At the checkout. Signing up is three steps — choose a plan, fill in your details, add a card — and your first month is charged there and then, with the same figure on the same day each month after. Your portal opens the moment it goes through. There is no free trial on the paid plans, so there is nothing to forget to cancel and no date on which a bill appears by itself. Stopping is self-serve in the portal and takes no longer than signing up did — you stay on until the end of the month you have paid for, and nothing renews after that. Whatever the receptionist booked stays yours, and exports from the portal. If you would rather see it work before paying, that is the free plan — roughly five calls a month, no card, and it does not run out or turn into anything. Move up when the calls do.

No — screening them is part of answering the phone, and it is on every plan, the free one included. When a caller turns out to be selling something, your receptionist says plainly that it is your business's AI receptionist, that you don't accept sales or spam calls, and asks customers to say so; you choose whether it then hangs up on anyone who doesn't within 7 seconds. Calls it screens don't use up your minutes. Anyone who sounds like a customer — a job, a price, a time that suits — is never screened for the rest of that call, so a real customer is answered and booked as normal. On Business Pro and Business Max+, your portal lists every screened call with the number and what they were selling, so a repeat caller can be blocked with your phone company. We do not block numbers ourselves — only your phone company can.

Your receptionist keeps answering — that is the point of it. We flag it in your portal and by email at 80%, and past the allowance the extra usage is charged at $0.20 a minute and $0.03 a text. Pay it in the portal within five days of going over, or your receptionist pauses and calls come straight to you until you do; the month's balance is due 10 days after the month ends. It is shown to you as it builds, so it is never a surprise, and if it goes unpaid past those days the account can be suspended until it is settled. If you would rather buy more time before you get there, the portal sells it at the same rate — $0.20 a minute and $0.03 a text, up to $20 at a time — so waiting costs you nothing extra, and past that it points you at a bigger plan because that is the better deal. The one cheaper route is a fixed pack bought ahead: $15 for 100 extra minutes. And if you would rather never pay for extra at all, one setting in the portal makes your receptionist stop at the allowance instead and send calls straight to you, with nothing charged.

Count the calls you take in a normal week and multiply by four. Business covers roughly 100 calls a month, Business Pro roughly 330 and Business Max+ roughly 660, at about three minutes a call. If you land between two, start lower — moving up in the portal takes one click, and your usage is on the dashboard from day one.

On Business Pro and Business Max+. Your Google Business profile connects to the portal, new reviews land there, and a reply is drafted for you to approve or rewrite — nothing is ever posted in your name without you reading it first. Business does not include the review centre.

One on Free and Business. Business Pro adds 1 extra line and Business Max+ adds 3, and every line rings the same receptionist. You pick each number yourself from a shortlist in your own area code, or you keep the number you already advertise and forward it — forwarding costs nothing and your customers never learn a new number. Lines beyond what your plan includes are $2 a month each: you buy them in the portal, and cancelling one there stops the charge.

Five to ten minutes, and you do it yourself in the portal the moment you have paid — you tell it your services and the questions your customers ask, set your prices and hours, choose your number, and forward your line to it. Most businesses are answering the same day. If you would rather not, say so in the first step and our team will call you within one to three days and do it with you instead.

No. Onboarding — training the receptionist on your prices, hours and rules, and connecting your calendar and the mailbox your business replies go out from — is included on every plan.

At the end of any month, without giving a reason. There is no contract and no notice period. Your bookings export from the portal on the way out.

No — allowances reset at the start of each billing month. It is the one place we'd rather be plain than clever: rollover sounds generous and mostly exists to make a plan look bigger than it is.