Your Free Plan: How It Works

Welcome to your AI Receptionist (AIR) Free Plan! This article covers everything you need to know to get the most out of your account — what's included, how your call limits work, and what happens as your firm grows.

What's covered in this article:

• What's included on the Free Plan

• Your call allowances

• What happens when you reach a limit

• Billing credits & paid features

• Follow-up texts

• Getting started with Quality Studio

• When to consider upgrading

What it is

The Free Plan gives you the real AI Receptionist — not a watered-down trial. Same call quality, same AI, same features that power our paid plans. You get 25 real calls a month, no time limit on how long you can stay on Free, and no credit card charges unless you choose to add more capacity.

Think of it less as "a limited version" and more as "your firm's AI receptionist, sized for where you are right now."

What's included on the Free Plan

Core call answering

• 24/7 call answering with a dedicated phone number (local or toll-free)

• Spam and blocked-caller screening

• New client intake & qualification

• Bilingual support (English & Spanish)

Make it sound like your firm

• Custom greeting & AI persona

• 12+ voices, tones & accents

• Adjustable speaking speed

• Custom FAQ / answer pairs, with self-healing FAQs

• Custom playbook setup

Test before you go live

• Quality Studio — test and preview your AI receptionist before it ever talks to a real client

• Includes 25 test calls/month and 50 simulated calls/month

Scheduling & handoff

• Call-transfer routing to your custom destinations

• Real-time calendar booking and AI scheduling integrations (Calendly, Clio & more) available as paid add-ons

• Live agent handoff available as a paid add-on

Stay on top of it

• Call recording, transcription & full-text search

• Instant call summaries by email, Slack & Teams

• Call log, analytics & real-time performance tracking

• Availability & schedule management

Connect & scale

• Native integrations (Clio, Zapier, Make & more)

• CSV data export

A note on philosophy: Free isn't a stripped-down demo. It's the full AI Receptionist with usage limits built for a solo practice or small firm just getting started. Add billing credits and enable paid features when you're ready — or move to a Pro plan for a higher included call volume.

Your call allowances

Your Free Plan includes three separate types of calls, each with its own monthly allowance. They don't share a pool — using up your test calls, for example, has no effect on your real call limit.

All three reset to zero at the start of your billing cycle. Unused calls don't roll over.

You can see exactly where you stand any time from your dashboard, which shows a running counter like "7 of 25 calls used this month."

⚡ A busy month can use up your 25 calls faster than you'd expect. Add credits and turn on Extra Calls — your AI Receptionist keeps answering beyond your included 25 at just $3/call. Check out your billing settings →

What happens when you reach a limit

What happens depends on which limit you hit.

Real calls (your 25 included client calls)

This is the only call type with a flexible option. When you reach 25 real calls in a billing cycle, your outcome depends on your Extra Calls setting:

• Extra Calls ON: Calls keep getting answered exactly as before — your callers never know you hit a limit. Each additional call is billed at a flat $3.00 per-call rate.

• Extra Calls OFF (the default): Once you hit 25, the next caller will follow your redirect instructions instead of your AI receptionist, and you'll get an email letting you know. Your dashboard shows a "limit reached" state.

⚡ Don't let a limit cost you a client. Add credits and turn on Extra Calls so call 26 gets answered just like call 1. Set that up now →

Test calls and simulated calls

No pay-per-extra option here. Once you use your 25 test calls or 50 simulated calls for the month, that call type is paused until your billing cycle resets. Your Quality Studio results, scores, and recommendations remain fully accessible.

Billing credits & paid features

Billing credits are a prepaid wallet you fund in advance. Once you have credits, you can toggle on any paid features you want those credits to fund.

How it works:

1. Add credits from your dashboard (Plan Details → Billing Credits → Add credits)

2. Toggle on the features you want to enable under "What's Enabled"

3. Credits are drawn automatically when a paid feature is used

Available paid features (all $3/call, all OFF by default):

• Extra Calls — keeps your AI answering after your included 25

• Live agent features — routes calls to a human when your AI can't resolve them

• Appointment booking — books consultations in real time during the call

Auto-Refill: You can opt in to have your billing credits automatically refilled when they run low — so paid features never stall mid-month. Find this under the Auto-Refill section of your billing settings.

⚡ A single call using Extra Calls and any paid features is capped at $6 total. That's the maximum you'll ever be charged for one call on the Free Plan.

Follow-up texts on the Free Plan

Every call on the Free Plan automatically sends your caller a follow-up text — this is always on and can't be turned off on Free. The message body is fully customizable per caller type (New Client, Existing Client, Sales, Other), but it carries a small locked signature: "— Sent via Smith.ai. Reply STOP to opt out."

Want your follow-up texts to carry only your firm's branding, with no Smith.ai signature? That's a Pro plan feature. See Pro plans →

Getting started with Quality Studio

Quality Studio is your testing ground — it's how you make sure your AI receptionist sounds right and handles calls the way you want before a real client ever calls. Every Free Plan includes full access to it.

The basic loop:

1. Set goals and scenarios: Describe what a good call looks like for your business — what the caller does, and what your AI Receptionist should do. Quality Studio uses this to generate pass/fail checks for every call.

2. Run a call: Choose a simulated call (AI-vs-AI, no phone needed) or a test call (live voice from your browser).

3. See results: Each check is marked pass or needs review. You also get a plain-language call summary and your updated AQI score.

4. Get a recommendation: For any failing check, Quality Studio identifies what went wrong and proposes a specific instruction change to fix it.

5. Apply and retest: Accept or edit the recommendation directly in your FAQs or Call Intake to directly refine to your AI Receptionist instructions. Then run the same scenario again to confirm the fix worked.

For the full walkthrough, see Getting Started with Quality Studio →

When to consider upgrading

The Free Plan is built to genuinely work for a solo practice or small firm — there's no clock forcing you to upgrade. That said, here are the moments firms most commonly outgrow it:

• You're regularly using more than 25 real calls a month. Pro plans start at 75 included calls, with a lower per-call rate on anything beyond that.

• You need custom prompting. This lets you fine-tune exactly how your AI receptionist handles nuanced intake scenarios — common for firms with specific qualification criteria.

• You want calendar booking handled automatically on the call, rather than as a follow-up step.

• You want your follow-up texts fully white-labeled, with no Smith.ai branding.

• You want a human safety net beyond your own team for escalations.

Compare plans and pricing →

Need help?

This article covers the most common questions, but if you need a hand with something specific, reach out to support@smith.ai and our team will help you out.