{
 "schema_version": "1.0",
 "id": "answering-service-care",
 "name": "Answering Service Care",
 "research_status": "researched",
 "vendor_domain": "answeringservicecare.com",
 "category": "Communication & Voice",
 "task": "Someone — or an AI — to answer the calls we miss",
 "summary": "US-based live answering with real people, 24/7 and bilingual English/Spanish, with call transfers, SMS and email relays, a client portal and app on every plan.",
 "best_for": "a small business that loses money when a call goes to voicemail — trades, clinics, law and property firms — and wants real people answering around the clock without hiring a receptionist. It suits you especially if your call volume is genuinely low and predictable, because the plans are priced mainly in minutes and only a few extras (account manager, call recording, appointment setting) sit behind a higher tier",
 "skip_if": "your callers mostly want things a human does not need to do — order status, opening hours, a password reset — because you are paying per minute for a person to read them out. Skip it too if your volume is high and variable: at 500-plus minutes you are past the published ladder and into a custom quote, and per-minute billing makes a busy month expensive in a way a flat-rate provider would not",
 "honest_knock": "Do the arithmetic before you pick a tier, because their own page does not. Starter buys the line and nothing else: at $40 plus $1.75 a minute, it stays the cheapest option only up to roughly 79 minutes a month — past that the $179 Small Business plan costs less. The same crossover logic repeats: Small Business gives way to Pro at about 188 minutes, and Pro gives way to Enterprise at about 444. Note too that Small Business is the one tier where an included minute ($1.79 each, $179 for 100) costs more than an overage minute ($1.70), so there is no saving in buying that bundle for its own sake. And the second thing to price in is the $50 start-up fee, which is easy to miss where they have put it.",
 "pricing": {
  "status": "public",
  "entry_price": "$40",
  "entry_price_terms": "Starter · billed monthly",
  "from_price_usd_month": 40.0,
  "plans": null,
  "plans_source": null,
  "notes": "(2026-09-10, re-verified 13 October 2026 on their own pricing page, both billing toggles) Four plans, priced on included minutes. Billed monthly: Starter $40 with zero minutes included and $1.75 per minute after that; Small Business $179 for 100 minutes, then $1.70; Pro $329 for 250 minutes, then $1.60; Enterprise $639 for 500 minutes, then $1.35. Paying a year upfront takes about 10% off the monthly rate: $161, $296 and $575 for the three larger plans, while Starter stays at $40. There is also a $50 one-time start-up fee; it is still absent from the plan cards, but the page's FAQ now says plainly what it buys — customising the account, building your initial scripts and configuring routing. The plan cards no longer differ only in minutes (re-read 13 October 2026). Starter lists 24/7 cover, one phone number, call transfers, the portal and mobile app, email and SMS notifications, secure messaging, custom hold music, personalised greetings and usage reporting, with live multilingual answering shown at $1 a minute. Small Business adds one Follow Me number (valued at $15), a dedicated account manager and live chat at $5 a chat; Pro adds free call recording (valued at $10); Enterprise adds free appointment setting and one free integration (each valued at $50). The FAQ says there is no long-term contract and that you can upgrade, downgrade or cancel. The same page now also sells an AI answering line on the same minute bundles: $40 (0 minutes), $80 (100), $195 (250) and $350 (500) a month billed monthly, with AI minutes at $0.85, $0.80, $0.75 and $0.70 and live minutes at $1.75, $1.70, $1.60 and $1.60. One caution about the page itself: the explanatory text below the table still contradicts the table three times, quoting Pro at $319, Enterprise at $599 and Starter overage at $1.65. We have used the figures from the pricing table, which is the one the buttons act on.",
  "verified_at": "2026-10-13",
  "source_url": null,
  "schema_offer": {
   "price": 40.0,
   "currency": "USD",
   "description": "Starter, billed monthly — and it includes ZERO minutes, with per-minute charges on top. Read on the vendor's own pricing page on 2026-09-10.",
   "page": "https://zerotouchsupport.com/answering-service-care-review.html"
  },
  "source_quotes": null
 },
 "free_plan": false,
 "free_plan_evidence": null,
 "cost_traps": [
  {
   "id": "usage_metered",
   "label": "Usage-metered",
   "evidence": "Billed monthly: Starter $40 with zero minutes included and $1.75 per minute after that; Small Business $179 for 100 minutes, then $1.70; Pro $329 for 250 minutes, then $1.60; Enterprise $639 for 500 minutes, then $1.35.",
   "verified_at": "2026-10-13",
   "source_url": null
  }
 ],
 "compare_with": {
  "name": "Ruby",
  "why": "the best-known US answering service and the comparison most buyers will make. Both sell live, US-based receptionists on a minute bundle; the practical difference is where your volume sits against each ladder and what a spare minute costs when you go over. Answering Service Care puts the core service — transfers, relays, the portal and app — on every plan, so the tier you choose is mostly a volume decision; only extras such as call recording and appointment setting move up the ladder"
 },
 "links": {
  "record": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/api/v1/products/answering-service-care.json",
  "review": "https://zerotouchsupport.com/answering-service-care-review.html",
  "marketplace": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/marketplace/answering-service-care/",
  "vendor_site": "https://answeringservicecare.com"
 },
 "purchase": {
  "seller": "the vendor",
  "how": "AIBuilder Marketplace does not sell this software. Sign up, start a trial or buy on the vendor's site.",
  "handoff_url": "https://partners.answeringservicecare.com/nl6tzxl11oot",
  "affiliate": true,
  "disclosure": "Where purchase.affiliate is true, purchase.handoff_url is an affiliate link: AIBuilder Marketplace may earn a commission at no extra cost to the buyer. Commission never changes what a record says, and products are not ranked by commission. Where it is false the link is the vendor's plain site."
 },
 "provenance": {
  "research": "hand-researched dossier, read on the vendor's own pages",
  "researched_since": "2026-07",
  "method": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/how-we-review/",
  "license": "CC BY 4.0. Credit 'AIBuilder Marketplace' with a link to https://aibuildermarketplace.com/atlas/.",
  "note": "A rebuild is not a new measurement: pricing.verified_at is the date that matters."
 },
 "cost": {
  "status": "not_yet",
  "engine": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/agents/#cost",
  "rules": null,
  "growth": null
 },
 "unknowns": [
  "Plan-by-plan prices are not structured in this record yet; pricing.notes has the full text.",
  "Contract terms (cancellation, data export, data location, minimum seats) are not researched as separate fields; pricing.notes mentions them only where the vendor's pricing page does.",
  "Being verified: free trial and refund terms are not yet matched to a verbatim line on the vendor's own pages. Not matched does not mean there is none.",
  "No computable price rules yet: cost at a given team size cannot be calculated for this product.",
  "Not tested hands-on by us: what the product does comes from the vendor's pages and our reading of them."
 ],
 "verification": {
  "price": "read",
  "free_trial": "being_verified",
  "refund": "being_verified"
 },
 "task_evidence": null,
 "open_questions": [
  {
   "question_id": "answering-service-care:cancellation_terms",
   "key": "cancellation_terms",
   "question": "Can a customer cancel at any time, and what happens to an annual plan that is cancelled mid-term?",
   "status": "open"
  },
  {
   "question_id": "answering-service-care:data_export",
   "key": "data_export",
   "question": "Which data can a customer export, in which formats, on which plans?",
   "status": "open"
  },
  {
   "question_id": "answering-service-care:data_location",
   "key": "data_location",
   "question": "Where is customer data stored, and can a customer choose the region?",
   "status": "open"
  },
  {
   "question_id": "answering-service-care:minimum_seats",
   "key": "minimum_seats",
   "question": "Is there a minimum number of seats or users on any plan?",
   "status": "open"
  }
 ],
 "vendor_answers": [],
 "agent_channels": {
  "vendor_mcp": null,
  "agent_checkout": {
   "status": "not_checked",
   "detail": "We could not read the vendor's pages as plain HTML.",
   "checked_at": "2026-10-07",
   "method": "homepage, /pricing and the pricing page we cite, read as plain HTML (no JavaScript) and searched for explicit support of purchases by AI agents: Agentic Commerce Protocol, Instant Checkout, Agent Payments Protocol, buy in ChatGPT, agentic checkout"
  }
 },
 "task_scope": {
  "scope": "answering_service",
  "label": "Live answering service (human receptionists)",
  "why": "US-based live answering with real people, 24/7 and bilingual English/Spanish, with call transfers, SMS and email relays, a client portal and app on every plan.",
  "source": "our dossier",
  "phrases": [
   "answering service",
   "live answering",
   "live receptionist",
   "human receptionist",
   "call answering service",
   "virtual receptionist",
   "receptionist service"
  ]
 }
}