Smith.ai vs. Gabbyville: Live Answering Service Comparison

It's not easy to decide on a live answering service. Do you need receptionists who make both inbound and outbound calls? Who schedule appointments? Who handle live transfers to you and your staff? Today, we compare Smith.ai virtual receptionists to Gabbyville.

Setup Fees & Contracts

Smith.ai

• No set up or cancellation fee
• No contract
• Free consultation
• 14-day money-back guarantee

Gabbyville

• $99 setup fee for Starter and Basic plans
• No contract for monthly plans; annual contracts also available
• 30-day free trial

Monthly Plans

Here’s how monthly plans from Smith.ai and Gabbyville compare:

Smith.ai

• $285 for 30 live receptionist calls and 1 live transfer number
• $765 for 90 live receptionist calls and 2 live transfer numbers
• $1,950 for 300 live receptionist calls and 10 live transfer numbers
• Custom plans available
• 10% annual discount when paid up front
  

Gabbyville

• $250 for 65 minutes
• $325 for 100 minutes
• $600 for 200 minutes
• $1,425 for 500 minutes

Discussion: Even if you sign up for a free trial with Gabbyville, which means getting a discount off your first month of up to 10%, monthly plans from Smith.ai are comparable than those from Gabbyville, with the lowest plan starting at just $285/month.

Consider for a moment that an average business call is about six minutes, according to GetVoIP. Smith.ai's $765/month plan would allow for 90 six-minute calls, but Gabbyville's closest $600/month plan would only allow for 33 six-minute calls. With Smith.ai, you're paying almost the same amount but you're getting 57 extra six-minute calls!

Only when your calls are incredibly short does Gabbyville have an advantage at cost-per-minute, and we encourage you to consider what sort of calls these are. Are new leads and current clients only spending a minute or two on the phone? It often takes three to five minutes to complete a high-quality phone call (based on our data from hundreds of thousands of calls since 2015), yet Gabbyville states most of their calls last "1 minute to 1 minute and 50 seconds." At Smith.ai, we never use scripts, and our receptionists are trained to actively listen and respond individually to callers. This can lead to longer call times, but results in much happier callers.

Overage Costs

Smith.ai

• $10.50/call on the $285/month plan
• $9.50/call on the $765/month plan
• $7.50/call on the $1,950/month plan
  

Gabbyville

• $4.00/minute on the $250/month plan
• $3.25/minute on the $325/month plan
• $3.00/minute on the $600/month plan
• $2.85/minute on the $1,425/month plan

Discussion: Continuing to assume an average call length of six minutes, if you happen to go over your monthly quota, Smith.ai is far more affordable than Gabbyville.

Features

Smith.ai and Gabbyville both offer the following features:

• Live call transfers
• Customized call answering procedures
• Online appointment scheduling
• Lead intake form completion
• Messages forwarded via email and/or SMS
• No charge for spam calls
• North American-based receptionists
• Initiating and bridging conference calls
• Bilingual answering

Smith.ai offers the following additional features:

• 24/7 live call answering
• Live call transfers
• Integration with all major calendaring and scheduling software programs
• Integration with all major CRMs, like Clio, Clio Grow, Hubspot, Lexicata, Capsule CRM, and more
• One free CRM integration
• Integration with helpdesk ticketing software programs
• Ability to map client history to the incoming number so clients receive personalized attention
• Messages texted to you
• Recommended business referral
• After-hours and overflow answering
• Facebook, webchat, and SMS answering
• Custom greetings
• Payment collection
• Daily call summary reports
• Call recording and transcription

Gabbyville offers the following additional features:

• Call answering Monday through Friday 8AM-10PM
• Dedicated team of 4 to 5 receptionists

Discussion: Smith.ai and Gabbyville offer many of the same features with their live answering services. Smith.ai answers calls 24/7 while Gabbyville answers between the hours of 8 AM and 8 PM EST. Plus, Smith.ai gives you access to all of our receptionists, and not just a dedicated team of 4 to 5 people familiar with your account. So, if someone is sick, you're never down a team member, and if your call volume skyrockets one day, Smith.ai can handle it with ease.

While Gabbyville and Smith.ai both handle lead intake forms for your business, Smith.ai is able to pipe this data directly into your CRM so it appears alongside your other client records. Gabbyville makes the data accessible in your dashboard, which you can then review and input into your CRM, resulting in more work for you. Smith.ai can also qualify leads, answering questions from callers about your practice areas, fees, and other aspects of your business to determine if they're a good fit for your business before an intake form is even completed, reducing the time you need to spend reviewing intake forms that may or may not represent good potential clients.

Summary

Overall, Smith.ai offers a robust set of live answering service features at much more accessible prices than Gabbyville. Just like Gabbyville, Smith.ai's receptionists are based in the U.S. and are well versed in American business practices and phone etiquette, so your callers get a great experience every time with Smith.ai, but at a fraction of the price.

Smith.ai Client Testimonial

Don't just take our word for it! Here’s what a client of ours had to say about making the switch from Gabbyville to Smith.ai:

“I've been using Gabbyville for about 9 months, and while I'm generally satisfied, I decided to make a switch to Smith.ai. I had filled out and then revised my ‘meet and greet’ with Gabbyville and they never seemed to follow it. I've used up my trial at Smith.ai and I really liked that they send me not only a message after any call, but also a daily summary. Gabbyville would send me a weekly spreadsheet (which they forgot to do for several weeks, so I missed billing for calls). The Smith.ai emails are much more visually pleasing, and I can just text them when I'm away or with a client, whereas with Gabbyville I would email it when I was in court or out for a long period of time.”

- Scott Nyman, Nyman IP

Learn More About Smith.ai

Smith.ai virtual receptionists are trained to learn your business and build a relationship with your customers. Discuss your options with us by signing up for a free consultation with our team or get started risk-free with our 14-day money-back guarantee!