# Counter & Crew full reviews Honest reviews of AI tools for local US service businesses. Nobody pays for a better verdict. Site: https://counterandcrew.com/ Index: https://counterandcrew.com/llms.txt ## Buying guides - Missed-call text-back: https://counterandcrew.com/categories/missed-call-text-back/ - AI receptionists: https://counterandcrew.com/categories/ai-receptionists/ - Review management: https://counterandcrew.com/categories/review-management/ - Website chatbots: https://counterandcrew.com/categories/website-chatbots/ - Local SEO: https://counterandcrew.com/categories/local-seo/ - Shop OS: https://counterandcrew.com/categories/shop-os/ ## Reviews ### Aircall Verdict: Skip for most From: $40/user/mo Tagline: Sales-desk cloud phone. Essentials is $40 a seat monthly. You still buy three. Website: https://aircall.io Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/aircall/ ## What it actually does Aircall is still Aircall on aircall.io. Legal name Aircall.io, Inc., a Delaware corporation at 44 West 28th Street, New York. Founded in Paris in 2014 (Aircall SAS). It bought Vogent on May 6, 2026 and Piper AI on June 3, 2026. The live brand did not get renamed. It is a per-seat cloud phone, SMS inbox, and CRM click-to-dial platform for sales and support teams. HubSpot, Salesforce, Zendesk, Pipedrive. That is the product. AI Voice Agent is a named add-on that greets, books, and routes. Public price: 50 free minutes per account per month, then $0.49 a minute PAYG ($0.39 after 2,500), or prepaid $175 for 500 minutes and $725 for 2,500. Leftover blogs still print $0.99 a minute. Stale. Do not use them. Transcription and AI Assist at $9 a license on Essentials are not a receptionist. Missed-call text-back exists as a webhook, Zapier, or Messaging API recipe. It is not a named priced SKU, so it does not get that tag. No reviews product. No listings. No [website chatbot](/categories/website-chatbots/). [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) logs calls. [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, Mindbody, and Clio 404. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you already live in HubSpot, you have at least three seats, and the job is outbound plus a shared SMS inbox, with optional Voice Agent on inbound. That is who G2 and Capterra review: sales and support operators. Do not buy it if you are a plumber, HVAC shop, salon, one-chair dentist, or solo law firm. [OpenPhone](/tools/openphone/) is $19 a user with a one-seat floor and Sona on the same line. [JustCall](/tools/justcall/) is $39 a user monthly cash with a two-seat floor, so $78 before AI. [Dialpad](/tools/dialpad/) is $15 a user and the wrong aisle: UCaaS, empty categories on this directory. Aircall's closest twin is JustCall, not Dialpad. The reason not to buy is the three-seat tax, then the paper. Live list August 25, 2026: Essentials $40, Professional $70 per license per month (US/Canada catalog JS). Pricing-page cards default to annually at minus 25 percent, which is $30 / $50 billed annually. JSON-LD publishes those annual figures. Do not put $30 on From. Minimum is three licenses on Essentials and Professional (Custom is 25). A one-line shop pays $120 a month cash before a $6 extra number, SMS overage, or Voice Agent. Help Center Starter AI Plan is one seat and 250 minutes with no public dollar. Custom. Do not invent it. ToS: auto-renew same duration, 30-day written non-renewal, cannot decrease licenses mid-term, pay unused seats, no general refund, New York law, jury waiver. AI Voice Agent marketing says cancel anytime. Seat ToS does not. BBB Aircall New York, live HTML: F, not accredited, eight unanswered complaints in three years. Porting does not stop billing. Reddit: none retrieved. ## The verdict Capterra 4.2 from 465 (live HTML). Value 3.9 is the weak subscore. Newest featured 1-star July 23, 2026. G2 product reviews live HTML blocked (DataDome 403); live call-recording category listing is 4.4 from 1,647. Trustpilot live HTML blocked; indexed 3.0 from about 1,023. TrustRadius 7.9 from 143 (blocked). Zero named plumber, dentist, salon, HVAC, or law-firm reviews. Official Essentials monthly cash August 25, 2026: $40 per user. Do not publish $30 as monthly. Do not invent a 1-seat price. Skip. Real phone for a three-person sales desk. Wrong buy for one truck. If you needed a cheap shared line, OpenPhone. If you needed a human on the after-hours line, [Smith.ai](/tools/smith-ai/) or [Ruby](/tools/ruby/). --- ### AnswerConnect Verdict: Situational From: $350/mo Tagline: Live humans from $350 a month for 200 minutes. Marketing says cancel anytime. The terms lock you for 90 days. Website: https://www.answerconnect.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/answerconnect/ ## What it actually does AnswerConnect is AnywhereWorks, Inc. doing business as AnswerConnect at answerconnect.com. A person answers your shop phone. They take a message, try to book, push a summary into the app, and can sit on website chat when you buy that tier. That is the product. It is not an [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/) that speaks for itself. The homepage sells "people, not bots." The public plan cards on the answering-services page (August 31, 2026) print three monthly cash floors. Entry is $350 for 200 minutes, plus a $49.99 setup fee, then $2.50 per additional minute. Growth is $395 for 300 minutes, no setup fee on that card, $1.85 overage. Standard is $575 for 400 minutes, $49.99 setup, $1.85 overage. Larger plans sit behind a "View larger plans" control. The separate /pricing URL 404s. The dollars still sit on the live service page and on the homepage plan block. Billing is whole minutes, rounded up. Chargeable time includes hold and the time spent patching a caller forward (Terms of Service). The first 30 interactions under 30 seconds in a cycle are free. That is a gift for hang-ups. It is not a gift for a five-minute plumber emergency. Integrations named on the homepage: Setmore, Salesforce, Zoho, Zendesk, Slack, Zapier. [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) and [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/) are not on that list. Zapier is glue. Do not buy this as a dispatch brain. ## Who should buy it Buy it if a missed after-hours call is a real job, you will not put a bot on the line, and 200 minutes is close to a real month at $350. Law firms, medical offices, and high-ticket trades that already pay for a human desk are the honest fit. Do not buy it if you mainly needed a night bot. That is [Rosie](/tools/rosie/) at $49 or [Frontdesk](/tools/my-ai-front-desk/) at $99. Do not buy it as the cheap human floor. [Smith.ai](/tools/smith-ai/) prints AI Pro at $150 for 75 calls, and human Starter at $300 for 30. [Ruby](/tools/ruby/) starts at $250. Do not treat the marketing line "we never tie you into a contract" as the whole story. The reason not to buy, even when you wanted a person, is the 90-day floor plus the meter. Terms of Service: the agreement runs month to month, and it is in effect for a minimum of 90 calendar days. After that, either side can end it on written notice. The same marketing page says cancel anytime and no contract. Read the terms. Overage on Entry is $2.50 a minute. A busy storm week will eat the allotment and then the card. ## The verdict Public list on the service page, self-serve looking until sales still wants the form. Forbes "Best Answering Service for 2026" is their chrome. Use the dollars on the page, not a blog reprint. Situational. A human desk from $350 if you will burn the minutes and you will sit through 90 days. If you needed a public human floor that starts lower, start at Smith.ai. If a bot is enough tonight, stay in Rosie or Frontdesk. --- ### Birdeye Verdict: Situational From: Custom Tagline: The multi-location reviews-and-listings suite. A one-truck shop should not be on this contract. Website: https://www.birdeye.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/birdeye/ ## What it actually does Birdeye is a reputation and local-presence suite, not a phone system. After a job or appointment closes in Dentrix, ServiceTitan, [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Clio, or Mindbody, it texts and emails a review ask. It watches 200-plus review sites from one dashboard and pushes NAP, hours, and photos to 100-plus directories, including Google Business Profile, Apple Business Connect, Bing, Yelp, and Healthgrades. A [website chatbot](/categories/website-chatbots/) (Robin) can capture leads and continue by text. There is also social posting, surveys, referrals, mass text, location pages, and a Stripe payments module. That is a lot of product. In 2026 they sell it as an "agentic marketing platform" with AI coworkers (Jay, Myna, Robin). The part that actually earns the invoice for a local brand is still reviews plus listings. Messaging can forward unanswered calls to a Birdeye number that takes voicemail, transcribes it, and texts the caller. That is not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/) and not an [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/). Do not buy it for the phone. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you run several locations and you need one dashboard for Google reviews and directory accuracy. That is the real ICP: DSOs and multi-site dental (Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental, HIPAA), franchise and multi-unit retail, multi-office law (Clio), salon groups on Mindbody, and home-service groups on ServiceTitan. Homepage logos are Aspen Dental, Sutter, H&R Block, not a one-truck plumber. They claim 9,000-plus home-services customers. A four-location HVAC shop with a marketing coordinator is in range. A single van is not. Do not buy it if you only wanted post-job Google reviews. That is [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/) money. Do not buy it if the pain is voicemail and text-to-pay. That is [Podium](/tools/podium/) or a receptionist. If [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) or the PMS already fires a review SMS, you are stacking an annual contract on a text you already send. The reason not to buy is the paper, not the dashboard. Terms effective May 13, 2026: the order form sets the term (typically annual), it auto-renews for the same period, and you need written non-renewal at least 90 days out. Payments are non-cancellable and non-refundable. Miss the window and you own another year. At auto-renew they apply an 8% "Innovation Fee" on recurring fees unless the order form says otherwise (deals before April 1, 2024 may be exempt). Trustpilot sits at about 3.5 from 650-plus reviews; G2 is 4.7 from thousands, many seller-invite. The angry reviews are cancel and billing, not "reviews did not go up." BBB is A-plus accredited and still full of 90-day notice fights, including shops that thought they were month-to-month. ## The verdict Pricing is custom. The live pricing page is a location-band form (1-3 up to 1000-plus) and a get-pricing button. No dollars. Plan names Starter, Growth, and Dominate show up on GetApp and Software Advice as "upon request." Blogs still print $299 / $349 / $449 per location. Those numbers are not on birdeye.com. Do not treat them as a rate card. Mass texting is an official add-on. Social is the one public figure: $50 a month for single-location accounts. 10DLC fees can be passed through. Get locations, modules, SMS, onboarding, the 8% fee, and the cancel address in the order form. Situational: right for a multi-location dental or home-service group that will staff it and calendar day 270. Skip for a one-location shop. That buyer is on the wrong contract. --- ### BrightLocal Verdict: Situational From: $41/mo Tagline: Agency local SEO with a human citation desk. The homepage 'from $31' is not what the card charges. Website: https://www.brightlocal.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/brightlocal/ ## What it actually does BrightLocal is a UK [local SEO](/categories/local-seo/) platform plus a separate human citation desk. Track watches Map Pack rankings, a geo-grid, citation gaps, and Google Business Profile. Manage adds Active Sync to GBP, Apple Maps, Bing, and Facebook, plus post scheduling. Grow adds review monitor, email/SMS/QR asks, widgets, and in-dashboard Google and Facebook replies. Citation Builder is not in the subscription. Specialists submit listings you pick. You keep the logins. That is the 2026 product. Still independent. No 2021-2026 sale. It is not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/), not an [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/), not a [website chatbot](/categories/website-chatbots/). AI Insights is an SEO summary, not a front desk. Active Sync is a handful of APIs, not [Moz Local](/tools/moz-local/)'s 90-directory hose. Yelp is Active Sync Plus, US and Canada. There is no [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, or Mindbody page. Review asks need a contact list you upload. [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/) still owns the post-job text. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you are an agency that needs white-label rank reports and a citation fulfillment desk, or a one-shop that wants a Map Pack grid and listings it actually owns. Citation Builder can be bought on a free account with no SaaS plan. Track is enough if the job is ranks and audits. If you need to answer Google reviews in the app, that is Grow. Do not buy Track because the homepage said $31. Live calculator August 25, 2026: one location, monthly, Track $41, Manage $54, Grow $65. Annual is $369 / $485 / $584, which is the $31 / $40 / $49 they market. G2 and Capterra still print $39 / $49 / $59. Stale. Citations are $3.20 a site, or $2 in a 2,000-credit pack. A 120-site US campaign is a second invoice. Managed SEO is $1,299 a month. HVAC owner praise on the site is that SKU, not Track. The reason not to buy is the bill stacks and cancel does not unwind it. ToS: no refund on unused SaaS time. Help, August 2026: downgrade is immediate; they keep prepaid money. Trustpilot, Alicia, February 2026: about $1,349 in three months, then a fight to cancel. G2: citation project estimated at three months, still open at nine. You own the listings after cancel. Reports freeze. Auto-renew. English law. ## The verdict G2 about 4.6 from 228 (homepage widget; live reviews HTML blocked). Capterra family 4.8 from 283. Trustpilot about 4.6 from 752. TrustRadius 7.2 from 41, down from a stale 8.5. Reddit: none retrieved. BBB: no US profile. Those stars are agencies. Software Advice's embedded dump was marketing shops. We did not retrieve a plumber, dentist, or salon DIY review. Official floor August 25, 2026 is $41 a month for Track at one location. Directories that still say $39 are last year's table. Fourteen-day trial, no card. White-label is included. 100-plus locations is Custom. Situational. If you only needed citations and GBP on a public $20 list, Moz Local. If you needed Google reviews after a job, NiceJob. Pay BrightLocal when you want the grid and listings you keep, on monthly, and budget the citation credits as their own line. --- ### Broadly Verdict: Skip for most From: $799/mo Tagline: The FAQ says cancel today. The terms still look like a 12-month auto-renew. List price is $799 a month. Website: https://broadly.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/broadly/ ## What it actually does Broadly is Vendasta's shop-facing brand. Vendasta bought Broadly Inc. on March 17, 2023. The consumer name did not change. Legacy Broadly 1.0 retired April 30, 2026. What you log into now is Broadly Engage: review asks and AI replies, an [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/) on phone, SMS, and chat, a named [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/) (call-forward to a Broadly number), website chat, listings, and social. Sold as one AI Workforce package. That is the 2026 product. Concret.io did not buy this company. It is not [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/). NiceJob is a Google drip. It is not [Podium](/tools/podium/)'s messaging stack with a proven missed-call file; the independent reviews we opened do not describe the 2026 text-back. [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), and ServiceTitan are partner pages. Dentrix, Mindbody, and Clio are not on broadly.com. Home services is the ICP. Salon is FAQ copy. ## Who should buy it Buy it only if you want the whole bundle, you run Jobber or Housecall Pro, and the order form says month-to-month with same-day cancel, in writing. Neighborly-style plumbing and HVAC are who they built for. Dental and law exist. Thin. Do not buy it if you only needed Google reviews. That is NiceJob at $75. Do not buy it because a closer offered $39.99 or a ranking guarantee. Trustpilot 2025 and BBB 2025-2026 are that pitch: trial, then $200 or $420, then billed after a cancel email. The reason not to buy is the paper. Pricing FAQ, live August 25, 2026: no long-term contract, cancel same day, billing stops this month. Terms still have 12- and 24-month auto-renew, 30-day written notice, and a termination fee equal to the rest of the term. Month-to-month still bills another month if notice is short. Amounts already paid are not refunded. Broadly can change prices anytime. Website FAQ says you own the site they build. Terms: Broadly-created site assets licensed only after 12 paid months. Capterra, May 17, 2025: cancelling for the tenth time, charged again. BBB F. Not accredited. Five complaints in three years, four unanswered. ## The verdict Capterra, GetApp, and Software Advice are 4.8 from 336 (one Gartner pool). Bodies we opened are almost all October 2022 to March 2023 construction, auto, and vet shops who got review volume and liked the inbox. G2 about 4.7 from 74 or 75 (indexed; live HTML blocked). Trustpilot 2.9 from two 2025 reviews. TrustRadius 7.5 from two ratings, empty. Reddit: none retrieved. Those 4.8 stars are a pre-acquisition pool. The 2025-2026 file is cancel and billing. Official list August 25, 2026: AI Workforce $799 a month. No setup fee on the FAQ. Ads extra, rate unpublished. Aggregator $249, $399, $79 modules are not on the live page. Do not use them. Whether $799 is per location is unpublished. Skip. The 2022 product could move Google. The 2026 contract does not match the FAQ. If you needed a $75 review drip, NiceJob. If you needed missed-call plus a human inbox, Podium is the other custom quote, with its own 12-month auto-renew. Do not sign a Broadly order that keeps the 12-month default. --- ### CallRail Verdict: Situational From: $55/mo Tagline: Public-price call tracking so you know which Google ad rang the phone. 250 minutes, then overage they will not refund. Website: https://www.callrail.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/callrail/ ## What it actually does CallRail, LLC, Atlanta. Still live. Founded 2011. The 2026 homepage still says call tracking and lead engagement. That is the product. Dynamic number insertion swaps the shop number on the page so you can see which Google ad, LSA, or landing page made the phone ring. Form Tracking is a paid step-up. Premium Conversation Intelligence summarizes and scores the call after it happens. That is not a receptionist. Voice Assist is a named [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/) SKU. It answers, qualifies, books, and can run on the existing business number as of July 28, 2026 without a Call Tracking subscription. Help Center: $95 a month, 50 answered calls over 15 seconds, then $1 a call. The Voice Assist microsite still shows $75. Treat $75 as unresolved promo. The main pricing footnote that still says you must add $55 Lead Tracking is leftover. The July 28 PR says standalone. It is not [Podium](/tools/podium/). Missed-call SMS exists as a Workflow checkbox, not a product. Web chat died with Lead Center on January 27, 2026. No reviews SKU. No listings SKU. No Dentrix. No Mindbody. Native [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) is bidirectional. [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/) and Clio are native. Dentists who need HIPAA buy the Healthcare Plan from $150 plus a BAA. Standard plans are not HIPAA. ## Who should buy it Buy Lead Tracking if you run Google Ads or LSAs and you need keyword-level proof. Monthly cash is $55. Yearly table is $50. Complete is $95 with forms. Conversion is $150 with Premium CI. Conversion Complete is $195. Every tier: 5 local numbers, 250 local minutes, 25 SMS. Extra local number $3. Extra local minute $0.05 and $0.06 both appear on the live page. Toll-free minutes $0.08. SMS $0.03. Trial is 14 days, no card. Per account, not per seat. Buy Voice Assist if you miss calls on the truck and you will live with a $1 overage after 50. Skip it if you wanted a human. That is [Ruby](/tools/ruby/). Do not buy it if you only wanted [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). That is Podium. Do not buy it as the shop PBX. Lead Center is gone. Do not buy it for a salon that lives in Mindbody. The reason not to buy is the 250-minute cap. A busy board burns it. FAQ, live August 25, 2026: extra minutes are not refundable under any circumstances, and each call rounds up. Trustpilot, November 7, 2025 (indexed; live HTML CloudFront 403): a $50 starter became about $200, no warning at the cap. Annual plans are nonrefundable and you cannot drop to monthly until the year ends. Software Advice still features a 2023 $1,600 unauthorized annual switch. Port-out is 4 to 6 weeks and the account stays open. BBB Atlanta, live: F, not accredited, three unanswered complaints, zero customer reviews. ## The verdict G2 about 4.6 from 1,511 to 1,518 (indexed compare pages; live HTML DataDome 403). Software Advice and GetApp 4.5 from 173 (same Gartner pool, live HTML). GetApp mix: 48 percent marketing and advertising. Trustpilot about 4.0 from 487 (indexed). TrustRadius 9.4 from 80 (live JSON-LD). Reddit: none retrieved. No named plumber, dentist, salon, or HVAC owner bylines. Closest trades voice is construction marketers. Official list August 25, 2026: Lead Tracking $55 a month, $50 on the yearly toggle. Directories still print retired $45 / $90 / $135 Call Tracking names. Stale. Do not use them. Volume buckets and White Label dollars were not on the public page. Situational. If the agency needs to prove the ads, this is the tool. If the shop only needed a text when a call is missed, Podium is the other aisle. If you sign annual, calendar the minute cap on day one. --- ### Chatbase Verdict: Situational From: $40/mo Tagline: Train a bot on your PDFs and paste a widget. It is not Tidio, and a credit is not one message. Website: https://www.chatbase.co Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/chatbase/ ## What it actually does Chatbase is a DIY custom GPT. You train an agent on your website, PDFs, Notion, and Q&A, then embed a widget. Email, WhatsApp, Slack, Instagram, and Messenger are channels. Voice launched April 8, 2026: inbound Twilio or SIP on Standard and up. That is the same CX agent on a phone number, not a receptionist SKU. Chatbase Inc. is bootstrapped. No 2021-2026 sale. Live at chatbase.co. The .com address redirects there. It is not [Tidio](/tools/tidio/). Capterra does not even rate live chat as a Chatbase feature. It is not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). There is no [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, Mindbody, or Clio page. HIPAA is Enterprise only. The DPA forbids special-category data on self-serve. Do not dump patient or case files into Hobby. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you will write the FAQs, upload the PDFs, and test the answers every month. A salon or plumber with a brochure site can put Hobby on the contact page for hours and pricing. Free is 50 credits, one member, 1 MB; agents get deleted after 14 days idle. Hobby is $40 a month, 700 credits, two seats. Standard is $150, 4,000 credits, and that is where Helpdesk, Voice, Telephony, and API start. Pro is $500. Enterprise is Custom. Do not buy it if you wanted a human in the widget. That is Tidio. Do not buy it if a missed call is a missed job. That is [Smith.ai](/tools/smith-ai/). Do not buy Standard for voice thinking you got [Ruby](/tools/ruby/). The reason not to buy is the meter plus the answers. Credits are not messages. A model request is 1 to 6 credits. Actions can double it. Voice is 6 credits a minute plus the model. Subscription credits reset on the first of the month and do not roll. Hit zero and the public agent stops unless auto-recharge is on ($40 per 1,000, those credits do not expire). Fees are non-refundable; cancel stops the next renewal. Capterra 2023 five-stars already mention fake URLs and the bot forgetting training. Trustpilot, March 31, 2026: a three-year user, costs tripled, features pulled, still cannot book. Capterra customer service sub-score is 3.8. Directories still list Hobby at $19. Stale. ## The verdict Capterra and Software Advice are 4.3 from 73 (live HTML, one Gartner pool, mostly September 2023). Trustpilot about 3.9 from 41 (indexed; live page blocked). Product Hunt 3.33 from 24. AppSumo 3.95 from 114 lifetime-deal buyers. G2 reviews list blocked; do not invent a score. Reddit: none retrieved. BBB: no profile. Zero plumber, dentist, salon, HVAC, or law-firm review bodies. Official list August 25, 2026: Hobby $40 a month. Free is real and tiny. $19 / $99 / $399 is a fossil. Situational. If you needed a live widget with a person behind it, Tidio. If you needed the phone, Smith.ai. Pay Chatbase only if you will train the bot and watch the credit counter, on monthly, and treat Voice as a Twilio experiment, not a front desk. --- ### Chatmeter Verdict: Skip for most From: Custom Tagline: Listings and reviews for 50-plus locations. The pricing form will still quote a one-shop plumber. Website: https://www.chatmeter.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/chatmeter/ ## What it actually does Chatmeter keeps name, address, hours, and photos straight across directories, then watches and answers reviews at chain scale. Local Pages are SEO landing pages by the hundred. Pulse AI reads reviews, surveys, and social. ChatExec is an in-house team that replies for you. That is the 2026 product, now inside Alchemer after a September 24, 2025 sale (KKR). Login is still live.chatmeter.com. It is not a phone system, not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/), not a [website chatbot](/categories/website-chatbots/). AI here drafts review replies and flags risk. It does not greet a caller. Google Business Profile and Apple Maps are first-class. There is no [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), ServiceTitan, Dentrix, Mindbody, or Clio page. Healthcare customers are hospital and urgent-care networks, not a solo dentist. Take 5 (1,200-plus), A&W (550-plus), UPMC (400-plus), CareVet (175) are the proof points. A van is not. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you run 50-plus locations and your job is listings accuracy plus review volume across a franchise or health system. Their own listings blog says that is the fit, and that it is not perfect for a single-location shop. Implementation they cite from G2 is about two months. Unlimited seats, billed by location. Demo, not a public trial. Do not buy it if you are a plumber, HVAC shop, salon, or one-office dentist. [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/) is the Google-review drip for that shop. [Birdeye](/tools/birdeye/) is the closer cousin if you actually have multiple locations and dental software. Chatmeter will still take a 1-4 location lead on the pricing form. That is a funnel, not a product for you. The reason not to buy is the paper they will put a small shop on. Live terms (Rev. 20210106, still the page on August 25, 2026): unless the order form says otherwise, the initial term is three years, then one-year auto-renew. Cancel is written notice at least 60 days before term end, mailed and copied to legal@chatmeter.com. Fees are non-cancellable and non-refundable. You cannot drop closed locations as a ToS right. Trustpilot, October 2022, still the lead Software Advice review in 2026: locations closed, vendor would not cut the count, silent 60-day auto-renew, buyout nearly $4,000. That dollar is one account, not a published fee. The 60-day rule is in the contract. ## The verdict G2 is about 4.5 from roughly 340 (indexed 2026 compare pages; live HTML blocked). GetApp and Software Advice 4.5 from 74. Trustpilot 3.0 from three old reviews. BBB A-plus, zero reviews, zero complaints (live HTML). Reddit: none retrieved. G2 mix is 24% small business. Birdeye on the same compare page is 55%. These are chain marketers, not trades owners. Official price August 25, 2026: Custom. chatmeter.com/pricing is a lead form. Per location, unlimited users, no public dollar. Vendr and directory "starting at" figures are not a rate card. Do not use them. Directory count on their own site is 70-plus on the homepage and 140-plus on listings. Pick neither. Skip. The product is real for A&W. It is the wrong buy for a one-truck shop. If you needed Google reviews at $75, NiceJob. If you needed listings plus reviews and could live with Birdeye's 90-day notice, that is the other door. Do not sign a Chatmeter order form that keeps the three-year default. --- ### Crisp Verdict: Skip for most From: $45/mo Tagline: A real live-chat helpdesk from Nantes. WhatsApp starts at $95. Tidio is $29, and that is the closer widget. Website: https://crisp.chat Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/crisp/ ## What it actually does Crisp is CRISP IM SAS, 2 boulevard de Launay, Nantes. Still live. Bootstrapped since 2015. The 2026 homepage is an AI customer support platform. That is a shared inbox plus a website live-chat widget plus Hugo, a metered AI agent. Hugo answers on chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, and email. It does not answer the shop phone. Phone in the inbox is [Aircall](/tools/aircall/), Ringover, or KrispCall. Twilio is SMS inbox, not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). It is not [Tidio](/tools/tidio/). Tidio is a cheap site widget with Lyro. Crisp is a helpdesk that happens to have a widget. It is not [Chatbase](/tools/chatbase/). You are not pasting PDFs into a bot you own. It is not [ManyChat](/tools/manychat/). Comment-to-DM is a different job. No reviews SKU. No GBP. No [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, Mindbody, or Clio. Native names are Shopify, Woo, Prestashop, HubSpot, Salesforce. ## Who should buy it Buy Mini at $45 a month per workspace if you want four seats and a widget and you already live in a SaaS inbox. Free is $0, two seats, 100 profiles, no AI. Essentials is $95, ten seats, $25 in Hugo credits (about 450 conversations), WhatsApp, Instagram, SMS, chatbot. Plus is $295, twenty-plus seats, $75 in credits, extra seats $10. Enterprise is Custom. Trial is 14 days, all features, no card. Public page is USD, including the French URL. Do not buy it if you are a plumber, HVAC shop, salon, dentist, or law firm. If you needed a widget on the site, Tidio at $29. If you needed a DIY FAQ bot, Chatbase at $40. If you needed the phone, [OpenPhone](/tools/openphone/) or [Ruby](/tools/ruby/). The reason not to buy is the jump, then the paper. Live pricing August 25, 2026: Mini $45 does not include WhatsApp. The shop that thought chat meant WhatsApp is on Essentials at $95, then WhatsApp credits from $50. Hugo credits expire each month. Terms: no refunds, no pro-rata. Cancel monthly and paid features drop immediately, current month still due. Yearly stays due until the prepaid year ends. French law, Nantes commercial court. Annual dollar amount is not printed. Do not invent it. Directories still print Pro $25 and Unlimited $95. Stale. Do not use them. Capterra 2026: leftover plugin billing after cancel, trial auto-convert, Hugo boot-loops, silent workflow kill, exact-match search broken. ## The verdict Capterra, Software Advice, and GetApp 4.6 from 148 (one Gartner pool, live HTML August 25, 2026). 94 percent small business. Computer Software 23 percent. Ease 4.5, value 4.5. Four one-stars. G2 live HTML DataDome 403; secondaries cite 4.5 from 169 to 194. Trustpilot live HTML WAF 403; indexed 1.8 from 44, 64 percent of negatives replied, more than a month to reply. TrustRadius 8.1 from 5. BBB: no crisp.chat listing. Reddit: none retrieved. No named plumber, dentist, salon, HVAC, or law-firm reviews. Furniture and a Shopify health shop are the closest storefronts. Official list August 25, 2026: Mini $45 a month. Essentials $95 if you need WhatsApp. Plus $295. Do not use euro reprints of the same numbers. The page prints dollars. Skip. The 4.6 is SaaS support teams replacing Intercom. The 1.8 is cancel and plugins. If the job was a widget on a plumber site, Tidio. If the job was the phone, not this. --- ### Demandforce Verdict: Skip for most From: Custom Tagline: Internet Brands recall and reviews. The 60-day trial is billed from day one. Website: https://www.demandforce.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/demandforce/ ## What it actually does Demandforce is still Demandforce on demandforce.com. Contracting name Demandforce, Inc. Parent is MH Sub I, LLC dba Internet Brands, El Segundo. Founded 2003 in San Francisco. Intuit bought it in 2012. Internet Brands bought it from Intuit in 2016. Henry Schein One took the dental go-to-market in 2018. HS1's 2026 /products/demandforce URL now serves Patient Engage, not this SKU. Do not write Demandforce, now Web.com. Do not write Demandforce, now Dentrix. It is a quote-only patient and client comms suite: PMS-synced recall, reminders, two-way text, and reputation. That is the product. ListingPro / Match and Lock is a named listings SKU with no public dollar, so there is no local-seo tag. AI Receptionist is named on the homepage and Phone pages with no public dollar, so there is no ai-receptionists tag. Missed Call Text is a Phone feature, not a priced SKU. No chatbot. Practice websites are iMatrix, quote-only. Live integrations wall includes Mindbody. Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental, [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), and Clio are not on it. Dental customers may still be billed through Henry Schein. That is billing, not a Dentrix-native phone. ## Who should buy it Buy it only if you already run a supported appointment PMS (vet, salon/spa, medical, auto) and sales quoted recall plus reviews as one IB bundle. Salon is the least-wrong Counter & Crew case if Mindbody or Meevo is already in the shop. Do not buy it if you are a plumber, HVAC shop, or law firm. No Jobber, Housecall Pro, or Clio. Do not buy it if you are a dentist who needed a phone. [Weave](/tools/weave/) is $199 with Dentrix, Eaglesoft, and Open Dental native. Do not buy it if you only wanted Google stars. [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/) is $75. [Podium](/tools/podium/) and [Birdeye](/tools/birdeye/) are the other Custom suites. The reason not to buy is the paper, then the meter. Live pricing August 25, 2026: Custom. Demo form, $100 gift card if the owner sits the call. Help: 60-day opt-out is billed monthly from day one. Miss the window and you owe the full term. ToS dated June 13, 2023, still served: 12-month initial term, auto-renews another 12 if signed on or after March 1, 2023, written cancel at least 30 days before term end, no refunds, JAMS in Los Angeles County, class waiver, California law, $2,500 fee if you file in the wrong court. $299 is setup for PMS sync, not a monthly plan. Directories still print $199 to $600 a month. Stale. Do not use them. BBB live: A-minus, not accredited, two complaints in three years. July 2024 unanswered cancel-until-paid. April 2025 answered: onboarding, 60-day window, one-year contract. Same story on Trustpilot (n=2). Capterra value is 3.27. ## The verdict Capterra, GetApp, and Software Advice 3.7 from 68 (one Gartner pool, live HTML). Star split 27 / 16 / 10 / 7 / 8. Newest body November 16, 2025. Sixteen of the 25 most-recent visible Capterra bodies are NominalGift. G2 live HTML blocked (DataDome 403); indexed 3.3 from 27, count frozen in the mid-20s. Trustpilot live HTML blocked; indexed 3.2 from 2. TrustRadius 5.1 from an unknown count (Cloudflare blocked); praise is pre-2019. Reddit: none retrieved. Zero plumber reviews. One HVAC on Sitejabber. Reviewers are dentists, vets, salons, medical. Official price August 25, 2026: Custom. Do not invent a starter. Do not put $299 in the From field. Skip. Real recall-and-reviews desk for a Mindbody salon that was already quoted. Wrong buy for a truck. If the office needed a dental phone, Weave. If it needed Google stars, NiceJob. --- ### Dialpad Verdict: Skip for most From: $15/user/mo Tagline: A real mid-market phone and contact-center stack. The SEO page that calls it an AI receptionist is not the SKU. Website: https://www.dialpad.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/dialpad/ ## What it actually does Dialpad is a cloud phone, meetings, messaging, sales dialer, and contact center. 2026 names: Connect, Support, Sell, AI Agents. Connect is the office PBX. Support is the contact center. Sell is the dialer. AI Agents are voice and digital bots billed per conversation. That is a RingCentral and Five9 class stack. Still independent. Google is an investor, not the owner. They bought Surfboard (workforce management) in October 2024. HQ San Ramon. It is not [Smith.ai](/tools/smith-ai/). It is not [Goodcall](/tools/goodcall/). It is not [Ruby](/tools/ruby/). SEO pages pitch an [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/) for dentists and plumbers. Help docs gate AI Agents to Support Advanced or Premium and a digital contact center. There is no [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/) product. There is no Google review product. Web chat is a contact-center channel, not a [Tidio](/tools/tidio/) widget. No [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), ServiceTitan, Dentrix, or Mindbody page. Clio shows up as third-party marketplace glue. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you have an IT person, 20-plus seats, and you want one vendor for desk phones, meetings, and a queue. Connect Standard is $15 per user per month on annual, $27 monthly. Pro is $25 / $35. Support starts at $80 / $95. Sell Essentials is $39 / $49. Enterprise is Custom. Voice minutes on Support and Sell are extra ($0.01 in / $0.02 out). E911 is $0.99 a line. Do not buy it if you are a one-truck plumber, a salon, or a solo dentist who needs the phone answered while you are in a chair. That is Smith.ai or Goodcall. Do not buy Connect Standard thinking the $15 seat is the AI receptionist. The reason not to buy is the job and the paper. The answering SKU is Support Advanced at $115 a user plus $1.99 a voice conversation. Annual auto-renews. Non-renewal needs 30 days. Leave early and you owe the rest of the term. Help mentions a 3-day refund. Terms say fees are non-refundable. Self-serve cancel is only monthly accounts with 10 seats or fewer. Everyone else emails Customer Success. BBB: 59 complaints in three years, not accredited. G2 organic 0-star: a CEO who could not cancel. BBB: about $4,000 in licenses they had asked to drop, still renewed. ## The verdict G2 Connect 4.4 from 4,192 on Wayback July 9, 2026 (live list blocked; some compare pages still show 1,863). Capterra family about 4.2 from 560-plus (live blocked). Trustpilot about 4.1 from 2,963, down from 4.3 in 2024. TrustRadius Connect 8.1 from 566. Reddit: none retrieved. Software Advice mix is IT, professional services, finance, call center. Zero trades bodies. Official floor August 25, 2026: $15 per user per month, annual Connect Standard. Directories that still print a receptionist price are selling the SEO page. Skip. The product is real for a distributed office. It is the wrong aisle for the Counter & Crew shop. If you needed the phone answered, Smith.ai. If you needed a $79 night bot, Goodcall. If you needed a dental PBX, [Weave](/tools/weave/). Do not sign Dialpad because a landing page said receptionist. --- ### Frontdesk Verdict: Situational From: $99/mo Tagline: AI-only receptionist at $99 a month. 200 minutes, then a quarter a minute. No human behind it. Website: https://www.myaifrontdesk.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/my-ai-front-desk/ ## What it actually does Frontdesk is the 2026 name for My AI Front Desk. Same Delaware company, AI Front Desk, Inc. Same live domain, www.myaifrontdesk.com. You forward the existing shop number. An AI greets inbound callers 24/7, qualifies them, can book a live calendar, SMS-confirms, and can warm-transfer VIPs or emergencies. Transcripts land in their CRM. That is the product. It is not a human answering service. There is no North America receptionist behind the bot. It is not a phone system ([OpenPhone](/tools/openphone/), [JustCall](/tools/justcall/), [Aircall](/tools/aircall/)). Missed-call text-back is a use-case page built from the receptionist plus SMS, not a priced SKU. Web chat and review-request automations ride inside the same plan. Do not tag those aisles. Do not confuse this vendor with aifrontdesk.com, frontdesk.ai, or [Weave](/tools/weave/)'s True Lark (formerly FrontdeskAI). The plan that answers the phone is Business-in-a-Box at $99 a month cash: 200 voice minutes, 400 SMS, 100 web chats, 1,000 overage credits, two editor seats. Annual is $79 shown as monthly, $948 prepaid. Do not put $79 on the card. Basic is $20 a month with zero voice minutes. The pricing page says it does not answer calls. Partner and Enterprise are custom. White-label starts at $500 a month, apply-only. Native booking I would actually hook up: Google Calendar, and [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/) for home services. The [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) help article is a 404. Dentrix, Mindbody, and Clio are not native. Zapier is on Business. That is glue, not a PMS. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you are a Housecall Pro plumber or HVAC shop, after-hours is the leak, you will live with an AI-only voice, and 200 minutes is close to your real month. Salons and dentists can book if they run Google Calendar or Acuity. Skip if they live in Mindbody or Dentrix. Law is situational. There is an intake page and no Clio. The only live Capterra review is a law-practice owner at 2 stars (Sep 2025) who was told HubSpot was native and got Zapier: \"It. Does. Not.\" Do not buy it if a botched 2 a.m. emergency needs a person. That is [Smith.ai](/tools/smith-ai/) at $150 or [Ruby](/tools/ruby/) at $250. Do not buy it as a Jobber dispatch brain. Do not buy Basic $20 thinking it is a cheap receptionist. Do not prepay a year to \"really try\" Zapier. The reason not to buy is the minute meter plus the missing human, with a prepaid trap on top. 200 minutes, then $0.25 a minute. Their own billing tutorial: 350 minutes on Business lands around $126.50 that month. Auto-reload is $10 per 1,000 credits unless you turn it off. Outbound is a hard 20 calls a day. Credits cannot buy more. ToS effective May 12, 2026: auto-renew monthly or annually, fees generally non-refundable, AAA arbitration in California. Marketing says cancel anytime. That means end of the current term, not a refund. Indexed Trustpilot 1-stars in March 2026: one shop paid $1,428 annual after a sales call they say promised a refund, product never went live, money stayed. Company chrome has not replied to negatives. ToS still lists $0.12 a minute. Live pricing is $0.25. Use the pricing page. ## The verdict Public list, self-serve, 7-day trial. G2 4.8 from 10 (Wayback August 23, 2026; live HTML DataDome 403). Newest body July 21, 2026. Five of the 5-stars posted the same day in May. Capterra live is 2.0 from 1. Trustpilot live HTML blocked. Indexed around 3.6 to 3.8 from about 9 to 11. Reddit: empty. BBB: no profile. Named plumber, dentist, salon, or HVAC independent reviewer: zero. Homepage \"10,000-plus businesses\" is marketing. Situational. Cheap enough to trial monthly on overflow if Housecall Pro is already the shop OS. Not the default for a storm-week plumber, a Dentrix office, or a firm that needs a human on first contact. If you only needed a voice bot and unlimited minutes, [Goodcall](/tools/goodcall/) is $79. If you needed a person, pay Smith. --- ### GatherUp Verdict: Situational From: $124/mo Tagline: The pricing page shows $99. Month-to-month is $124. NiceJob is $75 and talks to Jobber. Website: https://www.gatherup.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/gatherup/ ## What it actually does GatherUp, LLC, Walnut Creek. Still live. Founded 2013 as GetFiveStars. Rebranded GatherUp in 2018. Insight Integrity Group bought GatherUp and [Grade.us](/tools/grade-us/) on December 3, 2025 and parked them with The Transparency Company. Grade.us is a sister product still at grade.us. Do not call this a Grade.us rename. The 2026 site is agency-first: email and SMS review asks, NPS, monitoring on 100-plus sites, AI replies, widgets. Listings Hub is a paid add-on that syncs NAP to 125-plus directories including GBP, Apple Maps, Yelp, Facebook. Review Defense is a fake-review add-on. TextBack is a customer-initiated "feedback" keyword, not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). Web-to-Text is a contact form to SMS, still labeled BETA. No [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/). No chatbot. No referrals SKU. [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) and [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/) are Zapier only. Dentrix and Mindbody are none. Clio is none. Native names are Salesforce, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, QuickBooks, Toast, Athena Health. ## Who should buy it Buy Small Business only if an agency is already running it for you, or you need Salesforce plus HIPAA-shaped healthcare workflows that [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/) does not sell. Multi-location public bands start at $60 a location annual for 2 to 10. Agency is Custom white-label. 14-day trial, no card. SMS marketing and Web-to-Text are off during trial. Do not buy it if you are a plumber, HVAC shop, or salon that just wanted Google reviews after the job. That is NiceJob at $75, and it talks to Jobber. Do not buy it as [Podium](/tools/podium/). There is no inbox for missed calls. Do not buy it as [Birdeye](/tools/birdeye/). Listings Hub is $40 extra and shallower. The reason not to buy is the check versus NiceJob, and the paper versus the FAQ. Live pricing HTML August 25, 2026: one location $99 a month on the yearly toggle, $124 month-to-month. Included: 300 SMS and 3,000 email per location. Listings Hub $40. Review Defense Reveal $50 / $45, Illuminate $150 / $125, Integrity $375 / $300 per location; help says 1-year minimum. Promo SMS $10 plus $0.02 extra. FAQ: month-to-month, cancel anytime, no termination fee. Terms (July 13, 2026) are silent on term, auto-renew, and refunds. Help: no refunds for services rendered. Arbitration and class waiver. Capterra 1-star, July 2, 2025 (indexed; live Cloudflare-blocked): sales-gated pricing, dead chat, never bought. Software Advice April 2024: price up, support down. G2 2020-21: cannot pause campaigns, cannot toggle the seven follow-ups. ## The verdict G2 4.5 from 48 to 50 (Wayback February 10, 2026 had 49; live HTML DataDome 403). Capterra and Software Advice 4.6 from 41 (same Gartner pool; live HTML blocked). Trustpilot on gatherup.com: no score retrieved. Grade.us Trustpilot is two cancel reviews on the sister brand. TrustRadius about 9.5 from 3 (blocked). BBB: Grade Us, LLC, A, not accredited, one complaint in three years. No GatherUp-named BBB profile. Reddit: none retrieved. Reviewers are agencies and multi-location marketers. No named plumber, salon, HVAC, or law-firm owner bodies. Official list August 25, 2026: $124 a month cash, $99 on annual. Directories that still print Pro $75 / Pro Plus $99 / Executive $199 are 2020 SaaSworthy. Stale. Do not use them. Situational. If the agency needs white-label plus listings, this is a real reviews desk. If the shop needed a $75 Google drip that fires when Jobber closes the job, NiceJob. Do not sign Review Defense without reading the one-year line. --- ### Goodcall Verdict: Situational From: $79/mo Tagline: A cheap AI that answers the phone. No human behind it, and almost nobody in the trades has reviewed it in public. Website: https://www.goodcall.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/goodcall/ ## What it actually does Goodcall is an AI that answers inbound business calls. You get a Goodcall number or you forward your existing line when nobody picks up. It greets, answers FAQs from a Google listing, Yelp, website, or a PDF you upload, takes a message, can SMS a booking link during the call, and can transfer to your people. Transcripts land in a dashboard. Owner alerts go out by email or SMS. That is the product. It is not a live answering service. There is no North America receptionist on staff. "Human backup" means your own operator directory, a callback, or a message. It is not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). It is not a two-way SMS inbox, website chat, or review tool. Native live booking is documented for Boulevard (salons). ServiceTitan, [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), Dentrix, Clio, and Mindbody are Zapier-or-marketing claims, not help-center connectors. GoHighLevel MCP showed up in June 2026. Do not assume it books into your FSM until you see it on a demo. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you are a low-volume local shop, most after-hours calls are "are you open / send a link," you will stay under about 100 unique phone numbers a month, and you will self-serve the bot. Repeat-customer salons on Boulevard are the cleanest fit. A one-person computer-repair or junk-removal shop that just needed the phone picked up is the other. Do not buy it if a botched 2 a.m. call is a real job. Plumbers and HVAC with storm-week new callers will chew unique-customer caps. Starter is 100 uniques, then $0.50 each. Same person from a different number is a new unique. Law firms that need intake with a human safety net should be on [Smith.ai](/tools/smith-ai/). Dentists with Dentrix: no native connector found. The reason not to buy is the trust gap plus the missing human. Homepage says 42,000-plus businesses. G2 is 3.5 from one review (body not retrieved). Capterra listing is empty. Trustpilot is 2.9 from two reviews. Reddit: nothing retrieved. BBB profile for Goodcall AI Inc. is A-minus, not accredited, one unresolved July 2025 complaint: billed up front on what they thought was a 14-day trial, email tickets, no phone number to reach anyone. A December 2023 Trustpilot review is a shop that put a Goodcall number on listings, then got locked out of voicemail unless they paid about $60 a month. Do not publish the Goodcall-issued number as your brand number until you have lived with it. ## The verdict When it works, the pitch is simple: unlimited minutes, public pricing, the phone gets answered. Current official list (August 25, 2026): Starter $79 a month per agent (100 uniques), Growth $129 (250), Scale $249 (500). Annual toggle $66 / $108 / $208. Ignore older $59 / $99 / $199 tables. Those died in a December 1, 2025 migration that moved existing customers onto the new menu. Month-to-month auto-renew. Cancel in the dashboard. Payments are final; you can request a refund for the current month. Starter keeps call history 7 days. Inactive 60 days and they release the number. Situational. Cheap enough to trial for 14 days on overflow. Not the default receptionist for a trade whose after-hours line is the business. If the call needs judgment, pay for Smith.ai or a human service. --- ### Grade.us Verdict: Skip for most From: $124/mo Tagline: Same $99 / $124 cards as GatherUp. New demos get sent to GatherUp. A plumber should not be here. Website: https://www.grade.us Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/grade-us/ ## What it actually does Grade.us is Grade US, LLC, Bellevue, still dba Traject on paper dated November 7, 2022. Still live at grade.us. Login at grade.us/signin still returns 200. Insight Integrity Group bought Grade.us and [GatherUp](/tools/gatherup/) on December 3, 2025. Same CEO, Michael Yules. Separate site, separate login, separate help. GatherUp was GetFiveStars. Grade.us was never GatherUp. Do not write that it was. The product is a white-label review funnel for agencies: email and SMS asks, monitoring, in-dashboard Google and Facebook replies, widgets, reports you can mark up. Homepage still says the [review management](/categories/review-management/) platform for marketing agencies. There are no AI review replies on Grade.us pages. That is GatherUp SmartReply. There is no Listings Hub. The listings page is a [Whitespark](/tools/whitespark/) partnership with promo code TRAJECT, not a directory-sync SKU. No [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). No receptionist. No chatbot. No [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, Mindbody, or Clio. Zapier only. New 2026 leads are not this product. /signup 301s to app.gatherup.com/trial. The demo page, live August 25, 2026: thanks for your interest in Grade.us, next generation powered by GatherUp, same price, plus AI. Site banners send fake-review traffic to GatherUp Review Defense. ## Who should buy it Buy it only if you already resell Grade.us and you are not ready to move. Keep the current login. The Insight Integrity note was keep using your current platform. Do not buy it if you are a plumber, dentist, salon, HVAC shop, or law firm. [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/) is $75 and talks to Jobber. If you wanted this family, GatherUp Small Business is the 2026 SKU: AI replies, optional Listings Hub at $40, Review Defense. Do not buy Grade.us as [Podium](/tools/podium/) or [Birdeye](/tools/birdeye/). The reason not to buy is you would pay GatherUp money for a thinner stack, on older paper. Live plans page, rebuilt May 4, 2026: Small Business $99 a month on the yearly toggle, $124 month-to-month. Same pair as GatherUp. Multi-location bands match GatherUp. Agency card is Custom. Calculator still prints $40 a seat and $400-plus a month at 10-plus seats. White Label Premium $440 a year, non-refundable. Directories and GetApp still print Traject Solo $110 / Pro $60 a seat / Partner $2,500. Stale. Do not use them. ToS, last updated November 7, 2022: Grade US, LLC dba Traject, Washington law, JAMS, class waiver, $100 cap, fees nonrefundable, cancel by emailing support@grade.us, 14-day notice on price changes, auto-renew. Footer still says Grade Us, Inc. Unresolved versus the LLC. Trustpilot, indexed, live HTML WAF 403: 2.9 from two. One is cancel for over a year, card still hit. One is Traject doubling license fees, no refund on white-label prepay. BBB Bellevue, live: Grade Us, LLC, A, not accredited, complaint 20925734 from November 28, 2023 still Unresolved, cancel broken, card kept charging. The June 2026 five-star on that profile is Trajector Medical. Wrong company. ## The verdict Capterra, GetApp, and Software Advice 4.8 from 244 (one Gartner pool, live HTML August 20, 2026). Ease 4.7, value 4.6, support 4.8. Mix is 44 percent marketing and advertising. Newest Capterra body retrieved is November 17, 2022. Listing also mixes Reputology and Reputation Loop. G2 about 4.6 from 143 (indexed; live DataDome 403). TrustRadius 8.9 from 5, four written, all incentivized August 2020 agencies. Reddit: none retrieved. No named plumber, dentist, salon, HVAC, or law-firm owner reviews. Official list August 25, 2026: $124 a month cash, $99 on annual, Custom for Agency. SMS dollars were not on the public page. Skip. If you needed Google reviews after the job, NiceJob. If you needed this parent, GatherUp. If a closer says Grade.us is GatherUp, it is not, and they are about to demo the other site anyway. --- ### HighLevel Verdict: Situational From: $97/mo Tagline: A $97 all-in-one CRM that can text a missed caller, run the pipeline, and ask for the review. The cheap month still needs somebody to build it. Website: https://www.gohighlevel.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/highlevel/ ## What it actually does HighLevel is a CRM and marketing box built for agencies, then sold down to the local businesses those agencies serve. A lead comes in from a form, ad, call, or text. HighLevel puts the person in a pipeline, fires the workflow, sends the reminder, offers a calendar, and can ask for a review after the job. There is a website builder, chat widget, shared inbox, phone system, email tool, and automation canvas in the same login. That sounds like a [shop operating system](/categories/shop-os/), but it stops before the truck. HighLevel does not dispatch a technician, price a plumbing job, manage equipment history, or turn a completed work order into payroll. [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) and [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/) do that work. HighLevel sits in front of them, where ads, lead intake, [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/), nurturing, and review asks happen. Official pricing checked September 3, 2026: Starter is $97 a month or $970 a year for three sub-accounts. Unlimited is $297 a month or $2,970 a year for unlimited sub-accounts. Agency Pro is $497 a month or $4,970 a year and adds the machinery for reselling the platform. The regular trial is 14 days. Contacts and users are unlimited. Phone, text, email, and premium AI usage come from a separate prepaid wallet that auto-refills once it drops under $10, and usage can bill during the 14-day trial too. Annual prepay is non-refundable. So $97 is the door, not always the invoice. ## Who should buy it Buy it if three subscriptions already hold the same customer's name, nobody knows whether the estimate follow-up went out, and one person will own the build. A shop buying leads can use one workflow to text the missed caller, collect the service and ZIP, move the lead into a pipeline, offer a booking link, and remind the office when nobody replies. That is a real afternoon back. Do not buy it because a YouTube video called it all in one. The empty account is a hardware store. Someone still has to pick the lumber, wire the triggers, authenticate the email domain, test consent, and decide where a human takes over. Capterra showed 4.2 from 89 reviews in the September 2026 check. The recurring complaint is the same thing the feature list sells: there is a lot here, the interface takes time, and implementation can run long. Do not replace your field-service system with it. A plumber who needs dispatch, estimates, job costing, and invoices should start with Jobber or Housecall Pro. Do not replace a trained answering service with a workflow either. HighLevel can catch a miss and start a text. It cannot make the scared homeowner stay on the phone. ## The verdict Situational, 6.5 out of 10. The $97 cash is fair when it lets one operator retire a form tool, a small CRM, and a follow-up subscription. It is expensive when the workflows stay half built and usage charges keep pulling from the wallet. HighLevel is for the shop that has a process worth putting into one box, or the agency that already knows how to install it. If you want the outcome without spending Saturday in an automation canvas, [book a 30-min fit call](/start/). We set up the path the caller actually takes, then leave you with something the office can run. --- ### Housecall Pro Verdict: Solid pick From: $79/mo Tagline: Shop OS from $79 a month cash. Plumber and HVAC cards are a different price book than the generic table. Review asks are included. CSR AI has no public price. Website: https://www.housecallpro.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/housecall-pro/ ## What it actually does Housecall Pro is the shop operating system. Codefied Inc. does business as Housecall Pro at housecallpro.com. You schedule the truck, send the estimate, take the card in the driveway, and ask for the Google review from the same job. That is the product. Review management is on every plan. It is not a $75 extra the way [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/) is. There are two public tables. The generic /pricing page (August 28, 2026) shows Basic $79, Essentials $189, MAX $329 on the monthly toggle, and a default Annual toggle of $59 / $149 / $299. HVAC and plumbing live on a Mechanical Package at /industries/hvac-software/ and the plumbing industry page. Monthly cash there: Basic $79 (1 user), Essentials Individual $229 / Teams $299 (5 users, extra $100), MAX Individual $349 / Teams $649 (8 users, extra $75). MAX teams is a demo CTA. Mechanical annual dollars render as unpublished $XX. Do not apply the generic $59 / $149 / $299 annual to a plumber. Do not print the HVAC FAQ leftover $399. The live HVAC MAX individual card is $349. From on our card is $79, the Basic monthly cash both tables share. Extra seats on Mechanical match the generic extras: $100 on Essentials, $75 on MAX. Do not publish stale "$35 extra user" JSON. It is not an [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/) on Basic. CSR AI is a named paid add-on with no public dollar. Analyst, Coach, Marketing, and Help AI are free. HCP Assist (human virtual assistant) and Voice are other Custom add-ons. Terms bill Assist connected calls rounded up 30 seconds, plus 30 seconds of after-call work. Campaigns is the add-on with a Help price: $9 / $19 / $49 / $89. Do not print blog guesses for CSR AI. Sales Proposal is marketed as a $40/mo value and bundled in MAX on the generic page. Card processing as low as 2.59%. Bank / ACH 1%. Chargeback fee $25. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you run a home-service shop and you actually needed one system for the calendar, the invoice, and the review ask. Basic $79 is the one-truck floor. If you are HVAC or plumbing, Essentials starts at $229 individual, not $189. MAX individual is $349, not $329. Teams MAX is $649. Do not buy it if you only needed Google reviews. That is NiceJob at $75. Do not buy Basic thinking CSR AI is in the box. That add-on is Custom. Do not buy it as a [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) replacement on price. Jobber Core is $49. Do not quote the generic annual toggle to a plumber. The reason not to buy, even when the OS is the right aisle, is the split price book plus the cancel. Marketing FAQ: no long-term contracts, cancel anytime. Terms of Service, last modified July 1, 2026: subscriptions auto-renew for a period equal to the term you picked. Fees are not prorated or refunded except as the Terms say. Cancel by email to cancellations@housecallpro.com. The Help Center is blunter: chat, then a phone call with the account owner. Billing will not finish cancel or pause until that call. Downgrades wait until the end of the current period. The 14-day trial runs MAX features with no card. It closes if you never add payment. A 30-day money-back shows in Help and in a stale iOS ToS from April 2023. It is not in the July 1, 2026 web Terms. Treat it as conditional, only if it was offered at signup and documented. ## The verdict Public list, self-serve, 14-day trial. G2 and Capterra live HTML did not return usable star counts on August 28, 2026. Third-party blogs still reprint $59 or $399. Use the Mechanical monthly cards if you are HVAC or plumbing. Solid. The shop OS with reviews included, if you will pay $79 cash on Basic and you will cancel by phone. If you only needed the review ask, NiceJob is $75. If you needed a voice on the line tonight, that is still [Rosie](/tools/rosie/) at $49, [Frontdesk](/tools/my-ai-front-desk/) at $99, or [Smith.ai](/tools/smith-ai/) at $150. CSR AI is not a price you can read before a sales call. --- ### Jobber Verdict: Solid pick From: $49/mo Tagline: Shop OS from $49 a month cash. The $21 and $29 numbers are annual prepaid. Reviews sit in Marketing Suite at $99. Receptionist is $29. Website: https://www.getjobber.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/jobber/ ## What it actually does Jobber is the shop operating system at getjobber.com. You quote the job, put it on the calendar, send the invoice, and take the card. That is the product. It is not a reviews company. It is not an answering service unless you add those SKUs. There are four plans. Public monthly cash with no commitment, read on getjobber.com/pricing on August 29, 2026: Core $49 for 1 user, Connect $139 for 1 user, Grow $199 for 1 user, Plus $499 starting at 5 users. Seat packs on Connect, Grow, and Plus go up to Plus at 15 users for $699. Extra users are $29/mo each on every plan. Sixteen and up is Let's chat. The title and the pricing wizard also print $21 and $29. Those are annual prepaid Core, shown as a monthly number. The current promo year is $21. Then it is $29 billed annually. Do not put $21 or $29 in From. A banner on that page said save up to 40%, offer ends August 31, 2026. Three ways to pay, from the live FAQ. Monthly with no commitment: $49 on Core, cancel anytime, access through the end of the current period. Monthly with a 1-year commitment: cheaper teasers, then a 12-month minimum. Cancel early and they keep billing you until month 12. You cannot downgrade during that year (Terms of Service, section 3.4, July 16, 2026, getjobber.com/terms-of-service). Annual prepaid: billed in full on day one. Cancel mid-year and you keep access to the end of the term. The first payment is not refunded. Everything auto-renews unless you set it not to. What is in the box. Core: online booking, quotes, invoices, a website, reporting, the app marketplace. Not QuickBooks, not two-way SMS, not job costing. Connect adds reminders, auto-pay, checklists, quote and invoice follow-ups, QuickBooks, time and expenses. Grow adds visual quotes, optional line items, auto time, job costing, two-way SMS, automations. Plus adds a files library, teammate mentions, auto job costing, Pipeline, Marketing Suite, an [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/), dedicated onboarding, and Premium Support. Add-ons with public dollars: Receptionist $29/mo on Core, Connect, and Grow, included on Plus. Help (July 9, 2026): 30 conversations a month on those plans, then $0.79 each. Plus is unlimited. Pipeline $49/mo. Marketing Suite $99/mo. Help lists Reviews inside Marketing Suite (campaigns, referrals, job showcase, social posting). The pricing page still says reviews when a Reviews add-on is enabled. That dollar is the $99 suite, not a separate reviews SKU. Receptionist, Marketing Suite, and Pipeline are monthly only. They are not annual, and they are not in the trial. Card fees 2.9% plus $0.30. Tap to Pay 2.7% plus $0.30. ACH 1%. Instant payout another 1%. Fourteen-day trial. Grow features. No card to start. Add-ons are not in the trial. If the trial expires, the data stays. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you run a home-service shop and you wanted one system for the quote, the schedule, and the invoice, and you will pay Core $49 cash. That is cheaper than [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/) Basic at $79. Two-way SMS is Grow at $199, not Core. Do not buy it if you only needed Google reviews. [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/) is $75. Housecall Pro includes the review ask on every plan. Jobber puts reviews inside Marketing Suite at $99, or you buy Plus. Do not buy Plus at $499 to get a receptionist. That SKU is $29 on Core. Do not quote the $21 annual card as the monthly bill. The reason not to buy, even when the OS is the right aisle, is the three-price trick plus the 1-year monthly commit. Cancel on the no-commitment monthly plan is Gear, then Account and Billing, then Cancel Subscription. Admin only. You keep the account until the period ends. Annual and 1-year monthly commit last until the term is over. If you subscribed in the app, you cancel in the app. Jobber does not refund app-store charges. ## The verdict Public list, self-serve, 14-day trial. Third-party blogs still reprint $29 or mix per-user math into a company price. Use the monthly cash column. Solid. The shop OS at $49 cash on Core if you will ignore the $21 marketing number. If you needed the review ask with a public price, that is still NiceJob at $75 or Housecall Pro at $79. If you needed a voice on the line tonight, Jobber's receptionist is $29, or [Rosie](/tools/rosie/) at $49, [Frontdesk](/tools/my-ai-front-desk/) at $99, [Smith.ai](/tools/smith-ai/) at $150. --- ### JustCall Verdict: Skip for most From: $39/user/mo Tagline: Two-seat sales phone. The $29 is annual. AI that answers is $99 extra. Website: https://justcall.io Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/justcall/ ## What it actually does JustCall is still JustCall on justcall.io. Parent is SaaS Labs US, Inc., a Delaware corporation at 355 Bryant Street, San Francisco. Founded 2016. Not acquired. Not renamed. ServiceAgent.ai is a sibling waitlist for trades. Do not file that as this product. It is a per-seat cloud phone, SMS inbox, and sales dialer for sales and support teams. Team can ring a human and send SMS. AI that talks to callers is a separate add-on, AI Voice Agent, sold PAYG at $0.99 a minute or Agent Lite at $99 a month for 100 minutes (Max $249 for 300). Unused minutes do not roll. Transcription and summaries on the seat are not a receptionist. AI Review Assist at $9 a user is call scoring, not Google reviews. Missed-call text-back exists as a workflow and a webhook. It is not a named priced SKU, so it does not get that tag. No [website chatbot](/categories/website-chatbots/). No listings. No 911. Fair Use sits under the word unlimited. Toll-free inbound and external forwards burn credits. Native CRM is HubSpot and Salesforce. [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) and ServiceTitan log calls. [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, Mindbody, and Clio are none. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you already live in HubSpot, you have at least two seats, and the job is outbound plus a shared SMS inbox. That is who Capterra says uses it: sales and support, 90 percent small business, computer software first. SDRs, recruiters, BPO. Not a truck. Do not buy it if you are a plumber, HVAC shop, salon, one-chair dentist, or solo law firm. [OpenPhone](/tools/openphone/) is $19 a user with Sona on the same line and a one-seat floor. [Smith.ai](/tools/smith-ai/) is $150 with a North America human behind the bot and 30-day money-back. [Ruby](/tools/ruby/) is $250 for a person. [CallRail](/tools/callrail/) Voice Assist is the [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/) if you already buy Google Ads tracking. [Dialpad](/tools/dialpad/) is UCaaS, not this aisle. The reason not to buy is the floor plus the paper. Live list August 25, 2026: Team $39, Pro $69, Pro Plus $109 per user per month (official help-center monthly table). Pricing-page cards default to $29 / $49 / $89 billed annually. Minimum license is two on every plan, so Team cash is $78 a month before a number, 10DLC, SMS bundles, or the Voice Agent. Do not print a combined plumber bundle. Annual is prepaid and non-refundable. Auto-renew unless you give 30 days written notice (45 on an Order Form). JustCall may terminate for any reason. Delaware courts, class waiver. No money-back. BBB Justcall Inc, live HTML: D-plus, not accredited, file opened July 13, 2026. One unanswered complaint that day: sales said US and Canada were unlimited; after they ported, toll-free and an external route were not covered, calling died until they bought credits, and they were on a year of service. Capterra 1-stars: a $609.30 charge after cancel (Nov 2023); legal-team threat one day after an upgrade (Nov 2025); a Pro plan that advertised 1,000 minutes blocked by leftover trial credits. TrustRadius July 14, 2026: a mortgage broker spent a month on 10DLC and was told the industry cannot register a number. ## The verdict Capterra 4.1 from 225 (live HTML). Star split 109 / 70 / 20 / 12 / 14. Newest retrieved body November 14, 2025. G2 live HTML blocked (DataDome 403); G2 AI May 2026 is 4.3; indexed counts 2,176 to 2,388, not frozen; no G2 bodies opened. Trustpilot live HTML blocked (CloudFront 403); indexed 4.1 from 687. TrustRadius live 4.4 from 22 (indexed comparison pages still say 7.2; do not use 7.2). Reddit: none retrieved. Zero named plumber, dentist, salon, or HVAC reviews. Official Team monthly cash August 25, 2026: $39 per user. Do not publish $29 as monthly. Do not invent a 1-seat price. Skip. Real phone for a two-person sales desk. Wrong buy for one truck. If you needed a cheap shared line, OpenPhone. If you needed a human on the after-hours line, Smith.ai or Ruby. --- ### LiveChat Verdict: Skip for most From: $25/user/mo Tagline: A 20-year chat widget billed per person. Starter is one seat. Tidio is $29. Website: https://www.livechat.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/livechat/ ## What it actually does LiveChat is a product of Text S.A., Wroclaw (US: Text, Inc., Boston). Still live at livechat.com. The parent renamed from LiveChat Software S.A. in 2023. WSE ticker TXT, not Nasdaq. About 35,000 companies in marketing copy. July 2026 earnings used 35,000 customers. The 2026 homepage is live chat software with a LiveChat 2.0 inbox banner. That is a per-seat website widget, agent-assist AI they call Text Intelligence, and optional sibling products: ChatBot, HelpDesk, KnowledgeBase. ChatBot on the LiveChat pricing page starts at $52 a month. ChatBot.com now prints Text Essential $19 and Growth $79. Do not mix those grids. WhatsApp is a marketplace app at $99 or $199 per number, not native. It is not [Tidio](/tools/tidio/). Tidio is a cheaper widget with Lyro and a real free plan. It is not [Crisp](/tools/crisp/). Crisp is a Nantes helpdesk with WhatsApp on Essentials at $95. It is not [Chatbase](/tools/chatbase/). You are not pasting PDFs into a bot you own. It is not [ManyChat](/tools/manychat/). Comment-to-DM is a different aisle. It does not answer the shop phone. Twilio SMS in the inbox is not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). No reviews SKU. No GBP. No [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, Mindbody, or Clio. Native names are Shopify, WooCommerce, HubSpot, Salesforce. ## Who should buy it Buy Starter only if one person will live in the widget. Monthly cash is $25 a user. Annual is $19. Team is $59 monthly, $49 annual, per person. Business is $89 / $79. Enterprise is Custom. Trial is 14 days. Do not invent a 15 percent annual discount. The FAQ on the same site still says 15 percent and an old $41 plus $52 bundle. The cards do not. Do not buy it if you are a plumber, HVAC shop, salon, dentist, or law firm. If you needed a widget, Tidio at $29. If you needed a helpdesk plus WhatsApp, Crisp. If you needed a DIY bot, Chatbase. If you needed the phone, [OpenPhone](/tools/openphone/) or [Ruby](/tools/ruby/). The reason not to buy is the seat math, then the paper. Two people answering is not 2 times $19. It is Team at $59 each, monthly. ChatBot is another bill. HelpDesk from $29 and KnowledgeBase from $49 stack on the LiveChat path. Terms: Massachusetts law, auto-renew, no refunds, cancel through support chat. Help Center says you keep access until period end. ToS may cut it immediately. Capterra, Robert E., 1-star, February 2025: charged after cancel, chargeback. Trustpilot indexed: cancelled, charged anyway, twice, LiveChat plus KnowledgeBase. Michela d, Legal Services, 1-star, December 2025: missed chats, disconnects. ## The verdict Capterra and Software Advice 4.6 from 1,727 (same Gartner pool, live HTML August 25, 2026). Ease 4.6, value 4.5. Mix 70 percent five-star. 72 percent small business on the FAQ; top industries are software, IT, retail. Lisa T., Construction owner, 5-star, March 2026, bake-off versus Tidio and Pure Chat. That is the only trade card retrieved. G2 live HTML DataDome 403; indexed about 4.5, counts 751 to 810. Trustpilot live HTML WAF 403; largest unit about 2.7 to 2.9 from 203 to 210. BBB A+, accredited, zero customer reviews, one answered complaint in three years (misdirected ChatGPT case). TrustRadius indexed 8.4 from 135, also 7.1 on a compare snippet. Reddit: none retrieved. Official list August 25, 2026: Starter $25 a user a month, $19 on annual. Do not use directory $16 or the FAQ 15 percent line. Skip. The 4.6 is ecommerce teams that staff a site. The 2.7 is cancel. If the job was a plumber widget, Tidio. If the job was the phone, not this. --- ### Local Falcon Verdict: Recommended From: $24.99/mo Tagline: Public-price Map Pack geo-grid. Credits burn by pin. Unused package credits die at cycle end. Website: https://www.localfalcon.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/local-falcon/ ## What it actually does Local Falcon LLC (Erie, PA) sells geo-grid local rank tracking. You drop a grid on the map. Each pin is one credit. The report shows where a Google Business Profile sits in the Map Pack from those points, plus competitor and campaign views. Falcon AI is an optional analysis at 25 credits per report. Falcon Agent is a local SEO copilot included free on paid credit packages. Falcon Guard watches GBP changes. AI visibility tracking across AI Overviews and chat answers is in the product too. That is the September 2, 2026 product. It is not a citation hose. It is not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/), not an [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/), not a [website chatbot](/categories/website-chatbots/). There is no [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, Mindbody, or Clio page. Review asks after a job still belong to [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/). NAP cleanup still belongs to [Whitespark](/tools/whitespark/) or [Moz Local](/tools/moz-local/). [BrightLocal](/tools/brightlocal/) Track still bundles a Local Search Grid with citation tooling in one login. ## Who should buy it Buy it if the job is Map Pack by pin, for one shop or fifty, and you want a public credit menu. Live pricing page September 2, 2026: monthly Starter $24.99 (7,500 credits), Basic $49.99 (15,150), Pro $99.99 (31,250), Premium $199.99 (63,150 on the card; FAQ answer 132 rounds the top monthly allotment to about 63,000). Keywords and locations are unlimited on every plan. Sign-up gives 100 free credits. No card required for that trial pack. A 5x5 scan is 25 credits. A 9x9 is 81. Plan the month before you schedule nightly campaigns. If you blow the allotment, pay-as-you-go top-ups are $0.05 a credit and those never expire. Package credits on monthly plans expire at the end of the cycle. Annual packages ($299.88 / $599.88 / $1,199.88 / $2,399.88 a year) roll unused credits month to month and expire at year end. Do not read those year totals as monthly cash. Do not buy it for listings. That is Moz Local at $20. Do not buy it for humans who hand you citation logins. That is Whitespark Listings Premium at $399 once. Do not buy BrightLocal Track at $41 if you only needed the grid and already have citations elsewhere. Enterprise credit packs run $499 to $4,999 a month. On-demand API is $199 a month plus usage. Neither belongs in the From. The reason not to buy is the clock on credits, and the paper under the cancel button. Pricing page marketing: cancel anytime. Terms of Use, last updated February 24, 2026: subscriptions auto-renew unless you cancel before renewal, you are responsible for canceling, payments are non-refundable, no refund for unused credits or partial periods. Local Falcon LLC. ## The verdict The vendor marketing stack cites G2 about 4.7 from 71. We did not dump a live G2 reviews HTML body for this pass, and we did not retrieve a plumber-owner DIY thread that names the card charge. Public local SEO forums treat the geo-grid as the reason agencies keep a login. Trust that pile as agency software, not a truck-shop inbox review. Official floor September 2, 2026 is $24.99 a month for Starter. Directories that restate annual year-totals as "$24.99 billed annually" as if that were a discount trick are confused. Monthly cash and annual cash print the same plan names at different credit piles. Use the monthly column for the From. Recommended. If you needed NAP on a monthly feed, Moz Local. If you needed a rank grid plus a citation desk in one BrightLocal login, that door is $41 plus citation credits. Pay Local Falcon when the job is the map pins, on monthly if you can, and spend the trial hundred before you schedule the overnight grid. --- ### ManyChat Verdict: Skip for most From: $17/mo Tagline: Instagram comment-to-DM for creators. The website widget is dead. A plumber is shopping the wrong aisle. Website: https://www.manychat.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/manychat/ ## What it actually does Manychat, Inc. Still live. Review it as ManyChat. The 2026 homepage is chat marketing for Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, and Messenger. That is comment-to-DM, Story replies, broadcasts, and a human Inbox for leftover threads. Manychat AI answers DMs and comments from a knowledge library. It does not answer the phone. It is not [Tidio](/tools/tidio/). Meta Customer Chat, the website widget, was turned off in May 2024. Current "widgets" send the visitor off-site to Messenger, Instagram, or WhatsApp. It is not [Podium](/tools/podium/). SMS is Twilio marketing on Pro and up, not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). No reviews SKU. No GBP. No [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, Mindbody, or Clio. The native Shopify app is retired. On March 2, 2026 they replaced stored-contact Pro with Active Contacts that reset every month. New accounts: Free, Essential, Pro, Business, Advanced. WhatsApp, SMS, Email, and AI unlock at Pro. On Pro they eat the three-channel cap. Instagram plus Messenger plus WhatsApp plus TikTok needs Business. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you live in Instagram comments and you want those comments to become DMs. Creators, coaches, social-first ecommerce. That is the ICP. Help articles updated August 19, 2026. Do not buy it if you are a plumber, HVAC shop, salon, dentist, or law firm. If you needed a widget on the site, Tidio at $29. If you needed missed-call text-back plus reviews, Podium. If you needed a phone, [OpenPhone](/tools/openphone/) or [Ruby](/tools/ruby/). The reason not to buy is the aisle, then the meter. Live pricing August 25, 2026, page default annual, ex-tax: Essential $17 a month or $14 annual (250 Active Contacts, then $0.10 / $0.082). Pro $39 / $29 (2,500, then $0.05). Business $99 / $69. Advanced $199 / $139. Extra Inbox seat $25. WhatsApp is Meta per-conversation on top, first 1,000 free, prepaid Wallet. SMS is your Twilio bill. Annual is prepaid. ToS: 30-day refund is discretionary, no pro-rata, AAA, class waiver, California law. Meta policy can terminate the account. BBB Maria P, June 29, 2026: billed for organic inbox traffic after 250 contacts. Kelby C.: charged for months while locked out. Directories and G2 still print legacy Pro from $15 and Free with 1,000 stored contacts. That is the old monthly-only grid. Stale. ## The verdict G2 about 4.5 from 165 (indexed 2026; Wayback March 2025 was 4.6 from 150; live HTML DataDome 403). Capterra and Software Advice 4.6 from 72 (same Gartner pool; live Capterra.ca JSON-LD; US Cloudflare-blocked). Mix is marketing consultants and ecommerce. One Construction CEO five-star with no job-site story. Trustpilot about 2.9 from 248 to 250 (indexed; live WAF 403). BBB San Francisco, live: F, not accredited, two unanswered complaints, three reviews all one-star. TrustRadius about 7.5 (indexed). Reddit: none retrieved. Official list August 25, 2026: Essential $17 a month. Pro $39 if you need WhatsApp. Do not use $15. The AI page still says $29 add-on. New grid includes AI on Pro. Leftover. Skip. The 4.6 is a marketer badge. The 2.9 and the F are what happens when the meter and Meta disagree with the shop. If the leads are on the website, Tidio. If they are on the phone, not this. --- ### Moz Local Verdict: Solid pick From: $20/mo Tagline: Public-price citations and Google Business Profile for a one-shop. Plan on four weeks, and Yelp is not in the hose. Website: https://moz.com/products/local Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/moz-local/ ## What it actually does Moz Local pushes your name, address, phone, hours, and photos to 90-plus US, UK, and Canada directories. Google Business Profile, Apple Maps, Bing, and Facebook are in that hose. It watches listing health, flags duplicates, and can close some of them. Preferred and Elite add review responding (Google and Facebook only), a CSV email review ask, and social posting. Listings AI and Reviews AI are add-ons. That is the 2026 product. It is not Moz Pro. Help Hub: separate subscription. STAT is a different $720 rank tracker. It is not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/), not an [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/), not a [website chatbot](/categories/website-chatbots/). AI here drafts listing copy and review replies. Yelp is not on the 2026 public directory list and not a two-way review inbox. There is no [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, Mindbody, or Clio page. Moz, Inc. sits under Ziff Davis after the June 2021 iContact sale. Still live. December 2024 was a platform relaunch, not a sunset. Customers had to reconnect GBP and Facebook. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you are one location, or a small agency stacking locations, and the job is citation consistency plus GBP. A dentist, plumber, or salon in the US, UK, or Canada can check out without a demo. Lite is listings, review alerts, and the local grid. If you need to answer Google reviews in the app, that is Preferred at $30 a month or $299 a year. Fifty-plus locations is a Custom Enterprise card. That is not [Chatmeter](/tools/chatmeter/)'s three-year paper. Do not buy it if you wanted Google reviews collected after a job. That is [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/). Do not buy it if you needed listings plus a chatbot and dental software. That is [Birdeye](/tools/birdeye/). Do not buy Lite expecting Yelp. The reason not to buy is the hose is slow and it can shrink. Moz Help, live August 25, 2026: about four weeks for a new location, two to three weeks for updates. Pricing FAQ says it starts instantly. Help wins in the field. Trustpilot, May 2025, Kara, seven-year customer: listings dropped from 115-plus to 32, support hard to reach, a competitor link showed up in a citation. March 2025: Localeze would not take the right category. After you cancel, partners do not revert the listings. They mark them unmanaged. Data aggregators can overwrite the work. Auto-renew is on by default. Cancel in the dashboard at least 72 hours before renewal. Immediate cancel is permanent and burns prepaid time. Local General Conditions: no complete or partial refunds. NY law, AAA in New York, class-action waiver. ## The verdict G2 is 4.3 from about 475 (indexed 2026; live HTML blocked). Wayback August 2021 already had 466 at 4.3. That is about nine new reviews in five years, mostly agencies, not trades. Capterra 4.4 from 33 sits on a moz-pro URL and mixes Moz Pro. Trustpilot 3.0 from 229 is company-wide billing, mostly Moz Pro. Reddit: none retrieved. BBB A-plus, not accredited; one 2025 complaint names Moz Local $335.48 plus Pro, no refund until the card network. Official list August 25, 2026: Lite $20 a month or $199 a year per location. Preferred $30 / $299. Elite $40 / $399. Enterprise Custom at 50-plus. Old $129-a-location and $14 Lite are dead. Directories still print $14 and $16. Stale. $16 is the annual Lite equivalent, not monthly list. No Local free trial on the pricing page. Solid. If you needed Google reviews at $75, NiceJob. If you needed enterprise listings, Chatmeter is a skip for a one-shop. Pay Moz Local for citations and GBP, on monthly if you can, and do not expect Yelp or a four-day publish. --- ### NexHealth Verdict: Situational From: Custom Tagline: Dentrix booking overlay. Quote-only. Homepage says no long-term contracts. The MSA auto-renews. Website: https://www.nexhealth.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/nexhealth/ ## What it actually does NexHealth is still NexHealth on nexhealth.com. Legal name NexHealth, Inc., a Delaware corporation. Marketing HQ San Francisco. Careers also lists Draper, Utah. Founded around 2017. Series C April 2022, about $125 million at a $1 billion valuation. Bought Enlive (forms) in 2021. No 2024 to 2026 acquisition. Do not file it as [Weave](/tools/weave/), [Solutionreach](/tools/solutionreach/), or [Demandforce](/tools/demandforce/). It is a patient-experience layer on the practice PMS: EHR-synced online booking, two-way text, digital forms, payments, insurance verification, and insights. Reviews is a named module under Communications. Post-visit ask, five-star to Google, three-star stays private. That earns the review-management aisle because dentists get quoted this stack. It is not the product. The product is booking plus comms. No named listings SKU with a public dollar, so no local-seo tag. Google Reserve is a Book button, not NAP sync. /nexhealth-phones is a thin VoIP page with no dollar, so no ai-receptionists tag and no [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/) tag. Kickcall sells an [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/) for NexHealth users. That is a partner, not this SKU. No [website chatbot](/categories/website-chatbots/). Native names on the live wall: Dentrix, Dentrix Ascend, Dentrix Enterprise, Eaglesoft, Open Dental. No [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Mindbody, or Clio. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you are a dental or medical office that wants real-time online booking that writes back to Dentrix or Eaglesoft, plus forms and text, and you will keep the existing phone system. Lori V. switched from Weave for forms. Carolyn P. switched from RevenueWell. Do not buy it if you are a plumber, HVAC shop, salon, or law firm. Do not buy it if you are a dentist replacing the PBX. That is Weave at $199. Do not buy it if you only wanted Google stars. That is [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/) at $75. Solutionreach and Demandforce are the other Custom recall-and-reviews desks. Solutionreach leftover $199 is not a live floor. The reason not to buy is the paper vs the homepage. Live pricing August 25, 2026: Custom. Module picker: Scheduling, Forms, Communications, Payments, Verification, Insights. /plans and /checkout 404. Demo only. No trial. Payments processing is public: 2.6 percent plus $0.07 terminal, 2.9 percent plus $0.30 online. Campaign SMS 5,000 per location then $0.012. Verification 800 then $0.20. Directories still print $350 a feature. Stale. Do not use them. Homepage: no long-term contracts, flexible monthly plans. FAQ: annual prepaid. Terms of Sale: 1-year auto-renew, 30-day notice (FAQ says 90), no refunds, AAA arbitration, Delaware law, 1.5 percent a month late. Ahava L., Capterra 1-star June 6, 2025, podiatry: three-month lock after they were told no long-term contracts, no partial pay under $1,000. Same incident on Trustpilot and BBB. BBB live: F, not accredited, five unanswered complaints in three years. ## The verdict Capterra 4.7 from 31 (live HTML, last updated August 20, 2026). Star split 26 / 3 / 1 / 0 / 1. G2 live HTML blocked (DataDome 403); Wayback July 30, 2026 is 4.8 from 131, many seller-invite. Trustpilot live HTML blocked; indexed 2.6 from 6. TrustRadius 8.7 from at least 2 (blocked). Reddit: none retrieved. Zero plumber, HVAC, salon, or law-firm reviews. Official price August 25, 2026: Custom. Do not invent a starter. Do not put $350 on the From field. Situational. Real Dentrix booking overlay if the phones stay. Wrong buy for a truck. If the office needed a dental phone, Weave. If it needed Google stars, NiceJob. --- ### NiceJob Verdict: Recommended From: $75/mo Tagline: Set-and-forget review asks at $75 a month. The drip works. The parent company is the risk. Website: https://get.nicejob.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/nicejob/ ## What it actually does NiceJob watches a finished job in [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), AccuLynx, or similar, then texts and emails the customer a review ask. If they ignore it, it follows up. If they leave a review, it stops. Happy customers can get a referral ask. Pro adds rebooking nudges and AI-drafted review replies. Widgets put those reviews on your site. That is the whole product. It is not an inbox. It is not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). It is not an [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/). It does not take payments. NiceJob's own comparison page says as much versus [Podium](/tools/podium/). Parent company Paystone is a payments firm. The Stripe and Square hooks here are triggers (invoice paid, then ask for a review), not NiceJob running your cards. The Google ask is a link in SMS plus a couple of emails. Optional Feedback Routing scores the customer 1-10 first: high scores go toward Google, low scores get steered to a private email. NiceJob says everyone still sees a public-review option so it is not classic gating. Treat that as a gray area you should watch in the trial, not as a free pass. Some owners report reviews landing on NiceJob's own microsite instead of Google. If map-pack is the only reason you are buying this, confirm Google Business Profile counts actually move before you keep paying. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you are a one-location plumber, HVAC shop, roofer, or cleaner on Jobber or Housecall Pro, you close enough jobs to feed the drip, and you just want more Google reviews without living in a $400-a-month comms platform. That is who shows up in Capterra: home services and construction owners, not dentists. Clio exists for law firms. Mindbody exists for salons. There is no Dentrix. If HIPAA-native dental is the job, this is the wrong aisle. Do not buy it if your FSM already sends a review SMS on job complete. You would be paying $75 to duplicate a text. Do not buy it if the pain is voicemail, webchat, or text-to-pay. Do not buy the Sites website. Help docs say HTML export only after 36 months and they pull the site on cancel. Software-only Reviews and Pro have no setup fee. Sites is $99 plus $199 setup. The reason not to buy, even if the drip works, is the parent. Paystone Inc. entered CCAA creditor protection in Canada on June 5, 2026, after debt-funded acquisitions (NiceJob included) and a 2025 billing-error mess. A court sale process had a target close around August 24 and an outside date of August 31. As of August 25 there is no public "new owner, all clear." The marketing site is live and the CEO said operations continued. That is not the same as a stable vendor. If you sign up, export your customer list and do not put your public website on their Sites product. ## The verdict When it works, shops report the boring outcome you actually want: 5-10 new reviews a week with no extra button, or doubling years of Google reviews in a few months. Capterra sits at 4.9 from 203 reviews (home services heavy; GetApp and Software Advice are the same pool). G2 is reported around 4.8. Trustpilot is the ugly 3.4 from a couple dozen reviews, mostly cold-call sales and login fights, not a large billing graveyard. Reddit: none retrieved. Pricing is public, which is rare in this category. Reviews is $75 a month. Pro is $125. Month-to-month, 14-day trial, no card up front. Confirm $75: yes, on get.nicejob.com/pricing. A customer-count selector on the same page steps a Grow package to $95, $145, and $290. SMS overage is unpublished. Cancel by in-app or email with subject "Cancellation of Membership." It is not valid until they send confirmation. No refund language in the terms. Recommended for a single-truck shop that only needed the review engine, with the Paystone situation written on the order sheet. Not a Podium replacement, and not a bet-the-company website host. --- ### Numa Verdict: Skip for most From: Custom Tagline: A real AI receptionist for car dealers. If you run a shop, Capterra is showing you a product they stopped selling. Website: https://www.numa.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/numa/ ## What it actually does Numa answers dealership phones, texts missed callers, and books service into a live DMS. Voice AI (Operator) sits on the main line. Missed Call Recovery texts hang-ups. Smart Inbox holds calls, SMS, voicemail transcripts, email, and chat. It can book into CDK, Reynolds, Tekion, Xtime. LiveCSI watches OEM customer-satisfaction scores, not Google reviews. Human backup is the store's BDC, not Numa employees. That is a real product for a service lane. It is not a plumber tool. It is not a dentist tool. NumberAI started as generic [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/) for local shops. In 2024 the CEO told WardsAuto they went all in on dealers after dealers became the biggest users by accident. The 2026 homepage is "The AI Operating System for Car Dealerships." FAQ: built for franchise dealerships and multi-rooftop groups. They claim 1,300-plus rooftops. April 2026 they bought Ficus to push into dealer sales. That is deeper into auto, not into HVAC. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you run a franchise rooftop with a DMS and a service lane. Then get a demo, demand a live book on your scheduler, and call a same-DMS dealer. Do not treat the Capterra 5.0 as proof. Twelve reviews, almost all from 2020: Ace Hardware, a salon, restaurants, a campground, a chiropractor. One 2025 entertainment-company review. G2 is two reviews from 2020. Trustpilot: no numa.com page. BBB: no NumberAI profile. Reddit: nothing retrieved. Do not buy it if you are a plumber, HVAC shop, dentist, salon, or law firm. [Smith.ai](/tools/smith-ai/), [Goodcall](/tools/goodcall/), or [Podium](/tools/podium/) are the comparison set. HVAC directory pages that name ServiceTitan and [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) are the wrong company. There is no ServiceTitan, [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Jobber, Calendly, Clio, or Dentrix connector on numa.com. Numa will not sell you the 2020 answering service Capterra is still describing. The reason not to buy is simpler than the contract. They do not sell this to you. ## The verdict Pricing is custom. Demo form, no rate card. Ignore $49, $50, and $149. Those are stale SMB and directory leftovers. Capterra still prints $149 per user per month and "no hidden fees or contracts." Competitor blogs guess $200 to $400 a rooftop or $500 to $1,500 a month. Unverified. Public terms (May 2026) default to monthly unless the order form locks a longer term, plus unpublished usage and non-recurring fees, 1.5 percent late interest, and you lose Numa-issued numbers unless you port before cancel. GM iMR dealers can get co-op money. That is not a plumber discount. Skip. If Capterra sent you here, you are looking at a product that left your category two years ago. --- ### OpenPhone Verdict: Situational From: $19/user/mo Tagline: Cheap shared line on the phones you already carry. Rebranded Quo. If the Google number cannot go down, keep walking. Website: https://www.openphone.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/openphone/ ## What it actually does OpenPhone is OpenPhone Technologies, Inc. Still live. On September 23, 2025 they rebranded to Quo and raised $105 million. Not an acquisition. openphone.com redirects to quo.com. The app, the numbers, and the legal name did not change. Call it OpenPhone. The site calls it Quo (formerly OpenPhone). It is a per-user cloud phone: shared numbers, shared SMS inbox, recording, on the iPhone already in the van. Auto-replies is a named missed-call SMS on every paid plan (one-way template, three-hour cooldown). That is not [Podium](/tools/podium/). Sona is a named [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/). It answers, qualifies, texts a booking link, transfers. Included pack is 1,000 credits, about 10 calls a month. Paid credit tiers are $25, $49, $99, and $199. It is not voicemail transcription. It is not [Ruby](/tools/ruby/). No reviews SKU. No listings SKU. No [website chatbot](/categories/website-chatbots/). No 911. Native [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) and Clio start at Business. [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, and Mindbody are none. US and Canada calling and SMS are unlimited star, under Fair Use. Fair Use bans autodialers and cold calling. 10DLC is $19.50 plus $1.50 to $3 a month. ## Who should buy it Buy Starter if two people share one line and SMS is enough. Monthly cash is $19 a user. Annual is $15 ($180 billed). Business is $33 monthly, $23 annual, and that is the floor for IVR, auto-recording, analytics, Jobber, and Clio. Scale is $47 / $35. Extra numbers $5. Trial is 7 days. Trial has no SMS. Inviting two techs during trial bills seats. Buy it if you run Jobber and you can live with a 48-hour hold on the Google number. Buy it for a small Clio firm that wants one shared inbox. Skip it if you are a dentist. That aisle is [Weave](/tools/weave/). Skip it if you are a salon on Mindbody. That aisle is Podium. Skip it as [Dialpad](/tools/dialpad/). This is not UCaaS. The reason not to buy is the number on the truck. BBB, live August 25, 2026: A, accredited November 18, 2025, customer reviews 1.44 from 9, 37 complaints in three years, 36 in the last 12 months. 2026 file is holds, 10DLC, port-out, billing. Cameron F, HVAC: suspended when STOP rate on warranty texts went from 2.5 percent to 3.5. A salon line died after they canceled mid-port. A shop with the number on the truck locked for unusual activity until BBB. ToS, June 11, 2025: no refunds. Order Forms auto-renew, 30-day notice. Number retention: FAQ 60 days, ToS 45, support 30. Unresolved. Sona 7-day trial auto-converts. ## The verdict G2 about 4.7 from 3,294 to 3,399 (indexed; live HTML DataDome 403). Capterra and Software Advice 4.2 from 64 (same Gartner pool, live HTML). 17 percent negative. Trustpilot live HTML CloudFront 403. Wayback March 2025: 4.2 from 519. Comms Advisor August 12, 2026: 3.9 from 965, 20 percent one-star. TrustRadius 8.2 from 27. Reddit: none retrieved. G2 is startups and agencies. Trades show up on BBB when the line dies. Official list August 25, 2026: Starter $19 a user a month, $15 on annual. Directories still print Standard/Premium $13 and $20, or $10 a month from 2019. Stale. Do not use them. Sona $49 for 50 calls was the April 2025 launch blog, not the live credit packs. Situational. If Jobber is already the shop OS and you want a $19 line instead of Weave, this is the buy. If that number is on the truck, the van wrap, and Google, do not move it until you have a spare. If you needed a human at 2 a.m., Ruby. --- ### Podium Verdict: Situational From: Custom Tagline: Missed-call text-back and review texts that work, sold on a 12-month hook you cannot casually leave. Website: https://www.podium.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/podium/ ## What it actually does Podium started as review-request software. In 2026 they sell it as an "AI Employee" (internally Jerry; Larry for HVAC and plumbing, Avery for medspas). What you get on day one is more useful and more boring: one shared inbox for SMS, website chat, Google/Facebook/Instagram messages, and reviews. After a job, it texts the customer a Google review ask. If nobody picks up, it texts the caller so the job does not walk to voicemail. You can send a payment link in the same thread. That [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/) is what HVAC shops praise on G2. It is not an [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/). Generic Podium Phones still leads with "text the missed call" and a press-a-key switch to SMS. Live Voice AI that picks up and talks exists, mainly on the Home Services package. Unless your order form says Voice AI, you bought a texting system. The AI is split the same way. Base plans get suggested replies. The full AI Employee that qualifies and books around the clock is Signature or an add-on with no public price. G2's AI notes are mixed. After-hours coverage gets love. One shop watched it answer "thank you" with "G'night" or "Giddy up." Podium's own terms tell you to check the output. It does not manage listings, it does not do call-tracking, and it is not a job board. It sits next to ServiceTitan, [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), or Dentrix. For HVAC they now sell their own dispatch stack. That is a bigger purchase, not a checkbox. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you already lose jobs to voicemail and slow texts, you will live in the inbox, and review volume plus after-hours coverage will pay for a sales-quoted platform. The 2026 pitch is strongest for HVAC, plumbing, and electrical (Larry), auto dealers, and medspas. Multi-location shops that want one inbox and review leaderboards are the old classic fit. Do not buy it if you are a one-truck plumber who wants more Google reviews. A reviews-only tool does that without a year-long lock. Do not buy it if your pain is "someone has to answer the phone like a person" unless Voice AI is in writing. Dentists who need PMS-tied phones should look at [Weave](/tools/weave/) first. Small law firms and hair salons are not who Podium is building for right now, even if sales will still take the meeting. The reason not to buy is the contract, not the inbox. Terms of Service v6.3 (effective June 17, 2025) default to 12 months, auto-renew, and one month of written notice to support@podium.com. Leave mid-term and you still owe the rest. Fees are non-refundable. Price can rise at renewal with 45 days' notice. BBB complaints in 2026 are full of shops still getting invoices after they thought they were out. One quoted about $4,000 to cancel. If they talk you into porting the shop's main number onto Podium Phones, a bad cutover is not an inconvenience. It is the lead engine going dark. I would not port a plumber's number until missed-call text-back has run on a new number for 30 days. ## The verdict The review texts and missed-call text-back are the real thing. G2 sat at 4.5 from 2,110 reviews on an August 2026 snapshot. Capterra is 4.3 from 526, with value the weakest score at 3.9. The software is not the problem. The way they sell it is. Pricing is custom. The live site shows no dollars. Podium's unpublished page data still holds Core and Pro bases of 399 and 599, and those numbers get copied around the web, but you will talk to sales. Official extras to budget: 10DLC at $5 per US location per month, extra numbers at $5, phone seats at $30 per user ($25 at 5+), a $500 phones optimization fee per location, and AI/voice/SMS overages at unpublished rates. AI Employee is a separate quote. Home services is priced per tech. Use it if you will use the whole stack and you calendar the non-renewal date on day one. Skip it if you only needed review asks. That is a situational buy, not a default. --- ### Reputation.com Verdict: Situational From: $80/location/mo Tagline: Reviews and listings at $80 a location a month. You still talk to sales. A one-truck shop is on the wrong contract. Website: https://www.reputation.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/reputation/ ## What it actually does Reputation.com is a reviews-and-listings suite for brands that run many sites. After a visit closes, it asks for the review, watches the score, and keeps name, hours, and photos straight on the directories. They call the number Rep Score. That is the product. It is not a phone system. It is not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). It is not a shop OS. I opened reputation.com/pricing on August 30, 2026. Three published cards, all Talk to Sales. Rep Core is $80 a location a month: review collection, requesting, AI replies, plus business listings and SEO. Rep Core plus Pulse is $115 (they mark it most popular): Rep Score, journey insights, an AI reputation manager, Pulse analytics, and one basic survey template. Rep Core plus Surveys is $150: six custom templates, email survey requesting, targeted outreach, deeper experience insights. Enterprise is custom at 125-plus locations, with a customer success manager. Add-ons sit under the cards with no public dollars: Competitive Insights, Actions and Ticketing, Social Suite, Premium Sources, Premium Integrations, Managed Services, Expert and Professional Services. The service agreement (effective May 1, 2025) is the paper. The order form sets the term. It auto-renews for the same length unless either side gives written notice at least 30 days before the term ends, to legalnotices@reputation.com. Fees follow the order form, due in 30 days unless the form says otherwise. Carrier SMS fees can be passed through. Late interest is 3% a month or the legal max. Thirty days overdue can accelerate unpaid fees. They can suspend after 10 days notice. California law, Santa Clara County. A HIPAA BAA exists on the legal page. Independent star counts from G2 were not retrieved on this date. Do not treat a blog roundup as a count I opened. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you already run several locations and you need one dashboard for Google reviews and directory accuracy, with a person who will own the sales call and the 30-day calendar. Healthcare groups, dealer groups, property, self storage, restaurants, and multi-unit retail are the aisle they actually sell. On the real-estate page they name Yardi, Entrata, and RealPage. Automotive only says common automotive systems. The healthcare page names no PMS. That is not a one-van plumber. Do not buy it if you only wanted post-job Google reviews. [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/) is $75 a month, month-to-month, 14-day trial, no sales call. [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/) already includes the review ask from $79. [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) puts reviews in Marketing Suite at $99, not in Core at $49. [Birdeye](/tools/birdeye/) is the other multi-location suite. Their list is Custom, with 90-day written non-renewal and an 8% Innovation Fee at auto-renew unless you strike it. Reputation prints dollars and still makes you talk to sales. The 30-day notice is the kinder cancel window of the two. The reason not to buy, even when the aisle is right, is the call plus the meter. $80 a location looks cheap until you multiply it, and until you miss the notice window and own another term. Chatmeter is Custom for 50-plus location marketers. Reputation publishes $80 and still sits in that family. A one-location shop on this contract is paying for a dashboard built for Greystar, not for a truck. ## The verdict Public list, not self-serve. Rep Core $80 a location a month, Pulse $115, Surveys $150, read on the vendor pricing page August 30, 2026. You still schedule a meeting. Enterprise is custom at 125-plus. Do not quote a blog's $4,000 a year as the bill. Situational: right for a multi-location group that will staff it and put the notice date on the calendar. The term lives on the order form. The public MSA does not print 12 months. Skip for a one-location shop. That buyer wanted NiceJob. --- ### ReviewTrackers Verdict: Skip for most From: Custom Tagline: Chain review inbox. You book a demo. NiceJob is the $75 Google drip. Website: https://www.reviewtrackers.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/reviewtrackers/ ## What it actually does ReviewTrackers is still ReviewTrackers on reviewtrackers.com. Founded 2012 in Chicago. InMoment bought it June 16, 2022. Press Ganey Forsta bought InMoment May 14, 2025. Qualtrics closed a $6.75B purchase of Press Ganey Forsta on May 18, 2026. The live brand did not get renamed. Legal entity is Review Trackers, Inc., a Delaware corporation at 1 North State Street, Chicago. Do not write this as Qualtrics or InMoment. It is a multi-location reputation platform. It pulls reviews from 100-plus sites, asks for more with the Ask Tool (email, SMS, QR, kiosk), drafts AI replies on Starter and Essential, and runs sentiment and competitor analytics on Essential. Amplify is review widgets on a website, not a chatbot. SMS is review asks and internal alerts, not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). AI writes review replies. It does not answer the phone. Named plans: Data Only, Starter, Essential. Local listings management and local search rank are named add-ons with no public price. That is why there is no local-seo tag. No [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, Mindbody, or Clio. Jobber and Housecall Pro exist only as Zapier. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you run tens to hundreds of locations and HQ needs one review inbox plus NLP. Rural King, Ashley Furniture, American Family Insurance, DecisionOne Dental at 33 locations. Healthcare systems and auto groups show up on Capterra. A 33-location DSO is in-ICP. A one-chair dentist is not. Do not buy it if you are a plumber, HVAC shop, salon, one-office dentist, or solo law firm. [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/) at $75 is the Google drip after the job. [GatherUp](/tools/gatherup/) at $124 is the agency-priced SMB card with a public listings SKU. [Chatmeter](/tools/chatmeter/) is the true peer: also Custom, also chain-scale, listings-first instead of review-analytics-first. [Podium](/tools/podium/) and [Broadly](/tools/broadly/) answer the phone. This does not. The reason not to buy is you are not the customer, and the paper is annual. Live pricing August 25, 2026: Custom. Every plan CTA is Request a Demo. The public slider on /plans/ shows plans start at $89, $40, $29, $25, and $15 per location per month paid annually by location band (1-9, 10-39, 40-99, 100-199, 200-499). 500-plus is custom. That ladder is not a Starter SKU. Named packages have no dollars. You cannot checkout. MSA: fees on the Order Form, auto-renew for the same term, 30-day written non-renew, remainder of the term still due, no refunds for dropped locations, location minimum only goes up, uncapped renewal increases. Site ToS promises pro-rata refunds. MSA says none. MSA wins against the customer. Their own users (Nancy F. 2023, Doug K. 2022) struggled with review-request campaigns. Yelp can lag 24 hours to a few days (Michael R., Capterra, 2023). Monitoring is the product. Generation is the weak part. ## The verdict Capterra 4.7 from 172 (live HTML, last updated August 20, 2026). Newest body November 26, 2024. Many incentivized. G2 live HTML blocked (DataDome 403); indexed 4.6 from 161, count frozen since about January 2024. Trustpilot live HTML blocked; indexed 3.7 from 1 Portuguese joke. TrustRadius live 8.0 from 32, bodies mostly 2015 to 2018. BBB B-minus, not accredited, one unanswered July 30, 2025 billing complaint that reads like a fake-job mix-up. Reddit: none retrieved. Zero plumber, salon, HVAC, or law-firm reviews. Official price August 25, 2026: Custom. Do not use directory $49, $69, $99, $199, or $299. Skip. Real product for a 50-location auto group. Wrong buy for one truck. If you needed Google reviews at $75, NiceJob. --- ### RingCentral AI Receptionist Verdict: Situational From: $49/mo Tagline: AI answering from $49 with 100 minutes in the box. The phone company behind it is real. The meter is short. Website: https://www.ringcentral.com/pricing/ai-receptionist.html Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/ringcentral/ ## What it actually does RingCentral AI Receptionist (AIR) is a voice bot that answers the shop line, handles FAQs, captures a lead, offers a booking path, texts a follow-up, and routes the hard calls to a person with context. You can run it as a standalone product on whatever phone you already have, or as an add-on on RingEX, RingCentral's business phone. Setup pulls from your website or Google Business Profile. It speaks several languages and can switch mid-call. That is the product on the September 4, 2026 pricing page. Official cash, checked the same day on ringcentral.com/pricing/ai-receptionist.html: standalone starts at $49 a month with 100 minutes included. Already on RingEX, AIR is $39 a month with the same 100 minutes, and RingEX Core is $30 per user per month on monthly billing ($20 when you prepay a year). Go past the included minutes and you pay $0.50 a minute, rounded up in 30-second increments. Extra 100-minute bundles are for sale. Both AIR paths include a 14-day free trial. It books against your calendar. CRM hooks on the page are Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zoho. It is not a live answering service. There is no [Smith.ai](/tools/smith-ai/) or [Ruby](/tools/ruby/) person behind the bot. It is not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/) as its own priced SKU. It is not a review engine and it is not a [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) brain. Do not confuse AIR with the full RingEX seat or with RingCX, the contact-center product. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you already pay for RingEX and want the after-hours line picked up without hiring a night person. The $39 add-on is the clean fit there. Buy the $49 standalone if your volume is light, most calls are "are you open / can you come Tuesday," and 100 minutes is close to a real month. A quiet dental or legal intake line that mostly needs routing and a calendar hold is closer to the design than a storm-week HVAC board. Do not buy it because the logo feels safe and you skipped the meter. One hundred minutes is roughly two short calls a day. A busy plumber who eats 250 minutes on [Rosie](/tools/rosie/) Professional at the same $49 door will blow through AIR and land on fifty-cent minutes. Do not buy it if a botched emergency needs a human. That is still Smith.ai from $150 or Ruby from $250. Do not treat the RingEX bundle headline as "$39 for everything." The page is $39 for AIR plus $30 for the Core seat on monthly cash. The reason not to buy, even when the brand is bigger than [Goodcall](/tools/goodcall/) or Frontdesk, is the short allotment plus the parent company's billing reputation. G2 shows a handful of AI Receptionist reviews at 5.0 from six entries in a September 2026 check, and the wider RingEX product sits around 4.2. Trustpilot for RingCentral overall sits near 1.9 across roughly 1,800 reviews, with the loud complaints about invoices, renewals, and cancel friction rather than the bot's voice. A shop that hates surprise phone bills should model minutes before the trial ends. ## The verdict Situational, 6.5 out of 10. Real public pricing, real phone company, calendar and CRM hooks on the page, and a trial you can actually use. The $49 card looks like [Rosie](/tools/rosie/) until you notice Rosie gives 250 minutes on Professional and AIR gives 100. Existing RingEX shops can try the $39 add-on with eyes on the counter. Everyone else should price the overage against a human service before they forward the main line. --- ### Rosie Verdict: Situational From: $49/mo Tagline: AI answering from $49 a month. The $49 plan does not book the calendar, and going over minutes upgrades you. Website: https://heyrosie.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/rosie/ ## What it actually does Rosie is an AI that answers the shop phone. Rally Commerce, Inc. does business as Rosie at heyrosie.com. You forward the line or take a Rosie number, she greets the caller, works from the FAQs you typed in, texts you a summary, and keeps a recording. English and Spanish are on every plan. Website chat is free. That is the product on Professional. A shop owner asked us about the $49 card because it looked like a receptionist. On the live pricing page (August 27, 2026) Professional is $49 a month for 250 minutes, and the booking it can do is a link by text. It does not sit on Google Calendar. It does not warm-transfer. Scale at $149 a month for 1,000 minutes is the first plan that books on Google Calendar or Calendly, texts during the call, and will transfer live. Growth is $299 a month for 2,000 minutes, with waterfall transfers, custom training docs, and white-glove onboarding. Custom is a quote. Website Texting is a named add-on at $50 a month for 25 conversations, then $1 each. It is not a human answering service. There is no [Smith.ai](/tools/smith-ai/) or [Ruby](/tools/ruby/) person behind the bot. It is not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/) as a priced SKU. It is not a review engine. Do not confuse it with the other Rosie products that show up on G2. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you run a one-truck home-service shop, after-hours is mostly "are you open, can you come tomorrow," and 250 minutes is close to a real month. The $49 plan will pick up, take the message, and text you so you can call back from the roof. Buy Scale if you actually needed her to put the job on the calendar while you still have a pipe in your hand. Do not buy Professional thinking you bought a booker. The FAQ on their own site says the cheap plan sends a link. Do not buy it if a 2 a.m. emergency needs a person. That is still Smith.ai at $150 or Ruby at $250. Do not buy it as a [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) or [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/) brain. Do not treat the annual toggle as a price table. The page copies one plan's yearly math onto the other cards. Monthly cash is the From. The reason not to buy, even when $49 looks cheap next to [Frontdesk](/tools/my-ai-front-desk/)'s $99, is the meter plus the upgrade. Terms of Use (February 5, 2026, §3c): minutes bill in 60-second increments, rounded up. If you blow the allowance, Rosie automatically moves you to a higher plan and keeps you there until you downgrade. The upgrade hits the current period and at least the next two billing periods. That is not a $0.25 overage SKU you can shrug off. Frontdesk overage is ugly and visible. This one changes the subscription. Trial is 7 days. Terms say it converts unless you cancel, and a payment method is required. Ignore the JSON-LD line that still says no credit card. Legal: 30-day auto-renew, payments non-refundable, cancel in the dashboard at the end of the current cycle, ASP arbitration in Portland, Oregon. Numbers not ported back within three months of cancel can be released. Unlimited-minute plans are leftover for people on pre-February 2026 terms. They are not the 2026 public list. ## The verdict Public price, self-serve, home-services copy that is actually aimed at a plumber. G2, Capterra, and Trustpilot: no verified reviews found on August 27, 2026. Homepage "2,000-plus local businesses" is marketing. Situational. Cheap enough to trial on overflow if you understand Professional is a pickup-and-text, and you will watch the minute counter. If you needed her to book, start at $149. If you needed a person, pay for a person. --- ### Ruby Verdict: Situational From: $250/mo Tagline: Live US receptionists with a public price list. The minutes round up, and overage is not on the marketing page. Website: https://www.ruby.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/ruby/ ## What it actually does Ruby answers the phone with a person. The 2026 homepage says people-powered, AI-enhanced. Call Nav, transcripts, sentiment, and a robocall filter sit behind the receptionist. Their own FAQ: they do not use AI to answer calls. That is the opposite of [Goodcall](/tools/goodcall/), and of [Smith.ai](/tools/smith-ai/)'s $150 AI plan. Live buckets on ruby.com/plans-and-pricing, fetched August 25, 2026: $250 for 50 minutes, $395 for 100, $720 for 200, $1,725 for 500. Chat is a separate human widget from $143. It is not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). The owner gets a ping. Strategy is pick up so the call is not missed. It is not reviews or listings. Artibot is a free sibling chatbot they contrast with Ruby; do not buy this as a website bot. Clio is native. FieldPulse and JobNimbus have pages. [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, and Mindbody do not. Law is the home vertical. HVAC and plumbing have industry pages. Salons are a homepage noun. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you are a solo attorney or a low-volume office that refuses to let a model greet a caller, and you will size the minutes honestly. HIPAA dental overflow can work as answering, not as a Dentrix front desk. A one-truck high-ticket shop that lives under 100 minutes can make the math work. Pay ACH and skip the 3% card fee. Do not buy it if you are a dispatch-heavy plumber or HVAC shop. Lawyerist 2026: not for high volume. Independent plumber and HVAC review bodies were empty. After-hours emergencies burn the same minutes as Tuesday morning. After 90 days, downgrades wait three billing cycles. Unused minutes do not roll. That is a seasonal HVAC trap. The reason not to buy is the meter, which already went to court. McKenzie Law Firm v. Ruby, District of Oregon, settled 2021: about 18,000 clients, $8 million in vouchers, hold time and rounding. The Help Center now discloses it. The March 2026 terms still bill 60-second increments, hold, and wrap after hangup. The marketing page does not print overage. The help center does: $5.40 a minute on the 50-minute plan. Indexed complaints include an expected $660 that became $5,100, a 147-minute month with a $660 invoice including dead air, and a cancel that still billed 26 days and $1,100 (Trustpilot, October 2025). Cancel is email to billing@ruby.com or a phone call before the next invoice. You pay through period end. No pro-rata. ## The verdict Trustpilot is about 4.6 from roughly 830 (indexed 2026; live page blocked). G2 is about 3.7 to 3.8 from 11 or 12. Capterra 4.2 from 10. Software Advice 3.9 from 11, newest indexed review July 2026 and hostile. GetApp likelihood to recommend 0.70 out of 10. Reddit: none retrieved. BBB is not accredited; indexed reason is failure to respond to three complaints. Official list August 25, 2026 starts at $250 a month for 50 minutes. First month is not the headline if you overflow. Directories still print $235 and $245. Stale. Situational. If you need a human safety net and a published AI price, Smith.ai. If you wanted a $79 night bot, Goodcall. Pay Ruby only if a person has to answer and you can live with per-minute math in writing, including the overage the pricing page hides. --- ### Sendblue Verdict: Solid pick From: $100/mo Tagline: iMessage from $100 a line because replies and show-ups move. G2 5.0 and Leader Spring 2026 sit on the homepage. You can text first. Blasts are banned. Website: https://www.sendblue.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/sendblue/ ## What it actually does Sendblue is Round One, Inc. The product is an iMessage API on a real phone number. The job is more replies and more booked work, not a cheaper green-bubble pipe. Their homepage (August 31, 2026) prints the G2 banners in the hero: 5.0 on G2, Leader Spring 2026, 35,214+ installs, $2.1B generated. Y Combinator, SOC 2 Type II, and HIPAA plans sit next to that. We did not open the G2 listing itself. Those are the banners they bought the fold for. The thread on an iPhone is a blue bubble: read receipts, typing indicators, photos, voice memos, FaceTime Audio from the same line. If the person is not on iMessage, the same number falls back to RCS, then SMS, at no extra charge. That fallback is how the message still lands. It is not the reason to buy. It is not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/) the way [Podium](/tools/podium/) is. A missed call does not automatically fire a text unless you wire that. It is not an [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/). It is not [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) or [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/). Those two are not named on the public integrations list. HubSpot has its own page. Their docs and integration pages also name Salesforce, Close, GoHighLevel, Monday.com, Follow Up Boss, and Zapier. Public cards on sendblue.com/pricing (August 31, 2026): Free Sandbox at $0 on a shared number, 10 verified contacts, inbound-first. AI Agent at $100 a month per dedicated line, inbound-first, 1,000 inbound contacts a day, webhooks, media, typing, reactions. Enterprise is Custom, volume-based, full outbound, multiple lines, SOC 2 and HIPAA. They print $0 per-message fees, $0 A2P registration, $0 carrier surcharges, $0 SMS fallback fees. Annual discounts exist. You ask sales. You can text first. Docs (docs.sendblue.com/limits): on AI Agent, once someone has written you, replies inside 24 hours are unlimited. After that window you can message them first. That follow-up is capped at 200 contacts a day per line. Full outbound, including people who never wrote you, is the Enterprise / Blue Ocean plan behind a demo. New contacts there are 50 a day per line and 15 an hour. Burst is 10 messages a second. A follow-up cap of 150 consecutive outbound messages with no reply cannot be turned off. They do not support message blasts. The homepage FAQ says so. The terms (March 19, 2025) forbid unsolicited communications, bulk SMS marketing, and spam. You need opt-in before you initiate. Group chats: AI Agent can answer a group it was added to. It cannot create a new one. That is Blue Ocean. ## Who should buy it Buy it if the leak is people not writing back and not showing up, and $100 a line is cheap next to a missed job. Real estate on Follow Up Boss is the honest native fit. A plumber can use it if they will wire Zapier and they will not treat it as Jobber's $29 receptionist. HIPAA is on Enterprise with a BAA. The terms still say do not send PHI without that BAA. Do not buy it if you wanted a missed-call text-back box that fires when the shop line dumps to voicemail. That is still Podium (Custom) or [OpenPhone](/tools/openphone/) at $19 a user. Do not buy AI Agent to cold-text a list. That is Enterprise, and they still will not let you blast. The reason not to buy, even when the G2 banners look clean, is the meter behind the $100 card plus the contract language. Fees on the order form are non-cancellable and non-refundable. Credit cards take a 3% fee. Port in takes 3 to 5 extra days. Port out is $60 a line, and only while the subscription is still active. Once it lapses, the number goes back to the carrier. ## The verdict Solid. The homepage is selling conversion: more replies, more sales, G2 5.0 and Leader Spring 2026 in the first screen. $100 a line if they write you and you write back, including follow-ups. Custom when you need to text first into a cold, opted-in list. Skip it as a blast tool. Skip it as Jobber. Login still lives at dashboard.tryraz.com. Support is support@sendblue.com. --- ### ServiceTitan Verdict: Situational From: Custom Tagline: Shop OS sold per technician with no public dollar. Starter, Essentials, and The Works all say Request Pricing. Term lives on the Order Form. Website: https://www.servicetitan.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/servicetitan/ ## What it actually does ServiceTitan is the heavy shop operating system at servicetitan.com. ServiceTitan, Inc. sells it as AI software for commercial and residential trades. You dispatch the trucks, book the call, send the invoice, run payroll, and watch closing rates by tech. That is the product. It is not a receptionist you can buy tonight. It is not a reviews SKU with a public price. The live pricing page on September 1, 2026 prints no dollars. The headline is per-technician pricing. Three packages: Starter, Essentials, The Works. Each button is Request Pricing. The demo form asks for industry, Number of Techs, whether you have at least one full-time office employee, residential or commercial, and service-and-replacement or construction. There is no self-serve checkout. What they list on every card we could read: dispatching, scheduling, call booking, invoicing, pricebook, mobile estimates, payroll (configurable on The Works), advanced reporting, commission tracking, customizable memberships. Marketing copy around the packages talks about the dispatch board, call recording, campaign stats tied to revenue, checklists, and GPS on the way to the house. Pro products (Field Pro, Pay and Get Paid) sit behind Get Demo the same way. Do not paste a blog rate card. Third-party pages still invent per-tech monthly numbers. Those dollars were not on the vendor page we opened. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you already run a bigger home-service company, you have office people, and you wanted one system for dispatch, pricebook, payroll, and the membership book. HVAC, plumbing, and electrical are the core aisles they sell. Garage door, pest control, landscape, painting, locksmith, and remodeling pages exist on their industries list. Do not buy it if you are a two-truck shop that needed quotes and invoices this week. [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) Core is $49 a month cash. [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/) Basic is $79. Those are public tables. ServiceTitan is Custom. Do not buy it as an [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/). The demo is a sales call, not a 14-day self-serve trial with a published cash price. The reason not to buy, even when the OS is the right aisle, is the paper. Terms of Use last updated July 17, 2026 (ServiceTitan, Inc.). The term is on the Order Form. If the Terms of Use are the only agreement, subscriptions are month-to-month with thirty days written notice of nonrenewal. That is not a public 12-month default you can quote before you see the form. Fees are non-refundable. End the Agreement early and you owe a termination fee equal to the remaining payments. Extra seats and add-on subscriptions: cancel before they renew, email billing@servicetitan.com. Paid Authorized Users cannot be unassigned mid-period without written approval. After termination they will try to export Customer Data on request (fees may apply) and they are not obligated to keep it more than 60 days. ## The verdict No public list. No self-serve cash. Demo form, then an Order Form. We did not sit a two-truck shop through implementation, and we are not reprinting G2 banners we did not open. Situational. The shop OS for larger trades companies that will take the sales call and live with the Order Form. If you needed a public monthly number this afternoon, that is still Jobber Core at $49 or Housecall Pro from $79. If you only needed the review ask, that is a different aisle. --- ### SignpostAI Verdict: Skip for most From: $199/mo Tagline: A trades receptionist with public prices. The FAQ says month-to-month. The terms do not. Website: https://www.signpost.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/signpost/ ## What it actually does SignpostAI answers the phone for trades. AI Voice picks up in a couple of rings, filters spam, can qualify and book. Live Receptionist is a human 24/7. Texts go into a Messaging Hub. Instant Responders hit Angi, Thumbtack, Facebook, and SMS. They can invoice by text and sync QuickBooks Online. [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) booking is a real integration. [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/) is named on a page with no dedicated connector. ServiceTitan is blog-only. That is the 2026 product. It is not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). Strategy is answer the call so it is not missed. It is not a review tool. Hibu bought the marketing and reviews platform in September 2023. Old Capterra pages still talk Mia and $99 a user. Ignore them. It is not a [website chatbot](/categories/website-chatbots/) or a listings product. Dentists, salons, and law firms are not the 2026 ICP. There is no Dentrix, Mindbody, or Clio page. ## Who should buy it Buy it only if you are HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, or pest, you have little or no office staff, and you want a receptionist plus a text inbox, not Google reviews. Even then, I would not. The reason not to buy is the paper plus the live desk. Pricing FAQ says month-to-month, cancel anytime, no penalty. Terms say the Service Order wins. Default cancel is written notice at least 30 days before the next bill, then you also have to phone (844) 202-2015 Monday through Friday 9 to 6 Central. Miss the window and you pay the next term. No pro-rata if you cancel. They process cancel only at zero balance. BBB 2024: a shop turned the service off, was told they could not cancel until the last bill was paid, and kept getting billed. ComplaintsBoard 2024: sales said cancel if unhappy, then a contract and a $1,396 buyout. BBB January 2026: billed for spam the company said would not count, and a live receptionist left a prospect on hold 3.5 minutes then said the firm does not offer the one service it offers. BBB April 2025: a roofing company, receptionist scheduled lawn mowing. ## The verdict G2 is about 3.7 from 55 (indexed 2026, live page blocked). Capterra 4.1 from 57, thin after 2023. Trustpilot about 3.9 from 106. Reddit: none retrieved. BBB is A-plus, not accredited, five customer reviews all one star, zero company replies. One HVAC five-star on Trustpilot in September 2025 is not enough to cover that. Official list August 25, 2026: Standard $199 a month, Advanced $399, Complete $749. Every paid plan has a $199 setup. First month is not the headline. AI overage $0.40 a minute. Live overage $1.90 to $2.10, and each live call adds 60 seconds of wrap. Directories still print $99 per user. Stale. Demo-gated despite public prices. Skip. If you need a trades receptionist with a human safety net, [Smith.ai](/tools/smith-ai/) publishes per-call prices and a 30-day money-back on the first plan payment. If you only needed Google reviews, [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/). Do not sign a SignpostAI Service Order that does not match the FAQ in writing. --- ### Smith.ai Verdict: Solid pick From: $150/mo Tagline: Phone answering with a North America human safety net, priced per call, built for law firms first. Website: https://smith.ai Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/smith-ai/ ## What it actually does Smith.ai answers your business phone. That is the whole product. AI, a North America-based live receptionist, or both. They screen the caller, run intake, try to book the appointment, and log it into your CRM. Website chat is a separate product with the same live-agent idea. It is not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). They pick up so the call is not missed. You can get a post-call SMS, a ping when a transfer fails, or a live callback. That is not [Podium](/tools/podium/) texting the person who just hit voicemail. Three modes: 100% AI, hybrid, 100% human. About a quarter of AI-first calls still involve a person (caller asked, you set a rule, or the bot got stuck). Callers are told it is AI. Live agents work from home offices in North America, not an overseas floor. Spanish is included on the AI plans. On human plans a dedicated Spanish line is $1 per call. They do not manage Google reviews or listings. A review-request link in a follow-up text is not a reviews product. Booking on AI uses Calendly and similar. ServiceTitan and [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/) are native for the [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/). [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) is mostly Zapier. No Dentrix, Open Dental, or Eaglesoft on their integrations list. Law is the deep stack: Clio, Filevine, MyCase, conflict checks, retainers. ## Who should buy it Buy it if a missed call is a missed case or a missed emergency job, and you will pay per answered call to keep a human behind the bot. Law firms are still the company. Their own FAQ says roughly 80% of customers. HVAC and plumbing are the second-best fit if tickets are high and after-hours is the leak. Dentists and salons can use it (Mindbody exists) but it is not a dental PMS front desk. Do not buy it if you wanted Google reviews and two-way text. That is a different category. Do not buy it if 90% of your after-hours volume is "book the water heater quote" and a cheap AI-only bot would do. Do not buy the human Starter if a busy week will blow 30 calls. Call 31 is $11.50. Add-ons (booking $1.50, SMS, payments) stack on top. The 30-day money-back refunds the first plan payment up to $1,000. Overages are excluded. The reason not to buy is the meter, not the greeting. Trustpilot in 2026 has shops whose AI transferred to live agents without consent and raised the bill ($3 per live-agent call on AI plans). Another got a number already on a spam list, then got quoted overages on the spam. Cancel is email to support@smith.ai with 30 days' notice. The ToS can bill another month if you cut it close. Capterra's one 1-star (construction) is six months of overages and a card that kept charging. Capterra's 29 reviews are almost all lawyers, and the newest in the July 2026 snapshot is October 2023. I would not put a one-truck plumber on this as the default. ## The verdict When it works, the phone gets answered at 2 a.m. and someone qualified gets on the calendar. G2's virtual-receptionist listing sat at 4.9 from 73 reviews (June 2026 snapshot, no 1-stars, and it had gone two months without a new review). Capterra 4.8 from 29. Trustpilot is the less flattering 4.4 from 336, which is where billing and cancel stories live. Lawyers on Reddit who skip the AI and just buy the humans like it. Pricing is public. Ignore older "$97.50/mo" tables. They are stale. Current official: AI Free is $0 for 25 calls ($3 extra), AI Pro is $150 for 75, human Starter is $300 for 30. Hybrid is custom. Month-to-month is the default. Annual is prepaid and non-refundable. Unused monthly calls do not roll over. Solid for a law firm or a high-ticket trade that will cap transfer rules and buy a tier above real traffic. Not the default for a shop that mainly needed reviews or a cheap night bot. --- ### Solutionreach Verdict: Skip for most From: Custom Tagline: Lehi patient comms. The live price page has no dollars. Sales promised cancel-anytime. Website: https://www.solutionreach.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/solutionreach/ ## What it actually does Solutionreach is still Solutionreach on solutionreach.com. Legal name Solutionreach, Inc., 2600 N. Ashton Blvd, Lehi, Utah. Grew out of Communitect (2000) and Smile Reminder. Summit Partners invested in 2012. CEO Ken Ernsting. No 2024 to 2026 acquisition. Do not file it as [Weave](/tools/weave/) or [Demandforce](/tools/demandforce/). It is a patient-comms suite: PMS-synced recall, appointment reminders, two-way text, and reputation. Review invitations to Google or Facebook sit inside the packages. That is not [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/)'s $75 [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) drip. That is not Weave's $199 PBX. Switching phone systems is optional. Stella, the [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/), launched on the homepage August 24, 2026. It is an add-on on the live chart with no public dollar, so there is no ai-receptionists tag. Listings are a buried bullet on the reputation page with no public dollar, so there is no local-seo tag. No [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/) SKU. No [website chatbot](/categories/website-chatbots/). Native names on the live site: Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental. No Jobber, [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Mindbody, or Clio. ## Who should buy it Buy it only if you are a dental, vision, or medical office that will keep the existing phones and wants recall plus review asks in one vendor. DSOs and 6-plus location groups get the Enterprise column. Do not buy it if you are a plumber, HVAC shop, salon, or law firm. Do not buy it if you are a dentist replacing the PBX. That is Weave. Do not buy it if you only wanted Google stars. That is NiceJob. Demandforce is the other Custom recall-and-reviews desk, Internet Brands, with Dentrix missing from the live logo wall. The reason not to buy is the paper, then the quote. Live pricing August 25, 2026: Custom. Named packages Patient Connect, Practice Efficiency, Practice Growth, Enterprise. Zero dollars in the HTML. FAQ: yearly contract options. SMS caps 1,750 / 3,500 / 4,500. MSA: fees on the Order Form, all fees non-refundable, auto-renews 12 months unless written notice at least 30 days before term end, 1.5 percent a month late plus they can accelerate the rest of the term, Utah courts. A leftover checkout URL still prints Essentials $199 and Plus $249 billed yearly (HTML monthly cash $219 / $279) under retired names. Directories still print $329. Not the card. Do not use them. Capterra 1-star, Paul Albert, August 27, 2025: sales promised cancel-anytime. BBB February 17, 2026: silent auto-renew and a cancel fee, unanswered. Thirteen complaints in three years, all unanswered, letter grade D-minus. ## The verdict Capterra, GetApp, and Software Advice 3.8 from 236 (one Gartner pool, live HTML). Star split 107 / 57 / 23 / 18 / 31. Value 3.48, support 3.53. Twelve of 25 visible Capterra bodies are NominalGift. G2 live HTML blocked (DataDome 403); indexed 4.3 from 165 to 169. Trustpilot: no solutionreach.com listing retrieved (WAF 403). TrustRadius live 7.0 from 24. Reddit: none retrieved. Zero plumber, HVAC, salon, or law-firm reviews. Reviewers are medical, dental, and vision. Official price August 25, 2026: Custom. Do not invent a starter. Do not put leftover $199 on the From field. Skip. Real Dentrix recall desk if the phones stay. Wrong buy for a truck. If the office needed a dental phone, Weave. If it needed Google stars, NiceJob. --- ### SoTellUs Verdict: Skip for most From: Custom Tagline: Hand-the-phone video testimonials. Demo-gated. Google stars still live at NiceJob. Website: https://www.sotellus.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/sotellus/ ## What it actually does SoTellUs is still SoTellUs on sotellus.com. Privacy names SoTellUs, Inc. Apps ship as Webforce Pro L.L.C. The 2015 User Agreement still says onTop local. Gilbert, Arizona. Family company, Troy and Ron Howard. Not a [Grade.us](/tools/grade-us/) rename. No 2024 to 2026 acquisition. It is a video-first review collector. You hand the phone to a customer, they record a testimonial, then the software asks for Google and Facebook in SMS or email, puts widgets on the site, and auto-posts. That is not [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/)'s job-close Google drip. GMB posting is weekly Google posts, not NAP sync. There is no named listings SKU with a public dollar, so there is no local-seo tag. [GatherUp](/tools/gatherup/) Listings Hub at $40 would have earned it. This does not. Named pages exist for [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/) and live chat. Both are quote-only. Do not tag them. SMS is review invites, not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). No [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, Mindbody, or Clio. Jobber and Housecall Pro on the marketing strip are Zapier. ## Who should buy it Buy it only if the job is in-person video as content and you will sit a demo. Auto shops and restaurants show up in their case studies. Homepage also names salons, contractors, and home services. That is a pitch. Support docs only document Google Business Profile, Facebook/Instagram, and Zapier. Do not buy it if you are a plumber, HVAC shop, salon, dentist, or solo law firm shopping Google stars. NiceJob is $75 and talks to Jobber. GatherUp is $124 a month cash with a public listings SKU. [Podium](/tools/podium/) and [Birdeye](/tools/birdeye/) are Custom messaging and reputation suites. This is none of those. The reason not to buy is the job is video, the meter is a quote, and Google is optional. Live pricing August 25, 2026: Custom. Schema: custom pricing available, contact us for a quote. /plans, /checkout, /signup 404. Directories and webinars still print $59, $99, $199, $399 setup, no contracts, 30-day free. Stale. Do not use them. ToS is a 2015 website agreement, Arizona courts, vendor may terminate and delete, perpetual content license, no public refund. Connect Pro SMS is pay-as-you-go with no rate. Their own Capterra pile, mostly 2019 and incentivized, already says the quiet part. Shannon P.: SoTellUs holds all the reviews not Google. Todd H.: a review on SoTellUs has little impact on Google. Dan B.: most customers did not want a video. Daniel D. (attorney): I wish we could force Google or Facebook. Eric V. considered NiceJob. ## The verdict Capterra and GetApp 4.7 from 73 (one Gartner pool, live HTML, listing date August 20, 2026). Star split 56 / 15 / 1 / 1 / 0. About 70 of 73 incentivized. Newest body March 11, 2023. G2 live HTML blocked (DataDome 403); score not retrieved. Trustpilot live HTML blocked; score not retrieved. TrustRadius 404. BBB A-plus, not accredited, zero complaints, zero reviews. Reddit: none retrieved. Zero named plumber, HVAC, dentist, or salon reviews. Two attorneys, both 2019. Do not cite the vendor widget 4.9 from 853. Official price August 25, 2026: Custom. Do not invent a starter. Skip. Real video capture if that is the brief. Wrong buy for Google stars at $75. If you needed listings plus reviews, GatherUp. If you needed the phone, Podium. --- ### Synup Verdict: Situational From: $49/mo Tagline: Agency local listings with a new $49 Solo plan. Help still talks like annual auto-renew. Website: https://www.synup.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/synup/ ## What it actually does Synup pushes name, address, and hours to 100-plus publishers, then layers review monitoring, email/SMS/QR review asks, social, and a geo-grid. On August 19, 2026 they rebuilt the marketing site around an agent branded Sydekick. That is listings, reviews, social, and AI-answer visibility. It is not a phone. It is not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). It is not a [website chatbot](/categories/website-chatbots/). Synup Corporation, New York. Not acquired. They bought Clientjoy in January 2024 and OptimoRank in February 2024. Still live at synup.com. [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, Mindbody, and Clio are not on the live site. The buyer they built for is an agency or a franchise. Solo is the one-location door they added on the public pricing page. ## Who should buy it Buy Solo if you want citations plus Google review asks in one login and you will cancel in the dashboard, not by hoping an email lands. $49 a month for one location, or $39 on the annual toggle, with 5,000 credits. Premium is $299 for up to 10 locations. Pro $499 / 25. Scale $899 / 50. Enterprise is Custom. White-label starts at Premium. Trial is 14 days, $50 in AI credits, no card. Do not buy it if you only needed NAP and GBP. That is [Moz Local](/tools/moz-local/) at $20. Do not buy it if you needed a human citation desk you keep after cancel. That is [BrightLocal](/tools/brightlocal/). Do not buy it for the phone. The reason not to buy is cancel. Help articles from April 2026 still describe annual auto-renew, one-month notice, and cancellation charges. The public terms page is a thin website template: 30-day case-by-case refunds, 2.9% card fee, no arbitration clause we retrieved. Trustpilot and BBB stories in 2024-2026 are months of charges after written notice, $245 CAD and $800 examples, collections. Capterra 1-star, April 2026: a $10k sales/contract fight after a demo. G2 stayed about 4.5 from roughly 300. That pile is agencies. Local Search Forum citation people in 2023 already said look at [Whitespark](/tools/whitespark/), BrightLocal, or [Yext](/tools/yext/). ## The verdict G2 about 4.5 from 296 to 323 (indexed 2026; live HTML DataDome 403). Capterra and Software Advice 4.1 from 17 (same Gartner pool; live Cloudflare-blocked). Trustpilot about 3.0 from 8 to 11, mostly 1-stars, has not replied (indexed; live WAF). BBB not accredited, six complaints in three years (indexed; live JS-blocked). TrustRadius blocked. Reddit: none retrieved. Official list August 25, 2026: Solo $49 a month. An SMB page on the same site still says start at $199. Capterra still prints $99. Old OS $79 / $199 / $799 is dead. Do not use those. Situational. If you only needed citations, Moz Local. If you needed a rank grid and listings you own, BrightLocal. Pay Synup Solo only if you want the review-ask layer too, on monthly, and get cancel in writing that beats the Help article. --- ### tawk.to Verdict: Situational From: Free Tagline: Genuinely free website chat. You still have to answer it. The $29 branding is annualized. Website: https://www.tawk.to Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/tawk-to/ ## What it actually does tawk.to is still tawk.to. Legal name tawk.to inc., 187 East Warm Springs Rd, Las Vegas. Product launched October 2013. Bootstrapped. No 2024 to 2026 acquisition. There is no Plus plan and no per-seat grid. /plans 404s. /pricing is a founder essay. It is a free website live-chat widget and a shared inbox. Tickets, a knowledge base, and a light CRM sit on the same $0 core. You paste a snippet, or use the WordPress plugin or Shopify app. Unlimited human agents. Unlimited chats. The badge says Powered by tawk.to unless you buy Whitelabel. AI Assist is a separate SKU. Hobby is free, 100 message credits a month, one AI agent. Growth is $29 a month per property. Business $99. Enterprise $399. Overage on paid plans is $30 per 1,000 credits. That is a website bot, not a phone. Voice Agents is a 2026 add-on that markets inbound answering on a real number from $49 a month plus usage. Usage is Custom. Do not put it on this card and do not tag ai-receptionists. In-widget Video plus Voice is WebRTC at $49 a month cash, not PSTN. No [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/) SKU. No reviews product. No GBP. No [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, Mindbody, or Clio. Zapier showed up in the Q1 2026 update. That is still Zapier. ## Who should buy it Buy the free widget if you have a site and someone will answer from the phone app while they are at the desk. A salon or dentist with online booking can run Hobby after hours until 100 AI replies are gone. Then Growth is $29, the same cash as [Tidio](/tools/tidio/) Starter. Do not buy it as a receptionist. Do not buy Voice Agents as if it were [Smith.ai](/tools/smith-ai/). Do not buy Hired Agents ($129 to $728 a month) and call it software. If you wanted a paid widget with Lyro, Tidio at $29. If you wanted WhatsApp in the same inbox, [Crisp](/tools/crisp/) Essentials is $95. [LiveChat](/tools/livechat/) Starter is $25 a user. [Chatbase](/tools/chatbase/) is $40 if the job is a FAQ bot you own. The reason not to buy is you still have to staff it, and the paid extras do not refund. Live August 25, 2026: core is Free. Remove Branding is $39 a month or $348 a year. The add-ons page prints $29. That is annualized. Video is $49 a month cash, not $29. ToS (April 9, 2025): no refunds or credits if you cancel or downgrade. Help: yearly subscriptions cannot be paused. Trustpilot indexed: PayPal still charging after a confirmed cancel; a $144 annual pulled two years after the widget came off the site. G2 stale cards still list branding at $19 and a Plus tier. Dead. Do not use them. ## The verdict Capterra, GetApp, and Software Advice 4.6 from 345 (one Gartner pool, live HTML). Star split 223 / 102 / 13 / 3 / 4. Newest body July 15, 2026. G2 live HTML blocked (DataDome 403); indexed 4.5 from 181 to 202. Trustpilot live HTML blocked (CloudFront 403); indexed about 2.2 to 2.5 from 88 to 106. TrustRadius live 8.5 from 20. BBB A-plus, not accredited, zero complaints in 12 months, two in three years, zero customer reviews. Reddit: none retrieved. Zero named plumber, dentist, salon, HVAC, or law-firm review bodies. Reviewers are agencies, web shops, and SMB software. Official core August 25, 2026: Free. Do not invent a Plus price. Do not publish $29 as monthly branding. Situational. The $0 widget is real if you will answer it. If the leak is the phone, this is the wrong aisle. If you wanted after-hours AI without sitting on the bubble, Tidio. --- ### Thryv Verdict: Situational From: $99/mo Tagline: Public $99 listings and reviews. Print Yellow Pages is a different contract, and 2026 BBB still bills after a written go-down. Website: https://www.thryv.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/thryv/ ## What it actually does Thryv is Thryv Holdings (NASDAQ: THRY), Grapevine, Texas. Still live. The company used to be Dex Media and YP. The software on thryv.com is branded Thryv. Do not call it Dex. The 2026 homepage is an AI growth platform: listings, reviews, a Thryv-hosted site, social, call tracking, and optional done-for-you ads they call Boosts. That is [local SEO](/categories/local-seo/) plus [review management](/categories/review-management/). It is not an [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/). It is not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). Command Center WebChat is a human inbox, not a chatbot. A compare table still checks Missed Call Text Back. There is no product page and no SKU. Business Center is still sold at $185 a month plus $250 onboard: CRM, booking, invoices, ThryvPay. Generic SMB ops. Not [Jobber](/tools/jobber/) dispatch. Not Dentrix. Not Mindbody. Not Clio. In July 2026 they shipped a native Jobber integration and told home-service shops to keep Jobber as the system of record. ## Who should buy it Buy Marketing Center Starter at $99 a month if you already run Jobber and you need 60-plus directories plus AI review asks. Signature is $399: GBP help, Yelp, a designed site, five social profiles, AI Lead Insights. Amplify is Custom. Boosts are sales-quoted and only on Signature and Amplify. Workforce Center $49 sits on the AI-info page, not on /pricing/. Do not buy Business Center if you already have Jobber, [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, Mindbody, or Clio. Do not buy it as a phone. Do not buy it if you only needed Google review asks. That is [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/) at $75. The reason not to buy is the paper, and it is 2026, not folklore. SaaS terms (October 1, 2025): three-day refund, then 30-day written notice, month-to-month after whatever term is on the Order, no refunds, Texas AAA, class waiver. Tracking numbers stay with them. Print Yellow Pages is a different contract (March 2026): 18 to 24 month issue, Close Date auto-renew at undiscounted rates, bundle clawback, they can stretch print by six months and drag digital with it. BBB Dallas, live August 25, 2026: A+, 352 complaints in three years, 96 closed in twelve months. Lori L, June 17, 2026: official go-down date, then billed, then collections. Thryv's own August 3 complaint reply admits a rep failed to cancel and billed again. Another 2026 complaint: digital cancel, print still locked to September 2027. Trustpilot live HTML was CloudFront 403; indexed about 2.3 from 377. If sales attaches a Real Yellow Pages line, a six-month lock, or Boosts, walk. Get no print, monthly after the Order, and cancel by the contact form, in writing. Sales talk is void unless a signed amendment (Platform ToS section 28). ## The verdict Capterra and Software Advice 4.2 from 535 (same Gartner pool, live HTML August 25, 2026). Value 4.03. Eleven percent one-star. Many 2026 fives are vendor-referred. G2 live HTML DataDome 403. G2 AI page May 2026: 4.3 from 1,877. Compare snippets still show 4.6 from 415. Do not average. Trustpilot about 2.3 from about 377 (indexed). TrustRadius 8.7 from 15; bodies on the page are May 2022 incentivized. Reddit: none retrieved. No named plumber, HVAC, salon, or dentist review bodies in this pass. Construction office and one law-firm attorney are the closest. Official list August 25, 2026: Starter $99 a month, Signature $399, Amplify Custom. Annual Save 15% is advertised; the exact annual dollars are not on the page. Q4 2025 SaaS ARPU was $373. That is ARPU, not list. Kickstart $646 / Ignite $881 / Accelerate $1,475 were a 2025 sale page. Directories still print $149 and $244. Stale. Do not use them. Situational. Listings plus reviews on Starter, sitting on Jobber, with print refused in writing, can work. The 2026 BBB file is cancel and print, not the calendar. If you needed only NAP, [Moz Local](/tools/moz-local/) at $20. If you needed only reviews, NiceJob. If a closer opens a Yellow Pages order, you are not buying software anymore. --- ### Tidio Verdict: Solid pick From: $29/mo Tagline: A cheap website chat widget with a real free plan. Lyro does not answer the phone. Website: https://www.tidio.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/tidio/ ## What it actually does Tidio is a website live-chat widget and shared inbox. Flows is a no-code chatbot. Lyro is the AI agent. It answers website chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. Tidio's own 2026 Lyro review: no voice support. That is the product. Still independent. Series B in 2022. No 2021-2026 sale. It is not an [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/). It is not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). There is no native SMS, no [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), ServiceTitan, Dentrix, Mindbody, or Clio page. PeakSpan still calls it an ecommerce platform. A plumber can paste the widget on WordPress. That does not make it a front desk. ## Who should buy it Buy it if the leak is the website, not the phone. A salon or dentist with online booking who wants after-hours FAQ chat can start on Free (50 human conversations a month, 50 Lyro conversations lifetime, 100 Flows visitors). Starter is $29 a month, or $24.17 billed annually, for 100 human conversations. Growth starts at $59 a month for 250. Lyro as a paid add-on starts at $39 a month for 50 AI conversations. Flows starts at $29. Ten seats are included. Directories still print Communicator $19 and Plus $749. Dead and stale. Live Plus is $300 plus usage and sales-gated. Do not buy it if a missed call is a missed job. That is [Smith.ai](/tools/smith-ai/). Do not put Lyro unsupervised on a dental or law site. Terms, March 12, 2026: Tidio is not a HIPAA Business Associate. FAQ prohibits healthcare and legal advisory use of the AI. Lyro output "may be inaccurate." The reason not to buy is the meters plus the paper. Human conversations, Lyro threads, and Flows visitors bill separately. A 15-minute Lyro thread can consume another unit. Annual is prepaid. Terms: no pro-rata refund. Auto-upgrade is on by default in the ToS; Shopify copy says Lyro pauses. Do not trust the store listing. Trustpilot 1-stars and Shopify 1-stars in 2025-2026 cluster on annual auto-renew, silent hikes, and an upgrade that does not reverse. WordPress, March 2025: an eight-year customer, $150 to $500 a year. ## The verdict Capterra, GetApp, and Software Advice are 4.7 from 590 (live HTML, one Gartner pool). Shopify App Store 4.8 from 1,254 (live). WordPress plugin 4.7 from 396. G2 about 4.6 to 4.7 from 1.7k to 2.0k (reviews list blocked). Trustpilot about 3.8 from 224 (indexed; live page blocked). TrustRadius 9.5 from 16, thin. Reddit: none retrieved. BBB: no profile. Zero plumber, dentist, salon-as-shop, HVAC, or law-firm review bodies. Closest was construction remodeling, July 2025. Official floor August 25, 2026: Starter $29 a month. Free is real. Plus $300 is sales. Premium is Custom (payload floor $2,999, not printed). Solid as a website widget. Situational as a local-service default. If you needed the phone, Smith.ai. If you needed a $79 night bot on the line, [Goodcall](/tools/goodcall/). Pay Tidio for the site, on monthly, and do not let Lyro talk medicine or law. --- ### Uberall Verdict: Skip for most From: Custom Tagline: Berlin listings for 50-plus locations. Pricing is a demo. GEO Studio $109 is not the hose. Website: https://uberall.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/uberall/ ## What it actually does Uberall is Uberall GmbH, Hussitenstraße 32-33, Berlin. Still live. Founded 2013. Anthony Foy is CEO as of 2024. Private. They bought Navads in 2018 and MomentFeed in 2021. The 2026 homepage is a multi-location marketing platform: listings, GEO Studio, reviews, locator and local pages, local social, UB-I. Location Marketing Cloud and Near Me are ancestry, not the live brand. Listings push NAP, hours, photos, and attributes to 150-plus directories, including Google, Apple Maps, Bing, Yelp, and voice. Reviews is a named SKU: monitor Google, Facebook, Yelp, TripAdvisor and 80-plus, AI draft replies, email and QR asks, paid SMS. That earns review-management. Messages is Google Business Messages and Facebook Messenger for chains. Do not tag it as a shop chatbot. UB-I is a marketing agent. It does not answer the phone. SMS on this platform is outbound review asks, not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). No [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, Mindbody, or Clio. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you run 50 to 50,000 locations and HQ needs one dashboard. Retail, QSR, hotels, banks, healthcare networks. Burger King and Pret-scale, not a van. Do not buy it if you are a plumber, HVAC shop, salon, dentist, or solo law firm. If you needed NAP and GBP, [Moz Local](/tools/moz-local/) at $20. If you needed a rank grid plus citations you keep, [BrightLocal](/tools/brightlocal/) at $41 plus $3.20 a site. If you needed humans who hand you logins, [Whitespark](/tools/whitespark/) at $399 once. [Synup](/tools/synup/) Solo is $49. [Yext](/tools/yext/) is the other Custom enterprise knowledge graph. Skip that too. The reason not to buy is you are not the customer, and the paper is annual. Live pricing August 25, 2026: Show Up, Stand Out, Connect. No dollar, no per-location rate. CTAs are request pricing, get a personalized quote, book a demo. Official not-for list starts with a single-location small business looking for a free or very low-cost tool. GmbH terms, July 28, 2025: annual subscription plus set-up fee, fees non-refundable and payable in advance, auto-renew, default three-month non-renew notice. Helpjuice says cancel before the last day of contract. That fights the GTC. Closed locations still bill. US paper is MomentFeed UB, Inc. d.b.a. Uberall, California, San Francisco. German paper is Munich courts. GEO Studio is the only public list: US $109 / $449, DE €99 / €399. Do not put those in the listings field. G2 "25 plus locations" is a directory filter, not on uberall.com/pricing. Third-party $3,600 to $9,000 a year is unverified. Capterra $199 a year looks like Yext bleed. Do not use it. Capterra 2018: dashboard 100 percent health while live listings were wrong. 2025: photos marked updated that were not. Trustpilot indexed: fake directory live status, broken NAP, unusable rank and sentiment, oversold AI replies. ## The verdict Capterra 4.6 from 37 (live HTML August 25, 2026). Support 4.8, value 4.4. Twenty-five of 37 incentivized. Four 2025 reviews, all 4 to 5 stars, none trades. One 2021 body is Uber rideshare. Wrong company. Software Advice and GetApp are the same 37. G2 live HTML DataDome 403; indexed 4.3 from 140, blogs 4.3 from 148. Rank tracking 7.8 versus BrightLocal 9.3. Trustpilot live HTML WAF 403; indexed 2.5 from 5, 60 percent one-star, includes a job-scam post. TrustRadius 10 from 7 (live, tiny). BBB: no Uberall listings-vendor profile. Reddit: none retrieved. Official current-platform price August 25, 2026: Custom. GEO Studio $109 is not listings. Skip. The product is real for a 400-location chain. It is the wrong buy for one truck. If you needed NAP, Moz Local. If you needed citations you keep, BrightLocal or Whitespark. --- ### Weave Verdict: Situational From: $199/mo Tagline: A dental phone system with missed-call text in the base plan. A plumber is shopping the wrong aisle. Website: https://www.getweave.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/weave/ ## What it actually does Weave is the office phone system for small healthcare. VoIP, two-way SMS on the practice number, payments, scheduling pop, and PMS hooks. Missed Call Text is a named feature in the $199 Base Plan: missed call, auto SMS, conversation stays on the office line. Weave Reviews texts Google and Facebook asks. AI Receptionist (voice and messaging) is early access after Weave bought TrueLark in May 2025 for $35.9 million. Text Connect is website-to-SMS, not a chatbot. That is the 2026 product. Live at getweave.com. weave.com is a textile site. Weave Communications, Inc., NYSE: WEAV, Lehi, Utah. Francisco Partners announced a take-private on August 18, 2026. Not closed as of this review. It is not [Podium](/tools/podium/). It is not [Smith.ai](/tools/smith-ai/) sitting on top of your existing carrier. There is no [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), or ServiceTitan page. Home-services copy on the site is leftover. Dentrix, Eaglesoft, and Open Dental are native. Mindbody and Clio are not the ICP. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you are a dentist, optometrist, vet, or specialty clinic and you will rip out Comcast or the old PBX. Call-pop plus two-way text on the office number is why G2 is still 4.6. Base is $199 a month. Coordinate and Attract bundles are $149 each. Pro, Elite, Ultimate, extra phones, SMS overage, card rates, and setup are Custom. Software Advice still says contact sales for the rest. Do not buy it if you are a plumber, HVAC shop, salon, or law firm. Pricing tabs are Dental, Vet, Medical, Optometry only. We retrieved zero trades review bodies. That is a [Numa](/tools/numa/)-style miss for those shops, not a skip for a dentist. The reason not to buy, even for a dentist, is cancel. Terms, May 4, 2026: cancellation is not effective until all numbers are ported out, and they keep billing until then. Cancel too early and you can lose the number. Trustpilot 2026: porting outages of one to two weeks. If the Order has a term, you owe the rest of it. Annual and longer auto-renew unless you give 60 days' notice. No refunds. Leased phones: 10-day return or full retail. Utah law, JAMS, class-action waiver. Software Advice support sub-score is 3.9. Q2 2026: support as a share of revenue is falling via AI and self-serve. ## The verdict G2 about 4.6 from 354 (indexed 2026; live HTML blocked; aggregators show 426 to 442, count not reconciled). Capterra 4.3 from about 670. Software Advice 4.3 from 669, support 3.9. Trustpilot about 4.4 from 603. BBB not accredited; 14 complaints in 12 months, failure to respond to 16. TrustRadius 7.9 from eight. Reddit: none retrieved. Official floor August 25, 2026: $199 a month. Old $249, $399, $500, and $750 setup are not on the live plans page. Do not use them. FY2025 revenue over locations implies about $534 ARPU. That is not list price. Situational. A dentist replacing the phone can buy it and still hate the port clause. A plumber should not. If you only needed Google asks, [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/). If you needed a receptionist on the phone you already have, Smith.ai. If you needed missed-call without ripping the PBX, Podium is the other custom quote. --- ### Whitespark Verdict: Solid pick From: $399 Tagline: One-time citation building you keep. Plan on four to six weeks, and only about 30 percent will be live when they send the report. Website: https://whitespark.ca Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/whitespark/ ## What it actually does Whitespark Inc., Edmonton. Still live. Darren Shaw is still president. The site is whitespark.ca. whitespark.com returned 500 on August 25, 2026. Public pages are USD. It is not one platform. Software is sold a la carte. Local Citation Finder finds directories; it does not submit them. Listings Service is humans: audit, cleanup, new citations. You get usernames and passwords. You keep the listings. That is the opposite of [Moz Local](/tools/moz-local/) and [Yext](/tools/yext/). Rank Tracker and Ranking Grids are separate. Local Platform is a GBP editor at $1 per location per month, billed annually. Reputation Builder is a real review-request SKU at $79 per location per month. Link Prospector is a 404. There is no phone, no [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/), no chatbot. No [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, Mindbody, or Clio. ## Who should buy it Buy Listings Service Premium at $399 once (USD, per location) if your NAP is a mess and you will wait. Comprehensive is $599. Ultimate is $999. Custom starts at $20-plus. Data Aggregator is $99, US only. Yext Replacement is $399, US only, then $139 a location if you need updates. Listings Service updates are $2 a listing. Volume discounts start at 5 percent over $1,000. Buy Citation Finder Small Business at $33 a month on annual ($39 monthly) if you will submit yourself. Free starter exists. Rank Tracker Small Business is $14 a month weekly on annual. Grids start at $10. Do not stack all of them because the pricing page told you they unbundle. Do not buy it as a monthly listings hose. That is Moz Local at $20. Do not buy Reputation Builder if you only needed Google asks. That is [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/) at $75. Do not buy SEO Services ($499 or $1,999 a month, waitlisted) if you are an agency. They refuse agencies on that SKU. The reason not to buy is the clock, and they print it. Listings FAQ, live August 25, 2026: four to six weeks, first weeks are queue with no work done, about 30 percent of submissions live when the report goes out, no live-listing guarantee, some directories take more than a year. Darren's own tests, still cited in this industry, showed adding a pile of citations on an already-complete profile did not move Google. Local Search Forum and G2 (Wayback 2021; live HTML DataDome 403) are agencies: LCF sometimes says not listed when you are. Terms: software auto-renews, no refunds, no pro-rata. BBB A+, not accredited, zero reviews, zero complaints (live curl). Trustpilot live HTML was WAF 403; jina read 4.0 from three, two from November 2025. Capterra has no product page. Reddit: none retrieved. ## The verdict G2 about 4.6 from 21 (indexed; LCF 19). Score has sat at 4.6 since at least August 2021 Wayback (18 reviews). TrustRadius live: Rank Tracker 7.8 from 7, Citation Finder 10 from 1; bodies are 2015 to 2022 incentivized. Reviewers are SEO shops, not trades owners. Closest dental signal is a 2018 G2 agency serving multi-provider medical. Official list August 25, 2026: Listings Premium $399 one-time. Citation Finder from $33 a month annual. Directories that still print Basic $199 or LCF from $20 are stale. Do not use them. $4 and $5 per citation are on a 2021 blog, not the current listings page. Solid. If you needed NAP pushed on a monthly feed, Moz Local. If you needed a rank grid plus a citation desk in one [BrightLocal](/tools/brightlocal/) login, that is the other door, at $41 plus $3.20 a site. Pay Whitespark once if you want the logins, and calendar six weeks. --- ### Yext Verdict: Skip for most From: Custom Tagline: Enterprise listings and a knowledge graph. The leftover PowerListings page still prints $199 a year. Website: https://www.yext.com Review: https://counterandcrew.com/tools/yext/ ## What it actually does Yext is Yext, Inc. (NYSE: YEXT), 61 Ninth Avenue, New York. Still live. The 2026 homepage calls it an Enterprise Agentic Marketing Platform. The 10-K still says Answers Platform. Same company. They bought Hearsay in August 2024 (now Relate, for financial advisors) and Places Scout in February 2025 (now Scout, for AI-search visibility). The product is a knowledge graph. You put hours, NAP, and attributes in once. Yext pushes them to 200-plus publishers (Google, Apple Maps, Bing, Yelp, Facebook, plus the long tail). Reviews is a real SKU: monitor, ask, and AI-draft replies on 80-plus sites. Pages are schema landing pages at franchise scale. Search is enterprise site search, not a shop chatbot. Relate is advisor SMS, not [missed-call text-back](/categories/missed-call-text-back/). There is no [AI receptionist](/categories/ai-receptionists/). There is no [Jobber](/tools/jobber/), [Housecall Pro](/tools/housecall-pro/), Dentrix, Mindbody, or Clio page. PowerListings was the old self-serve one-location SKU. Official FAQ, live August 25, 2026: it is no longer a focus. Direct enterprise and resellers are. Sub-$50k ARR customers are 9 percent of ARR and shrinking 14 percent year over year. That is ARR, not list. They are walking away from one-shops on purpose. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you run tens to thousands of locations and your job is one source of truth. Great Clips at 4,400 salons is the proof point. Healthcare systems and QSR too. Implementation is a CSM and an annual invoice. Do not buy it if you are a plumber, HVAC shop, salon, one-office dentist, or solo law firm. [Moz Local](/tools/moz-local/) is $20 a month for NAP and GBP. [BrightLocal](/tools/brightlocal/) is $41 if you want a rank grid and citations you keep. [Synup](/tools/synup/) Solo is $49. [NiceJob](/tools/nicejob/) is $75 if you only needed Google asks. Yext's own FAQ says smaller businesses are better served by reseller partners. The reason not to buy is you are renting the hose. Current platform: Custom, demo only. yext.com/pricing is a 404. Billing is typically annual. Multi-year is the sales default. No free tier. No standard trial. Leftover PowerListings checkout is still live at /pl/powerlistings/plans.html: Emerging $199 a year, Essential $449, Complete $499, Premium $999, prepaid, 12 months, card auto-renew. SMB terms last updated May 15, 2017: no mid-term cancel, fees nonrefundable, perpetual content license, AAA, class waiver, New York law. BBB, live: cancelled August 14, 2025, still billed the next year. Another: cancelled July 31, charged $529.20 on October 3. Trustpilot live HTML was CloudFront 403; indexed about 1.5 from 344. Capterra, non-incentivized, March 19, 2025: billed after they promised they would not. Allan T., Capterra 2021, two two-year tests on lawyers and home services: citations updated, no Google rank lift. If you cancel, Yext stops pushing. FAQ says they do not hold data hostage. Same FAQ says some publishers revert. Capterra 2019 still on the 2026 page: listings all go away. MapQuest BBB 2025: listed permanently closed unless you pay. ## The verdict Capterra, Software Advice, and GetApp 4.2 from 114 (same Gartner pool, live HTML August 20, 2026). Value 3.8. Mix is 50 percent marketing and advertising, not plumbers. G2 live HTML DataDome 403; indexed about 4.3 to 4.4, counts disagree from 472 to 1,100-plus. Trustpilot about 1.5 from 344 (indexed). TrustRadius 7.9 from 53 (indexed; live Cloudflare-blocked). BBB A+, customer reviews 1.0 from four, 11 complaints in three years (live). Reddit: none retrieved. Official current-platform price August 25, 2026: Custom. Do not use Vendr or checkthat.ai ranges. PowerListings $199 to $999 a year is a leftover checkout, not the enterprise list. Directories that print those as 2026 Yext are stale on the product, even when the URL still works. Skip. The product is real for a 200-clinic health system. It is the wrong buy for one truck. If you needed NAP, Moz Local. If you needed citations you keep, BrightLocal. If a reseller or [Thryv](/tools/thryv/) partner puts you on Yext paper, you are not the customer they built this for. ---