At some point the phone becomes enough of a problem that you consider hiring someone to answer it. It is worth running that comparison properly rather than on instinct, because the two options are not close on cost and they are not close on capability either — in opposite directions.
The cost side, honestly
A part-time receptionist at any real wage, for twenty hours a week, costs multiples of any software in this category once you include employer taxes and the time spent recruiting and training.
Software vendors lean on this comparison hard, and it flatters them enough that it is worth treating with suspicion. So here is the part they leave out.
What a person does that software does not
Everything else. This is the honest answer and it is the important one.
A receptionist greets people at the door, takes payment, sells retail, manages the walk-in queue, makes coffee, chases a supplier, notices that a regular seems unhappy, reads the room during a rush, and answers the phone. The phone is one item on a list.
Comparing a receptionist's salary to a phone system's price is comparing a person to one of their duties. If you need the other duties, the comparison is not valid and no amount of arithmetic makes it valid.
They handle the unscripted call. A complaint, a distressed caller, an unusual request nobody wrote a rule for. Software should hand these over. A person deals with them.
They exercise judgement about your business. Whether to squeeze someone in. Whether this caller is worth bending a rule for. That judgement is not a feature.
What software does that a person does not
It answers at eight on a Sunday. Not because people cannot work nights, but because paying anyone to sit through the two calls that arrive on a Sunday evening is poor value.
It answers three calls at once. This is the genuine capability gap. During a rush, one receptionist answers one call. The second and third callers hear ringing. Hiring a second receptionist for the twenty minutes a day when three calls overlap is not a plan.
It does not take holidays or leave. A single receptionist is a single point of failure, and covering their absence is its own problem.
It does not get worse when busy. A person handling their ninth call during a rush is not at their best, through no fault of their own.
The question that actually decides it
Not "which is cheaper" — what is the phone problem you are trying to solve?
If the problem is that nobody greets people at the door, handles payments, and generally runs the front of house — you need a person. The phone is a symptom of not having one, and software will leave the actual gap unfilled.
If the problem is specifically that calls go unanswered while everyone is with a customer — that is a coverage problem at specific moments, and hiring a full person to cover those moments is an expensive way to buy them.
Most salons and restaurants asking this question have the second problem. They already have people; those people are busy.
The arrangement that usually wins
For a business that already has a front desk, the useful framing is not either/or. It is that the phone stops interrupting the front desk.
The person keeps doing the ten things only a person does. The calls that would have pulled them away from a client get answered anyway, and the ones genuinely needing a human get transferred to them.
The part worth getting right is that transfer. When it does not connect — nobody free, after hours, a dropped handoff — the caller should be told and given your number rather than left holding. Live call transfer covers how that works.
When hiring is clearly right
You need the other duties. Say it plainly: if the door is unattended, hire.
Most calls need judgement. Sort a week of calls into "wanted to book", "factual question", and "needed a person". If the third pile dominates, hire.
Your callers mostly do not speak English. Ours speaks English today, and a person who speaks your customers' language will serve them better than an English-only system.
You are growing into needing one anyway. If a front desk is six months away regardless, solving the phone with software and then hiring is two migrations.
When it is clearly not
You have staff, they are busy, calls ring out during your best hours and after closing, and most callers want an appointment. That is a coverage gap at specific moments rather than a missing role — and it is the case where the arithmetic genuinely does favour software, without anyone having to stretch it.
Count a week of calls before deciding. It is an afternoon, and it answers the question better than any comparison anyone can write for you, including this one.