Quo AI Receptionist: Sona Pricing and Limits (2026)
If your team already runs its phones on Quo, the business phone system that used to be called OpenPhone, the Quo AI receptionist is already one menu away. It is called Sona. You can switch it on without porting a number, without a second app, and for some teams without spending more than $25 a month. That convenience is real, and it is the main reason to pick it. The pricing model is less obvious than it looks, and a few limits only show up in Quo's own support docs.
NoMissedCall sells a competing AI receptionist, so read our view with that in mind. Every Quo figure below comes from Quo's pricing page, its Sona product page and its support article on Sona, all read on 26 October 2026. Where Quo is the better choice, we say so.
What the Quo AI receptionist actually is
Sona is not a separate product. It is a step you drop into a Quo call flow. Quo's support article lists the places it can sit: after your team's phones ring and nobody picks up, after a phone menu option, after a business-hours check, or at several points in the same flow. You can set up more than one Sona step and give each its own greeting, so after-hours callers hear something different from overflow callers at lunch.
On the call, Sona greets the caller, answers questions from a knowledge base you write (hours, services, pricing, FAQs), and takes a message. By default it collects the caller's name and the reason for the call. You can add your own fields and follow-up questions that only trigger on certain answers. Quo says every Sona call is recorded and gets a summary.
Two more things it can do, per the Sona page:
- Transfer the caller to a teammate or department, based on instructions you write.
- Send a text message with a scheduling link, a form or directions to the caller's phone while the call is still going. A separate text-message follow-up for new leads is labeled beta and is free during the beta on every plan.
The limits sit in the same FAQ. It says Sona handles inbound calls only and cannot make outbound calls. It works only inside Quo, not on another phone system. It cannot switch languages partway through a call. And the Sona page does not describe direct calendar booking. Booking happens when the caller opens the link Sona texts them, not on the call itself.
Quo AI receptionist pricing, as of October 2026
You pay for two things: the Quo seat and Sona usage. The seat prices come from Quo's pricing page, per user per month, before taxes and fees:
| Quo plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing | Relevant to Sona |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $19 | $15 | Sona included; AI summaries and transcripts only for calls Sona handles |
| Business | $33 | $23 | Adds AI summaries for all calls, call transfers, phone menus, HubSpot and Salesforce |
| Scale | $47 | $35 | Adds AI call tags and phone support |
Sona itself runs on credits. Quo's page says "1 Call = 100 credits." Every plan includes 1,000 credits a month, which is 10 calls. Past that you pick a tier:
| Sona tier | Price per month | Calls included | Each extra call | Effective cost per included call |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | $0 | 10 | $1.00 | Free |
| Tier 2 | $25 | 40 | $0.75 | About 63 cents |
| Tier 3 | $49 | 100 | $0.65 | 49 cents |
| Tier 4 | $99 | 250 | $0.55 | About 40 cents |
| Tier 5 | $199 | 600 | $0.45 | About 33 cents |
The tier prices and overage rates are Quo's, from its pricing page; the last column is our division. Sona tiers are billed on top of the seat, per Quo's support article.
Watch for older numbers. That support article still describes the free allowance as 10 calls with "$1 per additional call," which matches Tier 1 but not the paid tiers. In our real estate answering service comparison we found a Quo industry page quoting $49 for 50 calls. Third-party reviews quote other figures again. The pricing page is the one Quo keeps current, so we would trust it and confirm at checkout.
Per call, not per minute
This is the part that makes Sona different from most AI receptionists. Rosie, RingCentral and NoMissedCall count minutes. Sona counts calls. A five-minute call about a quote and a 40-second "are you open Saturday?" both cost one call.
That helps if your callers ask long questions, and it hurts if most calls are short. Quo's pages do not say whether a caller who hangs up during the greeting, or a robocall that reaches Sona, uses a call. Ask before you choose a tier. If short and spam calls do count, a busy line with a lot of noise burns through 40 calls fast.
You can cap usage. According to the support article, when credits run out and overages are off, calls go to a fallback step, which is voicemail by default. That is a sensible safety net, but it means the callers you most wanted Sona to catch, the ones in a busy month, are the ones who hit voicemail.
The fine print that decides it for some teams
Quo's own pages list conditions that the comparison sites mostly skip.
- Billing: the support article says Sona requires a paid plan billed through Stripe, "not iOS App Store billing." If you signed up for Quo inside the iPhone app, you would need to change how you pay before you can add Sona.
- Permissions: only an Admin or Owner can set it up.
- Trial: eligible workspaces get a 7-day free trial with unlimited calls. It converts to a paid subscription unless you cancel. Quo's free-trial accounts cannot buy Sona at all, so you need a paid Quo plan first.
- Transfers: the Sona page says it transfers callers to "the right teammate or department." Quo's pricing page lists call transfers as a Business plan feature. The support article does not state a plan requirement for Sona transfers. If live transfer matters to you, confirm it works on Starter before you build around it.
- Languages: the Sona page says English, Spanish and French. The structured data on the same page says "Currently, Sona only supports English." Both say it cannot switch languages mid-call. If you need Spanish, test it on a real call.
Where Sona beats NoMissedCall
If you are already on Quo, Sona wins on simplicity. There is no call forwarding to set up, no second inbox, and the call recording and summary land in the same thread your team already reads. Shared numbers, multiple users and Quo's HubSpot and Salesforce integrations on the Business plan are things a standalone app does not try to replace.
Sona also transfers calls. NoMissedCall has no live transfer in its Help Center; you get a push notification with the transcript and summary when the call ends. If a hot lead needs to be put through to a person mid-call, that is a real gap on our side.
And for long calls, per-call billing can come out cheaper than any minute allowance. A shop whose callers spend four or five minutes describing a problem pays the same Sona rate as a shop with 30-second calls.
Where it falls short
Sona only answers Quo numbers. If your business line is with a carrier, a cell plan or another VoIP system, adopting Sona means moving your phones to Quo first. That is a bigger decision than buying an answering service, and you pay a seat price for every user.
Booking is a text link, not a calendar slot confirmed on the call. Some callers will open the link and book. Others will close the text and call the next business on the list. Our guide to AI receptionists that book appointments covers which products confirm a time while the caller is still on the line.
Finally, the price is spread over three pages that disagree with each other. We would still buy it, but we would check the first invoice line by line.
What else is on the market at a similar price
All prices below come from each vendor's own page, read 26 October 2026, monthly, before taxes and fees.
| Product | Model | Entry price | What it buys |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quo + Sona | Per call, inside a phone system | $19 seat + $0 | 10 calls, then $1.00 each; $25 tier buys 40 |
| Rosie | Per minute | $49 | 250 minutes; $149 for 1,000 adds calendar booking and transfers |
| Clara (heyitsclara.com) | Flat | $39.99 | Unlimited calls; Clara Pro at $69.99 adds live transfers |
| RingCentral AI Receptionist | Per minute | $49 | 100 minutes, then $0.50 a minute; $39 as a RingEX add-on |
| Smith.ai AI Receptionist | Per call | $0 | 25 calls, then $3.00 each; Pro is $150 for 75 |
Clara here is the product at heyitsclara.com from 44pixels Ltd, not the unrelated getclaraai.com. Clara's page shows a lower monthly figure next to $39.99 without labeling it; we used $39.99. More on each in our Rosie pricing, Clara pricing and Smith.ai pricing breakdowns.
Dialpad, another phone system with a built-in AI agent, bills its agent by conversation credits rather than minutes. Its help docs explain when a conversation becomes billable. We did not verify a current Dialpad price, so we left it out of the table.
NoMissedCall is sold through the App Store and Google Play on two plans: Pro with 250 AI minutes a month and Premium with 500. Current prices show in the store listing. Only time the AI spends talking counts, and calls you pick up yourself through "ring my phone first" are free, per our Help Center. When minutes run out, the AI pauses until your billing date and your own phone keeps ringing. Google Calendar booking and webhooks are Premium features. It works with the number you already have through conditional call forwarding, which our call forwarding guide walks through by carrier.
An illustrative month
Take a hypothetical two-person shop that misses 60 calls a month, averaging about two and a half minutes each, so roughly 150 minutes. This is an illustrative scenario, not a customer.
- Quo + Sona: Tier 2 at $25 covers 40 calls, and 20 more at $0.75 adds $15, so $40 for Sona. Tier 3 at $49 would cost more for this volume. Add two Starter seats at $19 each if you are not on Quo yet.
- Rosie: the $49 plan's 250 minutes covers it with room to spare.
- Clara: $39.99, no usage cap.
- RingCentral: $49 for 100 minutes plus about 50 minutes at $0.50, so about $74.
- Smith.ai: 25 free calls plus 35 at $3.00 is $105, cheaper than the $150 Pro plan at this volume.
- NoMissedCall: Pro's 250 AI minutes covers it.
For a team already paying for Quo, Sona is close to the cheapest option in this example and the least work. For a team that is not, the seats change the math, and a standalone receptionist on your existing number is simpler.
One thing all of these share: they only help if the caller stays on the line. Hiya's State of the Call 2026 report, a survey of more than 12,000 consumers in six countries, found 86% of calls from unidentified numbers go unanswered. A callback from a number the caller has never saved may ring out, which is the case for answering the first call. We left out the popular missed-call percentages you see on vendor sites; our audit of those statistics explains why.
How to test Sona before you commit
- Write the knowledge base first: hours, service area, what you do and don't do, and the three questions callers ask most.
- Quo lets you configure and test Sona before you buy; you only pay to publish it. Use that.
- Start the 7-day trial only when you can spend the week on it, since it converts to paid.
- Call it from a phone it has never seen. Ask a short question, a long one, and one it shouldn't answer. Hang up during the greeting once, then check whether that used a call.
- Try a transfer on your actual plan. Try Spanish if you need it.
- Set a usage cap, and decide what the fallback should be. Voicemail is the default.
The short version: the Quo AI receptionist is a sensible add-on for a team already on Quo, especially one with long calls and a need for transfers. It is a harder sell if you would have to move your phone system to get it. Either way, read your first ten Sona transcripts before you trust it with a busy Monday.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Quo AI receptionist called?
It is called Sona. It is an AI agent built into Quo, the business phone system formerly called OpenPhone. You add it as a step in a Quo call flow, for example after your team's phones ring with no answer or after business hours.
How much does Sona cost?
As of October 2026, Quo's pricing page says every plan includes 10 Sona calls a month (1,000 credits). Paid tiers are $25 for 40 calls, $49 for 100, $99 for 250 and $199 for 600, with extra calls from $0.75 down to $0.45. That is on top of a Quo seat, which starts at $19 per user per month, or $15 on annual billing.
Does Sona charge per minute or per call?
Per call. Quo's pricing page says one call equals 100 credits, whatever its length. Quo's pages do not say whether a caller who hangs up during the greeting uses a call, so ask Quo before you choose a tier.
Can I use Sona without switching to Quo?
No. Quo's FAQ says Sona works only inside Quo, not with other phone systems. It also requires a paid Quo plan billed through Stripe, not through the iOS App Store. If you want to keep your current number and carrier, a standalone AI receptionist that works through call forwarding is the simpler route.
Can Sona book appointments?
Not directly on a calendar, based on Quo's Sona page. During the call it can send a text message with a scheduling link or form to the caller's phone, and the caller books from there. Quo's pricing page lists Sona on every plan, and call transfers as a Business plan feature.
Try it on your own phone
No Missed Call is an AI receptionist that answers your business line 24/7, books appointments straight into your calendar, and sends you a transcript and summary of every call. Setup takes minutes from your phone, and there is a 7-day free trial.
Download on the App Store · Get it on Google Play · Read the Help Center
