Why compare legal answering services at all?
Law firms compare answering services because an unanswered call is often a lost client. In a survey by the ABA Law Practice Division, researchers posing as prospective clients called hundreds of law firms, and 32 percent of the calls went straight to voicemail, according to Lawyers Mutual of North Carolina (2019). Fewer than 10 percent of callers got to speak with a lawyer.
The services that close that gap work in different ways. Some put a live receptionist on every call. Some use AI, some a mix. Call Della is an after-hours intake specialist: Della, an AI, answers personal injury, criminal defense and immigration calls at night, on weekends and on holidays, and turns each one into a dossier by morning. The right choice depends on your practice area, your hours and what you want on your desk the next day. These pages set the options side by side so a firm can decide on facts.
Which criteria does each comparison use?
Every comparison in this section uses the same ten criteria, so the pages can be read against each other. Each criterion is a question a managing partner would ask before signing.
- Who answers: a live person, an AI, or a mix.
- Hours covered: 24/7, business hours, or after hours only.
- Published price: what the provider lists on its own site.
- Minutes or calls included: the allowance in each plan, and whether it counts calls or minutes.
- Overage: the price of each call or minute past the allowance.
- Legal intake depth: message-taking, screening, or a full practice-specific intake.
- Urgent-call handling: live transfer, alert, or message.
- Integrations: which practice-management and CRM systems the service connects to.
- Spanish: whether it is offered, at what cost, and during which hours.
- Contract terms: month-to-month or longer, trials, and setup fees.
Call Della's column always comes from its own plan configuration, the same source as the Call Della pricing page. Competitor facts come only from competitor sites, never from review sites.
How do Smith.ai, Answering Legal, Posh and Ruby compare with Call Della?
The summary table sets all four providers beside Call Della. On a phone, the table scrolls sideways inside its frame. Each competitor fact links to its source page, read on October 25, 2026.
| Criterion | Call Della | Smith.ai | Answering Legal | Posh | Ruby |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who answers | AI. Della is an AI intake specialist and tells callers so if asked | Your choice of human-first (live receptionists), AI-first or hybrid (smith.ai/pricing/receptionists) | Live, U.S.-based receptionists who answer only for lawyers (answeringlegal.com) | Live, U.S.-based receptionists, with optional AI-enabled plans that mix AI and live answering (posh.com/ai) | Live receptionists ("100% live"), with AI-assisted call flows and transcripts (ruby.com/plans-and-pricing) |
| Hours covered | Nights, weekends and holidays (after hours only) | 24/7, or only the hours you set (smith.ai/pricing/receptionists) | 24/7/365 (answeringlegal.com) | 24/7/365, or on demand when you choose (posh.com/faqs) | 24/7, including after hours, weekends and holidays (ruby.com/plans-and-pricing) |
| Published price | $329/month (Solo), $598/month (Practice), Group custom | Human-first: $300, $810 or $2,100/month, Enterprise custom. AI-first: free, $150 or $500/month. Hybrid presets from $2.50 per call (smith.ai/pricing/receptionists) | Not published. Prices are shown after you submit a contact form (answeringlegal.com/answering-service-pricing-plans) | Live plans from $65/month to $1,900/month (prices effective 1 January 2026) (posh.com/pricing) | $250, $395, $720 or $1,725/month; larger plans through sales (ruby.com/plans-and-pricing) |
| Minutes or calls included | 300 minutes (Solo), 600 minutes (Practice), Group custom | Human-first: 30, 90 or 300 calls. AI-first: 25 calls free, 75 calls on Pro, 300 calls on Enterprise (smith.ai/pricing/ai-receptionist) | Not published. Free trial of 400 minutes, no credit card required (answeringlegal.com) | From 0 to 1,000 receptionist minutes, for example 100 minutes for $215 or 500 minutes for $975 (posh.com/pricing) | 50, 100, 200 or 500 receptionist minutes (ruby.com/plans-and-pricing) |
| Overage | $0.50 per minute | Human-first: $11.50, $10.50 or $8.50 per call over plan. AI-first free tier: $3.00 per call after 25 (smith.ai/pricing/receptionists) | Not published (answeringlegal.com/answering-service-pricing-plans) | $1.90 to $2.30 per additional live minute; AI-enabled plans charge about half that for AI minutes ($1.10 on Vogue AI) (posh.com/ai) | Not published on the pricing page (ruby.com/plans-and-pricing) |
| Legal intake depth | Practice-specific intake for personal injury, criminal defense and immigration only. Every call becomes a dossier with summary, urgency score, recording and transcript | Lead screening, qualification and intake on every plan; practice-specific legal intake and conflict checks listed for law firms (smith.ai/industries/legal-law-firms-answering-service) | Custom legal intake for every new client caller, with first-stage intake and warm transfers (answeringlegal.com) | Customized legal intake on your practice areas; supports your internal conflict check process (posh.com/industry/attorney-answering-service) | Lead qualification and intake, with the information collected set by you; scheduling and payment collection (ruby.com/industries/legal) |
| Urgent-call handling | Urgent-call email alerts to the attorney on call, plus a morning brief by 7am in your time zone | Live transfers to set destinations (1, 2 or 10 free by plan, $15/month per extra destination) (smith.ai/pricing/receptionists) | Transfers callers to you, pending your availability; detailed message after every call (answeringlegal.com) | Transfers when you set your status to "Accepting Transfers" in the Posh app (posh.com/faqs) | No specific urgent-call process published; personalized call handling, call forwarding, app and email notifications (ruby.com/plans-and-pricing) |
| Integrations | CRM webhook on the Group plan only. No native Clio, MyCase or other practice-management integration | First CRM free, $0.50 per call for each additional CRM. Names Clio, HubSpot, Salesforce and Zapier (smith.ai/pricing/receptionists) | 76 integrations, with direct ones for Clio Grow, MyCase, Lead Docket, Lawmatics, Smokeball, PracticePanther and Zapier (answeringlegal.com/integrations) | Via the Posh portal. Names Rocket Matter, Calendly, Acuity Scheduling and Zapier, and covers Clio set-up in its FAQ (posh.com/faqs) | Native Clio integration; also lists 8am MyCase, Lawmatics, HubSpot and Zapier-powered connections (ruby.com/solutions/integrations) |
| Spanish | Spanish on immigration intake only | Dedicated Spanish line add-on, $1.00 per call (smith.ai/pricing/receptionists) | English or Spanish, U.S.-based bilingual staff (answeringlegal.com) | English and Spanish guaranteed at no extra charge, Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm Eastern; outside those hours when a bilingual receptionist is available (posh.com/faqs) | 24/7 Spanish and bilingual call handling available (ruby.com/plans-and-pricing) |
| Contract terms | Month-to-month, no setup fee | Month-to-month. 30-day money-back guarantee for new clients, up to $1,000, overage excluded (smith.ai/pricing/receptionists) | No long-term contracts, no setup fees (answeringlegal.com/answering-service-pricing-plans) | Month-to-month. Free trial of 7 days or 250 minutes, whichever comes first (posh.com/pricing) | Contract length not published; no activation, onboarding or setup fees (ruby.com/plans-and-pricing) |
Which comparison should you read?
Read the comparison for the provider you use now or are weighing. Each page covers pricing in detail, when the competitor is the better fit, when Call Della is, and how each handles an urgent call at night.
- Smith.ai alternative: Smith.ai offers human-first, AI-first and hybrid answering for any business, priced per call. It suits firms that want live receptionists, daytime coverage or a Clio integration.
- Answering Legal reviews and pricing: Answering Legal has live, U.S.-based receptionists who answer only for lawyers, 24/7, with direct links to Clio Grow, Lead Docket and MyCase. Prices are not published.
- Posh virtual receptionist: Posh has live receptionists in Virginia Beach and optional AI-enabled plans, priced per minute from a low entry plan. It does not record calls.
- Ruby receptionist alternative: Ruby has live receptionists for phone and website chat, priced per minute, with a native Clio integration. Its pricing page does not publish overage or contract length.
When is a receptionist service a better fit than Call Della?
A receptionist service is the better fit when a firm needs daytime coverage, live humans on complex or sensitive calls, a practice area outside personal injury, criminal defense and immigration, or a ready-made practice-management integration. All four providers compared here answer 24/7 with live staff options, and Smith.ai, Answering Legal, Posh and Ruby each list Clio or other legal software integrations on their own sites.
Call Della covers nights, weekends and holidays only. It offers a CRM webhook on the Group plan and no native Clio or MyCase integration. Della takes Spanish calls on immigration intake only. A family law or estate planning firm, a firm that wants one vendor for day and night, or a firm whose existing clients call with case questions, will usually be better served by one of the four services above.
When is Call Della the better fit?
Call Della is the better fit when a firm practices personal injury, criminal defense or immigration, its own team covers business hours, and it wants every after-hours caller qualified rather than just greeted. Della runs the intake for that practice, scores urgency, emails an urgent-call alert to the attorney on call, and has the dossier and morning brief ready by 7am.
Every Call Della plan is published, month-to-month and free of setup fees, starting at $329 a month for 300 minutes. For a wider look at the choices, including voicemail and in-house night staff, see the after-hours intake options guide, and for how a call becomes a dossier, see how Call Della works.
If you practice personal injury, criminal defense or immigration, the quickest way to compare is to hear Della take a call. The demo takes 30 minutes: you hear a live Della call for your practice area and see the dossier it produces.
Questions about these comparisons
Who wrote these comparisons?
Call Della wrote every comparison in this section, and Call Della is one of the options compared. To keep them fair, every competitor fact comes from the competitor's own website, is linked, and is dated October 25, 2026. Where a competitor does not publish a fact, the table says "not published" rather than guessing.
Why are there no ratings or review scores?
Because a company scoring its own competitors is not a neutral source. These pages leave out stars, ratings and quoted reviews. They describe what each service publishes about itself and which kind of firm each one fits, so you can read reviews elsewhere with the right questions in mind.
Is Call Della a receptionist service?
No. Call Della is an after-hours intake specialist. Della, an AI, answers a personal injury, criminal defense or immigration firm's phone at night, on weekends and on holidays, runs the intake for that practice, and delivers a dossier by morning. Receptionist services such as Ruby and Posh answer any call for any business.
Which service is cheapest?
It depends on your calls. As of October 25, 2026, Posh had the lowest published entry price, $65 a month plus $2.30 per minute, and Smith.ai offered a free AI-first tier for 25 calls. Call Della starts at $329 a month for 300 minutes. Answering Legal does not publish prices. Compare using your own call counts and lengths.
How often are these pages updated?
Every comparison shows its updated date at the top. Competitor prices change, so each fact carries the date it was read. If you spot a fact that has changed on a competitor site, email hello@calldella.com and we will re-check the page and correct it.