Pay first for the leak that costs you most. If calls go unanswered while you're up a ladder, that is an AI receptionist; if quotes leave late, it is the AI already inside your job software; if neither, a $20 chat assistant. Design visuals, video, route planning and autonomous agents can wait until a basic tool has earned its fee.
Which leak is biggest is a counting question rather than a matter of taste, so count for one week before buying anything. Prices below come from the vendors' own pages, read on 29 October 2026. They move, so check each one before you commit.
Count three leaks for one week before you buy
You need three numbers, and none of them needs software. Write them on a whiteboard in the workshop or in your phone's notes, and keep the same definitions for the whole week.
| Leak | What to count | Where the number lives | Buy when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enquiries | Calls and messages from new customers that nobody answered within an hour | Phone call log, voicemail, inbox, website form | Two or more genuine new enquiries a week go unanswered |
| Quotes | Hours from the site visit to the quote reaching the customer; quotes with no reply after seven days | Job software, your sent folder | The average passes two days, or a third of quotes never get a follow-up |
| Admin | Invoices unpaid after 14 days; evening hours spent on paperwork | Accounting software, a tally on your phone | Chasing takes more than an hour a week, or three invoices sit past 14 days |
Count genuine enquiries only. Ring back every missed number once: a supplier, a sales rep or a customer who already has a booking is not an enquiry. The thresholds in the last column are my rules of thumb, not industry figures, and the sum in the next section shows where the first one comes from.
Calls: what a missed enquiry costs against $34 to $150 a month
Take a three-van plumbing and heating firm. Every figure here is illustrative: five people, about 60 jobs a month, $380 average gross profit per job, and nobody at the phone between 8 and 5 because everyone is on site.
In the counting week, 12 calls go unanswered. After ringing every number back, 5 turn out to be new enquiries. The other 7 were suppliers, existing customers and a sales rep.
Five a week is about 22 a month. Say half of those callers have already rung another firm by the time anyone calls back, so about 11 are lost. If the firm wins one answered enquiry in three, that is about 3.6 jobs, or roughly $1,370 of gross profit a month walking away. If a receptionist rescues only one lost enquiry in three, that is about 1.2 jobs and $460 a month.
Twelve calls a week is about 52 a month. This is what that volume costs at each tool's list price, using the allowance each vendor states:
| Option | List price | Allowance | Cost at 52 calls a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smith.ai AI Receptionist, free plan | $0 | 25 real calls, then $3 each | 25 free plus 27 at $3 = $81 |
| Smith.ai Pro, 75-call tier | $150 | 75 calls | $150 |
| Jobber Receptionist add-on | $29 | 30 conversations, then $0.79 each (Jobber's help article) | $29 plus 22 at $0.79 = $46.38, if each call counts as one conversation |
| Quo with a Sona tier | $25 | 40 calls, then $0.75 each | $25 plus 12 at $0.75 = $34, plus a Quo seat from $15 to $19 a month per user |
| Dialzara Business Lite | $29 | 60 minutes, then $0.48 a minute | At two minutes a call (my assumption), 104 minutes = $29 plus 44 at $0.48 = $50.12 |
Each rescued enquiry is worth about $127 in expected gross profit ($380 times one in three). The $81 line is covered by less than one rescued enquiry a month, and the $150 line by about 1.2. Price is almost never the risk with a receptionist. The risk is what it says to your customers, so treat the first fortnight as testing, not saving.
Testing is cheap. Smith.ai's free plan includes 25 test calls and 50 simulated calls on top of the 25 real ones, Dialzara offers a seven-day trial, and Goodcall lets you build a demo agent and only charges once you connect a phone number. Ring the assistant yourself from three different phones and ask the awkward questions: "Can you come tonight?", "How much to unblock a sink?", "I can smell gas, what do I do?"
Here is how a first week can go wrong (an illustration, not a real case). In the example firm, the daily call summaries showed the assistant telling two callers "we can be with you within the hour". The instruction sheet said "we do emergencies" and nothing about timings, so the assistant filled the gap. One customer waited three hours. The fix was three lines of instructions: never promise an arrival time; take the address, a phone number and a one-line description; say the owner will ring back within 30 minutes during working hours. For a gas smell, flooding or fire risk, the caller is told to contact the emergency services first.
Tell callers at the start that they have reached the firm's AI assistant. Some places require this, and it removes the surprise either way. Ask your provider what its default greeting says, and check any rules on recorded calls with a local adviser. If you want the wider cost picture for a phone assistant, what an AI receptionist costs a trades business works through it, and built-in or standalone receptionist covers the choice between a job-software add-on and a separate service.
Quotes: look inside your job software before adding anything
A separate quoting AI is almost never the right first purchase for a three-van firm. The tools that matter sit inside the job app, so check what yours already includes before you look elsewhere. Here are three job apps worth comparing, with what each lists on its own pricing page:
| App | The AI part | Plan it needs | List price for a five-person team |
|---|---|---|---|
| ServiceM8 | AI Quote & Invoice drafts a job description and billing items; AI Writing Helper drafts emails and texts | Listed among the essentials that come with every plan; Growing covers 150 new jobs a month with unlimited users | $79 a month |
| Tradify | SmartWrite drafts descriptions; SmartRead for Bills captures supplier bills | Plus only | $61 per user, so $305 for five users (the page doesn't say whether that is monthly or annual billing) |
| Jobber | Automated follow-ups on quotes and invoices; Receptionist add-on | Follow-ups listed from Connect; Receptionist is $29 on Core, Connect and Grow, and included on Plus | Connect for five users: $199 monthly, $169 on a one-year commitment billed monthly, $149 prepaid annually |
The cheapest line is not automatically the winner, but job caps matter. ServiceM8 counts new jobs, so a firm doing 60 a month is comfortable on Growing's 150 and not on Starter's 50 or the free plan's 30. Read the "then" price on any promotional banner too. Jobber's page showed a "save up to 40%" offer ending on 30 October, and the price that applies afterwards is the one to budget for.
If your software has none of this, a chat assistant with a saved price book does most of the same job. ChatGPT Plus is listed at $20 a month and Claude Pro at $17 a month billed annually ($200 up front) or $20 monthly. Both let you keep a Project holding your price list, standard exclusions and tone of voice, so every quote starts from your rules. A fuller comparison of the apps by business size is in the further reads at the end.
This is what a quote-drafting prompt looks like, with a realistic reply. The notes are the kind you dictate in the van.
You write quote descriptions for a three-van plumbing and heating firm.
Plain words, no jargon, no promises about dates or guarantees.
Use only the facts in my notes. If something is missing, list it as a question at the end instead of guessing.
Notes: replace leaking shower valve, one wall retile behind it, customer supplies the tiles, bathroom is upstairs so protect the stair carpet, isolate water at the stopcock, two visits, second visit is grouting after 24 hours.
Output: a two-sentence summary for the customer, a list of what is included, a list of what is not included, then questions for me.Within seconds the assistant returns something like this (illustrative):
Summary: We will replace the leaking shower valve and re-tile the wall behind it using the tiles you are supplying. The job takes two visits, with the second for grouting once the adhesive has had 24 hours to set.
Included: isolating the water; removing and replacing the valve; protecting the stair carpet; re-tiling one wall; grouting; clearing up.
Not included: tiles; adhesive and grout; work on other walls or pipework; repairs to hidden damage found behind the wall.
Questions: Is the stopcock easy to reach? How many spare tiles are being supplied? Is the new valve supplied by you or by us?
Two fixes before it goes out. The assistant listed adhesive and grout as "not included", but this firm normally supplies them, so the line moves to "included". And there is no price, no validity period and no payment terms, which you add yourself or take from the job app. The "hidden damage" exclusion is worth keeping. Wording is the part AI does well. Whether AI can price a job accurately is a separate question, and the safe habit today is to check every figure yourself.
Admin: reminders cost nothing, supplier bills are where AI pays
Chasing late invoices is the admin job people most want to hand over, and it is the one where you should buy least. Jobber lists automated quote and invoice follow-ups from its Connect plan, ServiceM8 lists Quote Follow-up and Automated Payment Follow-ups on every plan, and most other job apps can send a reminder on a schedule. Switch those on before paying for anything with "AI" in its name.
Where an AI step earns money is capturing supplier bills and receipts, because that is typing. Tradify's SmartRead for Bills is on its Plus plan only. In accounting software, QuickBooks lists its Accounting AI from the Essentials plan ($85 a month at the standard price) and not on Simple Start ($38). If you are choosing between them, the tutorial on how AI connects to QuickBooks for a construction firm, in the further reads at the end, shows what each layer can and cannot post.
A chat assistant is useful for the words around chasing. This is the same reminder before and after, the second drafted by the assistant and trimmed by the owner:
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| "Invoice 1042 is 3 weeks overdue. Pay it today or I'll add a late fee." | "Hi [first name], invoice 1042 for the shower valve job (due 6 October) hasn't come through yet. Could you let me know if it is on its way? The payment link is here again: [link]. If anything on the invoice looks wrong, reply and I'll sort it today. Thanks, [your name]" |
The second version names the job, gives a way to pay and an exit if there is a dispute. Chasing wording and timing are covered in polite reminders for trades. If chasing costs you three hours a week and your time is worth $50 an hour, that is about $650 a month, so even a modest cut in chasing time pays for a $20 assistant.
What can wait, and what ends the wait
Every tool below is useful for someone. For a three-van firm they are second-month purchases at best, and each has a trigger that tells you when waiting is over. The triggers are my rules of thumb, so adjust them to your own numbers.
| Tool type | Why it waits | What ends the wait |
|---|---|---|
| Website chatbot | Answers questions your receptionist and a good contact page already cover | Call summaries show callers repeating the same five questions, and the website produces more than ten out-of-hours enquiries a month |
| Design visuals and marketing video | More leads don't help if you cannot take the work | Your diary has spare capacity for four weeks running |
| Route planning | With three vans, a whiteboard and a map is usually enough | Each van runs five or more stops a day and a week of journey logs shows driving as a visible loss; Routific's free plan (up to 100 orders a month) is a no-cost test |
| Autonomous agents | They act on your accounts and inbox, so mistakes cost more | A process has run by hand, without errors, for a month |
| AI bookkeeping | It multiplies a messy file rather than fixing it | Your accounts are reconciled up to last month-end |
| Paid training courses | The trial below teaches the same habits with your own jobs | A second person is going to own the tools |
Free tiers and where each one stops
Free is a fair way to run the trial, provided you know the exact limit. These are the limits as each vendor's page states them:
| Tool | What free gives you | Where it stops | First paid step |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Free plan with limited file uploads and image generation; Projects on every plan | Limits on uploads, images and deep research | Plus at $20 a month (Go at $8 may include ads) |
| Claude | Free plan with up to five projects | Usage limits and no Claude in Chrome | Pro at $17 a month annually or $20 monthly |
| ServiceM8 | One user, 30 new jobs a month, AI helper assists limited to 10 a day | The 30-job limit, or a second user | Starter at $29: unlimited users, 50 jobs |
| Smith.ai | 25 real calls a month, plus test and simulated calls | $3 for each call after 25; no live support on free | Pro from $150 for 75 calls |
| Quo Sona | 1,000 free credits, which is 10 calls, on every Quo plan | Call 11 | $25 tier for 40 calls |
| Jobber | 14-day trial with Grow features, no card needed | Day 15 | Core from $29 a month on annual prepayment ($49 monthly) |
| Routific | 100 orders a month, all features except SMS notifications | Order 101 | $150 a month for up to 1,000 orders |
Most of these limits are on volume, which suits a trial: you find out whether the tool earns its place before the meter starts. For a longer look at free against paid across a trades business, free versus paid AI tools for a small trades business covers the same ground with more tools.
A four-week trial with a stop rule for every purchase
Trials are 14 days for Jobber, ServiceM8 and Tradify and seven for Dialzara, so the order matters. Start each trial only in the week you will use it.
- Week 1: baseline and assistant. Finish the three counts. Set up a chat assistant with a Project holding your price list, standard exclusions and tone. Use it for every customer reply and quote description you write, and note how many you drafted.
- Week 2: receptionist on after-hours only. Switch on the free plan or trial of one receptionist for evenings and weekends. Test it from three phones. Read every call summary the next morning.
- Weeks 3 and 4: job software trial. Start the 14-day trial on Monday of week 3. Send every new quote through it, and switch the receptionist to daytime overflow if the summaries were clean.
- End of week 4: decide. Fill in the scorecard below and keep, fix or stop each tool.
An illustrative scorecard for the example firm at the end of week 4:
| Measure | Baseline | Week 4 | Decision |
|---|---|---|---|
| Genuine enquiries unanswered per week | 5 | 1 | Keep the receptionist; move to a paid tier if volume passes the free allowance |
| Hours from visit to quote sent | 52 | 20 | Keep the job software's AI drafting |
| Invoices unpaid after 14 days | 6 | 3 | Keep the automatic reminders; nothing new to buy |
| Receptionist calls needing a correction | not applicable | 3 of 41 | Fix the instructions and retest for one more week |
| Chat assistant uses | 0 | 26 drafts | Keep on the free tier until limits interrupt real work |
Set the stop rule before you start, in writing: cancel any tool that has not moved its measure after two full weeks, and cancel any tool you have not opened in ten days. A subscription nobody opens is easy to forget about, and it keeps billing.
Three firms, three different first purchases
The same counts point to different tools. A three-van electrical firm that answers its phone well but takes four days to send quotes should start with job software. Its owner writes quotes in the evening from memory, so ServiceM8 Growing at $79 or Jobber Connect at $199 with follow-ups beats any receptionist. The measure to watch is hours from visit to quote.
A gas and heating firm with a good quoting routine but invoices that run late starts with nothing at all. It switches on automated reminders in the software it owns, adds the assistant for firmer wording on the few disputed ones, and spends the saved money on supplier-bill capture later.
A roofing firm gets most of its work from phone calls in bad weather, when every crew is on a roof and nobody can answer. The receptionist is the first purchase, with the instruction sheet written around storm damage: ask whether water is coming in, take photos by text if the tool supports it, and flag emergencies for a same-day call-back. The firm leaves quoting software alone until the call volume is under control.
For a fuller day-by-day plan once you have picked a path, the first 30 days of AI in a trades business goes through it, and the AI hub links the wider set of tutorials for small firms.
Questions a trades owner asks before paying
Can the whole crew share one ChatGPT or Claude login?
No. OpenAI's terms and Anthropic's consumer terms both ban sharing logins, and a shared login also mixes everyone's chats. Give each person their own plan, or use a team plan: ChatGPT Business is listed at $20 a user a month billed annually ($25 monthly) and Claude Team Standard at the same prices, both with a two-seat minimum. For one or two heavy users, individual plans are usually cheaper.
Should an AI receptionist tell callers it is an AI?
Yes, in the first sentence of the call. Some places require disclosure and others are moving that way, and a caller who finds out halfway through is more annoyed than one who was told. Ask your provider what its default greeting says, then ask a local adviser whether any rules about recorded calls or automated callers apply to your firm.
What happens when a free plan runs out mid-month?
It depends on the tool, so read the limit before you rely on it. ServiceM8's free plan is limited to 30 new jobs a month, Smith.ai's free plan charges $3 for each real call after the first 25, and Quo's Sona tiers charge a per-call overage. Put the limit in your trial scorecard so the first paid month is a decision you made, not a surprise.
Is a $20 chat assistant worth it if my job software already has AI?
Often yes, because the software's AI is tied to its own screens, while a chat assistant also drafts replies, review responses, tender wording and spreadsheets. Start on the free tier, save your price book and tone of voice in a Project, and move to the $20 plan only when free limits interrupt real work twice in a week.
Further reads
- How to Implement AI in Your Business: First Job for a Trades Firm — Pick and implement the first job once you know your leak.
- Replying to Trade Enquiries in 60 Seconds With AI — Set up fast replies to new enquiries.
- AI App for Tradies: ServiceM8, Tradify or Fergus by Business Size — ServiceM8, Tradify or Fergus, chosen by business size.
- Best AI for a Small Construction Company's Financials and QuickBooks — How AI connects to QuickBooks, and what it must not post.
- Seven AI Mistakes That Cost Tradespeople Jobs — Seven ways AI errors lose work, and how to spot them.
- When Should a Trades Business Bring In an AI Consultant? — When outside help beats doing it yourself.
- AI Software for Plumbers: What a Small Firm Pays Each Month, by Van Count — Monthly AI software bills for one, three and eight vans, tallied line by line from vendor pricing pages: platform, AI receptionist and ChatGPT seats.
- Best AI for Tradies: Seven Tools by Job, Price and Setup Effort — Seven AI tools ranked for quoting, calls, invoices and marketing, with vendor-page prices and a realistic setup time for each.
- Five AI Apps for Construction Site Work: Photos, Logs, Checks — Five apps for photos, daily logs and site checks, with the AI features each one lists, which plan carries them, and what four users would pay.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: Jobber, ServiceM8, Tradify, Smith.ai, Quo, Dialzara, Goodcall and Routific pricing and help pages, read on 29 October 2026; ChatGPT and Claude pricing pages; QuickBooks pricing page; OpenAI and Anthropic terms on shared logins.