A missed call from a homeowner with a leaking water heater is worth whatever that job would have paid. Say $1,400. If you miss four of those a month because you were under a sink, on a ladder, or driving with the radio up, you just lost $5,600 in potential revenue â more than most contractors spend on phones in five years.
Thatâs the whole argument. Your phone setup isnât a tech decision, itâs a lead-capture decision. Hereâs how the five realistic options compare.
The five setups
| Setup | Monthly cost | Who answers at 2 p.m. | Texting | Call recording |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personal cell only | $0 extra | Nobody, or you | Yes, personal number | No |
| Google Voice (personal) | $0 | Nobody | Yes | Inbound only, awkward |
| Google Voice for Workspace | ~$10â20/user | Nobody | Yes | Yes (admin setting) |
| VoIP business line (OpenPhone, Dialpad, RingCentral) | ~$15â30/user | Nobody, but auto-text fires | Yes, shared inbox | Yes |
| Live answering service | ~$150â400 | A human | Usually yes, varies | Usually yes |
Costs move around, and every one of these vendors changes pricing. Check current rates before you commit. But the tiers hold: free, cheap, cheap-plus-features, and real money for a human.
Option 1: Your personal cell
Cost: nothing. Thatâs the whole upside.
The downsides stack up fast. Customers have your personal number forever, including the guy who calls at 9:40 p.m. about a quote from 2023. You canât hand the number to a helper or an answering service later without re-training every past customer. You canât record calls. You canât see which calls came from your Google profile versus a yard sign. And when you sell the business â or just want to go to your kidâs game â thereâs no off switch.
If youâre six months in and broke, this is fine. Set a calendar reminder to upgrade.
The one thing you must do if youâre on personal cell: turn on voicemail with a real greeting that says when youâll call back, and actually call back within the hour. âThe number you have reachedâ is a hangup.
Option 2: Google Voice, free personal version
A second number, free, rings to your cell. Voicemail transcription thatâs about 80% accurate. Texting. Blocking.
What it doesnât do: itâs not licensed for business use under Googleâs terms on the free consumer tier, it has no call recording youâd want to rely on, no shared inbox, and no auto-reply when you miss a call. If you add a helper, thereâs no clean way to share the line.
Itâs a good separation-of-numbers tool. Itâs a bad business phone system.
Option 3: Google Voice on Workspace
If youâre already paying for Google Workspace for email (and you should be â a @yourname.com email beats @gmail.com with homeowners), adding Voice is cheap. You get a legitimate business number, basic call routing, voicemail transcription to email, and recording if you enable it.
Still no shared team inbox worth much, weak automation, and texting is functional but plain. For a solo operator who mostly wants a business number and transcripts in their inbox, itâs a fine landing spot.
Option 4: A real VoIP business line
This is where most one-to-five person shops should end up. OpenPhone, Dialpad, RingCentral, Grasshopper â the feature sets differ at the edges but the core is the same:
- A business number that rings on your cell and your helperâs
- Shared inbox so you both see every text thread
- Automatic text-back when a call goes unanswered â the single highest-ROI feature on this list
- Call recording
- Business hours routing (after 8 p.m., straight to voicemail)
- Call tagging so you can tell which marketing source produced which call
That auto text-back is the thing. A homeowner calls, youâre on a roof, the call drops to voicemail, and six seconds later they get: âHi, this is Dave at Daveâs Plumbing. Iâm on a job right now. Reply here with your address and whatâs going on and Iâll get back to you within the hour.â Most people will text. We broke the full setup down in Missed-Call Text-Back: Stop Losing Leads in 20 Minutes.
At $20/month, a VoIP line pays for itself if it saves you one job per year. It will save you more than one job per month.
Option 5: A live answering service
Now the real money. A human picks up in your company name, gathers the details, and either schedules the appointment in your calendar or texts you a summary.
Pricing usually works one of three ways:
| Model | Typical structure | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Per minute | ~$1.00â$2.00/min, billed in increments | Chatty callers; wrong numbers still bill |
| Per call | ~$5â$12 per answered call | Spam calls counted as calls |
| Flat tier | ~$150â$400 for X minutes or calls | Overage rates, annual contracts |
Trade-specific services (the ones that answer only for HVAC, plumbing, electrical) cost more and are worth more, because the operator can ask whether the breakerâs tripped instead of reading a script. Generic services are cheaper and sometimes audibly generic, which customers notice.
Before signing anything, ask:
- Can I get a recording of every call?
- Do you bill for spam, wrong numbers, and existing-customer calls?
- Can you book directly into my scheduling software, or only text me?
- Whatâs the escalation rule for an emergency?
- Whatâs the cancellation notice â 30 days or a year?
The break-even math on a $300/month service
Hereâs the arithmetic that decides it. You need three numbers.
Number one: how many calls you actually miss. Pull the last 90 days of call logs on your phone. Count inbound calls from numbers you didnât recognize that you didnât answer. Divide by three for a monthly average. Most solo contractors whoâve never checked are shocked â 15 to 40 missed inbound calls a month is common in a busy season.
Number two: what share of those are real leads. Subtract spam, suppliers, and repeat customers calling to chat. In most trades, somewhere between a third and half of unrecognized missed calls are a genuine new job inquiry. Use your own log, not my guess.
Number three: your close rate and average job value. You should already know both. If you donât, job costing will give you the average ticket in about fifteen minutes.
Now run it. Example numbers for a residential electrician:
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Missed inbound calls per month | 24 |
| Share that are real new leads | 40% â 9.6 leads |
| Leads already recovered by your own callback | 50% â 4.8 recovered |
| Leads genuinely lost today | 4.8/month |
| Serviceâs realistic recovery rate | 70% â 3.4 recovered |
| Your close rate on recovered leads | 35% â 1.2 jobs |
| Average job gross profit (not revenue) | $650 |
| Added gross profit per month | ~$780 |
| Service cost | $300 |
| Net | +$480/month |
Two things that break this math in the other direction.
The first is using revenue instead of gross profit. A $2,000 job with $900 in materials and $600 in labor doesnât give you $2,000 to spend on answering. Use whatâs left after direct costs.
The second is the recovery rate youâd have hit anyway. If you reliably call every missed number back within thirty minutes, the service is only recovering the handful who already hired someone else in that window. A $20 auto-text-back line captures most of that for a tenth of the price.
The answering service wins when your average job gross profit is high, your volume of inbound calls is high, or you genuinely cannot get to the phone â commercial service work, emergency trades, anybody on a roof or in a crawlspace all day. It loses when you do two $400 jobs a week and can check your phone between them.
Run the table with your own numbers. If net is under about $200/month, skip it and buy the VoIP line.
What to do about texting
Whatever you pick, texting has to work on the business number. Homeowners under 45 would rather text, and a text thread is a written record â useful when a dispute starts, same as your jobsite photos.
Two rules:
- Donât run business texts through your personal number. You lose the record when you change phones, and you canât hand it off.
- Keep estimates out of text. Text to confirm, schedule, and send photos. Send the actual number in a real written estimate.
A note on call recording and the law
Recording rules vary by state. Some states require only one partyâs consent â you. Others require all parties to consent, which means a disclosure at the start of the call. A few have rules that differ for calls crossing state lines.
Most VoIP and answering services can play an automated âthis call may be recordedâ greeting. Turn it on. It costs you nothing, it covers you in all-party states, and in practice it makes some callers more polite. Check your own stateâs rule before you turn on recording without a disclosure.
Picking in 60 seconds
- Under $75k revenue, solo, low call volume: Google Voice on Workspace, business hours set, voicemail that actually gets returned.
- $75kâ$400k, solo or with a helper, normal call volume: VoIP line with missed-call text-back. This is the right answer for most readers.
- High-ticket, emergency, or commercial work where you physically cannot answer: VoIP line plus an answering service, after youâve run the break-even table.
- Any of the above where youâre losing quoted jobs to silence: fix your follow-up system before you spend another dollar on answering. Capturing a lead and then dropping it is more expensive than missing it.
Your next step
Open your phoneâs call log right now and count missed inbound calls from unknown numbers over the last 30 days. That one number tells you whether youâre reading this as a $20/month problem or a $300/month problem. Everything else follows from it.