Aubern vs. Smith.ai: The Real Math When Your Business Grows

Two Different Pricing Models

Before the math, the structure: Smith.ai and Aubern price their products fundamentally differently, and that structural difference drives every dollar of savings or overspend.

Smith.ai sells call capacity. Their Done For You tiers are priced per call — $1.50/call at 10 calls/day, $1.33/call at 25 calls/day, $1.20/call at 55 calls/day. The per-call rate goes down with volume. The total monthly bill goes up — fast. $500, then $1,000, then $2,000.

Aubern sells the software. Flat $350/month. Doesn't matter if you take 300 calls or 3,000 calls. The software fee stays the same. Direct telephony carrier costs (Voice minutes, SMS, A2P 10DLC fees) are pass-through at cost — no markup, ever — and are bundled into the $350 for typical small-business volume.

That's the entire structural argument. One model gets more expensive as your business grows. The other stays flat. Below is what that costs in actual dollars.

What Happens As Your Business Grows

Aubern's per-call cost drops as your business grows. Smith.ai's total bill rises. That's the core difference, and it compounds every month you stay in business.

Aubern Is Custom Software, Not a Phone Reseller

This is the part most receptionist services don't talk about: the carrier fees. Every AI receptionist runs on a telephony backbone and those carriers charge real per-minute and per-message fees that the receptionist service either bundles into their pricing with margin baked in, or passes through with markup.

Aubern doesn't make money on telephony. The $350/month includes a bundled carrier allowance sized for typical small-business call volume. For a service business taking 50 calls a day, the direct carrier cost runs about $60–$125 per month depending on whether you use a local or toll-free number. That's the full per-call infrastructure cost — voice minutes, phone number rental, SMS confirmations, A2P 10DLC compliance fees. All covered by the bundled allowance inside the $350.

If your business grows past typical volume — hundreds of calls per day, or use of the AI as a booking service for unrelated businesses — the carrier costs that exceed the bundled allowance are passed through to you at cost. No markup. Ever. We monitor usage and notify you before any pass-through bill kicks in.

Aubern is custom software running on top of the carrier. We're paid to build and maintain the system that makes your business answer the phone — not to be a layer of margin between you and the carrier.

Year-by-Year Cost at 25 Calls/Day

25 calls per day is a healthy mid-sized service business — a plumber, an HVAC company, an electrical contractor with a few crews and steady residential plus light commercial work. Here's what each model costs over time at that volume.

Year 1, Aubern is $4,100 cheaper even with the $3,700 build cost. Year 3, the gap grows to $19,700. By year 5, a business at this volume has saved $35,300 with Aubern.

At 55 calls/day, the same five-year math saves close to $95,000. That's not a marketing number. That's the spread between a flat software fee and a per-call capacity model multiplied by 60 months.

Where Smith.ai Wins

Honest answer: at the smallest tier, in year one only, Smith.ai is cheaper.

A business taking 10 calls a day pays Smith.ai $6,000 in year one. Aubern is $7,900 in year one because of the $3,700 build cost. That $1,900 gap matters if cash flow is tight and you're not sure your business will scale past 10 calls/day.

But year two, Aubern's recurring is $4,200 while Smith.ai stays at $6,000. The gap closes in month 14. After that, every month Aubern is $150 cheaper. Forever. And if your call volume grows past 10 calls/day — which is the entire point of running ads, doing SEO, and advertising the AI receptionist on your website — Smith.ai's bill grows with you. Aubern's doesn't.

Scope Comparison

Cost comparisons only matter if both products do similar things. They don't. Smith.ai is a receptionist service. Aubern is a complete business platform with the AI receptionist built in.

A Smith.ai customer at $1,000/month for the AI receptionist still needs to pay for a website ($30–$200/month plus build), a CRM if not already integrated, and any client-facing portal or quote tool separately. The all-in Smith.ai stack at 25 calls/day typically runs $1,200–$1,500/month. Aubern's $350 includes all of it.

When Each Model Fits

Smith.ai fits if: you already have a website and tech stack you're happy with, you want a turnkey receptionist add-on, you need human escalation as a feature (Smith.ai has 500+ live agents Aubern doesn't compete with), and you're comfortable with a per-call pricing model that scales with volume.

Aubern fits if: you need a website along with the AI receptionist, you want one integrated stack instead of stitching together separate vendors, you're in home services or trades and need diagnostic-aware call handling, you want to own your platform after the build is paid off, and you want pricing that doesn't penalize your business for growing.

The Bottom Line

Smith.ai built their pricing around the economics of phone bills — pay per call, pay per minute, pay for capacity buckets. That model worked when the underlying cost was human receptionists answering the phone. It doesn't fit AI economics.

Aubern is priced like software because Aubern is software. One fee for the platform. Carrier costs at cost. Volume doesn't change the software fee. Your business growing is good for you, not a reason for your vendor to send a bigger invoice.

For a service business that intends to grow, the math is straightforward. Year one, Aubern wins at any volume above 10 calls/day. Year two onward, Aubern wins at every volume. Five-year savings at 25 calls/day: $35,000. At 55 calls/day: $95,000. At 100+ calls/day, Smith.ai stops publishing pricing and Aubern stops changing it.

Test the AI receptionist directly using the demo at the top of this post. If it sounds like the receptionist your business needs, $740 starts the build, and the system goes live within 3–4 weeks of signing. Run the math against your own call volume and decide.