Yelp Receptionist and Yelp Host: What Local Businesses Need

Yelp launched two AI call-answering products on October 21, 2025: Yelp Host for table-service restaurants at $149/month ($99/month for existing Yelp Guest Manager customers), and Yelp Receptionist for local service businesses at $99/month (as announced by Yelp, October 2025). Both answer inbound calls with AI, but both work only inside Yelp's own booking and lead tools. For a business already running its front desk on Yelp, that is a strength. For one that books elsewhere, it is a limit worth knowing before you sign up.

This post covers what Yelp Host and Yelp Receptionist actually do, where the integration stops, and the questions a restaurant or local service owner should ask before choosing either one.

Key Takeaways

• Yelp Host answers restaurant calls, takes reservations, quotes wait times and handles booking changes, priced at $149/month or $99/month for existing Yelp Guest Manager customers (as announced by Yelp, October 2025).
• Yelp Receptionist answers calls for local service businesses, asks qualifying questions, captures project details, and sends transcribed call summaries, priced at $99/month (as announced by Yelp, October 2025).
• Both products write bookings and leads into Yelp's own systems, Yelp Guest Manager for Host and the Yelp for Business inbox for Receptionist. Neither is documented to integrate with outside calendars, CRMs or POS systems.
• Yelp Host is rolling out an option to also add diners to the Yelp Waitlist and send automated SMS follow-ups for menus and payment holds.
• A business that already keeps its bookings and leads inside Yelp gets a straightforward add-on. A business that runs its calendar or CRM elsewhere should confirm whether double entry is required before switching.

What Yelp Host Does

Yelp Host is built for table-service restaurants. It answers the phone, takes new reservations, tells callers current wait times, captures special requests and handles changes to existing bookings (as announced by Yelp, October 2025). Yelp says it is rolling out the ability for Host to also add walk-in diners to the Yelp Waitlist and send automated SMS follow-ups covering menus, payment holds and orders.

The product is priced at $149/month, dropping to $99/month for restaurants that already use Yelp Guest Manager, Yelp's existing reservation and waitlist system. That discount is a signal about how the product is built: Host is an AI front end bolted onto Guest Manager, not a standalone phone system that happens to also talk to Yelp.

What Yelp Receptionist Does

Yelp Receptionist targets local service businesses outside table-service dining. It answers incoming calls, asks qualifying questions, captures the details of the job or request, and sends the business a recorded, transcribed call summary in real time through the Yelp for Business inbox (as announced by Yelp, October 2025). It is priced at $99/month.

This is closer to a lead-capture tool than a full booking system. It vets and documents a caller's request but the confirmation of what happens next, scheduling the job, sending a quote, following up, still runs through however the business already manages that work.

Where the Integration Stops

The clearest fact about both products is also the most important one for a small business to weigh: they are deeply integrated with Yelp's own tools and, based on Yelp's own announcement, not documented to connect to anything outside them. Yelp Host writes directly into Yelp Guest Manager. Yelp Receptionist delivers its output to the Yelp for Business inbox. Neither product's announcement describes a connection to external calendar apps, practice-management software, CRMs or point-of-sale systems such as Toast, Square, ServiceTitan or Jobber.

That is not a flaw. It is a deliberate design choice for businesses that already run their bookings and leads through Yelp. But if your restaurant takes reservations through OpenTable or Toast, or your service business dispatches jobs through ServiceTitan or Jobber, adopting Yelp Host or Yelp Receptionist likely means either migrating that workflow into Yelp's tools or manually re-entering what the AI captures into your existing system.

What This Means for Small Businesses

Before adopting either product, a restaurant or local service owner should ask:

1. Where do we currently take reservations or bookings, and would Yelp Host or Receptionist replace that system or sit alongside it?
2. If a caller's request needs to land in our own calendar, CRM or dispatch software, who re-enters it, and how often?
3. Does the $99 or $149 monthly price include everything we need, or will we still pay for our existing booking platform on top of it?
4. What happens to a call the AI cannot resolve? Does it transfer to a person, and how quickly?

For a business that already lives inside Yelp's ecosystem, Yelp Host and Yelp Receptionist are a reasonable, purpose-built add-on at a published price. For a business whose calendar, CRM or POS sits outside Yelp, an AI receptionist built to plug into that specific system may save more staff time than one built to plug into Yelp. Voksha, for example, connects directly to OpenTable and Toast for restaurants and to ServiceTitan and Jobber for home services, so a booking made on the call lands in the system the business already runs on (restaurant reservation automation comparison, July 2026). Missed calls carry a real cost regardless of which system answers them: Voksha's analysis puts the direct cost at $12.15 per missed call, about $26,000 a year for a business missing six calls a day (Missed-Revenue Methodology).

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Yelp Host work with reservation systems other than Yelp Guest Manager?

Yelp's own announcement describes Host as integrating with Yelp Guest Manager. It does not document a connection to other reservation platforms such as OpenTable or Toast.

Is Yelp Receptionist only for businesses listed on Yelp?

Yelp Receptionist is a Yelp for Business product and delivers call summaries through the Yelp for Business inbox, so a business needs an active Yelp for Business presence to use it.

How much do Yelp Host and Yelp Receptionist cost?

Yelp Host starts at $149/month, or $99/month for existing Yelp Guest Manager customers. Yelp Receptionist starts at $99/month (as announced by Yelp, October 2025).

How This Guide Was Sourced

Reported by the Voksha team, linked to https://voksha.com/. Pricing and product details come from Yelp's own official announcement, retrieved 2026-09-26. No unpublished Voksha call data is used in this guide; the cost-per-missed-call figure is cited to Voksha's own published research methodology.

Sources

• Yelp, "Yelp Host and Yelp Receptionist" (official blog, Yelp Fall Product Release), October 21, 2025, retrieved 2026-09-26
• Yelp for Business, Yelp Receptionist product page, retrieved 2026-09-26 Published by the Voksha team. Voksha builds AI receptionists for small businesses.

If your bookings live outside Yelp, see how an AI receptionist built for restaurants connects to OpenTable and Toast.