Upfirst is a self-serve AI answering service that picks up 24/7, books into calendars such as Google and Outlook, warm-transfers urgent calls and texts you a summary. As of November 2026 it costs $24.95 to $299 a month for 30 to 600 calls, with a 14-day free trial. It has no native ServiceTitan, Jobber or Housecall Pro integration.
This review is for owners of home-service and auto repair shops weighing Upfirst against the other AI answering services. Prices and features come from Upfirst's own pricing, integrations and HVAC pages, checked in November 2026.
What is Upfirst?
Upfirst is an AI receptionist you set up yourself: you give it your hours, services and prices (it can import them from your website), forward your number, and it answers, qualifies, books and transfers. It is a general small-business product, not one built only for the trades.
The industries on its site include HVAC, plumbing, pest control, landscaping, contractors, emergency restoration and towing, alongside law firms, real estate, property management, salons and veterinary clinics. Auto repair is not on the list. The homepage claims more than 6,000 businesses use it, which is Upfirst's own figure. It shows no third-party star ratings.
How much does Upfirst cost?
Upfirst bills per answered call, from $24.95 a month for 30 calls to $299 for 600, with lower per-call overage on bigger plans. Annual billing takes 20 percent off.
| Plan | Monthly | Billed annually (per month) | Calls included | Each extra call |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $24.95 | $20 | 30 | $1.50 |
| Premium | $59.95 | $48 | 90 | $1.00 |
| Pro | $159.95 | $128 | 300 | $0.75 |
| Scale | $299 | $240 | 600 | $0.70 |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | 1,000+ | Custom |
Prices from Upfirst's pricing page, as of November 2026. Other details worth knowing:
- Calls not billed: spam, telemarketing and robocalls the AI blocks, calls under 15 seconds, and calls where the caller never speaks. They still show in your call log.
- Extra AI agents: $9.95 a month each, for example a second agent for a second brand or location.
- Free trial: 14 days or 100 calls, whichever comes first, plus 25 texts, with full features. No credit card, and no automatic billing when it ends.
- Onboarding: a free 30-minute onboarding call; white-glove onboarding and done-for-you integrations only on Scale and Enterprise.
What Upfirst costs a trade shop: a worked example
Take, for example, a six-truck plumbing shop that forwards only after-hours and overflow calls and gets about 120 real calls a month that way. Premium covers 90, so the bill is $59.95 plus 30 calls at $1.00, or $89.95. If a cold snap pushes that to 350 calls, Pro costs $159.95 plus 50 calls at $0.75, or $197.45, which is still less than Scale. Pick the plan for your normal month and let overage cover the bad weeks.
What does Upfirst do for a home-service business?
Upfirst answers, captures the lead, books into your calendar or texts a booking link, and transfers urgent calls to your on-call tech based on rules you write. Every plan includes the same core features; the higher tiers add calls and support, not capabilities.
| Feature | What Upfirst lists | Why it matters in the trades |
|---|---|---|
| Transfers | Warm transfers with context and waterfall transfers on all plans | Waterfall can try the on-call tech, then a backup, then the owner |
| Emergency routing | Rules such as sending current clients with an HVAC emergency to the on-call phone | You decide which callers and which words wake someone up |
| Booking | Google Calendar, Outlook, Calendly, Acuity, Square and Clio; booking links by text | Books a calendar slot, not a job on your dispatch board |
| After-hours only | Forward just after hours, or all calls | Keeps your office on daytime calls |
| Languages | 35+ languages with automatic switching and translated transcripts | Useful in markets with Spanish-speaking homeowners |
| Texting | Two-way texting on all plans | Callers can send an address or a photo description by text |
| Integrations | Zapier, Make, API and custom integrations | The route into field software |
| Data | Zero data retention listed on all plans; BAAs on Enterprise | Ask what that means for recordings you want to keep |
Does Upfirst work with Jobber, ServiceTitan or Housecall Pro?
Not natively. Upfirst's integrations page lists Acuity, Calendly, Clio, Google Calendar, Make, Outlook, Square, Zapier and custom integrations, with no field service software. Its HVAC page says it can sync leads and service requests to ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro and Jobber through Zapier. That means a Zap creates a customer or request from the call; it does not check your dispatch board for an open slot. Our Jobber AI integration guide explains what Jobber's API allows if you want more than a Zap.
Who is Upfirst a good fit for, and who should skip it?
Upfirst fits small shops that want a cheap, month-to-month AI answering service they can set up in an afternoon and where a person in the office turns call summaries into jobs. It fits less well when you need the AI to book straight onto a ServiceTitan or Jobber board.
| Your situation | Upfirst? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 10 trucks, owner or one CSR, need nights and overflow covered | Good fit | Low entry price, transfers and texting on every plan |
| You want to test AI answering before committing | Good fit | Free 14-day or 100-call trial with no card |
| Bookings must land on the dispatch board automatically | Weak fit | Calendar booking plus Zapier, not a native board integration |
| On Jobber and happy with Jobber | Compare first | Jobber sells its own Receptionist add-on at $29 a month |
| High-volume ServiceTitan contact center | Weak fit | Tools like Avoca or ServiceTitan's AI Voice Agent read the customer record |
| Auto repair shop | Possible | Works as a general receptionist; auto is not one of its listed industries |
Where does Upfirst fall short?
The main gaps are field software depth, the work a Zap leaves undone, and the setup you have to do yourself.
- It books into a calendar, not your field software. Someone still has to create the job, pick the tech and confirm the window, unless you build a Zapier step and keep it working.
- Zaps fail quietly. If a field name changes or a token expires, leads stop syncing and nobody notices until a customer calls back angry. Check the log weekly.
- You write the emergency rules. Upfirst serves many industries, so it does not arrive knowing that a gas smell or no heat in January is different from a tune-up request. Our safety word list is a starting template.
- No human backup service. Transfers go to your people. If nobody answers, the caller gets a message or a callback promise.
- Per-call billing. A 40-second hours question costs the same as a ten-minute emergency, which is fine for most trades but worth knowing.
What are the best Upfirst alternatives?
The alternatives most worth comparing are Jobber's own Receptionist if you run Jobber, Rosie if you prefer minute-based billing, and Smith.ai if you want a live person available behind the AI.
| Alternative | Price as of November 2026 | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jobber Receptionist | $29 a month add-on on Jobber's pricing page | Jobber shops that want calls and texts turned into Jobber requests and visits | Only knows what is in Jobber |
| Rosie | $49, $149 or $299 a month for 250, 1,000 or 2,000 minutes | Owners who prefer minute-based plans | Calendar booking and live transfers start on the $149 Scale plan |
| Smith.ai AI Receptionist | Free for 25 calls; Pro from $150 a month for 75 calls | Shops that want the option of a North American live receptionist | Higher per-call cost than Upfirst |
For a larger ServiceTitan operation, read our Avoca review. For prices on more services side by side, see the best AI answering service comparison, and if your real problem is nights and weekends, our after hours answering service guide compares live, AI and hybrid coverage.
Is Upfirst worth it?
For a small trade business that misses calls after hours, Upfirst is one of the cheapest reasonable ways to stop sending callers to voicemail, and the free trial makes it low risk to test. It is worth it when someone in your office will turn its summaries into booked jobs the next morning.
It is not worth it as a replacement for a CSR who books into your field software with the right job type, membership and arrival window. If that is the job you need done, either pay for a tool built for your system or keep a person on it and use Upfirst only for overflow. Run the trial on real calls for two weeks and listen to ten recordings before you decide.
Where Cortex fits
Cortex does not sell or resell an answering service. If Upfirst answers your calls well, keep it. The gap it leaves is the step after the call: turning summaries into jobs, checking that nothing fell through, and following up on callers who did not book. We build agents that do that work inside Jobber, ServiceTitan or Housecall Pro with their own login, and a person approves every message and record change before it goes out.
To see which of your calls an AI should take and what should happen after each one, start with the Free AI Operations Audit.
