and, often, the replacement quote.
• Calls while you are quoting. You are in a basement pricing a system swap, which is the biggest ticket you will write that month. The phone rings four times and drops to voicemail.
• Commercial property managers. They have a list of three contractors, they are managing 40 units, and they will not chase you. One missed call can quietly cost a recurring account, not a job.
• Maintenance agreement renewals. Boring, recurring, and quietly the most profitable calls you take. They get deprioritised on a busy day and then never happen.

What one missed call costs you here

An HVAC call is two very different animals. A diagnostic and repair ticket typically lands somewhere in the $150 to $450 range. A system replacement is usually somewhere between $5,000 and $12,000. Both are typical ranges to start from, not claims about your market. Use your own average ticket and your own replacement close rate.

The maths that matters is the blend. If one call in ten becomes a replacement, your true average call value is far higher than your average repair ticket, which is why HVAC owners consistently underestimate what a missed call costs. Take 80 calls in a hot week, miss 30 percent because everyone is in the field, and even at a conservative blended value you are looking at four figures in a single week. Run your own numbers below rather than trusting anyone's headline.

Use your busiest week in the first field, not a typical one. Detail and workings on the missed call calculator.

Which service fits an HVAC company

NextPhone, because your call volume is spiky

NextPhone charges $199 a month on Pro for unlimited calls with no per-minute charges, $299 on Growth which adds the CRM integrations including ServiceTitan, Zapier and webhooks, and $599 on Scale for multiple numbers, custom routing and two-way SMS. For a trade whose volume triples for a fortnight in July, a flat bill is the point. Two cautions from their own page: the integrations you probably want are on the $299 tier rather than the entry one, and prices are quoted as "starts at". Check current NextPhone pricing.

Jobber AI Receptionist, if you already run Jobber

Jobber sells call and text handling as a $29 a month add-on to any plan, and includes it at no extra cost on the $499 Plus plan. The advantage is not the price, it is that the job appears in the system your techs and your scheduler already open every morning. Be clear-eyed about the real cost: the add-on needs a subscription underneath it, so the entry point is about $78 a month once you add Jobber Core, and Jobber does not publish how many calls or minutes the add-on covers. Ask that question first. Check current Jobber pricing.

Answrr, if you want to test before you commit a card

Answrr runs $99 a month for 300 minutes (5 hours), $199 for 750 minutes (12.5 hours) and $449 for 2,000 minutes (33 hours). Every plan includes every feature, so you are only choosing minutes and how many AI agents you run, which makes the tiers unusually easy to compare. The trial is 14 days with 60 minutes and no credit card, which is the cheapest way to find out whether callers accept an AI before your season starts. Watch the overage in a hot month: $0.25 a minute on Starter, $0.22 on Growth. Check current Answrr pricing.

PATLive, for the shoulder season and for people who want people

PATLive answers with US-based receptionists on a 14-day trial and no contract. Standard is $460 a month for 200 minutes with $2.20 per extra minute. The plan worth knowing about is Basic pay as you go at $75 a month with no minutes included and every minute billed at $2.60, which suits October and March when your phone is quiet and a bundle would be waste. Bilingual receptionists are a $20 a month add-on, the cheapest Spanish option in this market. Check current PATLive pricing.

Prices side by side

Verified July 2026. Compare every published plan on the pricing index.

What to ask before you sign

1. What does this cost in my busiest month? Not the plan price. Take last July's call minutes and run them through the overage rate. If the vendor cannot tell you the overage, that is your answer.
2. How many calls can it take at once? When twelve people call during a storm, a service that handles one at a time is a voicemail with extra steps. The developer platforms publish this openly: Bland allows 10 concurrent calls on its free tier and 100 on Scale, and Retell gives you 20 concurrent lines before charging $8 per line a month. End-user products rarely publish the number, so make them say it.
3. Does the job land in ServiceTitan or Jobber, or in my email? A transcript in an inbox means somebody retypes it, and on a hot day nobody does. Get the integration named on the quote, and check which tier it sits on.
4. How does it handle an emergency versus a maintenance call? Ask to hear both scripts. Then ask what triggers a text to the on-call tech and how quickly.
5. Can I turn it up and down by season? Month to month terms, no contract, and the ability to move between tiers without a penalty. PATLive states no contracts. Others do not.

Where to go next

The economics for plumbers look similar but the emergency window is tighter, and the recommended plans are cheaper because call minutes are shorter. If you also service rental portfolios, the response-speed maths on the real estate page is worth a read, since property managers call the contractor who answers first and keep calling them. Everything with a published price is on the pricing index.