What CRM & Call Tracking Actually Costs
Your monthly service fee gets you access to our platform. Phone numbers, call minutes, text messages, and AI usage are billed separately at cost. Here is what that looks like in practice.
The short version. Phone and messaging rates are set by HighLevel, the CRM platform we run on. We pass those costs through with a small markup to cover payment processing and overhead. For most clients this lands somewhere between $10 and $45 a month. If you add an AI attendant, expect that to roughly double.
Call Tracking: Three Real Examples
Each example assumes five local numbers: a rotating pool of four for tracking where callers come from, plus a dedicated number for your ads. All calls forward to your existing office line, and call recording is on.
About 50 calls a month averaging 3 minutes each.
About 150 calls a month averaging 4 minutes each. Most of our clients land here.
About 400 calls a month averaging 4 minutes each.
Calls bill per minute and round up to the next full minute. Numbers bill monthly whether or not anyone calls them, so tell us if you want one released.
Adding Text Messaging
Texting is billed per segment. A plain SMS holds about 160 characters per segment; longer messages, emoji, and special characters use more.
On the Typical example above, sending and receiving about 400 text segments a month adds roughly $5, bringing that account to about $26 per month.
US carriers also require every business that texts to register its brand and campaign. That is a one-time fee of about $25 and a monthly campaign fee that usually runs $2 to $11. We handle the registration and tell you the exact figure before submitting.
Adding an AI Attendant
An AI attendant answers your tracking numbers, greets the caller, asks a few qualifying questions, and either routes the call to you or captures the details into your CRM. It is billed by the minute it is actually talking.
Roughly $0.09 per minute of AI conversation, all in. That covers the AI voice engine, the text-to-speech voice, the language model, and the phone minutes underneath it.
A premium, more natural-sounding voice runs closer to $0.25 per minute. We start clients on the standard voice unless you want to hear the difference.
150 calls, AI answers each one for about 90 seconds before routing.
400 calls, AI answers each one for about 90 seconds before routing.
HighLevel sells flat-rate AI plans at $50 and $97 a month. Those only pay off above roughly 1,400 AI minutes a month. We put clients on pay-per-minute unless the volume clearly justifies a plan, and we will tell you when it does.
AI conversation length varies with how much the caller says. A caller who answers in one word costs less than one who tells a long story. These figures assume a straightforward greet-qualify-route script.
Where These Rates Come From
We do not set these prices. HighLevel, the CRM platform we build on, sets them based on its telecom carrier and AI providers, and those rates change on their schedule rather than ours. We pass the cost through with a small markup that covers payment processing and the overhead of managing your account’s billing.
You are welcome to check the source pricing yourself:
| What it covers | HighLevel’s published pricing |
|---|---|
| Phone numbers, call minutes, SMS and MMS, recording, transcription, carrier surcharges, A2P registration | Phone System Pricing & Billing Guide |
| Email sending, receiving, forwarding, and address verification | LC Email Pricing |
| Voice AI, conversation AI, and the AI Employee plans | AI Product Pricing |
The figures on this page reflect those rates plus our markup, as of when this page was written. Because the underlying rates can change without notice to us, treat everything here as a good-faith estimate rather than a locked quote.
A Few Things That Surprise People
- Inbound costs the same as outbound. Receiving a call or a text is billed at the same rate as sending one. That is standard across every business phone platform.
- Recording storage accumulates. You are billed monthly on every recording currently stored, not just this month’s calls. After a year of steady use it adds a few dollars a month. We can set an automatic deletion window if you would rather it not build up.
- Undelivered texts still bill. Once a message is handed to the carrier, it is charged whether or not it lands. Carriers do not refund these.
- Mobile carriers add their own surcharge on business texts, roughly a third of a cent to a cent per message depending on whether the recipient is on AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, or another carrier. It is included in the estimates above.
- Idle numbers still bill. A tracking number you have stopped using costs the same as an active one.
How Billing Works
Your account keeps a prepaid balance. Usage draws down from it, and when it runs low the account automatically tops up using the payment method on file. Every individual charge is itemized in the CRM under Settings, then Billing, then Wallets & Transactions, so you can always see exactly where the money went.
Your monthly service fee is separate and appears on your regular invoice.
Want a projection for your account?
These examples are useful, but your call volume is the only number that really matters. Tell us roughly how many calls you take in a month and whether you want texting or an AI attendant, and we will put together a projection based on current rates.
Reach out to your account manager, or email [email protected]. If you are already a client and want to review a specific charge, send it over and we will walk through it with you.