Canada's AI Answering Service

The answering service built for Canadian businesses — From $59 CAD/Month

Stop paying per minute. Stop sending callers to voicemail. Stop missing leads at night.

Aria is a 24/7 bilingual AI answering service for Canadian small businesses. Flat monthly pricing from $59 CAD, no per-call fees, no per-minute overage charges. Aria greets every caller, answers your most common questions, books appointments live in your calendar, captures lead details, and sends you a summary the moment the call ends. Live in under 48 hours. EN + Quebec French on every plan.

No setup feeLive in under 48 hoursStarts at $59 CAD/month
01 · The reality

The answering service problem in Canada

Live call centres bill by the minute
Smith.ai, Ruby, AnswerConnect, MAP Communications and the Canadian call centres all bill per minute or per call — typically $1.65 to $4.70 per minute. A modest 200 calls a month at four minutes each runs $1,300 to $3,800 before setup fees, holiday surcharges, and after-hours premiums.
Voicemail loses 67% of your callers
Two-thirds of Canadian small business callers who hit voicemail simply hang up and try the next result on Google. The Hibu small business call study found 67% of after-hours calls never become customers — they become competitors' customers.
Old answering services can't book a single appointment
Traditional answering services take a message. That's the entire product. They cannot open your calendar, check availability, or commit to a slot. Every booking still gets a callback the next morning — by which point the prospect has already booked with someone else.
Bilingual coverage costs extra (or doesn't exist)
Most US-based answering services offer Spanish as an upsell and have no real French capability. For Quebec, New Brunswick, Ottawa, and bilingual Ontario markets, that's a hard stop — and even when French is available, it's rarely Quebec French.
02 · How Aria helps

What Aria does as your answering service

Answers in seconds, 24/7, with a real conversation
Aria picks up on the first ring at any hour and holds an actual conversation — not an IVR tree. Callers can ask anything they'd ask a human receptionist, and Aria answers from what's on your website plus the FAQs you give her.
Books appointments live during the call
Aria checks your Google Calendar, Calendly, or Acuity in real time, confirms a slot with the caller, and writes the appointment back to your calendar before the call ends. Confirmation text goes out the moment they hang up.
Captures every lead with full caller context
Each call lands in your dashboard with a transcript, the caller's name and number, the reason for the call, and an urgency tag. No more guessing whether that 6pm missed call was a sales lead or a wrong number.
Flat pricing — no per-minute, no per-call surprises
Aria handles 5 calls a day or 500 at the same monthly rate. Starter is $59 CAD/month with 150 voice minutes. Pro is $159 with 500 minutes. Premium is $389 with 1,500 minutes. That's it — no overages disguised as 'usage credits'.
Books appointments live during the call
“Hi, I'd like to book an appointment”“Are you open right now?”“How much does this cost?”“Do you have any availability tomorrow?”“I have an emergency — can someone call me back?”
EN · FR
Bilingual EN + Quebec French on every plan
Aria auto-detects the caller's language on the first sentence and switches if they switch mid-call. Built for Quebec French — vouvoiement, courriel, clavardage — not Parisian French.
“We were paying a Canadian call centre $720 a month for an after-hours messaging service that wasn't even bilingual. Aria does more — books appointments, sends summaries, speaks French — for $59. The first month we recovered enough missed bookings to pay for the whole year.”
— Marc T., Plumbing Contractor, Laval
04 · The math

The ROI math on an answering service

The average Canadian small business misses 4-6 calls per day. Each missed call is a lost lead worth somewhere between $200 and $900 in lifetime value (varies by industry). Aria Starter at $59/month recovers itself if it captures a single appointment in a typical month.

$3,200/mo
in recovered missed-call revenue (average SMB)
Aria pays for itself on the first recovered booking
05 · How fast

From sign-up to live answering — under 48 hours

01
Paste your website URL
Aria scrapes your services, hours, pricing, FAQs, and tone of voice automatically. No training documents, no scripts to write. You review and edit any answer Aria didn't get right.
02
Pick your voice and your escalation rules
Choose from 12 natural English voices and 6 Quebec French voices. Define which calls forward to your cell — emergencies, top-3 clients by phone number, specific keywords. Aria stays silent on the rest.
03
Forward your business number
Five-minute setup with your carrier — call forwarding unconditional or busy/no-answer. You keep your existing number. From the moment forwarding is on, Aria answers every call you don't catch.
06 · Common questions

Answering service questions

An answering service is a third party that picks up your business phone calls and either takes a message or completes a task on your behalf — booking an appointment, qualifying a lead, dispatching emergencies, or transferring urgent calls. Traditional answering services use human agents in a call centre. Modern AI answering services like Aria use a conversational AI that talks like a trained receptionist and can do everything from greet callers to book appointments live.
Traditional human services run $1.65 to $4.70 per minute, often with a $200-500/month base on top. A small business doing 200 calls a month at four minutes each will pay $1,300 to $3,800. AI answering services like Aria charge a flat monthly fee — $59 CAD/month Starter (150 voice minutes), $159 Pro (500 minutes), $389 Premium (1,500 minutes). No per-call fees, no setup fees, no overage surprises.
The two terms overlap heavily. Traditionally, an answering service was message-taking only and a virtual receptionist could also handle bookings and lead qualification. Today the line has blurred — most providers offer both. Aria does the full virtual receptionist job (booking, lead qualification, escalation, bilingual coverage) for the price of a basic answering service.
Yes — emergency routing is one of Aria's most-used features. You define what counts as an emergency (keywords, time of day, caller history) and Aria immediately transfers those calls to your cell or your on-call rotation. Non-emergencies get answered, booked, or messaged according to your rules.
Most don't notice — Aria's voice is natural and the conversation flows like a real call. If a caller directly asks 'Am I talking to a person?', Aria tells them honestly that she's an AI receptionist and offers to escalate to a human if they prefer.
With Aria, under 48 hours from sign-up to first live call. The slowest part is forwarding your business number (5-15 minutes with your carrier). Traditional answering services typically take 1-2 weeks to onboard because they need to write scripts, train agents, and configure their call routing.
Yes — Aria works through call forwarding from your existing number. You don't change carriers, you don't get a new number, your customers don't notice anything. When forwarding is on, Aria picks up the calls you don't answer (or all of them — your choice).
Aria tells the caller honestly that she'll need to check on that, captures the question, and sends it to you immediately as a text and dashboard notification. You can call the customer back with the right answer, and the next time someone asks the same question Aria knows the answer.

Try Aria as your answering service — free

7-day free trial. No credit card. Live in 48 hours. Cancel anytime from your dashboard.

07 · Keep exploring

Specialized answering pages

01
24/7 Answering Service
Round-the-clock coverage including nights, weekends, and every Canadian stat holiday.
02
Phone Answering Service
The buyer's-guide breakdown for businesses replacing Smith.ai, Ruby, or local call centres.
03
Small Business Answering
Built for the owner-operator who's tired of being the receptionist too.