Understanding credits and voice
What gets counted, what does not, and why meters stay separate. One answered conversation is one call, however long it runs.
What exactly gets counted in a month?
One answered conversation counts as one call, however long it runs. A forty-second call and a nine-minute call cost the same: that is the simplest definition on this market, and it is deliberate.
Your base includes 50 Standard calls and one local number, with no setup or activation fee. That figure is the only one touching voice.
Other meters exist, yet they live apart: questions you ask your own assistant, replies sent to customers on written channels, text-message segments, transactional emails. None draws from a voice meter, and none turns into another.
Why this page exists
Because this is where vendors go vague. Counting unique callers, short sessions, or conversations grouped under internal rules makes an invoice impossible to predict.
You deserve a rule you can explain to your accountant in one sentence, and a screen showing where you stand before a month ends. That is what this guide covers.
A call is an answered conversation
Length changes nothing. A caller hanging up after two sentences and a caller describing a basement for eight minutes consume exactly the same.
A technical failure occurring before conversation begins does not count. A retry of one delivery toward one destination does not count either: those are ten attempts, not ten deliveries.
And a written request to your assistant — draft a message for this customer — is not a phone call. It belongs to its own meter.
Two voices, two rates of consumption
Standard voice belongs to a base, and it is what your 50 calls count. A higher-fidelity voice also exists: it handles pauses, nuance and Quebec first names better, and it draws more from that same voice meter.
A mode is chosen, and it can be heard beforehand. A preview plays your own greeting in a selected voice before anything goes live.
A voice meter is kept in whole half-units so nothing gets lost to rounding, and a period total is rounded once, at its end.
Other meters, and why they stay separate
Questions you ask your own assistant have a meter of their own. Replies sent to customers on written channels — chat, text, social messaging, email — form a shared meter, because it remains one conversation with one person whichever door they came through.
Text-message segments and transactional emails are counted apart, because a carrier routes them and bills by unit. That is telephony reality rather than billing invention.
A useful consequence: buying capacity on a meter unlocks no capability. Capacity and permission are two different things, and one does not stand in for another.
Where you see all of it
Inside an app, a usage screen shows every meter, a current period, and what remains. You look whenever you want, with no report to request.
Every call there is attached to its record: who called, what was asked, what was promised, and what it consumed. An invoice should carry no line whose origin you cannot trace.
If your volume shifts — a seasonal peak, a campaign, a large contract — that is where you see it before a month ends, and you decide afterwards. Capabilities reaching further, such as booking, quote follow-up or an email inbox, carry meters of their own, presented the same way.
What we read, and when
- Retell — component pricing for voice
- Twilio — voice pricing in Canada
- Twilio — SMS pricing in Canada
- Amazon SES — email pricing
Checked on
Related pages
Pages carrying those figures and screens.
Frequently asked questions
Does a ten-minute call count for more than a one-minute call?
No. One answered conversation is one call, however long it runs. It is the simplest definition on this market, and it is deliberate: per-minute billing pushes a receptionist to cut people off, and it makes you pay for talkative callers. Here, a caller hanging up after two sentences and a caller describing a basement for eight minutes consume exactly the same.
Do test calls count?
A call you place from a browser to hear your own greeting does not draw on your allowance. That holds during a trial and afterwards, and it is a design rule: you are not charged for checking that the product works before plugging it into your customers.
And a call that fails before the conversation starts?
It does not count. A technical failure occurring before a conversation begins is not an answered conversation. In the same way, a retry of one send toward one destination does not count twice: those are attempts, not deliveries.
Why do the meters stay separate?
Because they do not cost the same and they do not serve you at the same moment. Voice, your own questions to the assistant, written replies to customers, text-message segments and transactional emails each have their own line. None draws on another, and none turns into another — which makes an invoice readable rather than an opaque sum.
Does buying capacity unlock capabilities?
No, and that distinction avoids expensive misunderstandings. Capacity is volume; a permission is the right to perform an act. Adding volume on a meter does not grant the right to book, to price or to collect: those acts belong to the modules that carry them.
Where do you see what was consumed, and when?
Inside an app, a usage screen shows every meter, the current period and what remains. Every call there is attached to its record: who called, what was asked, what was promised, what it consumed. An invoice should carry no line whose origin you cannot trace.
What happens when a month's allowance is reached?
You see it coming on the usage screen before the month ends, and you decide from there. The rule applying beyond the included volume is not settled today and will be announced only once it is decided: we prefer a page saying not yet settled to a page inventing a figure.
Why does one voice consume more than another?
Because it is produced differently. Standard voice belongs to a base and it is what your 50 calls count. A higher-fidelity voice handles pauses, nuance and Quebec first names better, and it draws more from that same voice meter. The mode is chosen, and it can be heard before going live.
Are confirmation messages counted as replies?
No. Service and confirmation messages accompanying a call or an appointment stay included in your base, with no extra module. What belongs to the reply allowance is the conversation: a question asked by a customer and a written answer handling it. The difference lies in the nature of the exchange, not in the channel carrying it.
Why are text-message segments counted apart from replies?
Because a carrier transports them and bills by unit. A long message is split into several segments by the network, whatever the receptionist wrote. Folding that transport into the subscription would mean charging everyone for an average volume; so it is shown on its own line, beside the number of replies.
Can you know what one call consumed, call by call?
What was consumed is attached to each call in your workspace, beside the customer file, the request and the transcript. What a call actually costs us has only recently begun to be measured and is not published: until it is established on real calls, no figure will be written here.