Built-In AI Receptionists in Phone Systems vs a Voice Agent

A built-in AI receptionist is the quickest start inside a phone system you already pay for. A dedicated voice agent adds bookings in your own systems and lets you choose the models. Dograh, the open-source AI voice agent platform we build, answers behind any phone system through forwarding. You can self-host it or run it on Dograh Cloud.

Key Takeaways

• Only Webex publishes a price, $100 per 250 minutes and $115 per extra bundle.
• Zoom Phone and GoTo Connect sell their AI receptionists through sales.
• Forwarding keeps your phone system while your own agent answers.

This post is part of our guide to AI receptionists, where the first choice is renting a receptionist or owning the agent behind it. Here we compare the AI receptionists built into Webex, Zoom Phone, GoTo Connect and 3CX, then a dedicated voice agent behind the same phone system.

Four built-in receptionists in one table

Each phone system now sells an AI receptionist inside its own service, and each one bills it in a different unit. The table compares what each can do and how it charges, from the vendors' own pages, with a dedicated agent on Dograh in the last row.

Webex AI Receptionist

Webex publishes the most about its receptionist, including a price. Webex's AI Receptionist help article describes it as automating answering calls, responding to simple questions and transferring calls to a queue. It is an organisation-level add-on for Webex Calling Professional, Standard and Customer Assist, and for Webex Suite with Webex Calling.

Pricing comes in bundles. Webex's launch post says each AI Receptionist includes a 250-minute bundle for $100, extra 250-minute bundles are added automatically at $115 each, and minutes are pooled across all receptionists in the organisation. Admins can follow bundle use day by day in Control Hub.

The limits are worth reading before you buy. Prompts and templates are in English only, though the voices cover about a dozen languages. Business hours are set through an Auto Attendant in front of the receptionist, and transcripts are kept for up to 90 days. At launch, Webex listed appointment booking and lead capture as coming later, so check whether they are live on your account. It is also not available in some countries, India among them.

Zoom Phone's AI receptionist

Zoom pitches a receptionist that does more on the call. Zoom's phone page describes a 24/7 AI Receptionist that can greet callers, answer questions, book appointments and route callers to the right team. It invites Zoom Phone customers to add the receptionist to their existing service for free, and a footnote says the free trial is for existing Zoom Phone customers, so confirm what you pay once the trial ends.

You don't need Zoom Phone to use it. Zoom's receptionist plans include a "Receptionist with Any Phone" plan that works on any number, with 100 voice minutes included. That page shows no prices, so ask Zoom's sales team for one.

So Zoom is a strong fit for a business already on Zoom Phone that wants booking on the call, and a sales conversation for everyone else. Ask which calendar systems it books into and what an add-on minute costs before you compare it.

Open Source Alternative to Vapi / Retell

Self-hosted voice agent platform — no per-minute fees

dograh-hq/dograh

Star on GitHub

GoTo Connect and 3CX

GoTo sells its receptionist inside bundled plans. GoTo Connect's plans list "Phone System + AI Receptionist" and "CX Complete", each with 100 AIR credits included and more for purchase. The receptionist answers around the clock, captures caller details with email and text follow-up, and speaks several languages with a voice you can customise. Prices come from sales, and the page does not say what one credit covers, so ask whether it is a call, a minute or something else.

3CX takes a different approach. Its AI agents run on your own OpenAI or xAI Grok key, so the AI usage is billed by that provider at its own rates, on top of your 3CX licence. That gives you a direct view of model costs, but you only choose among the providers 3CX supports.

RingCentral sells a receptionist the same way, inside its own phone service or standalone. Our post on RingCentral AI Receptionist pricing prices a busy month on it.

A dedicated voice agent behind the same phone system

A built-in receptionist is the quickest start if you already pay for that phone system. A dedicated voice agent is the better route when the calls need bookings in your own systems or models you pick. Run on your own servers, it also keeps the call data there. You don't have to leave your phone system to get one.

The route is call forwarding. In Webex, Zoom, GoTo or 3CX, forward calls to a number on a provider Dograh connects to, such as Twilio or Telnyx, and set your agent as that number's inbound workflow. Callers still dial your usual number. A phone system that speaks SIP can instead send calls over a SIP trunk to the Managed SIP domain Dograh Cloud gives each organisation.

The agent can then act on the call. An HTTP API tool books or looks up records in your own calendar or practice system mid-call, and Pre-Call Data Fetch can pull the caller's record before the greeting. When a caller needs a person, Transfer Call dials a staff member's direct number while the caller hears hold music and connects once that person answers. You bring your own keys for any speech-to-text, language model and voice, or run open models on your own servers, and every call has a full trace and built-in QA.

Here is one worked example, a month of 600 minutes. On Webex it takes three bundles, $100 + $115 + $115 = $330, assuming the first bundle costs $100 and the next two $115 each. Zoom and GoTo need a quote, and 3CX adds your OpenAI or Grok bill to its licence. On Dograh Cloud, using the per-minute build-up from our RingCentral pricing post, about $0.0475 a minute with Twilio, Deepgram and gpt-4.1-mini, the month is 600 x $0.0475 = $28.50 plus $1.15 for the number, before whatever your phone system bills for the forwarded leg.

Self-hosted Dograh has no per-minute platform fee, but servers, model keys and phone minutes still cost money. Dograh Cloud charges a 1¢-a-minute platform fee. Our roundup of the best AI receptionist software compares standalone receptionist products, and our tutorial on how to build an AI receptionist sets one up step by step.