Smith.ai UK alternative
Jodie answers your calls 24/7 from a flat £49/month, with no per-call fees.
Calls answered
Plan includes 30 calls for £237
Any number of calls
Two services that both answer your phone. The difference is what you pay per call when volume spikes.
Cost per call (50 calls/mo)
Starting monthly price
Pricing model
Per-call overage
Free trial
Setup time
Who answers
Practice management integration
24/7 coverage
Pricing reflects Smith.ai's published rates at smith.ai/pricing, checked October 2026. Smith.ai bills in USD (no GBP price card); sterling figures convert at a 0.7562 dollar-to-pound reference rate. Smith.ai operates three product tiers; figures reference the AI plan and the Virtual Receptionist Starter. Jodie pricing is published in full in pounds sterling on the pricing page.
Slide the calls you'd take - the calculator picks Smith.ai's cheapest plan plus overage and compares to Jodie's flat plan.
Cost calculator
Jodie Basic
£49/mo
Flat. Unlimited.
Competitor: AI Free
$75/mo
roughly £57/mo
$0 base + $75 overage
You'd save
£8/month (£93/year)
Smith.ai tiers and per-call overage rates are from smith.ai/pricing, checked October 2026, and billed in USD. Calculator picks the cheapest of the AI Receptionist plans (Free: $0 / 25 calls + $3.00 per extra call; Pro: from $150 / 75 calls + $2.50 per extra call) and Virtual Receptionist Starter ($300 / 30 calls + $11.50 per extra call). Jodie Basic is flat monthly with unlimited calls at your locale rate.
FX rates as of 2026-10-05. Jodie price is the published locale rate, not converted.
Verifiable differences, not marketing claims. Each comes from public information on Smith.ai's site and ours.
Smith.ai's Virtual Receptionist Starter is £227/month for 30 calls, then £8.70 per extra call. Jodie's Basic plan is £49 flat with unlimited calls - the price doesn't move when your phone rings more.
£0.98 per call on Jodie vs £8.02 per call on Smith.ai Starter at 50 calls a month.
The recurring critical theme in Smith.ai's customer reviews is pricing surprise - the per-call meter auto-bumps you into the next tier when calls spike. Jodie holds 4.8 across verified customer reviews with a flat monthly bill.
Jodie 4.8 across customer reviews - and no per-call meter on our side.
Smith.ai's native Clio integration suits multi-partner firms with a dedicated intake desk. Jodie is built for the high-street solicitor whose phone rings during a court appearance, with LEAP and Actionstep handoff via Zapier on Professional.
Smith.ai if you need a US intake team; Jodie if you are the team.
Smith.ai leans hard on native legal-practice-management integrations. Here's where that matters and where it does not.
| Integration | Jodie | Smith.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Clio Legal practice management Smith.ai pushes intake into Clio directly. Jodie routes via Zapier on Professional and Premium plans. | Zapier | Native |
| MyCase Legal practice management | Zapier | Native |
| PracticePanther Legal practice management | Zapier | Native |
| HubSpot CRM Both route via integration partners rather than first-party. | Zapier | Partner |
| Salesforce CRM | Zapier | Partner |
| Slack Team notifications | Zapier | Partner |
| Email / SMS notifications Lead capture | Native | Native |
| Zapier (6000+ apps) Universal automation Zapier-only on Jodie Professional and Premium covers tools Smith.ai has no path to. | Native | Not supported |
Smith.ai's integration list is from smith.ai/integrations at the time of writing. Jodie integration coverage reflects the Professional ($99) and Premium ($199) plan tiers - Basic is voice + email/SMS only. 'Native' means first-party, 'Partner' means via an official integration provider, 'Zapier' means routed through Zapier's connector library.
Smith.ai publishes most figures up front - the question is what the bill looks like once per-call overage and tier auto-bumps kick in.
| Jodie | Smith.ai | |
|---|---|---|
| Base monthly price | ||
| Per-call overage rate Jodie has no per-call charge. Smith.ai publishes $3.00/extra call on the free AI plan, $2.50 on AI Pro and $11.50/extra call on Virtual Receptionist Starter. | ||
| Setup fee Both are $0 setup. | ||
| Free trial (no card) Jodie offers 7 days free with no card. Smith.ai offers a free AI plan (25 calls a month) and a 30-day money-back guarantee on human plans. | ||
| Auto tier-upgrade rules Jodie's flat plan doesn't auto-upgrade. Smith.ai's tier behaviour at the overage ceiling is in the terms of service, not the pricing page. | ||
| Total first-year cost calculable from public info Jodie: 12 x flat plan. Smith.ai: depends on your call volume because the per-call rate compounds. |
Smith.ai's £227 human Starter is priced for multi-partner firms. If your phone rings while you are in court or with a patient, these are the UK businesses Jodie was built for.
LEAP and Actionstep - the practice systems most UK firms run - are not on Smith.ai's native list. £49 flat with Zapier-routed LEAP or Actionstep handoff on Professional beats £227 for 30 calls plus £8.70 per overage.
See Jodie for solicitors & law firmsFor a single-handed clinic with 40 inbound calls a week, Smith.ai's per-call cap doesn't survive a flu surge. Jodie answers in seconds and notifies the front desk at a flat price.
See Jodie for gp surgeries & medical practicesA buyer on Rightmove at 8pm calls the next agent if you don't pick up. 24/7 cover comes standard on Jodie Basic at £49 - with no 25-call cap and no per-call meter.
See Jodie for estate agentsSelf-assessment season volumes spike fast every January. A flat plan with unlimited calls beats £8.70 a call when every client is calling about an HMRC letter at once.
See Jodie for accountantsSmith.ai's AI Receptionist has a free plan for 25 calls a month plus around £2.27 per extra call, and a Pro plan from around £113/month for 75 calls plus £1.89 per extra call. The Virtual Receptionist Starter is around £227/month for 30 calls plus £8.70 per extra call. Jodie publishes £49 Basic, £99 Professional, £199 Premium - all with unlimited calls.
Smith.ai is a US-incorporated company in Palo Alto with no UK office, no smith.ai/uk site and no UK phone number. UK firms sign up by forwarding a landline; agents work to US time zones and the invoice is in USD. Jodie is UK-built, supports UK numbers natively and bills in sterling.
Yes. Smith.ai is a US-incorporated company founded in 2015 and based in Palo Alto, with thousands of US law-firm customers. The questions worth asking are about price predictability and contract terms, not legitimacy.
The pattern is consistent: praise for receptionist quality and the Clio integration. The recurring critical theme is pricing surprise - calls run past the cap and the next tier auto-bumps.
Both are receptionist services with different pricing shapes. Moneypenny is UK-based and quote-led, starting around £145/month. Smith.ai is US-based and bills per call. Jodie sidesteps both with flat sterling pricing and unlimited calls.
For sole practitioners and small high-street firms, yes. UK firms more often run LEAP or Actionstep alongside Clio - and Jodie's Professional plan routes into all three via Zapier at £99/month flat.
Jodie setup is minutes - forward your UK number and Jodie starts answering. Smith.ai's site states month-to-month, but its AI plan needs 30 days' notice to cancel, so check yours. Most businesses run both for 5-7 days during cutover, then cancel.
Move from a per-call meter to a flat plan without losing coverage. Most switchers run both for a week, then cancel Smith.ai.
Total time: Under 1 hour active time, 5-7 days for safe parallel running
Sign up at the register page. No card needed. You get your Jodie phone number on the spot.
Set conditional forwarding (busy / no answer / always) from your phone provider to the Jodie number.
Jodie picks up via the forward; if it does not work for you, you cancel Jodie and your Smith.ai line is unaffected. Listen to a few call recordings.
Smith.ai's site states month-to-month, with 30 days' notice on the AI plan - cancel from your account dashboard or via your sales contact. Watch for any pro-rated per-call overage on the final invoice.
Once Smith.ai is cancelled, leave the forward to Jodie in place. Confirm a test call lands on Jodie and a summary arrives in your inbox.
Buyer's guides
This comparison is part of our independent buyer's guides ranking the whole field.
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