Frontdesk for Small Businesses: A Plain-English Look

Who this is for

Frontdesk, which also goes by My AI Front Desk, is aimed at a small business that wants routine front-desk work handled with as little babysitting as possible: answering, appointment handling, texting and follow-ups in one place. Cleaning companies and appointment-based businesses are the kind of owner it is talking to, and the pricing page backs that up: calls, texts and website chat come in a single plan rather than as separate products.

What happens when someone calls

According to its pricing page, Frontdesk answers the call, can book appointments, can transfer a call to your team (the page calls these 'Agent Actions'), sends and receives text messages, runs a chatbot on your website and keeps everything in a built-in CRM. It works in 20-plus languages. There is no human backup; transfers go to your own people. What the page does not tell you is how deep the lead sorting goes, what you receive after a call, or whether booking does a live calendar check before confirming, and we have not placed a test call. If you want to understand what a typical AI receptionist does on a call so you can ask the right questions, start with our guide to how these systems handle a call.

Setting it up

The promise is low management overhead, which usually means a short setup and not much to maintain afterwards. The pricing page mentions a Zapier connection on the $99 plan, which is how you would link it to tools it does not connect to directly. We cannot tell you whether the low-maintenance promise holds, because we have not been through setup ourselves. Treat it as a claim to test during the 7-day trial rather than something we have seen.

What we still need to check

Here is what the pricing page did not tell us. We share it so you can ask the same questions if you get to Frontdesk before we do.

• How lead qualification works: whether it asks questions and grades callers, or simply takes their details.
• Whether booking does a live calendar check before confirming, and which calendars it connects to directly.
• What you receive after a call (a summary, a transcript, a recording) and how long it is kept.
• Whether around-the-clock answering has any limit on how many calls it takes at once.
• How the 200 voice minutes hold up over a real month, since we have not placed a test call.

What it costs

We checked myaifrontdesk.com/pricing on September 7, 2026. The plan an owner wants is Business-in-a-Box at $99 a month ($79 a month if you pay annually), which includes 200 voice minutes plus texting, the website chatbot, the built-in CRM and Zapier. There is also a $20 Basic plan ($16 annual), but read it carefully: it includes the platform and no voice minutes, so it does not answer your phone. Usage past your allowance is billed in credits at a penny each: a voice minute is 25 credits, or $0.25; a text message is 4 credits; a chatbot conversation is 5. Every plan has a 7-day free trial, and the page says no contracts and no hidden fees.

Two hundred minutes is a modest allowance, roughly 60 to 70 three-minute calls, so a busy shop should budget for overage at $0.25 a minute. Larger businesses can ask about the Partner/Enterprise tier, which is custom-priced with voice as low as 7 credits a minute.

Where it falls short

• 200 voice minutes is a modest allowance, and overage runs $0.25 a minute.
• The $20 Basic plan cannot answer calls at all; the real starting price is $99.
• No human backup; transfers go to your own team.
• Lead-sorting depth and the booking check are not described on the pricing page, and we have not tested a call.

Our take for owners

With the prices confirmed, Frontdesk is a reasonable option for a small business that wants calls, texts and website chat handled in one place for $99 a month. We still have not tested it, so use the 7-day trial to run the calls in our booking guide before you point your line at it. If the point is turning trade calls into booked jobs, Torklio is the one to look at; if you just need messages taken, Goodcall and Rosie are simpler.