Pay as you go answering service: $19 a month, then 50c a minute

Minutes are counted to the second across the month, not rounded up on every call. Your messages come by email, at no extra cost. That's the whole bill: no setup fee, no after-hours surcharge, no per-message fee.

Want your messages by text as well? That's your choice. Switch texts on in Settings and each text is 15c; switch them off again any time. Leave them off and you never pay for a text.

At about 60 minutes of calls a month, Essentials comes to $49, the same as Starter. Starter includes 60 minutes and 60 texts and books jobs straight into your calendar, so past that point it's the better buy. If a bigger plan would have cost you less, we tell you; moving is your choice.

The traditional pay-as-you-go answering services charge by the call. When we checked their published pricing on 24 August 2026, a typical service charged a monthly fee of $25 to $49 plus GST and $2.60 to $4.00 a call for taking a message, with diary booking sold separately.

At 25 calls a month that comes to roughly $99 to $164 with GST added, our arithmetic on their numbers. On Giday Essentials the same 25 calls are about $34, GST in.

What a human service does better: a person handles a long, emotional or messy call better than any AI. If most of your calls are like that, a human service is worth the money. If most of your calls are "are you open Saturday?" and "can someone ring me back about a quote?", you're paying human rates for message-taking. There's a fuller comparison on Giday vs a human service.

• Answers in your business's name, 24/7, in a natural Australian voice, with "on a recorded line" in the greeting.
• Answers from what you've taught it: your services, hours and published prices. Anything it doesn't know, it takes as a message rather than guessing.
• Takes a proper message (name, number and what it's about) and emails it to you straight away. Urgent ones come as a priority message.
• Takes more than one call at once. No hold, no queue.
• Screens out telemarketers and robocalls so they never become messages.
• Tells callers it's a virtual receptionist the moment they ask.

What Essentials doesn't do: book jobs into your calendar, text your customers a confirmation, or put urgent callers through to you. Those start on Starter at $49 a month, which also includes 60 texts. Every plan is on the pricing page.

• The sole trader whose phone rings a few times a day and who just needs to know who rang and why.
• The side business, or the business that's quiet most of the year.
• Anyone who misses calls now and then and wants them answered properly instead of going to voicemail.

If you're booked out and the phone rings all day, look at Starter or Steady on the pricing page instead.

You don't change your number. Divert it to your Giday number, either just the calls you miss or every call, and undo it the same way whenever you like. The codes for Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and NBN phones are in the divert guide, and the whole setup is on how Giday works.

60 minutes of call time on us, for a week. A card goes on file, nothing is charged, and the clock only starts when your receptionist answers its first call. Do nothing when the week ends and it simply ends, uncharged.