Which First AI Employee plan is right for me?
Picking a plan comes down to one question: do you want insurance that catches the calls you miss, or labor you hand off for good? Your size settles the rest.
Most people open the pricing page and start comparing minutes. That's backward. The plan you want isn't a math problem about call volume. It falls out of one decision you make first, about what you want this thing to be, and once you've made it the rest is easy.
Insurance, or labor replacement?
There are two honest ways to use an AI receptionist, and they point at different plans.
Insurance: catch what you miss
Think of it like insurance (an analogy, of course; First AI Employee is a phone service, not an insurance product). You run your day exactly the way you do now. The AI sits behind you and picks up what slips through: the call that lands while you're under a sink, already on the other line, or driving home at six. You weren't going to answer those anyway, so every one it saves is found money. Nothing about your routine changes. You've plugged a leak.
Labor replacement: hand the phone off for good
Here you decide the phone isn't your job anymore, or your one office person's job. Every call goes to the AI first, on purpose, so nobody gets pulled off real work to answer it, qualify it, and book it. You're not catching the overflow. You've decided the front desk runs itself.
What's an interruption actually costing you?
That's the question that splits the two, and it isn't the price of a plan. It's the price of your attention. A solo tradesperson on a roof doesn't just lose the call when the phone rings. They lose the thread, the focus, sometimes the safe footing, and then twenty minutes climbing back into the job. If your day is one interruption after another, you're not really weighing $99 against $249. You're weighing it against your own time, at whatever your time is honestly worth.
So ask it straight: what does one interruption cost me, and how many do I take a day? If the honest answer makes you wince, you're looking at labor replacement. If you mostly catch your own calls and just want the after-hours leak sealed, insurance is plenty.
I've argued hard that missing calls is expensive and you shouldn't tolerate it, and I think it holds up; the missed-call calculator will put your own number on it. That's the insurance half. The case for handing the drudge work to an AI on purpose is its own argument. To pick a plan you don't need the whole philosophy. You just need to know which of the two you're buying.
So how big are you, really?
The second input is how much phone you actually have, and that tracks with size. Three rough buckets, and you'll know yours on sight:
Microbusiness: you and a few hands. Calls come in faster than one person can catch between jobs, and they stack up in the busy stretch.
Small business: a real team and steady volume, maybe someone whose whole job is the phone. The question becomes whether that job should be a salary or a system.
The chart: your size, your goal, your plan
Put the two together, your size and which job you're hiring it for, and it sorts itself out.
| Your business | If it's insurancecatch what you miss | If it's laborhand it off |
|---|---|---|
| Solo entrepreneurjust you | Essential$99/mo | Basic$249/mo |
| Microbusinessyou and a few hands | Basic$249/mo | Standard$499/mo |
| Small businessa real front desk | Standard$499/mo | Enterprise$999/mo |
| Medium or largerhigh volume or many locations | Enterprisethe volume decides it, either way | |
No contract on any plan, so start lower and move up the day it isn't enough.
Read it however you like. A solo operator buying insurance starts on Essential; the same operator handing the phone off wants Basic. A microbusiness takes Basic for insurance, Standard for labor. A small business takes Standard for insurance, Enterprise for the full handoff.
What if I'm a medium or larger business?
Then there's no real decision to make. The volume alone puts you on Enterprise, insurance or labor, and the only open questions are how many numbers and how many locations. That's a short conversation, not a quiz.
Still genuinely torn between two? Start on the lower one. There's no contract, so you move up the day it stops being enough, and you've lost nothing finding out. Want it grounded in real numbers first? Run yours through the missed-call calculator, or see every plan side by side on the pricing page. And if you'd rather hear it than read another chart, the 7-day free trial puts it on your own line, free. And whatever you land on, it's the same price for everyone — printed right there on the page, with no quiet discount for the shop that pushes hardest and no special number waiting behind a longer call.
— Roscoe