Answering service · Built for contractors
Bella answers your business line 24/7, captures every caller, transfers real jobs to your phone live, and emails you a summary after every call. No call center minutes, no queue. Flat $99 or $149 a month.
Call the demo: (954) 417-1740 See plansNo setup fee. Month to month. Cancel anytime.
A live answering service puts a real person on the line, and for some calls that matters. A funeral home, a family in crisis, a caller who is genuinely upset and needs someone to slow down and listen. A trained human agent handles that better than software, full stop.
The trade-off is the meter. As of September 17, 2026, PATLive's cheapest paid plan is $99 a month for 50 minutes, Ruby's Starter plan is $250 a month for 50 minutes, and AnswerConnect's entry plan is $350 a month for 200 minutes, each billed in one-minute increments with overage on top. A quiet month is cheap. A storm week, when every customer on your street is calling at once, is exactly when the bill and the hold queue both spike.
If your calls are mostly emotionally heavy, or you're bound by a rule that requires a licensed human on the line, a human answering service is the honest right answer, even at that price.
Most contractor calls aren't complicated. A no-cool call in August is "the AC stopped, here's my address, when can you come." A roof leak in a storm is "water's coming through the ceiling, I need someone today." A lockout is "I'm standing outside my own garage." Bella asks the right questions for your trade, captures the details, and gets a real job moving without a per-minute meter running.
ServiceHawk runs two flat plans. Answer is $99 a month: 24/7 answering on a dedicated number, call summaries by email, live transfer to your phone, and 400 minutes included. Book is $149 a month: everything in Answer, plus appointment booking straight into your calendar and a text follow-up to the caller, with 1,000 minutes included. Extra minutes on either plan run $0.25 a minute, well under what a human service charges per minute, and there's no setup fee.
Because it's software, Bella answers every call at once. If your whole service area loses power in a storm and forty people call in an hour, nobody gets a busy signal and nobody waits on hold. A human answering service can't do that at any price.
| Option | After hours | Cost model | Every call at once |
|---|---|---|---|
| Voicemail | Message only, most callers hang up | Free | No |
| You, between jobs | No | Your own time | One line, one call |
| Human answering service | Yes, on paid plans | Metered minutes, roughly $99–$350/month to start, more at volume | Limited by staffing, queue can back up |
| ServiceHawk (Bella) | Yes, 24/7 | Flat $99 or $149/month, $0.25/min overage | Yes, no queue |
Human answering service figures are each provider's own published pricing as of September 17, 2026 (PATLive, Ruby, AnswerConnect). See our AI vs. human answering comparison for how the AI side stacks up.
Pick a plan and pay. Choose Answer ($99/mo) or Book ($149/mo) at servicehawkai.com/plan.html. No setup fee.
Answer nine quick questions. You get an email with your new dedicated number and a short list of questions about your business, services, and how you want emergencies handled.
Forward your line. Conditional call forwarding means Bella only answers the calls you miss, so your existing number keeps working exactly like it does today.
She's live the same day. On the Book plan, booking connects to Google Calendar, Outlook, iCloud, or Jobber by pasting the calendar's private link. Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan, and Square connect through Google Calendar.
Neither wins every time. A human call center is metered by the minute, with published entry-level plans running from about $99 to $350 a month before overage as of September 17, 2026, and climbing well past that once you count real call volume, but a trained person is still better at reading an upset caller. An AI answering service like Bella answers every call at once for a flat monthly price and never runs out of lines, which fits most contractors better because most calls are routine: hours, an address, what broke, when you can come out.
As of September 17, 2026, published entry-level plans start around $99 a month at PATLive (50 minutes) and $250 a month at Ruby (50 minutes), with AnswerConnect's entry tier at $350 a month for 200 minutes. Providers that bill in one-minute increments push that number well past $500 a month once your call volume grows, because you are paying for a person's time, not a flat rate. Always check the provider's current pricing page before you sign, since these figures change.
Often, yes, and that is fine. What a caller with a burst pipe or a dead AC actually wants is someone who answers on the first ring, gets the address right, and gets a tech moving. Bella does that whether the caller realizes it is AI or not, and a caller who insists on a person can be flagged for a callback.
Yes. Bella can transfer a real job live to your phone while you're on the road, and anything urgent gets flagged in the call summary that lands in your inbox right after. You keep a human in the loop for the calls that need one without paying a human to sit by the phone for the ones that don't.
Same day, usually. Pick a plan at servicehawkai.com/plan.html, pay, and you get an email with your new number and nine quick questions about your business. Answer them and forward your line with conditional call forwarding, so Bella only picks up the calls you miss, and she is live.
Hear it before you decide
No form, no wait. Call the number below right now and hear Bella answer, ask the questions your trade actually needs answered, and handle the call. Then pick a plan when you're ready.
ServiceHawk