Ruby vs Simple Phones
Simple Phones starts $18/mo cheaper than Ruby.
Both pages checked by August 19, 2026
- RubyHuman agents
- $115/mo
- Bundled chat add-on — 10 chats plan
- Ruby is a US-based live virtual receptionist and website chat service for small businesses, sold in monthly buckets of receptionist minutes and chats, where AI is used only to assist its human receptionists rather than to answer calls.
- Simple PhonesAI only
- $97/mo
- Basic plan
- Turnkey AI phone answering service for small businesses: Simple Phones generates a starter agent from your business details, assigns a number you forward missed calls to, and their team makes ongoing agent customizations on request rather than you building the agent yourself.
The differences that matter
- Ruby is human agents; Simple Phones is ai only. That is the real decision here, not the price.
- Ruby can put a human on the line; Simple Phones is bot-only.
Feature by feature
| Capability | Ruby | Simple Phones |
|---|---|---|
| Live transfer | Yes | Yes |
| Books appointments | Yes | Yes |
| Text follow-up | Yes | Yes |
| Outbound calls | Yes | Yes |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes |
| Human backup | Yes | No |
| Call recordings | unstated | unstated |
| Transcripts | Yes | Yes |
| Spam screening | Yes | unstated |
| Custom voice | unstated | unstated |
| API | unstated | Yes |
"unstated" means the vendor doesn't claim it in their own documentation. It is not the same as no — it means nobody will put it in writing.
Ruby plans
| Plan | Published price | Includes | Over that |
|---|---|---|---|
| Virtual receptionist — 50 minutes | $250 /month | 50 min | — |
| Virtual receptionist — 100 minutes | $395 /month | 100 min | — |
| Virtual receptionist — 200 minutes | $720 /month | 200 min | — |
| Virtual receptionist — 500 minutes | $1,725 /month | 500 min | — |
| Live chat — 10 chats | $143 /month | — | — |
| Live chat — 30 chats | $335 /month | — | — |
| Live chat — 50 chats | $520 /month | — | — |
| Bundled chat add-on — 10 chats | Up to 10 chats for $115 (a 20% savings) | — | — |
| Bundled chat add-on — 30 chats | Up to 30 chats for $268 (a 20% savings) | — | — |
| Bundled chat add-on — 50 chats | Up to 50 chats for $416 (a 20% savings) | — | — |
Simple Phones plans
| Plan | Published price | Includes | Over that |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | Simple Phones starts at $97/mo for 100 calls/mo. | 100 calls | If you cancel your plan, or you exceed the number of calls per month for your tier, your phone numbers will be released. |
| Advanced | not published | 500 calls | If you cancel your plan, or you exceed the number of calls per month for your tier, your phone numbers will be released. |
| Premium | not published | 2500 calls | If you cancel your plan, or you exceed the number of calls per month for your tier, your phone numbers will be released. |
| Pay As You Go | $0.19/min | — | — |
Ruby sources
- Plans and pricing (receptionist minute tiers, chat tiers, bundled chat pricing, included features); canonical URL is https://www.ruby.com/plans-and-pricing/ruby.com · read August 19, 2026
- Plans and pricing (canonical URL, same tiers)ruby.com · read August 19, 2026
- FAQs — money-back guarantee, no long-term contract, 60-second rounding statement, Spanish, scheduling, transfers, porting/forwarding, HQ in Portland OR, service arearuby.com · read August 19, 2026
- Ruby billing FAQs PDF (first-party asset host) — 30-second increments, hold time billable, no rollover, overage billed in arrearsassets.ruby.com · read August 19, 2026
- AI at Ruby — Call Nav, transcripts, sentiment analysis, robocall filtering; AI included at no extra cost; explicitly not used to replace human receptionistsruby.com · read August 19, 2026
- Integrations directory (CRM, calendars, legal software, Zapier)ruby.com · read August 19, 2026
- About Ruby — "In 2003, Ruby started as a small business"ruby.com · read August 19, 2026
Simple Phones sources
- Pricing / features / FAQ page (renders the site's pricing and FAQ sections: $97 for 100 calls, 14-day free trial, no commitment, overage = numbers released, country list, language list, forwarding, CRM/Zapier, transfer to a team member)simplephones.ai · read August 19, 2026
- Homepage (inbound, outbound, logging, customization, routing, voices, crawling)simplephones.ai · read August 19, 2026
- In-app billing screen (tier names "Basic Subscription - 100 calls/month", "Advanced Subscription - 500 calls/month", "Premium Subscription - 2,500 calls/month"; Pay As You Go $0.19/min and its 250 minutes/month minimum; >2,500 calls or >20 agents triggers Pay As You Go; whitelabel answer)app.simplephones.ai · read August 19, 2026
- Help centre: Creating an agent (one agent on the Basic plan)help.simplephones.ai · read August 19, 2026
- Help centre: Inbound Callshelp.simplephones.ai · read August 19, 2026
- Help centre: Outbound Calls (1 call per number per 24h, callback-only unless BYO Twilio)help.simplephones.ai · read August 19, 2026
- Help centre: Routing (transfer to any number, time-of-day rules, email/text/webhook alerts)help.simplephones.ai · read August 19, 2026
- Help centre: Crawling (website/FAQ knowledge base)help.simplephones.ai · read August 19, 2026
- Help centre / API: Call Details & Transcript (response fields: minutesUsed, start/end time, transcript; no recording URL)help.simplephones.ai · read August 19, 2026
- Help centre documentation indexhelp.simplephones.ai · read August 19, 2026