Smith.ai review: AI receptionist pricing, live backup and who it suits

Smith.ai answers your business calls three ways. The AI Receptionist handles calls on its own. Virtual Receptionists puts a live, North America-based person on every call. Hybrid lets the AI take routine calls and sends the ones you choose to a person. Most owners searching for Smith.ai today are looking at the AI plan, so that’s the focus here, with the human options where they change the decision.

Two things set Smith.ai apart from most AI receptionists. It bills per call, not per minute. And when a call is beyond the AI, it can hand the caller to Smith.ai’s own live receptionists, with no extra fee when the AI starts that escalation (AI Receptionist).

Who it’s for

Smith.ai fits a business where one call can be worth a lot and a bad answer costs a client: law firms, contractors, agencies, insurance and finance. It connects to Clio Grow, Clio Manage and MyCase for legal intake, and to Salesforce and HubSpot for sales teams (integrations).

It’s a poor fit for a medical, dental or therapy practice whose callers talk about their health. Smith.ai says it isn’t HIPAA-compliant and can’t handle calls involving protected health information; for medical offices it only takes calls without health details, such as FAQs and messages (receptionists FAQ).

What callers hear

The AI answers 24/7 in English or Spanish. It answers questions about your business, qualifies leads with the questions you set, books appointments, transfers calls to your team and sends you a summary, recording and transcript of each call. Known spam numbers are blocked and not billed.

Before it answers a real customer, you can test it with simulated calls in Smith.ai’s Quality Studio (pricing). That’s worth doing: script the five calls you get most and listen to how it handles them.

What it costs at real call volumes

Because billing is per call, call length doesn’t change your bill. A 12-minute intake call costs the same as a 1-minute “are you open Saturday?” call. That makes Smith.ai cheaper than it looks for businesses with long calls, and dearer for businesses with lots of quick ones.

The free plan gives you 25 real calls a month, every month, with all AI features. It’s not a time-limited trial, but a card is required at signup and overage is off by default (AI Receptionist).

Take 200 calls a month. Call length doesn’t matter here, so the usual “3 minutes each” assumption drops out:

• Pro 150 calls at $270, plus 50 extra calls at $2.30, comes to about $385, or $1.93 a call.
• Pro 300 calls at $500 covers you with room to grow, at $2.50 a call for 200 calls.

So at 200 calls the smaller plan plus overage is cheaper. Move up once you regularly pass about 250 calls. Note that extra calls cost more than included ones ($2.17 to $3.00 against $1.67 to $2.00), so picking a plan close to your real volume matters. Smith.ai also lets you remove up to 10% of each cycle’s calls as spam (pricing FAQ).

Cheaper AI receptionists land well below that. Upfirst, also billed per call, charges $159.95 for 300 calls. Dialzara, billed per minute, comes to about $239 for 600 minutes (200 calls at 3 minutes): $199 for 500 minutes plus 100 at $0.40. What you pay Smith.ai’s premium for is the human backstop and the legal and sales integrations.

The all-human plans are a different price class. 200 calls a month with live receptionists costs about $1,965 on Basic (90 calls at $810, plus 110 extra at $10.50), and booking, recording and a Spanish line are charged per call on top (receptionists pricing). Hybrid starts from about $2.50 a call, so around $500 for 200 calls, but you have to go through a consultation to get it (Hybrid pricing).

Contracts and setup

Every plan is month to month with no setup fee. The AI plan needs 30 days’ notice to cancel, so plan your exit a cycle ahead. The live receptionist plans have a 30-day money-back guarantee, capped at $1,000 and excluding overage.

Setup is self-serve on the free plan. Pro adds dedicated onboarding, and Enterprise (from $500 for 300 calls) has Smith.ai write and tune the AI’s prompts for you and adds multi-location support. You get a dedicated number, or you keep yours by forwarding or porting it.

What it books into

The calendars Smith.ai names are Calendly, Acuity Scheduling, Appointy and Harmonizely, plus Zapier and Make for other tools. If your schedule lives only in Google Calendar or Outlook, ask how booking would work before you sign up. For a law firm, the Clio and MyCase integrations matter more than the calendar: new matters land in the system you already use.

When the AI can’t handle a call

This is where Smith.ai earns its price. The AI can transfer to your team, and if your team can’t pick up, it can escalate to Smith.ai’s live receptionists instead of taking a message. That escalation is free when the AI starts it. Having a live agent step in for verification or scheduling as a regular part of your calls is a paid add-on, and its price isn’t published, so ask before you rely on it.

How it compares

vs Abby Connect. The closest match: AI and live receptionists from one company. Abby bills per minute and its plans start at $164. Abby Connect offers HIPAA compliance for human answering only, not its AI; Smith.ai isn’t HIPAA-compliant at all, so a practice handling health details should look at Abby’s human receptionists.

vs Ruby. Ruby is a live-only answering service billed per minute. If you want people on every call, compare both on your real call count; see Smith.ai vs Ruby.

vs cheaper self-serve AI. Upfirst and Goodcall cost less at the same volume and transfer calls to your own team. See Smith.ai alternatives for more.

Verdict

Smith.ai is a good pick for a law firm or service business that wants AI on the phones but wants a person available when the AI is out of its depth. Per-call billing suits long calls, the AI plan prices and overage rates are published, and the free 25-call plan lets you hear it on real callers before paying. It’s not the cheapest AI receptionist, it can’t take healthcare calls, and the 30-day cancellation notice is worth remembering. If you don’t need the live backup, the self-serve options in our best AI receptionists for small business will cost you less.