The main Upfirst alternatives are other AI receptionist apps billed per call, per caller or per minute, human answering services, and platforms where you run the agent 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, and the agent and its data stay yours.
Key Takeaways
- Upfirst's per-call billing skips spam, silent calls and calls under 15 seconds.
- BAAs and done-for-you integration setup sit on Upfirst's top plans.
- Match the billing unit to how long and how often your callers talk.
This post is part of our guide to AI receptionists, where renting a receptionist is weighed against owning one. Below, we cover what Upfirst does well, where buyers want more control and the alternatives by type. If you want to own the agent, the last section covers Dograh.
What Upfirst does well
Upfirst is a ready-made AI receptionist billed per call, and its entry price is low. Upfirst lists Starter at $24.95 a month for 30 calls, then $1.50 a call, and Premium at $59.95 for 90 calls. Paying yearly takes about 20% off each plan.
Its billing rules favour the buyer. Spam never counts, and neither do calls under 15 seconds or calls where the caller never speaks. The trial runs for 14 days or 100 calls, whichever comes first, with no card and no automatic charge.
Setup is light. You forward calls from the line you already have, with no porting needed, and booking works with Google Calendar, Outlook, Calendly, Acuity, Square and Clio Manage on every plan, along with an API and Zapier. When the agent passes a call to you, Upfirst tells you who is calling and why before you accept, and it can try one person after another down a list.
It also answers in English, Spanish and more than 35 other languages. For a solo attorney, a property manager or a small contractor who wants calls answered this week, that is a strong package.
Where buyers start wanting more control
The limits show up as a business grows or starts taking sensitive calls. Upfirst signs business associate agreements (BAAs), the contracts the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires before a vendor handles patient information, only on its Enterprise plan. Done-for-you integration setup comes on Scale and Enterprise, so on the lower plans you wire up the API or Zapier yourself.
Volume changes the maths too. Pro is $159.95 for 300 calls and Scale is $299 for 600, with extra calls at $0.75 and $0.70, and above 1,000 calls the price is a custom quote. Every call that counts adds to the bill, whatever it was about.
The bigger question is ownership. The agent runs on Upfirst's own service, and your call recordings live there too. That suits most small offices. It suits fewer teams that want to change how the agent behaves in detail, keep call data on their own servers or move the agent somewhere else later.
Upfirst alternatives by type
The alternatives split by who answers and how the bill is counted. The table puts one product of each kind beside Upfirst, with Dograh's two ways to run it at the bottom, and our roundup of the best AI receptionist software lists more.
| Option | Type | How it bills | Entry price | Who takes the handover |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Upfirst | AI receptionist app | Per call | $24.95/mo for 30 calls, then $1.50 a call | You, told who is calling before you accept |
| Dograh Cloud | Platform you build on | Per platform minute | 1¢/min platform fee, plus models and phone | Your staff, through Transfer Call |
| Dograh self-hosted | Open source, your servers | No platform fee | Servers, models and phone minutes | Your staff, through Transfer Call |
| Smith.ai AI Receptionist | AI app with people behind it | Per call | Free for 25 calls, Pro $150/mo for 75 calls | Smith.ai's live receptionists |
| Goodcall | AI receptionist app | Per unique caller | $79/mo for 100 unique callers, then 79¢ each | The people you choose |
| Rosie | AI receptionist app | Per minute | $49/mo for 250 minutes | Transfers from the $149 Scale plan |
| Dialzara | AI receptionist app | Per minute | $29/mo for 60 minutes, then $0.48 a minute | Transfers on the Elite plan |
| RingCentral AI Receptionist | Add-on for RingCentral phones | Per minute after 100 | $49/mo with 100 minutes, then $0.50 a minute | RingCentral users, with a call summary |
| Ruby | Human answering service | Per minute | $720/mo for 200 minutes | Ruby's receptionists take every call |
Per-call apps sit closest to Upfirst. Upfirst vs Smith.ai comes down to who stands behind the AI. Smith.ai's AI Receptionist can pass calls to its own live receptionists, with no fee when the AI starts the escalation, while Upfirst passes calls to you. Smith.ai's Pro plan works out at $2.00 per included call, against about 67 cents on Upfirst Premium. Our post on Smith.ai alternatives covers that people-plus-AI model in full.
Upfirst vs Goodcall is a question of repeat callers. Goodcall counts unique callers and never meters minutes, so a customer who rings four times in a month counts once on Goodcall and four times on Upfirst.
Per-minute apps such as Rosie and Dialzara suit short calls, since a two-minute booking uses two minutes of the plan, while long calls drain it fast. RingCentral AI Receptionist fits teams already on RingCentral phones, and our RingCentral AI Receptionist review goes through its plans. Human services like Ruby put a person on every call, which costs more per minute and suits businesses whose callers are often upset or need judgement.
Open Source Alternative to Vapi / Retell
Self-hosted voice agent platform — no per-minute fees
dograh-hq/dograh
Star on GitHub
What to test before you switch
Run the same script on every option over a real phone call, using last month's calls as a guide. Ask for a person halfway through a booking, then let that person's phone ring out to hear what the caller gets. Book an appointment and check that it lands in your calendar. Then compare the trial's call log with the bill to see which calls counted.
Join the Dograh Community
Dograh is an OSS alternative to Vapi. Join our Slack community for queries, releases, best practices & community interactions.
Where Dograh fits
Dograh is for buyers who want the most control, because you run the agent and decide every part of it. The code is open source under the BSD 2-Clause licence. The call flow, prompts, documents and tools are yours to change in a visual workflow builder. You also choose the models: the platform's own, any provider by your own key, or open-weight models on your servers.
Handovers work the way a careful office would want. Transfer Call dials your staff member first while the caller hears hold music, and connects the two only when that person answers. It runs on Twilio, Telnyx, Plivo, Cloudonix and Asterisk ARI and waits 30 seconds by default. If nobody answers, the caller stays with the agent, which takes a callback request.
The trade is setup time. Upfirst can be answering calls in an afternoon, and an agent you run yourself takes longer to build and test. In return, the agent answers from your own price lists and FAQs through its Knowledge Base, and pre-recorded clips in a real person's voice can carry the lines callers hear most.
Booking runs through an HTTP API tool against any calendar or booking system that has an API. After each call, a Webhook node can send the caller's details, recording and transcript links to your CRM or booking system. Every call has a full trace, and built-in QA scores a sample of them. The same agent can also call customers back through outbound campaigns, with retries and calling hours you set.
Self-hosting also keeps your recordings on your own servers, and for patient calls it means no BAA with Dograh is needed. Your model providers may need their own, your phone carrier may need one depending on what it stores, and a cloud provider needs one if your servers run there. On price, 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. Our tutorial on how to build an AI receptionist walks through the setup.
If your calls fit a per-call app today, Upfirst is a sound choice. When you need the agent on your own servers, your own models or a handover you design, that is when owning the agent pays off.
Glossary
- Per-call billing
- Pricing that counts each answered call, however long it lasts. Upfirst leaves out spam, calls under 15 seconds and silent calls, so a plan's included calls go to real conversations.
- Unique caller
- A distinct phone number that calls in a billing month. Goodcall bills by unique caller, so one customer who rings several times counts once.
- Business associate agreement
- The HIPAA contract a vendor signs before it handles patient information for a healthcare provider. Upfirst offers one on Enterprise, and self-hosting Dograh means no BAA with Dograh is needed.
- Transfer Call
- Dograh's tool for handing a caller to a person. The person's phone rings first, the caller joins once they pick up, and an unanswered transfer sends the caller back to the agent.
