Ruby Review: Features, Pricing, & Alternatives

Do your business phone lines and live chat get flooded with spam and soliciting calls? Then, start using virtual receptionist software for screening and routing essential calls.

Ruby Receptionist excels at it, offering multilingual support and compliance with HIPAA. However, what makes it unique?

Let’s find out in this Ruby review.

SMB Guide’s Verdict for Ruby

Ruby gets a 7.5 out of 10. Here is why:

It strongly focuses on HIPAA, making it fit businesses that deal with sensitive customer data. Ruby also provides call routing based on custom-defined criteria, which helps streamline the experience.

However, Ruby has steep pricing, which may not fit small businesses on a budget. We give it that rating since price plays a considerable role besides other factors.

It makes Ruby suit large enterprises looking for call routing and personalized interaction.

Factor	Rating (out of 10)
Pricing & Plans	7
Real-Time Messaging & Canned responses	8.5
Live Chat AI & Natural Language Processing (NLP)	7
Customizable Chat Widgets	7.5
Visitor Tracking and Analytics	7
User Interface and User Experience	9
Integrations and Compatibility	7
Customer Support	7
SMB Guide Rating	7.5

SMB Guide utilizes a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria for reviewing software to keep our reviews unbiased for our readers. For more information, see our evaluation criteria.

Pricing & Plans

Ruby has 3 services, including Ruby Receptionist, Chat, and a Bundled package.

The platform offers a money-back guarantee of 21 days but lacks a free trial period. However, Ruby Receptionist is the main package; let’s look at its plans.

Ruby receptionist

It is the main package divided into 4 plans. The plans have the same features but vary in the number of receptionist minutes. Here are the plans: 

1. Call Ruby 50 

It is the entry plan with up to 50 receptionist minutes.

Price

• Monthly: $235

Features

• Professional receptionists
• One-touch call holding
• Appointment scheduling
• Personalized greetings
• 2–hr average response time
• Zapier integration
• 7 hold music options
• Payment processing

Who its for: Small service teams with a low volume of calls.

2. Call Ruby 100

It is the next plan providing up to 100 receptionist minutes.

Price

• Monthly: $375 

Features

• English and Spanish conversations
• Immediate access to messages
• Call routing by call type
• Local and toll-free business numbers
• 73 net promoter score
• Clio manage integration

Who it’s for: Medium-sized businesses with a larger volume of calls.

3. Call Ruby 200

It is one of the top plans, providing up to 200 receptionist minutes.

Price

• Monthly: $680

Features

• PCI-compliant service available
• Call and text from the app or portal
• Webform client intake
• Custom after-hours call routing options
• Dedicated customer success team
• Rocket Matter integration

Who it’s for: Large organizations with a high call volume.

4. Call Ruby 500

It is the top plan, providing up to 500 receptionist minutes.

Price

• Monthly: $1640

Features

• HIPAA-compliant service available
• One-touch call holding
• FAQ and local weather information
• Conditional no-answer forwarding to Ruby
• Convenient call handling updates
• Zapier and My Call integrations

Who it’s for: Large enterprises with an extensive call volume and complex customer inquiries.

Real-Time Messaging & Canned Responses

Businesses will find that Ruby chat specialists answer chats in real-time and route interested customers to a voice call. Chat activity notifications also get delivered through the app, email, or SMS.

Agents will also find that Ruby gives access to chat transcripts and call details to follow up with the leads anytime.

However, with the platform trying to deliver quick service, the inquiries get assigned to the readily available agent. It can often lead to getting different agents who might not know specific technical issues each time.

With canned responses, Ruby provides pre-defined templates for various scenarios. For example, agents can create or edit templates for requesting info, greetings, thanking, apologizing, or confirming. 

Ruby also allows businesses to customize the canned responses to fit their brand voice. However, editing the canned response is only through the web portal.

In addition, Ruby limits personalizing the message with customer details like name or email.

Live Chat AI & NLP

Ruby’s chatbot is basic and can only respond to simple inquiries and collect customer information. With its NLP engine, it only understands and replies to queries that match pre-defined phrases and keywords. 

For example, the NLP engine cannot understand the language variation if customers use slang or synonyms. The limitation of understanding complex conversations leads to frequent handoff to a human agent. 

Ruby chatbot learning capabilities also have limitations. It relies on scripts and the knowledge base content, which often is inaccurate or outdated.

With customizing bot responses, Ruby limits the options, only allowing basic prompts and greetings adjustments.

Customizable Chat Widgets

Customize Ruby’s chat widget by tweaking the font, color, and adding a logo. However, Ruby has limitations with positioning the widget. Automated greetings and pre-chat forms are also available on Ruby. 

The forms have basic fields for collecting customer information like name, email, and phone. However, Ruby lacks a native CRM integration to help with pre-chat forms to auto-populate relevant data.

Given that Ruby provides basic customization options, ease of implementation is simple. However, limitations with personalization can hinder achieving a complete brand look.

Visitor Tracking and Analytics

Ruby’s visitor tracking feature is basic, providing metrics on chats, chat duration, leads, and visitors’ location. Ruby displays the information on the dashboard in table format.

One thing to note is that Ruby lacks detailed insights on referral sources, time on page, visits, and more. Not only that, but the software doesn’t sort, segment, or export the data for further analysis.

With such limitations in reporting and analytics, the software hinders insights into user needs. Tailoring support on Ruby also has some limitations, given that the shallow visitor data hinders it.

The only data agents can access are chat transcripts.

User Interface and User Experience

Ruby has a simple interface providing basic functions. For non-techies, the interface is less intimidating, and navigating is easy.

The dashboard features a tab-like design with the sections and settings clear enough.

With customization options, Ruby has limitations, especially for the chat widget and dashboard. However, agents can customize the chatbot responses and greetings.

With branding, the software lacks native integration platforms to make the process seamless. The good thing is that onboarding on Ruby is simple, providing tutorials on the following steps.

Integrations and Compatibility

The Ruby integration stack is small, with pre-built connections to Zapier, Clio, Grasshopper, Nextiva, Mycase, and Rocket Matter.

With APIs, Ruby has limitations that hinder custom integrations with other systems. However, the software allows custom development of APIs for specific needs.

Ruby also lacks integration support or documentation with built-in platforms, making it complex to connect the tools. With compatibility, Ruby provides a web-based portal compatible with browsers and mobile devices.

It also provides a mobile app for iOS and Android.

Customer Support

Ruby provides 3 channels for reaching customer support, including phone, live chat, and email. Live chat and email are available 24/7, with live chat getting instant responses through a bot, while email responses take up to 3 hours.

On the other hand, phone support is available only on weekdays (5 AM to 6 PM). With self-help resources, Ruby provides an FAQ that answers the most common inquiries.

Ruby also has a newsroom that churns emerging trends on AI. The platform also has an online community with Facebook (12K), X (3.6K), Instagram (2.1K), and YouTube (940) followers.

Ruby – Unique Features

Ruby provides one of the best virtual receptionist platforms in the market. Here are 3 features that make it stand out.

Custom scripts

Businesses can create a customized script for their receptionist to use. It ensures personalized engagements with customers and consistency.

Call routing

Ruby provides advanced call routing options to businesses, allowing them to direct customer calls depending on custom-defined criteria.

It allows companies to streamline the client experience.

Round-the-clock chat services

Support through live chat and email is 24/7 with friendly receptionists. It is handy in lead generation and enhanced customer satisfaction.

What Experts Say About Ruby

At the time of this writing, Ruby had the following reviews:

• G2 rating: 3.7/5 (10+ ratings)
• Capterra rating: 4.1/5 (5+ ratings)
• Trustpilot rating: 4.1/5 (750+ ratings)

Had a very positive experience with Ruby in terms of frontline phone calls. They have an excellent team and everyone has been super professional. Would very much recommend them as the first customer touchpoint for your business.

Curtis R., Attorney – Verified Capterra review

Ruby provides us professional answering services around the clock when we are not in the office, or if we need to have someone else answer the phones for awhile when we are in the office. Their customer service is outstanding and we feel they treat our customers as their own. We can’t say enough good things about their professionalism.

Penny K., Office Manager – Verified Capterra review

Ruby Alternatives

We understand that Ruby will not be the best fit for most businesses due to pricing and other factors. So, we researched and found 3 Ruby alternatives that offer what it lacks and more functionality.

LiveAgent

It is a customer service platform offering a help desk with ticketing, a call center, and live chat. Unlike Ruby, LiveAgent provides multichannel support to enhance customer experience.

Not only that, LiveAgent has a call center that handles inbound calls and logs them as tickets. With pricing, LiveAgent offers 4 plans, each having a 2-week trial period.

The entry plan costs $9 per agent. It makes LiveAgent suit businesses looking for a powerful help desk with omni-channel support.

Get started with LiveAgent for free

Smith.ai

It is a virtual receptionist providing businesses with customer engagement through AI. Like Ruby, Smith.ai provides businesses with phone services, live chat, and human agents for support and lead generation.

The platform also offers bilingual agents for personalized customer experience. Pricing of Smith.ai is similar to Ruby, where it offers 4 plans. However, the price is per call, unlike Ruby, which charges per minute.

The entry package “Starter” costs $285 monthly with up to 30 calls. Smith.ai is best for enterprises looking for responsive customer support with call routing.

Yellow.ai

It is an autonomous customer service platform providing generative AI to businesses to create support chatbots. Unlike Ruby, Yellow.ai relies on generative AI to deliver engagement across channels.

The pricing model of Yellow.ai is pay-as-you-go, unlike Ruby’s. However, it also offers an enterprise package that requires sending a quote.

It makes Yellow.ai fit businesses looking for virtual reception through AI.

Other options: Best Ruby Alternatives

Get Started with Ruby

Ruby is one of the best virtual receptionists who continues to deliver live chat and call solutions for customer support.

Its unique selling points include HIPAA compliance, call routing, and bilingual agent support. That’s why we recommend Ruby to businesses with a multilingual and international clientele.

Get started by signing up and get a dedicated rep!

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