Methodology: how we get our numbers

A calculator site is only worth using if its inputs are honest. Here is exactly where ours come from, and what we refuse to publish.

Statistics

Caller behaviour: CallRail 2025 survey of 1,000 US consumers — 82% will call a competitor if a business does not answer; 78% have abandoned a business after an unanswered call; 42% leave a voicemail.
Missed-call rates and booking rates: ServiceTitan reporting and platform data — 18% of home-services calls unanswered on weekdays, 41% at weekends; typical call-to-booked-job rate 42% (plumbing 43%, electrical 41%, HVAC 38%).
Job values: Angi 2026 cost guides — HVAC repair average about $350, replacement about $7,500, roof replacement average $9,609, water-heater replacement $1,348, emergency plumber about $170/hour.
Wages: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025 — receptionist median $38,010/year, $18.27/hour. Loaded cost uses a 1.25 employer-burden multiplier, stated on the calculator.
After-hours demand: NextPhone's published analysis of ~1.45 million calls — 28.5% of calls outside business hours, 34.8% of those with buying intent. This is vendor data and is labelled as such wherever we use it.

Statistics we will not use

"85% of callers never call back" — no verifiable primary source. "80% never leave a voicemail" — traces to an unattributed 2014 opinion piece; the best current evidence says 58% do not leave one. "$126,000 lost per year" — vendor-blog folklore. "62% of calls unanswered" — a January 2016 study of 85 businesses, quoted only with its date and sample. If you find a number on this site without a source, tell us via the contact page and we will fix or remove it.

Pricing

Vendor prices were checked against public pricing pages and reputable roundups in October 2026 and are labelled "prices checked Oct 2026". Vendors change pricing frequently and sources sometimes conflict — Smith.ai's AI tiers were listed two different ways in the same month — so our cost calculator shows ranges where that happens and tells you to verify before buying. We re-check pricing quarterly.

Money

This site is free to use. We earn through affiliate commissions when readers buy through some links, disclosed on our affiliate disclosure page, and in future through advertising clearly labelled as such. Affiliate relationships never change a calculator's maths, and the cheapest result is highlighted by the formula, not by commission.