The voice is the easy part. The number, the law and the per-minute bill decide it.
An AI receptionist in Australia is decided by whether it holds an Australian number, what it costs per call or minute, and whether its recording and follow-up stay inside the Spam Act, the Do Not Call Register rules and state recording law. Five services compared on published pricing. We have built voice on one platform, not a receptionist product.
Read this first: what we have built, and what we have not
We have built inbound call handling on GoHighLevel, which bundles phone numbers and a Voice AI feature, and we have wired Twilio numbers into automations. We have not implemented against Sophiie, Smith.ai, Dialzara or My AI Front Desk; they are described from their own published pages, read on 3 September 2026.
A missed call is the most expensive leak in most trade businesses and the easiest one to sell software for, which is exactly why this page leads with the rules rather than the demo. An AI receptionist is a telemarketer, a recorder and a data collector in one product, and each of those has a regulator.
If your missed calls are during hours and you have someone in the office, the cheapest fix is a call-forward and a training conversation, which we do not sell. If they are after hours or while you are on the tools, read on.
The rules an AI receptionist has to obey in Australia
These are published and they are the durable part of this page. Check each against the product on the demo, not against the brochure.
- #1Its follow-up texts are commercial electronic messagesUnder the Spam Act 2003, every SMS or email the receptionist sends after the call needs consent, accurate identification of your business and a working unsubscribe honoured within 5 working days and functional for at least 30 days after sending (ACMA, avoid sending spam). A caller asking for a quote gives inferred consent to follow up about that quote — not to a campaign.
- #2If it calls out, the Do Not Call Register appliesA receptionist that "calls the customer back" is making a telemarketing call if the purpose is commercial. At 30 June 2023 the Register held 12.49 million numbers — 6.26 million mobile, 5.83 million fixed (Do Not Call Register statistics). A callback to a customer who rang you first is generally within consent; a cold call to a scraped list is not.
- #3Outbound calls have hoursThe Telecommunications (Telemarketing and Research Calls) Industry Standard prohibits telemarketing calls on a weekday before 9am or after 8pm, on a Saturday before 9am or after 5pm, on a Sunday at all, and on national public holidays, and requires the caller to give the individual’s given name, the business name and the purpose of the call at the start (Industry Standard 2017). A bot that calls back at 8:15pm is a breach.
- #4Recording in Queensland: a party may record, but may not pass it on freelySection 43 of the Invasion of Privacy Act 1971 (Qld) makes it an offence to use a listening device to record a private conversation, with a maximum of 40 penalty units or two years, except where the person using the device is a party to the conversation. Section 45 separately restricts communicating or publishing that recording without consent (Invasion of Privacy Act 1971 (Qld)). Your receptionist is a party. Your CRM, your bookkeeper and the vendor’s training pipeline are not. Other states have their own surveillance devices Acts and the party exception is not universal; check yours.
- #5The Privacy Act may or may not apply to you — it applies to the vendorThe Privacy Act binds organisations with annual turnover over $3 million, plus exceptions such as health providers and businesses that trade in personal information (OAIC). Most trades sit under it. The vendor holding your recordings usually does not, so ask where the recordings live and how long.
Five services, on what they publish
Published pricing as at 3 September 2026. Currency is stated where the vendor states it. Note that only one of the five is Australian, and that its pricing page does not name the currency on the page we read.
- #1Sophiie — the Australian one, built for trades, priced per callFree with no calls; $99 a month for 30 calls and 300 SMS; $299 for 500 calls and 2,500 SMS; $819 for 2,500 calls and 10,000 SMS; native integrations and full API on paid tiers (Sophiie pricing — currency and GST not stated on the page). Founded 2024 on the Gold Coast, 1,600-plus customers (about); Sophiie AI Pty Ltd, adopts the Australian Privacy Principles, collects voice recordings and transcripts, and states it will not disclose personal information outside Australia except in listed cases (privacy policy). ServiceM8, Simpro, Zapier and QuickBooks named as integrations. Documented, not implemented. The constraint: confirm the currency, the GST and where recordings are hosted before you sign.
- #2GoHighLevel Voice AI — the one we have built against, priced in US dollars plus usagePlatform from US$97 a month; Voice AI, calling, SMS and phone numbers are "usage based charges" on top, described on the pricing page as including charges for phone numbers, SMS, emails and premium AI (HighLevel pricing). Phone numbers are provisioned inside the platform and billed as usage. Implemented — integration page. The constraint: it is a platform you configure, not a receptionist you switch on, and the per-minute rate is not on the public page.
- #3Smith.ai — human-backed receptionists, US dollars, priced per callUS$300 a month for 30 calls with US$11.50 a call over; US$810 for 90; US$2,100 for 300; "no overseas agents", North America-based (Smith.ai pricing). Australian numbers not addressed on the page. Documented, not implemented. The constraint: roughly three times the per-call price of the Australian AI option, for a human.
- #4Dialzara — the cheapest per-minute entry, US dollarsUS$29 a month for 60 minutes and US$0.48 a minute over; US$99 for 220 minutes; US$199 for 500; US$349 for 1,000 at US$0.35 over; 7-day trial (Dialzara pricing). Australian numbers and company location not stated. Documented, not implemented. The constraint: minutes, not calls — a chatty caller costs you more.
- #5My AI Front Desk — bundled with a CRM, US dollars, minutes on the middle tierUS$20 a month with no voice minutes; US$99 for 200 minutes bundled with chat, SMS, a CRM and sequences; overage at 25 credits a minute where a credit is US$0.01 (pricing). Australian numbers not stated. Documented, not implemented. The constraint: the bundled CRM is a second list for your leads to live in.
What a call actually costs, underneath the subscription
Every AI receptionist sits on a telephony provider, and that provider’s prices are the floor. Twilio publishes an Australian local number at $3.00 a month, inbound calls at $0.0100 a minute and outbound local calls at $0.0252 a minute, in AUD (Twilio, Australia voice pricing, read 3 September 2026).
So a three-minute inbound call costs about three cents to carry. What you are paying the receptionist vendor for is the model, the integration and the margin. Dialzara’s US$0.35 to US$0.48 a minute and Sophiie’s roughly $3.30 a call on the entry plan are the price of not building it yourself, and for most trades that is a fair trade. We build on GoHighLevel when a business already runs it; we would not build a receptionist from Twilio up for a four-person business, and we would say so on the call.
What to test on the demo, in order
Ring it from a mobile at 7pm with a real job — a blocked drain, a flat battery, a fascia sign — and see whether it books, quotes or just takes a message. Then hang up mid-sentence and see what it texts you.
Then ask the vendor five things: what number the customer sees and whether it is yours; where the recording is stored and for how long; whether the follow-up SMS carries an unsubscribe; whether it ever calls out and, if so, what stops it at 8pm; and how the booking lands in your job system. ServiceM8 and Simpro are the two we can vouch for on that last one.
If it fails the first test, the price does not matter. If it passes, after-hours describes what we would build around it, and a Leak Check is where we would count the missed calls first.
What this page does not do
It does not rank. We have built voice on one platform and it is not a receptionist product. Four of the five are described from their pricing pages.
It does not tell you the Australian option is best because it is Australian. Sophiie’s pricing page did not state its currency or GST treatment on the day we read it, and its privacy policy describes recordings without saying how a caller is told. Those are questions, not verdicts.
And it is not legal advice. The Spam Act, the Do Not Call Register, the Industry Standard and the Queensland Act are linked above; read them, and if you operate outside Queensland, check your own state’s recording law before you switch anything on.
The questions people actually ask.
01Do I have to tell callers they are being recorded?
In Queensland, a party to the conversation may record it under section 43(2)(a) of the Invasion of Privacy Act, and the receptionist is acting as your party. Passing the recording on is restricted by section 45. Other states have their own surveillance devices Acts and do not all carry the same party exception. Most vendors play a disclosure regardless, and we would too; it costs three seconds and removes the question. This is not legal advice.
02Is an AI callback a telemarketing call?
If its purpose is to sell or book paid work, the ACMA treats it as a telemarketing call and the Do Not Call Register and the calling-hours standard apply. A callback to someone who rang you first is generally within consent, but the hours still apply, so the bot must not ring back at 8:15pm on a Tuesday or at all on a Sunday. Ask the vendor what enforces that, and ask to see the setting.
03Why not just use ServiceM8 Phone or a human answering service?
ServiceM8 Phone from $29 a month turns a missed call into a job card without any AI, and for a lot of businesses that is enough. A human service such as Smith.ai costs around US$10 a call and is better at a distressed caller. The AI options sit between, at roughly $3 a call or 40 US cents a minute. Count your missed calls for a fortnight before you pick; most people guess high.
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