Starter
The phone that rings steadily, not constantly. One kitchen, one line, one number people call — a plan shaped for a restaurant that has never needed to count its calls, and shouldn't have to start just to get its phone answered well.
The plan for ordinary weeks.
A single location is the whole shape of it. That isn't a limitation stated apologetically — it's the plan this size of restaurant should look at first, rather than sizing up a bigger tier "to be safe" before anyone has a real sense of what the phone does in a typical week. Starter fits a restaurant that has never needed call-volume software, has never counted how many times the line rings on a Tuesday, and doesn't need to start now. The starting point here isn't a forecast. It's simply picking up.
The demand itself is steady rather than dramatic — hours-and-menu questions mixed with a regular but unremarkable flow of orders, day after day, without the sharp two-night spikes that push a restaurant toward a bigger plan. A neighborhood counter-service spot, a single pizzeria, a small sit-down room: the common thread isn't cuisine, it's a phone that rings often enough to be worth answering well and rarely enough that nobody has ever sat down and counted it.
What steady actually adds up to.
Picture a single-location restaurant fielding about 45 calls in a typical week — a dozen of them asking whether the kitchen's still open or whether a dish still has a certain ingredient, the rest placing an order of some kind. Call length varies enormously in real life, from a ten-second hours check to a five-minute order with three modifications, so the figure below is a plain, adjustable example — never a researched or typical number.
That is the shape Starter's allowance is being cut for: a month built from ordinary calls, landing with real room to spare — enough headroom that a big group calling ahead, a slow morning that turns into a rushed evening, or a Friday that runs a little heavier than usual all get absorbed without anyone tracking anything. The exact allowance line sits at the press with the rest of the figures; the headroom-first shape is the settled part.
BOTH FIGURES ARE AT THE PRESS. THE SHAPE OF THE PLAN IS SETTLED; ITS NUMBERS ARE CONFIRMED IN CONVERSATION AT /ACCESS, NEVER READ OFF A PAGE.
Nothing stops. The meter continues.
Say that same restaurant has an unusually active stretch — a wave of catering orders, a local write-up, a holiday week — and weekly volume climbs from 45 calls toward 85 for a few weeks running. At the same illustrative five-minute average, the month lands near 1,700 minutes instead of 900: roughly double an ordinary month, on the same line.
Whatever the allowance turns out to be, the mechanism past it is already settled: no call gets refused, no line goes quiet, no plan change is demanded mid-month. Minutes past the allowance are metered at the one rate every plan shares, added to that month's bill, and the next ordinary month goes back to the plan figure on its own. An allowance crossed once in a while is not a plan that's the wrong size — it's a month that ran heavier than usual, billed accordingly and left at that.
If growth turns out to be lasting rather than a busy stretch, that's the actual signal worth watching. A phone that's busy most days, not just some, is Standard's shape — the next place to look.
Starter is the smallest plan, not a smaller product. The machinery below comes with every tier, unchanged.
THE SAME SIX LINES APPEAR ON EVERY PLAN PAGE, UNCHANGED. WHAT DIFFERS BY PLAN — THE ALLOWANCE AND THE MONTHLY FIGURE — IS BEING SET AT THE PRESS.
The worked month above is the honest answer: an ordinary week's worth of ordinary calls adds up to real minutes fast. This plan exists specifically for volume in that range — not as a shrunken version of something built for more.
No. That's the point of starting here rather than guessing at something bigger. If you'd rather see the arithmetic on your own rough numbers, the estimate takes a calls-per-day guess and works out which shape fits — with every assumption on the page.
No — this is the entry point. A restaurant whose volume sits far under the worked example still starts here; the allowance simply carries more headroom for that particular account.
Everything above describes one restaurant, one line, one account. This plan doesn't average or split its allowance across locations — a restaurant running more than one location prices each on its own line, each on its own volume, and Enterprise covers what actually changes in that conversation. Related: Standard, the next shape up · how minutes work, the full definition of what gets counted · the pricing FAQ, for what's settled and what's still at the press.
Run your numbers with us.
Rates are being set at the press. Sign up to see the live rate card and check out yourself, or request access and we'll walk your call volume, your plan shape, and your final number together.