My AI Front Desk's $20 plan includes no voice minutes at all.

My AI Front Desk, which now brands itself "frontdesk" on its own site, is an American AI receptionist advertising setup in five minutes, 20-plus languages, and plans from $20 a month. The $20 plan includes ten chatbot conversations, forty SMS, and zero voice minutes. Voice is drawn from a credit balance at 25 credits per minute, and their first plan that includes any is $99.

Start free pilotFree pilot. About 14 days to a working line, no call limit.

Who is My AI Front Desk actually for, and who are we for?

My AI Front Desk is for a business that wants many channels and many languages configured quickly and cheaply. We are for a business whose phone specifically has to be right.

My AI Front Desk

A small business that wants a chatbot, SMS and voice under one subscription, set up fast, in one of twenty-plus languages. Their pitch is speed (five-minute setup) and breadth, and for a business whose main need is a website chatbot with some phone coverage attached, the $20 tier is genuinely inexpensive. The language count is the highest in this comparison and for a multilingual customer base that can be the deciding factor.

AnswerAI

A business where the phone is the channel that matters and the calls carry decisions: what to refuse, who to escalate to, what has to be asked first. We build one agent for one business against its own call log, over about two weeks, wired into the software you already run. We do not do chat or SMS at all: the whole build is the phone call, which is how it goes deeper than a product that has to cover three channels at once. If breadth is what you need, theirs is the better shape.

My AI Front Desk figures read from myaifrontdesk.com/pricing on August 9, 2026. Their full plan ladder is printed in the pricing section below.

	My AI Front Desk	AnswerAI
What you get	A product you configure yourself in a form	Custom software written for one business, against your own call log.
Billing model	Credit balance drawn down per minute and per message	One flat monthly fee. Unlimited calls, no meter, no overage line.
What the advertised entry covers	$20 covers 10 chatbot conversations and 40 SMS, no voice minutes at all	Every call, every month; the fee is agreed in writing before anything is built.
What the first voice plan covers	$99 covers 200 voice minutes	Every call, every month; the fee is agreed in writing before anything is built.
When you go over	25 credits per voice minute · $10 per 1,000 credits	None. There is no meter to go over.
Channels	Voice, SMS and website chatbot	Voice: the whole build is the phone call
Languages	20+	More than seventy languages on the platform. English and French is a starting point, not a premium tier, and there is no per-language charge.
Setup	Claimed 5 minutes, self-serve	About 14 days, built with you, starting with a free pilot, no call limit.

The two "what it covers" rows are the whole comparison. A buyer putting their $20 against another company's $29 is comparing a chat plan with a phone plan, and the arithmetic below is what that costs once voice is switched on.

What does a voice minute cost once you convert the credits?

Twenty-five cents a minute, or about thirty-two cents a call at our measured length. Credits are the only abstract billing unit in this comparison, and converting them is the difference between a plan that looks like the cheapest on the market and one that is priced in the middle of it.

A model: their published credit rates, our measured call length

Their own published rates (verified August 9, 2026): 25 credits per voice minute, 4 per SMS, 5 per chatbot conversation, with credits sold at $10 per 1,000. Converted at an average call length of 76 seconds, or 1.27 minutes, which is ours: 80 calls at Lammer Enterprises, one Calgary landscaping company, April 21 to August 6 2026.

One credit, in dollars$0.01$10 ÷ 1,000 credits.
One voice minute$0.2525 credits × $0.01.
One call at 76 seconds$0.321.27 minutes × $0.25.
What the $20 plan buys in calls0 callsThe plan includes no voice minutes. Any voice draws down purchased credits on top of the subscription.
The $99 plan: 200 included voice minutes≈ 157 calls200 ÷ 1.27 = 157.5 calls. $99 ÷ 157 = $0.63 per call, before any credit top-ups.

Their real voice-inclusive entry price, against the $20 on the pricing page$99

This is not an accusation of bad faith; the credit rates are published clearly and the $20 plan's contents are listed accurately on their own page. It is a warning about comparison shopping. Our own competitive scan recorded "$20 entry" on July 30 and used it to argue the category's price floor was collapsing; re-reading the page on August 9 showed that was a true price for the wrong product, and we corrected the finding. If we got it wrong reading it carefully, a buyer skimming five tabs will too.

Every rate above is My AI Front Desk’s own published figure, read from their pricing page on August 9, 2026. Prices in this category move; check before you decide anything on them.

Where is My AI Front Desk genuinely better than us?

Breadth and speed. Three channels under one subscription, twenty-plus languages, and self-serve setup in minutes rather than a two-week build with a person on the other end.

We do voice and nothing else. They do voice, SMS and a website chatbot on one plan, and for a small business that wants all three covered without managing three vendors, that consolidation is worth real money. It is not a capability we are working toward either; building phone agents properly is the whole company.

Twenty-plus languages is the widest coverage in this comparison and it is not close. We handle English as standard and French as a build consideration. A business whose callers speak Punjabi, Tagalog or Mandarin has a real option there and does not have one with us.

And self-serve setup genuinely matters to some buyers. Their claim is five minutes; ours is about fourteen days and starts with a conversation. For an owner who wants to solve this tonight without booking a call, the difference is decisive, and no amount of arguing about build quality changes what they are actually asking for.

Where are we better than My AI Front Desk?

The phone is the product rather than one of three channels, the pricing has no abstraction layer, and the agent is built against your call log rather than configured in five minutes.

Credits are the thing we would change first. An abstract unit between the customer and the price is a small tax on understanding: to know what a call costs you have to know the credit rate, the credit price and your own average call length, and almost nobody works all three out before signing. Our billing has no unit at all; there is no meter, so there is nothing to convert.

Five-minute setup and a two-week build are not two speeds of the same thing; they are different products. Five minutes gets you a working generic agent. Two weeks gets you an agent that knows a med-spa must price a treatment but refuse a candidacy question, or that a law firm must take both parties' names before hearing any facts. Whether that difference is worth fourteen days depends entirely on what your phone is liable for.

And depth beats breadth once the phone is the thing that matters. Three channels handled adequately is the right answer for a business testing all three. One channel handled properly is the right answer for a business whose calls are how it earns, and that is the only business we build for.

How does the pricing model differ?

They sell subscriptions plus a credit balance that voice draws down. We sell a build with no unit, no balance and no conversion step.

Basic$200 voice minutes, 10 chatbot conversations, 40 SMSVoice billed from credits
Business-in-a-Box$99200 voice minutes, 100 chatbot conversations, 400 SMS
Partner / EnterpriseCustomCustom volume; overage as low as 7 credits per voice minute

Annual billing: $16 and $79. Now brands itself as "frontdesk". Read from My AI Front Desk’s own pricing page on August 9, 2026.

Credit systems are common in software and there is nothing improper about one. What they do is move the real price one step away from the page, so the comparison a buyer makes at the top of the funnel, $20 against $29 against $49, is not a comparison of the same thing. In this case the gap between the advertised entry and the voice-inclusive entry is $79.

For completeness: annual billing brings their tiers to $16 and $79, the Partner tier quotes voice overage "as low as 7 credits" a minute, and credits auto-reload at $10 per 1,000. All published clearly on their page; the arithmetic is available, it just has to be done.

When a plan is priced in credits, the advertised number and the number you pay are separated by arithmetic nobody does at the comparison stage, which is precisely when the comparison is being made.
Nick Lovett, Founder, AnswerAI

If you want chat, SMS and phone in twenty languages for as little as possible, they are the better answer. If the phone is the thing that earns, we should talk.

Start free pilot

So who should pick which?

Pick on breadth versus depth. Three channels and many languages point at them; a phone carrying real consequences points at a build.

Pick My AI Front Desk if

You want voice, SMS and website chat from one vendor
Your customers speak languages beyond English and French
You want to be set up tonight, self-serve, without a conversation
Your main need is the chatbot and phone coverage is secondary
You are a US business and USD billing is simpler
You are comfortable doing the credit arithmetic yourself

Pick AnswerAI if

The phone is the channel that earns and it has to be right
You want a price with no unit to convert
Your calls carry clinical, legal or safety judgments that must not be guessed
You are Canadian and want CAD billing and Canadian privacy law as the starting point
You have hard cases you can name and a call log to build against
You want the person who built the agent to be the person you call

Questions about My AI Front Desk vs AnswerAI

No. Verified August 9, 2026, the $20 Basic plan includes 10 chatbot conversations, 40 SMS and unlimited email drafts, with 0 voice minutes a month. Voice is billed from a credit balance at 25 credits per minute, with credits at $10 per 1,000. Their first plan that includes voice minutes is Business-in-a-Box at $99 for 200 minutes.

Twenty-five cents, converting their published rates: 25 credits per voice minute at $10 per 1,000 credits. At a 76-second average call, our own measured figure, that is about $0.32 a call. Their Partner tier quotes overage as low as 7 credits a minute, which would work out to $0.07 a minute for high-volume customers.

Their own site brands the product "frontdesk" while the domain and most search traffic still use My AI Front Desk. We mention it because a reader clicking through from this page should not think they have landed somewhere wrong. We have no information about the reason and are not speculating about one.

On a quiet month, yes. Their voice-inclusive plan is $99 for 200 minutes, roughly 157 calls at our measured average, and every minute past that draws credits at a published rate. AnswerAI is one flat monthly fee for unlimited calls with no meter behind it, so the two are not the same purchase. If cost is the deciding factor and your calls are straightforward, they or Dialzara are the sensible answers and we would say so on the first call.

Do the credit arithmetic before you compare anything

Any plan priced in an abstract unit needs converting before it can be compared, and that conversion is where the real number lives. If the phone is what earns for you and you want it built rather than configured, our pilot is free: about fourteen days to a working line, no call limit.