Your AI receptionist. Start with a prebuilt receptionist workflow.

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.

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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.

AI or human receptionist: which fits your business

An offshore receptionist suits work needing broad human judgement or general admin support. Frontly is usually stronger on repeatable phone workflows: available 24/7, 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 depends on your current phone setup.

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.

How inbound answering works

Yes. Frontly connects to calendars, CRMs, practice systems, property platforms and help desks, and every one is listed on our integrations page as Available or Requires vendor approval. Integrations are what let Frontly complete an action during the call instead of generating another message for staff to process later.

See every integration

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

You do, in the visual builder. You start from a prebuilt receptionist workflow, customise it with your business information, test it before going live and update it whenever your needs change, with email support for questions about using Frontly. If you want expert guidance, a separate paid add-on gives you a Customer Success Partner who reviews your workflows and makes recommendations.

See the workflow builderSee the managed service on pricing

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

Every call is transcribed on every plan, including outbound campaign calls on Pro, and the full call history sits in your dashboard. That is included. A voice recording of the call audio is a separate add-on, off by default, and switched on per account rather than per agent.

See the add-on on pricing

No. Recording is set at the account level, so once it is on, every inbound and outbound call is recorded. There is no per-call opt-out. That is why the disclosure in your greeting matters, and why the obligation to get it right sits with you.

Clause 8.4 of our Terms

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 languagesWhy multilingual cover is a hiring problem

Yes, on the Pro plan. 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

Setup time depends on verification, workflow complexity and integrations. You customise the general receptionist workflow with your business information, questions and call-handling rules, then test it before going live. Integrations, complex booking rules and multi-location escalation paths need more testing.

Frontly has three plans. Starter and Standard are flat monthly rates for inbound answering, and Pro, which adds outbound campaigns and higher volume, is quoted. 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 rates

No. Every plan is month to month, with no commitment beyond the plan you pick, and you can cancel any time. Your plan runs to the end of the period you have paid for.

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.