After-hours answering that pays for itself by day 7. Create my free demo
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smith.ai alternative

Looking for a Smith.ai alternative?

Compare Cawly’s AI-first answering service with hybrid AI/human receptionist plans and see which fit is right for your business.

Create my free demo Hear a real call

Hear it first

Hear the receptionist before you sign up

You are calling the actual AI your customers would talk to — not a sales demo.

Go live in minutes

  1. 1. Sign up — Create your account and tell Cawly about your business.
  2. 2. Get your number — Choose a new business number — or forward your existing number to Cawly.
  3. 3. Start receiving calls — Cawly answers, books, qualifies, transfers, and handles customers 24/7.
  • No hardware
  • No complicated setup
  • No technical experience required

Get started

Meet Cawly

The teammate who never takes a sick day

Portrait of Cawly, the AI answering teammate who covers your phones around the clock

Cawly answers your business phones around the clock — like a trusted employee who never calls out. It uses the apps your company already runs, captures every lead, books the appointment, speaks English and Spanish, and alerts your team the moment something is urgent.

  • Answers every call around the clock — no sick days, no lunch breaks
  • Uses your company's apps and tools
  • Captures leads and organizes the details from each call
  • Schedules appointments while you're on the job
  • Speaks English and Spanish
  • Alerts your team when something is urgent

Your data stays in house

Your client conversations stay inside Cawly

We don't send your client conversations to any external AI company at all. Speech recognition, reasoning, and voice generation all run inside Cawly's controlled GPU infrastructure.

Cawly GPU infrastructure

  • Speech recognition — Audio is transcribed on Cawly GPUs. No third-party speech API hears the call.
  • Reasoning — The model that understands the caller and writes the reply runs on our hardware — not a public LLM.
  • Voice generation — The voice callers hear is synthesized in the same locked-down environment.

Never sent outside this vault: OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Amazon or any other external AI company.

Your callers' words never train someone else's model.

Read how we handle data

Digital employees

Hear who could answer for you

Pick a digital employee and play a greeting, booking, or after-hours clip. Each one answers in your business’s name.

Sample clips:

  • Greeting
  • Booking
  • After hours

Portraits are AI-generated characters. Callers never see them — they only hear the voice.

Built for local service businesses

Plumbing · HVAC · Property management · Law firms · Dental · Medical · Contractors · After-hours

  • 2 rings — typical answer time
  • 24/7 — around the clock
  • 15 min — typical setup time
  • 7-day — trial with ROI report

See what missed calls cost your business — Open the ROI calculator

Integrations

Connects to the tools you already use

Cawly books the calendar, files the lead, and alerts your team in the apps you already open — no retyping after the call.

  • Google Business Profile
  • Google Calendar
  • Outlook Calendar
  • Calendly
  • HubSpot
  • Pipedrive
  • Twilio
  • Stripe
  • Square
  • Slack
  • QuickBooks Online
  • Jobber
  • Housecall Pro
  • Google Sheets
  • Webhook
  • Custom MCP

See all integrations

Don't see yours? Tell us — we'll add it.

Who Smith.ai is good for

Firms wanting hybrid human/AI receptionists.

Where Cawly differs

AI-first, faster setup, transparent pricing.

When to choose Cawly

When you want 24/7 AI coverage at a flat rate.

Frequently asked questions

Are you affiliated?

No - this is an independent comparison.

Is Cawly cheaper than Smith.ai?

Cawly starts at $99/mo flat vs Smith.ai per-call tiers.

Can I switch from Smith.ai?

Yes - most businesses go live with Cawly in under 15 minutes.

Ready to stop missing calls?

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