# Phone Providers Add AI Receptionists: RingCentral and More Source: https://voksha.com/news/phone-providers-add-ai-receptionists/ Published: 2026-10-03 > RingCentral, Dialpad and IONOS added AI receptionists to their phone platforms. What each does, what it costs, and the lock-in trade-offs to weigh. Three business phone and hosting providers have each added their own AI receptionist over the past year: RingCentral's AI Receptionist (AIR) reached general availability June 30, 2025; Dialpad launched its Agentic AI Platform on October 9, 2025; and IONOS added an AI Receptionist to its Momentum platform on April 15, 2026 (as announced by each company). Each is a genuine addition to its own phone product, and each works best, sometimes only, if you are already on that provider's system. This post covers what each does, how to think about cost, and the lock-in and integration questions to weigh before choosing a receptionist bundled with your phone provider. > **Key Takeaways** > > - RingCentral AI Receptionist (AIR) reached general availability on June 30, 2025, sold as an add-on to RingCentral's platform (as announced by RingCentral, June 2025). > - Dialpad's Agentic AI Platform launched October 9, 2025, with agents that handle scheduling, order lookups, lead qualification and account management before escalating with full context (as announced by Dialpad, October 2025). > - IONOS added an AI Receptionist to its Momentum platform, live in the UK from April 15, 2026, with call-based tiers (as announced by IONOS, April 2026). > - All three are extensions of the provider's own phone platform. None of the sources document the AI receptionist as a standalone product independent of that provider's phone or hosting service. > - If you already use RingCentral, Dialpad or IONOS, adding their AI receptionist is a reasonable next step. If you are choosing a phone system and a receptionist at the same time, weigh how much the AI feature ties you to that one provider. ## RingCentral AI Receptionist (AIR) RingCentral's AIR uses generative AI to answer incoming calls, pull answers from a business's own website, FAQs and documents, and transfer callers to the right place. It reached general availability on June 30, 2025, and RingCentral has since added appointment booking, multi-location routing and a Spanish-language beta (as announced by RingCentral, June 2025). RingCentral later announced "AIR Everywhere," extending the feature to non-RingCentral phone systems, which broadens who can use it but confirms the product started as RingCentral-native. ## Dialpad's Agentic AI Platform Dialpad's Agentic AI Platform, launched October 9, 2025, builds autonomous voice and text agents that understand multi-step requests and carry them out inside a business's existing systems, handling scheduling, order lookups, lead qualification and account management before escalating to a human with full context preserved (as announced by Dialpad, October 2025). Early adopters spanned healthcare, retail, real estate, recruiting, automotive and legal services. As with RingCentral, the platform is built into Dialpad's own communications suite, so getting the most from it assumes calls already route through Dialpad. ## IONOS AI Receptionist IONOS, better known as a web hosting and domain provider, added an AI Receptionist to its "Momentum" platform, built through a partnership with Newo.ai. It manages calls 24/7, schedules appointments, answers questions by learning from the business's own website, and forwards calls with summaries sent by email (as announced by IONOS, April 2026). The UK launch came with three call-based tiers. IONOS pitches this as "hire a digital workforce," aimed at small businesses without an existing phone system to build around, making it more of a fit for an IONOS hosting customer adding a phone presence than a drop-in replacement. ## Lock-In and Integration Trade-Offs, Fairly Stated Each of these three products does what it says. RingCentral's is the most phone-system-native, though "AIR Everywhere" shows the company saw that as a limit worth solving. Dialpad's platform handles multi-step requests, but the deepest value comes from calls already routed through Dialpad. IONOS's receptionist is aimed at a low entry cost, but its documented setup describes forwarding calls and reading your website, not connecting to third-party tools such as Calendly, HubSpot or ServiceTitan. None of this makes any of the three a bad choice; the calculation differs depending on where you start. If you already pay for RingCentral, Dialpad or IONOS services, adding their AI receptionist is often the path of least friction. If you rely on a calendar, CRM or scheduling tool not run by your phone provider, confirm what the AI receptionist connects to before committing to a provider based on the AI feature alone. ## What This Means for Small Businesses A small business evaluating any of these three, or a standalone AI receptionist instead, should ask: Does the AI write directly into the calendar, CRM or dispatch tool we already use? Is it available if we switch phone providers? What is the real monthly cost past the entry tier? And who handles a call the AI cannot resolve? Voksha, a standalone AI receptionist that forwards from any existing business number rather than requiring a specific phone platform, is built around the opposite trade-off: on its Premium plan, it connects self-serve to six booking tools (Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, Apple iCloud, Mindbody, Square Appointments and Booker) that book during the call, and more than 70 other listed platforms, from CRMs to industry software, are set up with Voksha support ([The Complete Guide to AI Phone Systems for Small Business in 2026](/guide/small-business-phone-systems/), April 2026). Whichever route a business chooses, the case for automating call answering is the same: Voksha's research on over 1,000,000 analyzed calls found 85% are resolved by AI with no human needed and 66% are simple booking requests ([Voksha Call Intelligence Report](https://voksha.com/research/call-intelligence-report/)). ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Do I need to be a RingCentral, Dialpad or IONOS customer to use their AI receptionist? RingCentral's AIR was built for RingCentral phone customers, though "AIR Everywhere" has since extended it to other phone systems. Dialpad's platform and IONOS's receptionist are both documented as features of each company's own platform. ### Which of the three is the cheapest? This post does not compare their prices, which change and are not in Voksha's checked pricing data. Check each provider's current pricing page, and compare the real monthly cost past the entry tier at your own call volume. Dialpad's pricing was not disclosed in its launch announcement. ## How This Guide Was Sourced Reported by the Voksha team, linked to [https://voksha.com/](https://voksha.com/). Product and pricing details for RingCentral, Dialpad and IONOS come from each company's own press release or newsroom, retrieved 2026-09-26. Voksha figures cite Voksha's own published research report. No unpublished Voksha call data is used in this guide. ## Sources - RingCentral, "RingCentral Announces General Availability of AI Receptionist (AIR)," June 30, 2025, retrieved 2026-09-26 - Dialpad, "Dialpad Launches Its Agentic AI Platform," October 9, 2025, retrieved 2026-09-26 - IONOS UK Newsroom, "IONOS offers 24/7 phone support to SMBs with its new AI Receptionist," April 15, 2026, retrieved 2026-09-26 Published by the Voksha team. Voksha builds AI receptionists for small businesses. Want a receptionist that isn't tied to your phone provider? [See Voksha pricing](https://voksha.com/pricing/).