Answer Every Call Your Techs Can’t.

Inboxsmith is one flat, done-for-you plan — $397/mo, priced by call volume rather than truck count. That includes about 1,800 minutes (~600 calls); if a busy month runs over, it's a flat $0.20 a minute — never a per-call meter, so a storm spike won't blow up your bill. A one-time $997 setup applies (waived on an annual plan, 50% off on a 6-month term), and we prove it first with a free 7-day pilot.

An answering service takes a message — then someone has to call the customer back, and by then they've booked your competitor. Inboxsmith books the job: it captures the name, address and issue, offers a time window your office confirms, and fires the details to your dispatcher in under a minute. It's the difference between “we'll have someone call you” and “you're on the schedule.”

It introduces itself as an automated assistant, then sounds like a natural conversation — the current generation is a long way from the old robotic systems. The best test is to hear it: we can play a recorded call or let you call a demo line and try to break it.

No. You keep your existing business number — the one on your trucks, cards and ads. We simply forward your line to Inboxsmith so it answers the calls you can’t.

If you're on Housecall Pro MAX with CSR AI or ServiceTitan's Voice Agent, keep it — those book against your live calendar and they're solid. Inboxsmith is for the rest: owner-operators on Jobber, Workiz, regular Housecall Pro, or just a cell phone. It's flat-fee and fully done-for-you, and it works across all your trades whether or not your software has an API.

Yes. Inboxsmith is inbound-only by default — it answers people calling you — so outbound robocall rules don’t apply. The assistant discloses that it’s automated up front, the call is recorded with disclosure, and it never invents prices or appointment times: it reads your real prices and offers windows your office confirms.

Yes — emergency triage is built per trade. A “no heat with a newborn” or an active flood is routed to your on-call line immediately, while a routine job gets booked into a window. If a caller reports gas, smoke or fire, the assistant tells them to hang up and call 911 before anything else.

A live answering service puts a human agent on your line — a good fit when you want a person, and the meter typically runs per call or per minute. An AI answering service answers 24/7 whatever the call volume. Inboxsmith is one flat monthly fee, always discloses it’s automated, and adds trade-specific emergency triage and in-call booking.

Yes — that’s the dispatch loop. When a call qualifies as an emergency, your on-call tech gets pinged with the address and the problem, and has 60 seconds to claim the job while the caller stays on the line. If nobody’s free, it books the first morning window right on the call, and your office confirms.

Yes. Call forwarding decides what Inboxsmith answers — everything, after-hours only, or just the overflow when your line is busy. That’s exactly how the free pilot runs — up to 7 days or 300 minutes: we take only the overflow and after-hours calls you’d otherwise lose, then you decide whether to widen it to every call.