Smith.ai or Cloverly: what a trade shop is actually buying

Start with what they are, because it is substantial. Smith.ai has been answering phones since 2015. Their site says they serve 5,000-plus businesses and staff more than 500 live receptionists, all North America-based, working alongside the AI. When their AI hits something it cannot handle, a person can take the line — and their pricing page says an AI-initiated escalation carries no fee.

The integration surface is wide: native connections to Salesforce, HubSpot, and Clio, plus what they describe as 5,000-plus apps through Zapier and Make. If your shop already runs on a CRM, Smith.ai probably talks to it. We integrate with none of those, and there is no logo strip on our site pretending otherwise.

• Two product lines: an AI receptionist and a live virtual receptionist service, each with its own pricing page.
• 24/7 coverage on both lines, with no setup fees and a 30-day money-back guarantee on the live plans.
• Bilingual AI call handling in English and Spanish; on the live plans, a dedicated Spanish line is a $1.00 per-call add-on.
• Spam calls are not charged, per their pricing page.
• Month to month on the self-serve plans, no long-term contracts.

None of that is a weakness. If the rest of this page reads as 'Smith.ai is a broad, established company and Cloverly is a narrow, new one,' that is the accurate reading, and the question is only which shape fits a trade shop.

As of July 2026, Smith.ai's AI receptionist has three published tiers: a free plan with 25 calls a month and $3.00 a call after that, Pro at $150 a month billed around $2.00 a call, and Enterprise at $500 a month around $1.67 a call, with volume discounts as you commit to more calls. The live receptionist plans are Starter at $300 for 30 calls, Basic at $810 for 90, and Pro at $2,100 for 300, with overage at $11.50, $10.50, and $8.50 a call respectively.

Then the per-call add-ons on the live plans, from the same page: appointment booking $1.50, SMS notifications $0.50, call recording and transcription $0.25, a dedicated Spanish line $1.00, payment collection $1.00. Reasonable individually. They matter because they scale with exactly the thing a trade shop cannot control — how many people call when a storm rolls through.

Run the arithmetic on a heavy month, with their published rates and our label on it: this is arithmetic, not a quote. Say July brings 160 calls — a normal load plus one bad-weather week. On the live Basic plan that is $810 for the first 90 calls and $735 in overage for the next 70, about $1,545 before a single add-on. Book 50 of those callers and add $75. Record everything and add $40. On their AI Pro rate of $2.00 a call, the same month is about $320.

So be clear about what that math says, because it cuts both ways. If all you want is AI answering and your volume is modest, Smith.ai's AI plans cost less than we do, full stop. The per-call model bites on the human-staffed plans, at volume, in exactly the months you are busiest — the months the phone is worth the most. Cloverly's tiers are $497, $997, and $2,497 flat. No per-call or per-minute charges; we agree a volume ceiling for a shop your size before you start, and if you outgrow it we talk before anything changes.

One row deserves expansion: intake. A general-purpose receptionist, human or AI, can take any caller's name and number. A trade call has trade questions. For tree work, whether there is a clear drop zone changes the crew and the quote. A limb touching a service line is not an estimate request; it is a call that should follow the escalation rule you wrote, the same way 'if they say gas, put them through to me' does. Cloverly's scripts only contain the services and questions you gave us, so it cannot volunteer work you do not do — and prices come back as the range you set, never a firm number you would have to honor at the door.

• You want the option of a person taking over the call. Smith.ai staffs 500-plus live receptionists behind the AI. We have no equivalent and are not building one; our only human path is a transfer to your own cell.
• Your shop runs on a CRM. Their native Salesforce, HubSpot, and Clio connections plus the Zapier catalog will slot into an existing stack. We write to email and a calendar, nothing else.
• You are not a trade business. Smith.ai serves legal, healthcare, and much else. Cloverly is built for local trades and would be the wrong tool anywhere else.
• Your call volume is low and steady. At 40 calls a month, their free-plus-overage or Pro AI pricing is genuinely cheap, and a flat $497 would be paying for headroom you do not use.
• You want a vendor with references. They have a decade of them. We have a guarantee instead of a customer list, and a guarantee is not a reference.

If two or more of those describe you, stop reading and go get their quote. A comparison page that never says the other side should win is an ad.

The honest case for us is narrow, which is the point. Cloverly does one thing — a front office for local trade shops — and the whole product is shaped by that. Spanish is on every call in every tier, not a per-call line item, because in our market the caller who opens in Spanish is not an edge case. The bill is flat because trade volume is weather, and a shop should not owe more in the exact month its phone finally paid off. Intake asks trade questions because a name and number is a message, not a booking.

Setup is done for you on Front office and Managed: one 45-minute call, we write the script, connect the calendar, set the escalation rules, and test with live calls before it answers a customer. There is no setup fee right now — Smith.ai does not charge one either, so the difference is not the fee, it is who does the work. We target 24 to 48 hours from the setup call to the line going live, and that is a target, not an average — we will give you a date we can hold, not a number off a brochure. Two clocks we do not control: texting waits on A2P 10DLC carrier registration, typically one to seven days, and Google Calendar write access waits on Google's review. Voice waits on neither.

One thing to do before you talk to either company: pull your call log for the last two weeks and count what you missed. Then get Smith.ai's quote for that volume, with the add-ons you would actually use, and put it next to a flat tier. Send us both numbers and we will tell you which one we would pick in your position — including when the answer is them.