Beside
Beside combines an AI receptionist, business phone line, scheduling, CRM, review management, website builder, and ads management into one agent for local service businesses. It learns your trade, drafts each next move for approval, then executes: after-hours calls get answered, leads get chased by text and email, jobs land on the calendar, and reviews get replies in your voice. Paid plans start at $99 monthly.
What is Beside?
Beside is an AI operating system for local service businesses: one agent that answers the phone, books the work, chases the leads, and keeps customers coming back. Instead of handing owners another dashboard, Beside does the work and asks for approval. The product bundles a business phone line, an AI receptionist, lead follow-up with a CRM, self-serve scheduling, a reviews manager, a website builder, and Google Ads management into a single subscription, so a plumber, salon, or realtor does not have to stitch five tools together.
The AI receptionist is the center of the system. It picks up live on your own number, day or night, including the hours you are already on a job, asks the job questions you wrote, checks Google or Outlook for real availability, books the appointment, and texts a confirmation. Every call is transcribed and summarized, so nothing depends on memory. It screens spam, hands a caller to a teammate, takes a message with name, reason, and callback, and speaks English, Spanish, French, or Portuguese. You can pick a tone or clone your own voice, and teach it how your shop name and street names are pronounced.
After the call, Beside keeps going. It creates and enriches the contact, drafts quotes, sends follow-up texts and emails, and moves the record through pipeline stages. The CRM holds every conversation, job, and review per customer. Lifecycle campaigns bring regulars back with timely offers and maintenance reminders, while the Reviews Manager requests a review after each job and replies to every review in your voice.
What separates Beside from point tools is the approval model. Routine low-risk work can run on its own from day one, but anything with your name on it arrives as a finished draft you approve, edit, or reject. Approve the same move repeatedly and Beside offers to take it over, and every action keeps an undo. Visibility work sits alongside: a website built and maintained for you, Google Ads campaigns set up and optimized, and blog, SEO, and GEO answer optimization still marked as coming soon.
Setup is deliberately light. You keep your existing number by porting or forwarding, keep the CRM, calendar, and email you already use through integrations such as HubSpot, Follow Up Boss, Attio, Google Contacts, Google Sheets, and Microsoft Teams, and start from a free business audit that studies your site, reviews, and competitors. Beside reports more than 21,000 paying businesses and a 4.8-star rating. Pricing runs on monthly credits: Part-time at $99 for 5,000 credits and Full-time at $249.99 for 12,500.
Beside Core Features
AI Receptionist
Picks up live 24/7 on your own number, asks the job questions you set, checks Google or Outlook availability, books the appointment, transfers urgent callers, and sends a transcript plus summary.
Business Phone Line
Your own number for calls and SMS, ported or forwarded from your current carrier, with new local or toll-free lines available per team member.
Lead Follow-Up and CRM
Replies by text and email within seconds, keeps chasing until the job is booked, and holds every contact, conversation, quote, and job in one record.
Scheduling
A public booking link and self-serve scheduling around real availability, with automatic reminders and confirmations that cut no-shows.
Reviews Manager
Requests a review after every job and replies to each Google review in your voice, with approval before anything posts.
Website Builder
A professional site built for you, published, and kept current automatically rather than left to decay after launch.
Ads Manager
Google Ads campaigns set up, run, and optimized for you, with clear reporting on the calls and bookings they produce.
Approval-Based Live Agent
Every follow-up, campaign, quote, and review reply arrives as a finished draft you approve, edit, or reject, with undo on every action.
Who is Beside for?
Beside fits owner-operated local service businesses where the phone is still the front door and the person best at selling is usually the one holding the tool. If missed calls are lost revenue and there is no full-time office staff to catch them, this is the gap it fills. Home services contractors. Plumbers, HVAC technicians, electricians, roofers, and landscapers live with emergency calls that arrive after six and quotes that go cold. Beside sorts emergencies from estimates, answers when the van is under a sink, and keeps quotes moving with follow-up texts. Real estate agents and brokerages. Agents answer mid-showing or lose the lead. Beside picks up, books the tour, and keeps cold leads warm until closing, and it works with Follow Up Boss for teams already running that pipeline. Salons, barbers, and med spas. Stylists cannot stop mid-service. Beside answers, books the next visit around real availability, and texts regulars who have gone quiet, which is where most repeat revenue sits. Insurance and professional services. Agents in meetings need screening, not silence. Beside routes what is urgent, captures the rest with context, and keeps a record of every conversation for compliance-minded shops. Automotive and specialty trades. Auto brokers, dealerships, detailers, and service shops get leads that expect an answer in seconds. Beside qualifies the buyer, sends a quote, and follows up to the sale. Shops that quote by text win those leads, and the receptionist can send the quote while the caller is still on the line. Agencies and multi-location operators. Beside for agencies and per-line provisioning let a team deploy an agent on every number, so a two-person shop and a two-hundred-seat fleet run the same way, with each line keeping its own agent and its own call history. Owners who mainly want the after-hours calls covered can start with the standalone Beside Phone plans at $29 per business per month and add the full workspace later. It is not the right buy for enterprise contact centers that need deep telephony routing, or for businesses that want a purely self-serve tool with no review step. The value depends on handing over real work, so owners who intend to approve everything manually will see less return than the credit allowance suggests.
Beside Use Cases
Answer every after-hours emergency call and book the plumber for the next morning slot.
Qualify inbound HVAC leads and send a priced quote before the caller hangs up.
Book showings for a realtor while she is standing in the middle of an open house.
Text quiet salon clients a rebooking offer and fill an empty Tuesday chair.
Chase website form leads by text and email until they book or opt out.
Reply to every Google review in the owner's voice without writing a single one.
Launch a Google Ads campaign and route the calls it produces straight to the receptionist.
Provision a local number and its own AI agent for each technician in a growing fleet.
Beside Pros and Cons
Pros
- Owns the phone line, so calls, texts, follow-up, and the calendar all write into one customer record instead of five disconnected tools.
- Approval-first design keeps a human in the loop while still removing the typing: finished drafts, one-tap approve, and an undo on every action.
- Replaces several subscriptions at once, covering phone, AI receptionist, CRM, scheduling, reviews, website, and Google Ads under one bill.
- Keeps what already works through number porting or forwarding and integrations such as HubSpot, Follow Up Boss, Attio, Google Contacts, and Microsoft Teams.
Cons
- Credit-based pricing is hard to forecast and unused monthly credits do not roll over, with extra credits costing $25 per 1,000.
- No free plan and no conventional free trial: the free entry point is a business audit, then paid plans begin at $99 per month.
- Blog, SEO, and GEO answer optimization are still labeled Soon, so the visibility side trails the phone and follow-up features.
FAQ About Beside
Beside Pricing
Two credit-based plans with the same agent and the same credit rates: Part-time at $99/month for 5,000 monthly credits and Full-time at $249.99/month for 12,500. Monthly credits reset at renewal and do not roll over; add-on credits cost $25 per 1,000, $125 per 5,000, or $250 per 10,000 and never expire. Standalone Beside Phone is priced separately at $29/month for 30 AI-answered calls or $99/month unlimited, with no per-minute fees. A free business audit is available before you subscribe.
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