The main Smith.ai alternatives are human answering services such as Ruby and PATLive, mixed services such as Abby Connect, AI receptionist apps, and platforms where you run the AI yourself. Dograh, the open-source AI voice agent platform we build, is one of these platforms. You can self-host it or run it on Dograh Cloud, with your staff behind the agent.
Key Takeaways
- Smith.ai sells AI and human answering as two lines, both billed per call.
- An AI-initiated handover to Smith.ai's receptionists carries no extra fee.
- Running your own agent means the people behind it are your staff.
This post is part of our guide to AI receptionists, where most businesses end up mixing AI and people. Below, we cover Smith.ai's model and prices, the alternatives by type and keeping Smith.ai behind an AI. If you want to run the AI yourself, the last section covers Dograh.
How Smith.ai sells AI and people
Smith.ai runs two product lines, and both use per-call billing. Smith.ai's AI Receptionist starts with a Free plan of 25 calls a month, then $3.00 a call. Pro is $150 for 75 calls with $2.50 for each call over, and Enterprise is $500 for 300 calls. Every call the AI answers counts toward the quota by default, with known spam filtered and up to 10% of calls removable as spam.
The AI line has people behind it. Calls can be transferred to Smith.ai's live receptionists, who are based in North America, and Smith.ai says an AI-initiated escalation carries no fee. When a live agent steps in to verify someone or schedule an appointment, that is a per-call add-on. The Free plan needs a card, and its overages are off by default.
The human line costs more per call. Smith.ai's live receptionists start at $300 a month for 30 calls, then $11.50 a call. Basic is $810 for 90 calls and Pro is $2,100 for 300. They answer 24/7, or you can set answering hours and send the rest to a number or voicemail. Spam, wrong numbers and sales calls do not count when caller ID comes through.
What 90 calls a month costs
Here is one example month, built from list prices, for a practice that takes 90 calls. On Smith.ai's live Basic plan all 90 are included, so the month is $810. On the AI Receptionist's Pro plan, 75 calls are included and 15 more cost $2.50 each, so the month is $150 + $37.50 = $187.50. As a third point, Upfirst's Premium plan includes 90 calls for $59.95, with no people behind its AI.
Per-minute services do not fit a call count without a guess about call length, so they stay out of this example. The gap between the first two lines is roughly the price of a person on every call. The AI line keeps a person within reach for the calls that need one, without paying for a person on every call.
Smith.ai alternatives by type
The alternatives split by who answers the phone, and each kind bills in its own unit. The table puts the main options side by side, with Dograh's two ways to run it at the bottom.
| Option | Who answers | How it bills | Entry price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smith.ai AI Receptionist | AI, with Smith.ai's receptionists behind it | Per call | Free for 25 calls, Pro $150/mo for 75 calls |
| Smith.ai live receptionists | People | Per call | $300/mo for 30 calls, then $11.50 a call |
| Ruby | People | Per minute | $250/mo for 50 minutes, $720 for 200 |
| PATLive | People only | Per minute | $349/mo for 200 minutes, then $1.99 a minute |
| Abby Connect | People, AI or both | Per Abby Minute, AI minutes count half | $164/mo for 50 Abby Minutes |
| Upfirst | AI | Per call | $24.95/mo for 30 calls |
| Goodcall | AI | Per unique caller | $79/mo for 100 unique callers |
| Rosie | AI | Per minute | $49/mo for 250 minutes |
| Dograh Cloud | Your AI agent, with your staff behind it | Per platform minute | 1¢/min platform fee, plus models and phone |
| Dograh self-hosted | Your AI agent, with your staff behind it | No platform fee | Servers, models and phone minutes |
Smith.ai vs Ruby is mostly a choice of billing unit. Ruby bills per minute, $720 for 200 minutes, and offers 24/7 live answering and services that meet the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Smith.ai's live line bills per call, so long calls favour Smith.ai and many short calls favour Ruby.
Smith.ai vs PATLive is closer on price. PATLive puts its 200-minute plan at $349, about 80 calls by its own estimate, with $1.99 for each extra minute and a 14-day free trial on any plan. PATLive offers no AI answering, so it fits a business that wants people only.
Abby Connect sells the same tiers for human, AI or mixed answering, and AI minutes count half, so 50 Abby Minutes cover 100 minutes of AI. Its HIPAA options apply to human answering. AI apps such as Upfirst, Goodcall and Rosie drop the remote people and hand calls to your own staff, and our post on Upfirst alternatives compares them by billing unit.
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Keep Smith.ai and put AI in front
Replacing Smith.ai is not the only choice. Some businesses keep its live receptionists for the calls that need judgement and put an AI agent in front for the routine ones, such as opening hours, directions, bookings and simple messages.
That works when the split is written down. Decide which calls stay with the AI and which go to a person, then point the agent's transfer at your Smith.ai line or at your own staff. Our post on AI virtual receptionists vs answering services works through where each one wins.
The cost moves with the split. Every routine call the AI finishes is one fewer per-call charge on the human plan. Smith.ai's own AI line already works this way inside one bill, so price both before you build a split of your own.
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Where Dograh fits
Dograh fits buyers who want to run the AI themselves and put their own people behind it. The people who take handovers are your own staff, reached through Transfer Call, and the agent, its prompts and its call data stay with you.
Transfer Call rings your staff member while the caller listens to hold music, and joins the two once that person picks up. It works on Twilio, Telnyx, Plivo, Cloudonix and Asterisk ARI, with a 30-second default wait. If nobody answers, the caller stays with the agent, which takes a callback request and writes it to your system through an HTTP API tool.
The agent itself is yours to shape. You choose the speech and language models, from the platform's own to any provider by your own key or open-weight models on your own servers. Pre-recorded clips in a real person's voice can carry the lines callers hear most, and every call has a full trace and can be scored by built-in QA.
For patient calls, self-hosting means no business associate agreement (BAA) with Dograh is needed. A BAA may still be needed with your model providers, with your phone carrier depending on what it stores, and with a cloud provider if your servers run there.
Self-hosted Dograh has no per-minute platform fee, but servers, model keys and phone minutes still cost money. Dograh Cloud charges a 1¢-a-minute platform fee. Your staff's time on the calls they take is the other line, as it is with any setup where your own people stand behind the AI.
If you want a person on every call and no setup, Smith.ai or Ruby is the simpler buy. If you want the AI to be yours with your own team behind it, our tutorial on how to build an AI receptionist is the place to start.
Glossary
- AI-initiated escalation
- A handover that the AI starts, rather than one the caller or business requests. Smith.ai charges no fee when its AI Receptionist escalates a call to its live receptionists this way.
- Per-call billing
- A set price for every answered call, whatever its length. Smith.ai bills both its AI and live lines this way, so long calls cost the same as short ones.
- Abby Minute
- Abby Connect's billing unit. A minute of human answering uses one Abby Minute, while a minute of AI answering uses half of one.
- Transfer Call
- The Dograh tool that passes a caller to someone on your team. Your staff member is rung first and joined to the caller only on answer, and if the timeout passes with no answer, the caller goes back to the agent.
