AI Receptionist With a Free Canadian Phone Number: What Is Included and What It Costs

The pitch for an AI receptionist is easy to make and easy to overstate. The real cost is in the line items. Many services quote a monthly plan and then add the phone number, the setup fee, the per-minute overage, and sometimes a "premium voice" tier. By the second month the bill is nothing like the headline.

This is the line-item view of 1n1.ai Front Desk, an AI receptionist that comes with a free Canadian phone number, written for the owner of one business who wants to know what is included before signing up.

Included, on the trial and on every plan

A Canadian phone number, free for as long as you stay. Picked by city or area code in the setup; a US number is available too if you serve both sides of the border. No setup fee, no line fee. It is tied to your verified business phone, one free number per receptionist.

A receptionist written for your trade. Sophia (keep the name or pick another) answers the way a good front desk in your industry answers. A plumber's Sophia opens with "is it something urgent, or a job you're planning?" and takes the address. A dentist's asks whether it is a cleaning or something that hurts, and moves pain to the front of the line. A florist's asks what the occasion is. Twenty-three industries have this, and every other business gets a general receptionist that still knows your hours, services, prices and service area because you told her.

Every call written down. Recording, transcript and a summary emailed within a minute of the call ending, in the language you chose. Name and phone always, plus the fields you picked: address, job, order, vehicle, pet, occasion, headcount.

Callers in their language, you in yours. She speaks 70 or so languages and switches to the caller's. You read everything in one language.

Ring-me-first. Your own phone rings for 12 seconds; Sophia picks up only if you do not. Every call, yours or hers, on one list.

A website, live the minute you claim it. yourbusiness.1n1.ai, with your number, hours, services, up to twelve photos and your menu or price sheet, and Sophia answering on it. Point your own domain at it for free.

Spam protection. Flagged spam is screened at the network edge, and a daily call cap, a per-call maximum and a silence timeout catch the rest. Junk calls do not eat your minutes.

Forwarding from your current number. Keep the number you have. Forward the calls you miss with one carrier code and Sophia answers them in your name.

What you pay for

You pay for minutes. Plans differ by how many minutes of calls you get a month (250, 500 or 1,000) and by nothing else. Every plan has the same receptionist, number, website, recordings, summaries and lead capture. Current prices, in Canadian dollars, are on the home page; they are not repeated here so this post stays true when they change.

A minute is a minute whether the call came to your number, your website's call button or the mobile app, and whether Sophia answered or you did with ring-me-first. When the minutes run out, calls pause until the month resets or you move up a plan. There is no per-minute overage and no annual contract, and you cancel from your dashboard.

The trial is 14 days or 100 minutes, whichever comes first, no card, with the number and the website live from the first day. If you let it lapse, the receptionist pauses and the number is held for 7 days before release. Pick a plan inside that window and you get back the same number, receptionist and site.

What she will not do

Sophia stays inside what you told her, so she:

• Never invents a price. If you gave her a service call fee or a price line, she reads it. If you did not, she says the team will confirm.
• Never confirms a slot she cannot see. She takes the booking request with the details and you confirm. Writing into your calendar or booking system is custom integration work, not a checkbox.
• Never diagnoses. A dental receptionist gets you in for the pain; she does not tell you what it is. A legal receptionist takes the broad strokes; she gives no advice.
• Never claims to know whether you are open this minute. She tells callers your hours.
• Does not text callers. It is a voice line.

These limits are the reason an owner can trust her with the phone.

What the setup asks you

Six short screens, about ten minutes:

1. Your industry, business name, city and phone.
2. What callers ask: hours, services, service area, pricing policy, and a few questions specific to your trade (a plumber's after-hours rate, a dentist's new-patient policy, a florist's delivery area). Skip anything.
3. The receptionist: her name, her voice, what she must collect from every caller. Press the microphone and ask her what your customers ask.
4. Verify your phone by text (or a short call in the US).
5. Pick your free number by city or area code, and decide whether your own phone rings first.
6. Claim your web address.

Then call the number. If she says something you would not say, change the answer that produced it, and she updates instantly.

Who this is not for

If you want to write the receptionist's instructions yourself, run several assistants, or schedule recurring outbound calls, that is Studio, the other half of 1n1.ai. It is included with every plan and opens from your Front Desk menu, but numbers there are paid per number and creating agents there needs a plan. Front Desk is the quick way in. Studio is the workshop.

Start your front desk, free for 14 days