14 Best AI Receptionist Software for Calls, Texts, and Booking

XBert by Nextiva offers both a standalone and bundled AI receptionist for your business. In my recent Nextiva XBert review, I found XBert to offer an excellent customer-facing AI receptionist.

I recommend XBert for small-to-medium-scale businesses. They can delegate routine work like booking appointments and answering common questions via XBert’s AI employee. It can also reschedule appointments.

In my testing, I found XBert to perform exceptionally well. Its different voice options are carefully designed to sound human.

It excels at omnichannel operations as it works via voice, SMS, and web chat.

You can try XBert via its 14-day free trial. Nextiva also provides a 30-day money-back guarantee for its plans.

During onboarding, you can create a basic AI receptionist, which can then be further trained. It automatically captures website information, with the option to load documents to further improve it.

Additionally, Nextiva XBert can escalate to live human support via Nextiva Contact Center. For standalone use, it notes down the information and transfers calls to the number set. It also supports SMS/chat handoff.

RingCentral AI Receptionist is best for businesses already using RingCentral’s phone system, RingEX. It is capable of auto-syncing phone numbers, contacts, business settings, and the employee directory.

Like XBert, RingCentral AI Receptionist can operate 24/7. It offers support for six languages (English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese) and channels, including voice and SMS.

RingCentral AI Receptionist can answer and route calls via native calling for RingEX users. It can also schedule appointments and send SMS follow-ups.

Additionally, it is fairly easy to set up and uses your site’s content to understand your business. You can upload documents to refine it further, offering straightforward deployment.

RingCentral offers a 14-day free trial on their plans. Teams can get built-in reports that include call volumes, resolution rates, transfers, and unanswered questions.

As for integration, it works with popular CRMs including HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zoho. Calendar support for Google and Outlook is also available.

RingCentral AI can route calls by name, location, and keyword. It escalates with the caller’s name, reason for calling, and call summary.

Smith.ai is a robust AI receptionist provider with live-agent fallback. It is popular with law firms due to native Clio integrations and legal intake.

However, it can be beneficial for other industries like finance, medical, staffing, insurance, and real estate.

Smith.ai’s AI receptionist can book appointments via Calendly. It can also qualify leads, route calls, and do warm transfers. 

Smith.ai does offer a free plan with 25 calls per month, which is enough to test it. I tried their free plan. They offer 12+ AI receptionist voices, including Ava, Sierra, and Nolan. The ones I tried sound good, though slightly robotic. All voices are customizable.

Smith.ai offers Quality Studio to implement knowledge and accuracy control. Here, you can set goals, test real calls, and gradually improve the AI receptionist over time with a feedback loop.

In terms of integration, they have support for Salesforce, HubSpot, and the Clio ecosystem (Grow and Manage). Smith.ai also supports Zapier and Make, enabling integration of 5000+ apps via them.

As for hand-off, it escalates to a live agent if needed. They offer their own team for handling escalations, with the option to transfer calls to your team as well. If the escalation is AI-initiated, there is no fee.

IONOS AI Receptionist is simple AI software that answers calls and schedules appointments 24/7. It is an affordable solution that works via phone only.

To schedule appointments, it works with Google Calendar, Outlook, Cal.com, and Calendly on the Flex Pro and Unlimited plans. It is smart enough to suggest appointments based on your schedule. 

Before you sign up, you can test it by directly trying its public AI demo line. I found it sounded professional, though clearly AI.

As for knowledge creation and accuracy, it learns from your website URL. You can also feed the IONOS AI receptionist a custom knowledge base or documents. It also pulls customer data from HubSpot, Salesforce, or Zendesk to aid during calls.

For custom integration, advanced API access is available on the Unlimited plan.

Teams can configure IONOS AI Receptionist via Call Manager. It also has emergency phrase detection, which can identify urgent calls and transfer them to the right human agent.

Best fit: Small businesses that only need a voice AI receptionist that handles basic customer queries and appointment scheduling.

Synthflow is best suited for enterprises that want to automate phone calls using enterprise-ready voice AI agents. 

With Synthflow, you can set up custom AI agents for voice, chat, SMS, and WhatsApp channels. 

Each AI agent can be customized via multi-step workflows. The visual flow designer offers you the ability to customize every step, and you can use APIs to further customize it. You can also split a conversation across multiple AI agents, each handling a specialized task.

At the core of Synthflow is its BELL framework, which lets you build, evaluate, launch, and learn. Its AI Sandbox lets you preview, compare, and roll back agent versions before going live. 

These agents, once deployed, can escalate to a human depending on the handoff triggers set by the team. They can also try to escalate if they fail to resolve the customer’s problem or if caller sentiment is negative. 

As it is enterprise-ready, Synthflow offers 200+ integrations, which include HubSpot, GoHighLevel, Cal.com, Zapier, and others. It works with most popular phone systems, including Cisco, Avaya, RingCentral, and Genesys. It also supports SIP trunking.

The Flow Designer is no-code, but enterprise telephony and integrations still need technical expertise.

Goodcall is a voice-based AI phone answering solution. Its plans support 3 to 50 team members, which suits small businesses.

With Goodcall, you can automate customer service. It focuses on lead capturing. Once a lead is captured, it can be sent via SMS, email, Google Sheets, or CRM. This cuts manual data entry and the errors that come with it.

Goodcall is easy to set up and supports knowledge sources, business tools, and database connectivity. Its no-code, intuitive setup helps you set it up with no engineering team required. The number of logic flows differs based on the chosen plan.

Integration-wise, Goodcall supports calendars, CRMs, Zapier, and Google Sheets.

Goodcall can handle inbound calls and tries to resolve customers’ queries. If it is not able to, it transfers to your business line by default, with the option to configure it to a specific person or department.

Front Desk is the best pick for local businesses such as retail, therapy, real estate, legal, automotive, and accounting.

I tried their demo account, which offers access to the backend with demo credits (300 credits). You can also use its 7-day free trial to further test it.

Frontdesk offers scheduling with double-booking prevention. It also checks for availability by taking into account business hours and daily booking limits. To do so, it integrates with popular calendar apps including Google Calendar, Outlook, and Calendly.

It integrates well with CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, and others, so that all information with context gets logged automatically. 

Knowledge building starts the first time you spin up an AI agent. It reads your website and documents and builds the knowledge base. You can then refine its guardrails and playbooks. Furthermore, these AI receptionist agents work with unified memory, and conversations via all channels (voice, text, email, chat, and WhatsApp) are taken into account when dealing with customers.

If needed, Frontdesk can escalate to a human agent in real time with the full transcript.

Slang AI is the best pick for businesses in the hospitality industry. It helps restaurants and restaurant groups maximize bookings by answering every inbound call 24/7.

It answers guest queries, cross-sells other locations if one location is full (premium feature), and offers custom VIP call routing to direct staff for a seamless experience. If Slang AI can’t handle a request, it forwards the call to a staff member or texts the guest your contact details.

Slang AI is customizable, with the option to set custom greetings, responses, and voices. 

Integration-wise, it supports major restaurant platforms including OpenTable, SevenRooms, and Yelp, with Tripleseat available as an add-on for private events. This keeps the reservation pipeline smooth with proper text confirmations.

Slang AI is purposely built for restaurant businesses, unlike other entries in our list.

Rosie AI answering service is aimed at small businesses that want a 24/7 AI receptionist for their customers.

Rosie offers appointment booking (Scale plan and above) and answers FAQs, with an easy option to escalate when needed. Each call is properly documented and easily available via the dashboard.

It learns directly from your site and Google Business Profile, with an additional option to add custom FAQs when needed. However, more customization and custom agent training are locked behind its Growth plan.

It connects to Google Calendar and Calendly on the Scale plan and above, and Zapier extends it to 1,000+ apps. 

Rosie offers two types of escalation: warm transfers, where it briefs your team before connecting (Scale plan and above), and waterfall transfers that try backup numbers (Growth plan).

Dialpad AI Receptionist is an AI receptionist that handles high inbound call volume, especially for those already on the Dialpad platform.

The AI Receptionist handles calls, and Dialpad’s wider AI Agents platform extends to chat and SMS.

In my research, I found that the Dialpad AI Receptionist can book appointments directly. The wider AI Agents platform can also check order status and reset passwords.

You can create the AI receptionist via their no-code builder. It also offers the ability to configure via plain language. For advanced users, Dialpad offers Agent Studio that lets you do Skill Mining, helping in finding automation opportunities in past call data.

For escalation, it provides full context to the human agent, including a complete transcript.

If your business has an audience from around the world, then CloudTalk is a great pick, as it offers 70+ languages and accents. 

However, it only supports a voice channel. With CloudTalk, you can let customers book appointments via calendar integration, route calls, and screen and qualify leads. It also works with CRMs (HubSpot, Salesforce) to log caller details.

The CloudTalk AI receptionist learns from content on your site and FAQs. It is also capable of escalating calls with full context.

If your business wants tailored voice agents, then Retell AI is for you. It allows teams to create custom voice agents via its no-code studio. For more technical teams, it also has usable APIs and SDKs. 

Retell AI supports multiple conversation channels, including voice, web, in-app chat, and SMS.

You can choose all the components of your AI agent, including LLM (GPT, Claude, etc.), Text-to-Speech (Retell Platform Voices, Fish Voices, etc.), and Telephony (Custom Telephony or Retell Twilio/Telnyx).

As for escalation, it supports agentic human handoffs.

GoTo Connect is another 24/7 smart assistant. I recommend it to small businesses as it includes the necessary features, such as automating tasks, resolving customer queries, and escalating if there is a need (urgency or inability to resolve customers’ problems).

In the demo I heard, the voice was clear but sounded somewhat robotic. Setting up GoTo Connect involves uploading existing documents and setting up question-and-answer pairs.

Integration-wise, it is part of the GoTo platform, which makes it easy for CRM syncs and directory transfers. Hand-offs are done with full context. It also supports a “transfer by name” feature where callers say an employee’s name and get connected.

AIRA is a budget-friendly option for service businesses including HVAC, roofing, and auto repair. 

AIRA offers a 24/7 AI workforce that can handle customer queries, send booking links, do lead qualification, and call routing. It uses its built-in CRM and lead pipeline. You also get the option to use other CRM software, including HubSpot and Salesforce.

With AIRA, you can get your AI receptionist live in ten minutes (as claimed by them) as it learns from your website information, including services, operational hours, FAQs, and most importantly, brand voice.

AIRA offers call escalation on all plans if the AI receptionist cannot resolve the customer’s queries or problem.