Ruby puts a live receptionist on your line for businesses of every kind. Doorkeep puts one AI agent on your line that only ever handles property management calls.
A live answering service. Ruby’s receptionists pick up around the clock, take messages, screen and forward calls, capture new leads, and book appointments for law firms, contractors, medical practices, agencies, and financial advisors. Plans are sold by receptionist minutes, from $250 a month for 50 minutes up to $1,725 for 500.
An AI phone agent that only does property management. It answers as your property, works the call against your rules, resolves what it can from the knowledge you approved, and calls you with a spoken briefing when a person is genuinely needed.
Most of your callers are tenants with a problem, and what you need is the problem moving, not a name and a number to call back.
If your phone is mostly new-client intake for a business that isn’t property management, Ruby does that job well and has for years.
| Scenario | Doorkeep | Ruby Receptionists |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | One AI phone agent, built only for property management. | A live receptionist service staffed by people, answering for businesses across many industries. |
| Who it answers for | Property managers. That’s the entire customer list. | Law firms, home services, healthcare, business services, and financial services. |
| Coverage | 24/7/365, and it’s the same agent on every call. | 24/7 phone coverage, including after-hours, weekends, and holidays. |
| What it costs | Published pricing, priced per plan, not per unit. Starts at $149/month billed annually with 100 minutes included. | Published plans metered in receptionist minutes: $250 for 50 minutes up to $1,725 for 500. Larger volumes are quoted. |
| Setup and onboarding fees | None. Self-serve signup. | None. Ruby publishes no activation, onboarding, setup, or customization fees. |
What it is
One AI phone agent, built only for property management.
A live receptionist service staffed by people, answering for businesses across many industries.
Who it answers for
Property managers. That’s the entire customer list.
Law firms, home services, healthcare, business services, and financial services.
Coverage
24/7/365, and it’s the same agent on every call.
24/7 phone coverage, including after-hours, weekends, and holidays.
What it costs
Published pricing, priced per plan, not per unit. Starts at $149/month billed annually with 100 minutes included.
Published plans metered in receptionist minutes: $250 for 50 minutes up to $1,725 for 500. Larger volumes are quoted.
Setup and onboarding fees
None. Self-serve signup.
None. Ruby publishes no activation, onboarding, setup, or customization fees.
| Scenario | Doorkeep | Ruby Receptionists |
|---|---|---|
| Water through the ceiling at 2am | Reads the urgency, works your escalation rules, and calls you with the property, the unit, and what’s wrong before you pick up. | A receptionist answers, follows the call instructions you’ve given, and reaches your contact or takes a message. |
| Tenant asks “what are the quiet hours?” | Answered on the spot from that building’s knowledge base. You’re not interrupted. | Answered from the information you supplied, or captured and sent to you. |
| Tenant asks when rent is due | Captured and routed to you, never guessed at. Rent, fees, and lease terms are yours to answer. | Handled the way your call instructions say to handle it. |
| A prospect calls about a vacancy | Captures the inquiry, shares what you approved about the unit, and sends you the lead with the full transcript. | Receptionists capture new leads and send the caller’s details to you, and can book the appointment on your calendar. |
| Ten calls land while you’re at a showing | Each call is answered and handled by the agent. No callback list waiting for you. | Answered by Ruby’s receptionists, and their time on each one draws down your plan minutes. |
Water through the ceiling at 2am
Reads the urgency, works your escalation rules, and calls you with the property, the unit, and what’s wrong before you pick up.
A receptionist answers, follows the call instructions you’ve given, and reaches your contact or takes a message.
Tenant asks “what are the quiet hours?”
Answered on the spot from that building’s knowledge base. You’re not interrupted.
Answered from the information you supplied, or captured and sent to you.
Tenant asks when rent is due
Captured and routed to you, never guessed at. Rent, fees, and lease terms are yours to answer.
Handled the way your call instructions say to handle it.
A prospect calls about a vacancy
Captures the inquiry, shares what you approved about the unit, and sends you the lead with the full transcript.
Receptionists capture new leads and send the caller’s details to you, and can book the appointment on your calendar.
Ten calls land while you’re at a showing
Each call is answered and handled by the agent. No callback list waiting for you.
Answered by Ruby’s receptionists, and their time on each one draws down your plan minutes.
| Scenario | Doorkeep | Ruby Receptionists |
|---|---|---|
| What you get after a call | Recording, transcript, summary, and escalation history. | A real-time notification after every call by email, text, or the Ruby app. |
| Property-specific knowledge | Each building carries its own knowledge base: policies, amenities, quiet hours, escalation contacts. | Receptionists work from the call instructions and information you provide. |
| Changing how calls are handled | You configure it yourself, per property and per time of day. | Change your call handling instructions at any time in the Ruby app. |
| Fair Housing | Fair Housing guardrails in every interaction, supporting your compliance program from day one. | Not detailed on the pages we reviewed. |
| PMS integration | Not required. Works standalone with call forwarding today. Buildium, Rentvine, and DoorLoop in beta: connect your account today, with sync rolling out. | Not a property-management product. |
What you get after a call
Recording, transcript, summary, and escalation history.
A real-time notification after every call by email, text, or the Ruby app.
Property-specific knowledge
Each building carries its own knowledge base: policies, amenities, quiet hours, escalation contacts.
Receptionists work from the call instructions and information you provide.
Changing how calls are handled
You configure it yourself, per property and per time of day.
Change your call handling instructions at any time in the Ruby app.
Fair Housing
Fair Housing guardrails in every interaction, supporting your compliance program from day one.
Not detailed on the pages we reviewed.
PMS integration
Not required. Works standalone with call forwarding today. Buildium, Rentvine, and DoorLoop in beta: connect your account today, with sync rolling out.
Not a property-management product.
The 11pm noise complaint, the work-order status check, the trash-day question: triage, intake, and answers from the knowledge you approved for that building. No message slip, no callback, no evening spent.
Doorkeep doesn’t hand you a number to dial back. It calls you with the property, the unit, who’s on the line, and what’s wrong, then connects you. You’re already up to speed when you say hello.
Every call recorded, transcribed, and summarized. Not a note that a call happened. The call itself.
Locked out
Lisa Chen · Maple Ridge #312 · 11:48 pm
Message taken · details captured
Which day is trash pickup?
Kevin Nguyen · Riverside · 7:15 pm
Answered from Knowledge
Ceiling leak
Oakwood Terrace · Unit 12 · 2:04 am
On your escalation list · Call List rung
Illustrative examples. What happens on each call depends on your settings.
Ruby’s receptionists are real people and they are good at the job they were hired for. They answer around the clock, they screen and forward, they capture leads, they book appointments, and they do it for law firms, contractors, medical practices, agencies, and financial advisors. A warm, competent human voice is the product, and for a great many businesses that is exactly the right product.
Property management asks something different of whoever picks up. A tenant calling at 11pm is not a prospect to be charmed. They have a problem, and the only thing that helps is the problem moving. That takes knowing which building they’re standing in, whether no heat at 15 degrees outranks the leak reported an hour ago, who is actually on call tonight, and what you have approved anyone to say about the lease.
A generalist receptionist has no way to hold all that, and it isn’t a failure of skill. Nobody answering for a roofer, a chiropractor, and a family law practice in the same hour can also carry your escalation ladder in their head. A generalist service is built to take a great message. Doorkeep is built to work the property-management call.
Doorkeep only ever answers property-management calls. Every one runs through your properties, your rules, and your escalation contacts. It handles what it can, briefs you before it connects you, and writes down all of it either way.
An answering service’s job finishes when the receptionist hangs up. Yours starts there. Somebody called about no hot water. You have a name, a number, and a sentence. Now you’re the one deciding whether it can wait, calling the tenant back to find out what “no hot water” actually means, and calling the plumber. The service billed four minutes. You spent forty.
Doorkeep works the call to a decision on the first call. It asks the follow-up questions itself, so “no hot water” reaches you as which unit, since when, whether the heat is out too, and whether anyone has already been out to look. If your rules make that an emergency at that hour, it reaches you with all of it and connects the call. If your rules say it waits, it says so to the tenant, logs it, and it’s in your morning summary.
Both services pick up fast. The measure that matters is how many calls you still have to make afterward.
Doorkeep Starter is $149/month billed annually and includes 100 minutes a month. Additional minutes are $1.50 each. It’s priced per plan, not per unit, and it’s on the website.
Ruby sells the same shape of thing, metered in receptionist minutes. Its published plans run $250 a month for 50 minutes, $395 for 100, $720 for 200, and $1,725 for 500, with anything larger quoted. A hundred minutes is the closest like-for-like line anyone can draw between the two, and there it is $395 against $149/month billed annually.
Both meter minutes, so the honest question isn’t metered against unmetered. It’s what the minute buys. A Ruby minute buys a person on the phone with your caller. A Doorkeep minute buys a call worked against your rules, plus the recording, the transcript, the summary, and the escalation history. And on both sides the plan is the bill: Ruby publishes no activation, onboarding, setup, or customization fees, and Doorkeep charges none either.
This is the real question on this page and it deserves a straight answer rather than a sales one.
For plenty of businesses, yes. If the call is the sale, a human voice is worth what it costs. A homeowner ringing three roofers hires the one who sounded most reassuring. Ruby is built for that call and is good at it.
A tenant call isn’t that call. Nobody phones their property manager at 11pm hoping for a pleasant conversation. They want to know the right person has it and they want to stop worrying. Consistency beats warmth there. Doorkeep answers the four hundredth no-heat call the way it answered the first, at 2am on a holiday, same questions, same order, same rules.
It also doesn’t pretend to be a person. Doorkeep is a facilitator. It listens, works out what the call actually is, answers from what you approved, and connects a human when a human is what’s needed. It does not give advice, it does not talk a tenant through a shutoff valve, and it does not commit you to anything. When judgment is required, you’re on the phone, and you’re briefed.
A prospect asks whether the building is good for kids, or what the neighborhood is like. Those answers carry legal weight whether or not anyone intended them to, and they get asked on ordinary Tuesday afternoons by people who mean nothing by them.
Doorkeep runs Fair Housing guardrails in every interaction, on every leasing call it takes, and the whole conversation is recorded and transcribed rather than compressed into a message. If you ever need to know what was actually said on your line, you have the words, not a summary of someone’s memory of them.
Ruby’s published pages don’t detail how its receptionists handle Fair Housing, which fits a service answering for many industries. A guardrail written for the leasing line specifically is a different thing.
At comparable minutes, yes. Doorkeep Starter is $149/month billed annually with 100 minutes included and $1.50 per additional minute on Starter. Ruby’s published 100-minute plan is $395 a month. Price isn’t the reason to choose either one, though. Ruby buys you a person on the line. Doorkeep buys you a call handled to a decision against your own rules, documented end to end.
Yes. At the start of every call, Doorkeep says it’s an AI assistant and tells callers the call is recorded before the conversation begins. After that, what callers notice is that the call was answered by name, for the building they were calling about. When a caller wants a person, it takes the details and reaches your on-call contact, or takes a message if that’s what your rules say.
Because the hard part of a tenant call isn’t answering it, it’s deciding what it is. A dripping faucet and water spreading across a ceiling are three words apart, and “no hot water” in one unit is a different call from “no hot water” in the whole building. Doorkeep only handles property-management calls, so those judgments and your escalation rules are the whole job rather than one account among thousands.
It escalates the way you told it to. Doorkeep calls your contact, says who’s on the line, which property, and what’s wrong, then connects the call. If nobody answers, it comes back to the caller, takes a message, and sends you an alert.
Yes. Point your existing number at Doorkeep and nothing changes for your tenants. Forward everything, or forward only after hours and overflow and keep answering the rest yourself.
Ruby’s own published pages, retrieved September 26, 2026: the plans and pricing page for the plan tiers, the minute allotments, the 24/7 coverage description, and the statement that there are no activation, onboarding, setup, or customization fees; the live receptionist and industries pages for what receptionists do and who Ruby answers for. Nothing here is an unpublished claim about how Ruby runs internally. Doorkeep is not affiliated with Ruby, and prices on either side can change.
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Browse allFair Housing guardrails · Recording disclosed on every call · Emergency detection and escalation