A Smith.ai alternative for service businesses that want calls in their own CRM

What is Smith.ai?

Smith.ai is a call-answering company that offers three ways to handle your calls: an AI-first receptionist, human-first receptionists, and a hybrid of the two. Its site lists industries from law firms and medical offices to home services and general contractors. Calls can be screened, qualified, booked or transferred. Its AI receptionist page lists native integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot and Clio, plus thousands of other apps natively or through Zapier and Make.

Smith.ai is open about its customer mix. Its homepage, read October 2026, says roughly 80% of its 5,000+ business customers are law firms, with the rest including home services contractors (it names HVAC, plumbing, electrical and roofing), healthcare and IT firms. Its human-plan add-ons include conflict-of-interest checks (a routine law-firm step) and accepting collect calls, which the pricing page says attorneys who work with inmates often require. That isn't a criticism. It is a reason to check how well the intake questions and integrations fit a trade business before you sign.

What do Smith.ai's human receptionists cost?

The human-first plans are priced per call, not per minute. As shown on Smith.ai's pricing page in October 2026:

All of those plans include 24/7 live answering, lead screening and intake of five short questions, a dedicated local or toll-free number (or porting your own at no charge), and the first CRM integration. Smith.ai says there are no setup fees and no charge for spam calls, as long as the forwarded calls pass caller ID. The service is month to month, with 10% off for a 12-month subscription, and new clients get a 30-day money-back guarantee on the plan and add-ons up to $1,000, excluding overage.

Several things a contractor would want are per-call add-ons on these plans. As listed in October 2026: booking appointments $1.50 a call, a dedicated Spanish line $1.00, call recording and transcription $0.25 (recording-consent laws vary by state; see our general guide on recording business calls, which is not legal advice), text or Slack alerts when a caller qualifies for a transfer $0.50, text and email follow-up $0.50, taking payments $1.00, extended intake of six more questions $1.50, and complex routing $1.50. Monthly add-ons included extra transfer destinations at $15 and tracking numbers at $5 each.

Per-call billing has a clear upside: a long call costs the same as a short one, so you aren't pushed to rush customers. The thing to model is the add-ons. Add booking, recording and alerts to every call and the per-call cost climbs well above the base plan.

Here is a made-up month using the listed prices. A small company on Starter takes 45 calls, and 30 of them get booked. The bill would be $300 for the plan, plus 15 overage calls at $11.50 ($172.50), plus 30 bookings at $1.50 ($45), for $517.50. That works out to about $11.50 per call, before recording or alerts. Your numbers will differ, which is the point: run them with last month's actual call count, and run them again for your busiest month of the year.

What does the Smith.ai AI receptionist cost?

Smith.ai's AI receptionist page listed three tiers in October 2026:

• Free: $0 a month for 25 calls, then $3.00 a call. A card is required at signup, and overage can be switched on or off.
• Pro: from $150 a month, listed at $2.00 a call, with options for more calls at lower per-call rates. Self-serve with dedicated onboarding and support.
• Enterprise: from $500 a month, listed at $1.67 a call, with full-service setup, custom AI prompting by Smith.ai's technical team, and unlimited custom integrations and workflows.

The core AI features listed include 24/7 answering, recording, transcripts and summaries, lead qualification and routing, scheduling through tools such as Calendly, and integrations. Smith.ai says self-serve plans are month to month with no contract, and live agent involvement can be added per call on any plan. The free tier is a low-risk way to hear how an AI answers your real calls.

Who is Smith.ai a good fit for?

• Businesses that want a human option from the same vendor. Being able to move between AI, human and hybrid without changing companies is a real convenience.
• Firms whose tools Smith.ai already connects to. If your CRM and calendar are on its integration list, setup is simpler. Its homepage names ServiceTitan among its integrations, which matters for larger trade shops.
• Owners who want to try before paying. A free AI tier and a money-back guarantee on human plans lower the risk of testing.
• Offices with lower, steady call counts. Per-call plans are easy to budget when volume is predictable.

One point in Smith.ai's favor on ownership: its pricing page says you can port your existing business number to it at no charge, so customers keep dialing the number painted on your trucks. Ask how you would move that number back out if you leave, as you should with any provider.

Where it may fit less well: a trade business whose scheduling lives in field-service software that isn't on the integration list, or one that wants intake, dispatch rules and emergency escalation written around its own trade rather than adapted from a general template.

What does an alternative built into your own stack look like?

The difference we care about is where the call ends up. In our setup, the AI receptionist is one part of a business phone system on a number you own, and every call becomes a record in your CRM: caller, address, job type, urgency, source and transcript. The receptionist books into the same calendar your crew uses and follows rules written for your trade, such as which calls get a same-day slot, which ZIP codes you serve, and which situations ring the on-call tech at 2 a.m.

That approach has its own costs. Setup takes real work, because someone has to write down your services, prices, service area and emergency rules. And an AI receptionist still needs a clear handoff to a person for callers who want one. Our own service companies answer calls on this kind of setup, and the written rules get revised every season.

If you are comparing human answering with AI in general, our page on AI receptionists versus answering services covers the broader tradeoffs.

How should you decide?

1. Count your calls. Monthly inbound calls, how many come after hours, and how many need booking. Per-call pricing depends on the first number; add-ons depend on the third.
2. Price your real call. For a human plan, add the per-call add-ons you would actually use to the base cost per call. For an AI plan, check the per-call rate at your volume.
3. Check where records land. If calls don't reach the system your office works from, someone ends up copying them by hand.
4. Write your call rules first. Services, area, emergencies, who gets alerted. You need this page for any provider.
5. Test with real calls. Use the free tier or a trial, call at odd hours, and ask hard questions.

Our list of questions for an AI receptionist provider is a useful checklist for that last step.

Frequently asked questions