The AI front desk for your small business.

Frontly is an Australian AI front desk platform. It answers your business calls, works out what each caller needs, and completes the approved workflow: answering the question, capturing the enquiry, booking the appointment, transferring the call, or updating a connected system. Every call lands in your Frontly dashboard with a transcript.

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An AI receptionist is a phone system that holds a natural conversation with a caller and performs front-desk tasks automatically. Unlike voicemail or an answering machine, it asks questions, understands the replies, and takes the next approved action during the call rather than leaving a message for somebody else to action later.

AI vs a human receptionist

No. A traditional answering service records a message for someone to handle later. Frontly completes the work on the call: it books the appointment, qualifies the enquiry, answers the question from your knowledge base, sends the information, or routes the caller to the right person. The difference shows up as how much is left on your desk the next morning.

Frontly vs a virtual receptionistFrontly vs OfficeHQ

A traditional IVR makes callers translate their problem into a numbered option, and routing is all it can do. Frontly lets the caller explain what they need in their own words, asks a follow-up when it is unclear, and either resolves the call outright or connects them to the right person with a spoken briefing.

See AI IVR

Frontly uses natural conversational voices built for live phone calls. It handles interruptions, follow-up questions and the many different ways people phrase the same request. The voice, greeting, tone and speaking style are all configurable. The honest way to judge is to ring it yourself rather than take our word for it.

Call the agent now

Only if you want them to be, and it is set in the greeting. Frontly can introduce itself plainly as your AI assistant, or simply answer in your business name. Businesses in regulated sectors usually disclose it and many others do not. You control the wording either way.

It can automate a large share of repeatable phone work, but it cannot do the physical front-desk job or exercise human judgement. Most businesses use Frontly for predictable phone enquiries while their people handle exceptions, relationships and whoever is standing at the counter. What share that is depends on your call mix, and it is worth measuring rather than assuming.

Usually one of four things: removing a paid after-hours or overflow service, deferring the next hire, supporting more locations with the same team, or converting more calls into completed bookings. Making an existing employee's day easier is a nice side effect, not a business case, and you should hold us to the first four.

Model it on your numbersThe true cost of a receptionist, itemised

An offshore receptionist suits work needing broad human judgement or general admin support. Frontly is usually stronger on repeatable phone workflows: available 24/7, takes every call at once during a spike, applies your policy identically every time, and connects to your systems. Some businesses run both, with people handling the exceptions.

Yes. In most setups your existing number forwards to Frontly, and you choose whether that is every call, only unanswered calls, only calls when the line is busy, or only after hours. Customers keep ringing the number they already know and your current phone system stays where it is.

Usually not. Frontly runs alongside an existing mobile, landline, VoIP or PBX setup using call forwarding or SIP. Your handsets, extensions and internal routing stay as they are. The right connection method is confirmed during setup, and it is one of the first things we check.

Yes. Frontly can take every call, cover only outside business hours, or act as overflow when nobody answers within a set number of rings. Plenty of businesses start with after-hours only, watch what it handles, and widen the coverage from there.

See after-hours answering

Yes, concurrently, up to the capacity configured for your service. That is what changes during a campaign, an outage, a seasonal peak or an open-home weekend: callers are not pushed to voicemail because the line is already engaged, which is exactly when most businesses lose the most work.

It follows the escalation rules you set. It can transfer the caller, notify an on-call person, send an SMS or email, create a task, or capture a detailed message. Whoever receives it gets the caller's details and the reason for the call rather than just a name and a number.

Yes. Transfers can be triggered by what the caller asks for, the urgency, the department, the location, the time of day, or the on-call roster. Frontly collects the relevant details first and hands over with a spoken briefing, so the caller does not repeat the story they have just told.

Yes. Frontly checks availability and creates, reschedules or cancels bookings, either in its own scheduling system or in a connected platform. The exact behaviour depends on the booking rules and the integration configured for your business, which we agree during setup.

How inbound answering works

Frontly connects to any system exposing an OAuth2 or API-key integration, including calendars, CRMs, practice systems, property platforms and help desks. Integrations are what let Frontly complete an action during the call instead of generating another message for staff to process later.

Verified integrations by industry

Yes. You control the business information, the approved answers, the qualifying questions, the escalation rules, and which actions Frontly is allowed to take. Different workflows can run for business hours, after hours, individual locations, departments and caller types.

See the workflow builder

Through the Frontly dashboard as structured records: caller details, what they wanted, the outcome, the follow-up action, and the full transcript. The same information can be pushed by email or SMS, or into a connected CRM or booking system, so the right person sees it without logging in.

Frontly's core platform and your call records are hosted in Australian data centres. To deliver real-time conversation, limited call content is processed by specialist speech and language providers, some located overseas, under no-retention terms. Our privacy page sets out the full data flow rather than reducing it to a slogan.

Read the data flow

Recording is configurable and does not have to be switched on. Where recording or transcription is used, the greeting, the consent wording, who can access it, and how long it is kept are all configured around your business and your industry's requirements.

Yes, on the same number. Language availability and quality depend on the voice and speech configuration selected, so any language you rely on should be tested before it goes into production. We would rather you hear it than take the claim on trust.

Voices and languages

Yes. Frontly runs approved outbound workflows including appointment reminders, recalls, confirmations, screening and follow-ups, from the same platform that answers your inbound line. Outbound campaigns follow Australian consent, caller identification, permitted calling hours and Do Not Call Register requirements.

See outbound campaignsWhat the ACMA rules require of AI calling

About an hour for a standard setup. The workflows are templated by industry, so most of the work is agreeing your call types, your hours and your escalation rules. Integrations, complex booking rules and multi-location escalation paths need more testing, and we tell you upfront if yours is one of them.

Frontly is a flat monthly rate, in three families and three sizes that scale with your monthly call minutes. The comparison worth making is not the monthly price on its own, but against the bookings completed, the paid coverage removed, and the hire deferred.

See current ratesWork out your return

Two options. Annual is paid upfront for 12 months at the lower rate and auto-renews, with no refund for cancelling early. Monthly has no commitment and can be cancelled any time, at roughly 20% more per month. Annual waives the one-off setup fee; monthly does not. Current figures are on the pricing page.

Compare the plans

When nearly every call needs specialist judgement, when almost all the work happens face to face, or when your call volume is so low that the occasional voicemail costs you nothing. We would rather say that upfront than sell you something that does not pay for itself.